Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 233

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Sending a spicy picture to your work chat instead of your significant other? That's so embarrassing. You know what's not? Debt? Consolidate your debt with a loan from FIG. No hassle, no judgment.

Starting point is 00:00:16 Borrow better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hey, guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called,

Starting point is 00:00:26 Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick.

Starting point is 00:00:41 Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman helped make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?

Starting point is 00:01:08 We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is mental health. Awareness Month and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I like was just so wanting to like be out of that phase out of my skin and I just like really regret not living in

Starting point is 00:01:49 the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart radio app. Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All Zone Media. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing

Starting point is 00:02:23 new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show both things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout. Hello. Hi, Gare. I'm excited to see what's falling apart today. Well, that's our elections, which have, as we all know, have been ranked for as long as I can remember, which is kind of true, considering when I was born, circa the year 2000. Oh, yeah, the famous, the great and democratic election of the 2000 in the United States. The flawless election of 2000, yeah. But no, we are going to be talking about Trump's continuing claims that the 2020 election was rigged and his investigation of election fraud in not just the 2020

Starting point is 00:03:14 election, but also the 2024 election, which if you recall, was not rigged against Trump considering Trump won that election, including the popular vote. Yeah, he won every way you could slice that up. A sweeping victory. Yeah. It was a fat hell for the Democrats. But a lot of the investigations into election fraud actually do revolve around the 2024 voter rolls, which we will discuss in a bit. But first, let's go back a few weeks. On executive disorder, I reported that Cash Patel went on to Fox News a few weeks ago and announced that the FBI would soon be making arrests related to Trump's claims that the 2020 election. was stolen, with Patel saying it was a conspiracy, and, quote, they tried to thwart our elections

Starting point is 00:04:05 and rig the entire system. We got all the evidence. We've got all the evidence. I can announce on your show that we've got all the information we need. We're working with our prosecutors, the Department of Justice, and their Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrest. And it's coming, and I promise you, it's coming soon. Patel also claimed on Fox News, quote, we have the information to back President Trump's claims. About a week and a half later, the DOJ announced, quote, multiple aliens charged with illegally voting in federal elections. It's multiple, James.

Starting point is 00:04:43 It's multiple. Okay, yes. What are we looking at? Three? No, no, more than three. More than three. It was four. It was four.

Starting point is 00:04:51 For me, okay. Just for people who aren't familiar with this. of the United States, it's not a statistically significant number when it comes to electoral outcomes. Generally, they are decided by several multiples of four. Usually. Yeah. Patel commented, quote, securing our elections from criminal actors here at home and around the world is one of the top priorities for this FBI. Non-citizens voting is a federal crime period. And while other administrations may have looked the other way in the past, those days are over. We will continue to work around the clock with our interagency partners to ensure those who engage in such conduct

Starting point is 00:05:30 will not get away with it. So these arrests took place in New Jersey, and these quote-unquote multiple aliens were four permanent residents who registered to vote and cast ballots in at least one federal election before applying for naturalization via the N-400. Yeah. Now, the N-400 form has a section where it asks if the applicant has ever registered to vote, or has voted in a federal, state, or local election. Three of the people charged in New Jersey checked no in the box asking if they had voted, the other left the box blank.

Starting point is 00:06:10 But when later questioned by an immigration services officer at the U.S. CIS interview, this applicant answered no, that they did not or have not voted. Yeah. Now, interestingly, only two out of the four are actually charged with, quote, voting by an alien in a federal election. Okay.

Starting point is 00:06:30 Three, are charged with false statements in relation to naturalization. Yeah. And two are charged with procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully. Yeah, I'm guessing the goal here would be to denaturalize them, right? For the people that were naturalized, that looks like that will be part of what they do going forward. Yeah, I know I've reported on this in ED before, but like large part of it, of USCIS have denaturalization targets, right, in the same way that we've seen deportation

Starting point is 00:06:59 targets for ICE and CBP. So, like, that will be the reason that those specific charges, right? That is the easiest way to denaturalize someone. I was going to say the only way, but I think there are technically other ways, but, like, the bulk of times you're going to see someone denaturalized it because they concealed. Previously, it had been that they had concealed, like, some loyalty to like a terrorist group, right? Or perhaps there are bars for like communists and Nazis like with capital letters there. I'm not talking about the political affiliation. I'm talking about like being a member of a party with a party card there.

Starting point is 00:07:36 I'm not talking about like the view necessarily. Yeah. That's a whole other like tangent. There's back and forth rulings if you can really denaturalize someone for being a member of a communist party still. It depends what they mean by communist party. Yeah. That's kind of like a vague term.

Starting point is 00:07:50 But false state. in relation to naturalization, as in allegedly lying on the form by checking a box that conflicts with what the federal government is alleging, is a much more clear-cut route to denaturalization. Yeah. One of the people charged is a green card holder from Liberia, who immigrated as a refugee in 1998 named David Newellie. He's currently 73 years old. He allegedly registered to vote in New Jersey in 2003 and attested he was a U.S. citizen.

Starting point is 00:08:24 The complaint claims Newellie voted by mail in the 2020 general election and submitted a provisional ballot in person on November 5th, 2024 for that general election. Next May, it's May 2025. Newelly submitted a N-400, claiming he had never voted in the U.S., but admitted to voting twice in the naturalization interview. He is charged with voting by an alien in a federal election and false statements. Yeah. Those are the charges he's facing. That's interesting because he seems to clarify it in the interview, right? Correct.

Starting point is 00:09:02 I don't quite know how that works, but like, yeah. He did admit in the interview that he did vote, but they're still charging him with false statements based on the N-400. They'll all be interesting to follow because it could be pretty hard to stick the landing on that, given that he, I mean, I guess technically what you put on the form is there's no takebacks, I guess. But him using the interview to clarify, it certainly seems like he's trying to do what is in the spirit of the things asking him to do. Yeah, that would be an interesting one to follow. This was also interesting because it shows the investigative capacity of the FBI.

Starting point is 00:09:38 This guy admitted to this. Like, he admitted to this in the USCIS interview. The FBI did not like crack the case here. Yeah, yeah. Like there. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, he told it, he told the cops that he did it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:49 When was his USCIS interview? I'm not sure when the interview was. He submitted the N-400 in May 2025. Okay, so in Trump, too, era. Could have been in late 2025. Yeah, this was, at least within the last year. Yeah, yeah, well, some of those N-400 is thing forever now. Totally.

Starting point is 00:10:05 It's kind of interesting. But, yeah, I'm just wondering to what extent previously, I don't actually know, to what extent previously USCIS would like refer people for prosecution. Yeah, that is a good question. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, here it is, here it is. August 2025 was when he was interviewed, according to the criminal complaint. Relatively fast turnaround.

Starting point is 00:10:27 I wonder if that's just a part of the country he's in or whether that was because, like, they wanted to get him in the office, right? And then I'd clarify or detain him because he had voted. And then in October, USCAS denied the application due to a lawful acts of voting in the 2020 and 2024 elections. and the false statement on the N-400. Yeah. We will take an ad break here and then talk about the three other cases after these messages. All right, we are back. Eidene Koresh, 43 years old, is a green card holder who immigrated from Israel on a B2 visa in 2015.

Starting point is 00:11:18 In 2021, Koresh allegedly registered to vote in New Jersey, asserting he was a U.S. citizen, and voted in person in the 2022 midterm. election. Corash later submitted an N-400 in 2025. Based on his charges, I believe his citizenship was granted. He's charged with voting by an alien in a federal election and procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully. A lot of these criminal complaints are quite short, around seven pages. Okay. Jacinthic Zoom is a 70-year-old green cardholder who's lived in the U.S. since 2000, after immigrating from Jamaica. She allegedly registered to vote in 2018 and voted by mail in the 2020 general election. She submitted an N400 in 2021 and was granted citizenship based on what the DOJ is calling

Starting point is 00:12:11 false statements. She's charged with two counts of false statements in relation to naturalization. Two counts would be, I guess, registering to vote and voting. She's oddly enough one of the ones who's not actually charged with voting in a federal election. She's just charged with two false statements. This is, I think, one in the interview, the other on the N400. Oh, okay. Yeah, that can make sense. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:37 It's interesting that they didn't charge maybe, like, I guess they're like eyes on the prize trying to denaturalize someone. Yeah, I mean, like a big part of the FBI's messaging in this is, you know, we found people who illegally voted. But half of the people here aren't actually charged with that. And I don't quite know why. Maybe it's theoretically possible those charges could be added later, but at least in the original criminal complaints issued when DOJ made this announcement,

Starting point is 00:13:05 Exume is not actually charged with voting, even though the criminal complaint says that she did. But it's not one of the charges. Yeah. The normal patent with federal charges is to have a lot of charges. And most of these federal cases will end in plea bargains, right? Because the exposure is so high. So yeah, it's interesting that that's not there when normally the pattern is to put as much as you can in front of the person so that you end up with the plea bargain.

Starting point is 00:13:31 This last guy is also not charged with illegally voting in a federal election. Abina Dunn Vig is a 33-year-old green cardholder who immigrated from India in 2012. He's alleged to have registered to vote in 2016 and subsequently voted in person for the 2016 general election and then by mail in 2020. Vig later submitted in N400 in 2020, but he only faces one charge, procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully. So again, a lot of these charges, even though the criminal complaints allege a lot of the same stuff, the actual charges very greatly. And it's, it is unclear why exactly that is. Yeah. Are they different?

Starting point is 00:14:14 They're all in New Jersey. All New Jersey. So same year, say attorney. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It'll be interesting to follow those cases as well. I know, like I said, that they have some sort of denaturalization targets, so whether they're just focusing their energies on that. It could be a case, or it could be something to do with the specifics of that crime

Starting point is 00:14:34 that I just don't know about voting, well, not a citizen. Yeah, there could be some prosecutorial reason that they aren't pursuing it in certain cases, but are in others. Yeah, and they're all alleged to have voted in federal elections, right? Yes. In at least one federal election, either presidential general election or midterm general election. New Jersey does not have like local election voting for non-citizens. A few days before, Patel announced the imminent arrests on Fox News. The Department of Justice

Starting point is 00:15:04 sent a letter to the chief election official for Wayne County, Michigan, demanding Wayne County hand over all ballots from the 2024 election. The letter said the DOJ and its civil rights division is authorized to investigate and prosecute individuals who may have registered to vote or voted in violation of U.S. law. The letter included three instances of recorded allegations and convictions in Wayne County in quote-unquote recent years related to voting fraud. This pushed by the DOJ to get their hands on ballots or voter rolls is part of a much larger pattern. Yeah. In January, during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, one of the demands from now former Attorney General Pam Bondi during negotiations with Governor Tim Walls,

Starting point is 00:15:51 was for the DOJ to be granted access to the state of Minnesota's voter rolls, quote, to confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal law, unquote. But Trump's DOJ has actually sued over 30 states for not complying with requests to gain access to their voter rolls. Cases against Arizona, Massachusetts, Rhode Island have been dismissed, as have cases in California, Michigan, and Oregon, but the DOJ is appealing those rulings. at least 15 states have complied or said they will comply with requests by handing over voter registration lists, including driver's license and social security numbers. These are largely red states, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi,

Starting point is 00:16:35 Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. In a March hearing in the case against Rhode Island to gain access to their voter rolls, Eric Neff, the acting chief of the voting section of the civil rights division of the DOJ, said that after receiving the voter rolls, quote, our intention is to run this against DHS's save database, unquote. That's the systematic alien verification for entitlements database. James, do you want to briefly explain what this database is and how it's used?

Starting point is 00:17:11 In very basic terms, it is a database. So you have like e-verifers. right, right, would be an example of a DHS database that employers can use to check if somebody is able to accept employment legally in the United States, right? Save is there for government agencies, not individuals, and they should be able to determine whether or not somebody is eligible for certain benefits, right? There are things called public charge rules. If people want a more in-depth explanation of public charge rules, you can scroll all

Starting point is 00:17:41 the way back to November 24 when I made a podcast about these things. we looked at a number of tools that the Trump administration might use to try and deport and denaturalize people in a podcast episode back then. The problem with these databases is they're not very good. The most obvious and amusing examples of E-Verify not being very good are when state agencies hire cops who DHS claims are not legally able to work in the United States. And then the state agencies point out that they used E-Verify, which is, DHS's own tool for verifying and then everyone gets quiet and wonders like, who screwed up here, right? Because they have done their obligation, right?

Starting point is 00:18:25 Large employers have to use E-Verify. The same is true, I imagine, for save, right, in that it is not a database, which is perfect. And so running one against the other, also the phrase running here is doing a lot of work, right, like, are they going to look for name matches? Are they going to look for social security number or driver's license matches? Certain non-citizens will have what's called an ITIN on SSN. There are a lot of ways which this could go horribly wrong.

Starting point is 00:18:59 There's a reason that these two databases are not normally combined, not to mention the fact that this provides a really large disincentive for people a signing up for benefits, right, which we've already seen. Just the rhetoric from the Trump administration in the campaign provided a disincentive for people accessing benefits, but also for people registering to vote, right? Yeah. People who are of diaspora communities, whether or not they are citizens, will be concerned about this.

Starting point is 00:19:30 And that is not an unconscious side effect, I'm sure, right? That is something that they are extremely aware of as they go forward doing this. The court raised concerns about SAVE and said that there's been. been reporting of people being falsely identified as non-citizens in saves database. Yeah. But Eric Neff responded that according to the DHS, the accuracy rate of the save database is 100%. So I'm sure that's fine.

Starting point is 00:20:01 That's just no database of the skill. No, that's just mathematically impossible. Like it's 99% and 100% are like vastly different. Yeah. It's worth noting that in Trump's, one of his early executive orders, like spring of 25, the one about preserving the integrity of American elections, part of what he asked them to do there was to overhaul save and make it like a single source citizenship verification, which it is not and it is still not.

Starting point is 00:20:46 Yeah. There's that push from the executive order a few months ago to create like state citizenship lists. Yeah, they've tried to go a number of ways about this, right? They also, the fall of last year, they integrated safe with the passport database. I think most people will be aware that there are millions of American citizens who don't have passports, for instance, right? Yeah, they've added some other stuff, right? But the idea here is to create, like, and it should worry everyone, right? Like, this is a citizenship database that they will then attempt to combine with their biometric databases, I'm sure,

Starting point is 00:21:24 and we've seen this with, like, the name of the Android app is alluding me now. There's an Android app that ICE officers have, which is supposed to verify someone's status based on a facial recognition scan. Yeah. We know it doesn't work because there was one, for example, one lady who was scanned twice.

Starting point is 00:21:41 Each result returned a different identity. A different identity, yeah. Neither of which was her. This stuff is extremely dangerous for anyone, right? you could be a citizen or a non-citizen the idea that they're going to check you against the list of legit Americans should really worry people. Yeah. And unable to pass the Save Act in Congress, not to be confused for the same database, though

Starting point is 00:22:05 they are slightly related. But unable to pass that in Congress, Trump signed the executive order last March, attempting to force the Postal Service to not deliver mail-in ballots if the voter on the ballot does not appear on this newly created. list of pre-approved voters using this state citizenship list. Yeah. We'll see if that actually goes through, but that's another example of them, you know, trying to, trying to use state citizenship lists to just crack down on the number of people that are able to vote. Yeah. We can all imagine that this will have different impacts across

Starting point is 00:22:38 different demographics, right? And like, that is very much not accidental. The last thing for the voter rolls, in Fulton County, Georgia and Maricopa County, Arizona, the federal government has simply seized voting records. In Arizona, the FBI successfully subpoenaed 20-20 election records from Maricopa County, and in Georgia, the FBI raided an election warehouse in January after dubiously obtaining a search warrant. Then on May 6th, a federal judge ruled

Starting point is 00:23:10 that the federal government can keep the 2020 election materials that were seized in that raid, even if, quote, the seizure in this case was certainly not perfect unquote yeah maricopa county's an interesting one right like but i think it's part of a grand jury investigation yes yeah i can remember at the time and there's a 2020 election uh like maricopa county's results being somehow contentious the state senate did their own investigation into that like several entities have right The details of that investigation is in part what was the target of the grand jury subpoena.

Starting point is 00:23:51 Okay. And not so much Maricopa County, but a number of Arizona counties were really important in the results at a 2020 election, right? There was a massive effort for turnout. I personally know people in indigenous communities who literally traveled for the entire day to vote. The indigenous turnout, especially indigenous women in Arizona, really did make a big difference in the 2020 election. And Maricopa counties, like by population, the biggest county. Maricopa County is vast. A number of other like Arizona counties outside of Maricopa wall, so really pivotal in 2020 election. It's not surprising to see

Starting point is 00:24:25 those ones being targeted. It wasn't surprising to me at the time to see them being targeted, you know? Yeah. Maricopa's where Phoenix is just for people to put it on the map. Famous for having really great law enforcement over the years. Joe Opio was Maricopa County Sheriff. Oh, yes. Ah. Last. from the past. Not so far from it. Isn't he like doing some running for office or something? I thought he was.

Starting point is 00:24:52 He was for a bit. I have not thought of Joe Arpire for a few years, though. What a life to lead. Yeah, it's been a while. Wow. Joe Arpire born in 1932. That's wild. Yeah, he can't be.

Starting point is 00:25:05 Even for the United States. That's even pushing our charitocracy a little. But no, Trump does get. continue to truth claims about Fulton County on his account a few nights ago. He put out a video of the election board.

Starting point is 00:25:25 The video was edited to appear as if it was implying that there was voter fraud or that the elections were conducted improperly. And when that was not what the video was actually showing. But he is his truthed a lot after

Starting point is 00:25:40 the raid to watch out for the results of the of the Fulton County election raid. And now the federal judge is letting the feds keep the materials that they seized, even if it was, in the judge's own words, certainly not perfect. Yeah, I think Fulton County plays a load-bearing role in Mugger's understanding of the 2020 election rate. Yeah, and Trump's own minds.

Starting point is 00:26:05 That is where he got the mugshot taken, right? Like, this is like he is... Oh, I've forgotten about that. Personal vendetta against Fulton County. Yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense. Alpire, by the way, did run for mayor of Fountain Hills in 2024. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:26:20 Yeah. Just eight years before his 100th birthday. What a country. Oh, that's incredible. He did, he received a whopping 1,527 votes in the primary election. It's a thousand people who thought the best hope we have is someone who is approaching. Sheriff Joe. Sheriff Joe, at nearly a century of age.

Starting point is 00:26:43 remarkable. Well, with age comes wisdom. Yeah, up to a point. That does it for us today and it could happen here. We will keep a lookout for any more arrests by Patel who claims to have all the evidence he needs

Starting point is 00:26:58 even though the only arrests so far is just a handful of people from New Jersey and then I think one other person from Pennsylvania that was arrested like in March. Again, because the actual number of voter fraud in this country is... It's minimal. According to all investigations

Starting point is 00:27:13 we've seen so far, very low. It's statistically insignificant. Yes, very low to the point where it's statistically insignificant. I think if you're going to be concerned about election rigging, looking at the way that partisan gerrymandering has been completely,

Starting point is 00:27:28 completely allowed to go through and gerrymandering over districts that were protected by the Voting Rights Act. Look at where polling places are. Look at the electoral college exists to be in between the popular vote and the result of the election, right? There are many things which distorting.

Starting point is 00:27:43 the will of the people, non-citizens voting is not statistically significant in that. Like, it's just not. But this will have a real electoral outcome, or is, I guess, because it will dissuade people from voting. It will dissuade people who have become U.S. citizens from voting. It will dissuade people who are born as U.S. citizens. And they could be pursuing charges against election officials in some of these states. Yes. Like, that is part of trying to seize these ballots and voter rolls. It's not just to charge the possibly for people who may have illegally voted,

Starting point is 00:28:16 by then trying to put some of the blame on election officials themselves. And that is a motive of intimidation is certainly part of the goal here. And that's written explicitly in some of these executive orders, threatening charges against U.S. officials for allowing certain mail-in votes

Starting point is 00:28:31 to be counted when the Trump administration claims that they should not be. Yeah, the nascent of this whole thing is Trump's calls to electoral officials in Georgia, right? Like the Fulton County. the whole spirally. Find those votes. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:46 They're where it all began. So yeah, we'll keep up on this as it develops leading into the midterm election. But bye-bye for now. Early vote often. Vote early vote often. A little too relaxed during yoga? That's embarrassing. You know what's not?

Starting point is 00:29:13 Debt. Consolidate your debt with a loan from FIG. No early repayment fees and low interest rates. So you can pay off your debt faster. Borrow Better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, name?

Starting point is 00:29:28 Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special.

Starting point is 00:29:43 So how do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. And, well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas.

Starting point is 00:30:08 And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some

Starting point is 00:30:44 retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Revenue. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamist sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey.

Starting point is 00:31:16 I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracy. I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levan this went to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me?

Starting point is 00:31:40 Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcast. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here. Very special episode today because I am lucky enough to be joined by Molly Conga. Hi, Molly. Hi, James.

Starting point is 00:32:06 Thanks for having me. I'm excited to hear about today's topic. Yeah. Today's topic is Buffalo. If this just came up on your phone without you clicking in. So I guess, look, Buffalo, when people imagine the Great Plains before European colonization, I think, Buffalo are the fauna that they particularly imagine. being present, right? It's such a romantic image, right? And they're gone now, but they were once so many, like every time we drive through southwest Virginia, I'm in central Virginia. So when we drive

Starting point is 00:32:35 through southwestern Virginia, my husband always brings up this account that he read of someone witnessing the Buffalo stampeding through the Cumberland gap, like where, oh, wow, yeah, yeah. Right down on the tip of southwestern Virginia and just looking at that place and imagining Buffalo there, like, you have to romanticize it. That's incredible. Yeah, they're sick. They've one of the coolest, like, American experiences I've ever had, maybe seven or eight years ago now. I was bikepacking in, like, the Colorado Wyoming border up there. And I was with some friends, we've been, like, maybe we're like three or four days in, you know, like where you kind of hit the sweet spot at that point when you, like, haven't showered for that long

Starting point is 00:33:14 and you're just kind of disconnected from the world. That's when it starts to be getting. Molly's making a face. The sweet spot. You can't see. Just four days of human stink. It really starts to get good. That's when it gets good because you're just like, that's how long it takes to disconnect, right?

Starting point is 00:33:28 So looking at your phone and, like, worrying about not smelling good and stuff. Becoming a beast of the outdoors. Yeah, you just return to your feral self. I'd like to return to my feral self as something as possible. But we're, like, riding, I forget where we're going at Walden, maybe. We're coming off this big plateau dropping into this big kind of, like, where it gets kind of more plane-y, big, big kind of meadow plain. And we're coming down there and there and there's a few of us and these buffalo just come like from the side of us. And they're running alongside us, right?

Starting point is 00:34:02 And we're riding going and we're cooking, like, maybe 25 miles in house and something like that. And these buffalo are just cruising next to us because they're just trying to get like to try to check out like, what are these weirdos doing? And they're just like, why the fuck would you put all your stuff on a bicycle and go ride around like this? And then we're like, oh, it's a fucking buffalo. and for like maybe a mile, they just kind of wanted to keep this in, but they just wanted to keep tabs at us as we're going down this dirt road.

Starting point is 00:34:28 And then like they were getting really close, right? So they're like kicking up all this dust. And you got to feel like you were like almost one of the buffalo, you know, you're like in the herd, traversing the planes. I think you're supposed to keep your distance from them, right? Yeah, well, they went, we didn't have many options. I mean, there's not a choice at that point. Yeah, when they're like, do not approach.

Starting point is 00:34:47 Yeah, they were approaching us. We didn't stop. I was like pretty keen on not stopping. And Molly is right. They look so pedible, but they're really not. They're really not. Despite their fluffy appearance, it's advised. Like any time in Yellowstone pretty much,

Starting point is 00:35:03 especially in these summer months, you will find a video of a tourist approaching a buffalo and regretting that season. They're pretty big. I've been gored by a bowl before, and I would like to keep it to a one goring lifetime for me. One is all most people get. Yeah, yeah, it is. I was pretty...

Starting point is 00:35:22 Let me tell you, I thought that one was all I was going to get. I was ready to make my peace with the world. Luckily, I got a second chance. Yeah, people kind of focus on a buffalo, right? They ignore many of the other species that we lost during this intense period of ecological destruction, right? And I can see why you can find images of piles of dead buffalo skulls. There's that, like, really haunting image of the idea of killing animals. only for their capes or their tongues.

Starting point is 00:35:53 Often this period of genocidal violence is referred to as a buffalo genocide. And I think that encapsulates, right, not just the destruction of the buffalo population, but also of the indigenous cultures that relied on that buffalo population and of the ecology that went with it. Obviously, when I say destruction, I'm not saying they've gone very much still here, it's still present, but the attempt by the government in capitalism. to remove those people from their land. But yeah, it is a shame that these other animals don't get a fair shake. Have you ever seen a black-footed ferret?

Starting point is 00:36:28 When you said there was going to be something about ferrets, I was thinking about it, and I realized all domesticated animals were wild animals, and it never occurred to me that a ferret could live outside. Oh, yeah. A ferrette thrives in the outdoors. I really wanted to have ferrets when I was younger. I enjoyed the presence of ferrets. I enjoyed working with ferrets.

Starting point is 00:36:48 Oh, he's kind of cute in a little bit. Yeah. He's gross. The ferrets are very sweet. Yeah, we had a friend with ferrets growing up so we'd use them to, they used them to catch rabbits in the UK, right? Oh. Yeah. The reason that these guys struggle to get back on the landscape is because they need massive prairie dog towns to feed of.

Starting point is 00:37:11 Oh, do they live in, like, societies? Do they live like a prairie dogs? So do ferrets live in, like, ferret villages? The ferrets predate the prairie dogs. But do they live in like a village? I don't know if they live in like a, I don't know what their social structure is. In Colorado, there's a national blackfooted ferret center where you can go and see them. I've cycled past it, but I regret not going in.

Starting point is 00:37:34 Maybe I'll make a special trip. Reach out if you're with the ferret people. Sorry I said he looks gross. Yeah, please don't cancel us. Because the pro dog towns can collapse, right? Their populations can collapse pretty easily. They get like infectious diseases. So they need like a massive number of people.

Starting point is 00:37:50 prairie dog towns in order to have a sustainable genetically diverse ferret population. Oh, I get it. I get it. And because we don't have those, right, because they are not generally amenable to agriculture, and then the ecosystem is very different. What's naturally worse, that means, I don't know if there are any, there are, like, they're not extinct genetically, but ecologically in terms of their participation in the ecosystem. I don't think there are any very, I think there are some in the Charles Russell Wildlife Refuge, but very few Blackfooted ferrets, which is a shame because they're cool little guys.

Starting point is 00:38:23 I mean, I guess given what we did to the landscape of so much of the country, I'm sure there are other animals that just like their niche is gone. Yeah, and that is exactly what I want to talk about today, right? Like, specifically I want to talk about Buffalo because of the canceling of some public land grazing leases for Buffalo. Before we do that, Molly, we should talk about the terminology, right? the Buffalo Bison discussion. Right, because they're not Buffalo, they're Bison. They're Bison Bison.

Starting point is 00:38:53 Mm-hmm. And as we are, what, five minutes into this, someone has already logged on to Reddit. They have opened. The thread already exists. It's too late. Yeah, it's too late. You might as well even address it.

Starting point is 00:39:03 It's too late. Yeah, we should have moved this to the front of the episode, I guess. If that is you, Rediting, please stop. I am aware that scientifically, we should call them bison. I don't care. English-speaking people have been

Starting point is 00:39:17 calling these animals buffalo since English-speaking people came to this continent. They did so because the animals remind them of Cape Buffalo. I actually have had a friend gourd by a Cape Buffalo as well that were going through most of my goring experience. You've got to leave these big cow-type creatures alone. He was ambushed. My goring was entirely my fault. You shouldn't be unkind to animals and I deserved it. And it was a good learning experience for me. Hids wasn't. I think it was just a bad overall experience being gored wouldn't recommend it. I'm avoiding it. Yeah, you've got this far. You're probably good. I think men in their 20s are probably like peak. I was going to say, I think once you hit 30, your odds decreased dramatically. Yeah, you're out the window,

Starting point is 00:40:00 unless you're working with cattle. Like my dad got pretty close a couple of times when I was cleared. I remember jumping over a fence once, but I think that was more of a professional hazard than like a lifestyle choice. So here's the deal, right? There are many species in the USA, which have names similar to species on other continents, that they are not the same. European, blackbirds and American, blackbirds, right? Robbins would be another example. There is a different sheep's head fish, almost everywhere I have gone underwater. Everyone has a sheep's head. The coolest sheep's head for people wondering is California sheep's head because it undergoes a sex change, making it a pretty cool fish. Also, it gets really cool

Starting point is 00:40:38 after it transitions. It gets like these black and red stripes. It's like one of my favorite fish. If you want to be sensurious about buffalo names, I would suggest picking one of the many indigenous words that have been used to refer to an animal for far, far longer than buffalo or bison. Also, buffalo is one of the cooler words in English language. Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo. Yes, exactly. Yes. It is the longest single word sentence because it's a noun and a verb and a proper noun, right? Right. So it's Buffalo the city, Buffalo the animal, Buffalo the verb meaning like what to like to bully or something to like yeah I don't know if you've

Starting point is 00:41:12 been around them but they do do this they sort of bother things yeah yeah yeah I'm making of course at motion with my neck and shoulders that no one apart from Molly can see uh but yeah they're they're just kind of aggressive in a sort of pokey and yeah like it's a good verb I don't know hang around what's your buffalo you'll get it um yeah it's buffalo the proper noun Buffalo the noun Buffalo the verb Buffalo the propping noun

Starting point is 00:41:38 Buffalo the verb No Buffalo the noun You're going to have to diagram this one Yeah Yeah It's basically like Bison from

Starting point is 00:41:47 Upstate New York Are bullying other bison from upstate New York Yes That is the It's a breakdown Of the Buffalo sentence Fun trivia for everybody

Starting point is 00:41:55 Yeah that's We'll do that At the end of the year We'll quiz you Why are we talking about Buffalo today I can't remember I can

Starting point is 00:42:02 Let me tell you It is because the Bureau of Land Management has cancelled grazing rights in seven allotments of public land in Phillips County, Montana for privately owned bison. And there's been a bunch of reporting on this. Like, when this stuff happens, when stuff the Trump administration does with public land, the outdoors, they're like Democrat blue wave fake news panic accounts really, really go kind of wild with it. They did with this one, right? I think people running whatever, like, you know, Occupy Democrats. Pantsuit Nation for change. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. Occupy Democrats. I forgot about Pantsuit Nation. Wow. That's a real throwback.

Starting point is 00:42:45 Yeah, I never forget about the Pantsuit Nation. They live forever in my mind. What I think, like, the people of that tendency have not realized is that, like, these are not per se wild buffalo. It's not like these buffalo have individually, like, or as a population, survived the genocide, have been holding out on this land of Phillips County for more than a century, right? That doesn't mean that we should be callous about this, we shouldn't. But I just want to explain it a little bit more, I guess.

Starting point is 00:43:12 There are still thousands of Buffalo across the West on federal and private land. Some of them have been grazing on public land with permits for more than four decades. Having them on the landscape is a good thing, right? We need the genetic diversity, even if they're privately owned. Right, so it's not just like, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:43:31 Knowing very little about this, I think a lot of the discourse around these like permits for grazing on public land, it's like, well, why should these farmers get to use our public land for their property, for their cattle? Yeah. And I don't know enough about that to care about that at all. But in terms of what buffalo due to the grassland, like just walking around on it and eating it is part of the maintenance of that grassland. Yes. Yeah. Like the eradication of the buffalo in the Midwest caused ecological habits. because we need them walking around and shitting on it.

Starting point is 00:44:03 Yeah, yeah. Specifically, what we need is them coming in, eating everything, trampling around, shitting everywhere, and then leaving, right? Because that is what, like, so many indigenous cultures have these, like, these, like, traditions that the buffalo go away and then we do a tradition and they come back, right? This happens for a lot of migratory animals. It's not just buffalo, right?

Starting point is 00:44:23 Because it gave shape to time in people's lives. That's how they impacted the landscape, right? They didn't stay in one place. They moved through spaces. So if we want to restore this short grass prairie ecosystem, which is, as it turns out, why people are putting buffalo on this particular land, then we need a lot of space to do it. And we need the buffalo to be able to move around, right?

Starting point is 00:44:50 So people who own these particular buffalo are an NGO called American Prairie. Do you heard of American Prairie? used to be American Prairie Reserve. No, American Prairie Foundation. Okay, great. Are they the villains or the heroes? Neither. I mean, the Trump administration is the villains.

Starting point is 00:45:08 Doug Bergam, specifically, I guess, always. God, I forgot about Doug Bergam. Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, Doug is now Interior Secretary. Thanks to REI for signing a letter endorsing him. Also, fuck you. American Prairie's interesting, I guess.

Starting point is 00:45:24 It's not what I would want, but I don't think it's evil. Sounds like most NGOs. Yeah, it sounds like most of the world as it exists. Not my preference. Yeah. Then how I would do it, American Prairie is a big NGO

Starting point is 00:45:41 that's been trying for about a quarter of a century to buy up private land adjacent to public land around Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. So the goal is to create, like, by bridging these two pieces of public land to create a massive reserve where, like, one of the things with Bison specifically, right, they need a lot of space and very few Bison can cross like political

Starting point is 00:46:11 boundaries. They don't have passports. They don't. Yeah, this is one of their issues. They're undocumented, you could say. But think about the Yellowstone. People get really mad about the Yellowstone Bison leaving the part. This is a big deal.

Starting point is 00:46:24 This has been a big deal for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, people like... What, like they're Disney cast members? Like they're not allowed to leave in costume? Yeah, exactly. They have to return. Take the head off? Yeah, they take the head off.

Starting point is 00:46:36 Take the body off and just wear the head. Mickey Mouse can't be walking in the parking lot. Yeah, you can't see Mickey Mouse at Fons. Like, that would really ruin the magic. Yeah, people get mad at them, right? For a number of reasons. The Buffalo don't know about the park. That, this is a thing, right?

Starting point is 00:46:50 And Buffalo, as it turns out, they love to disrespect offense, which I respect. I like that about it. If I had shoulders like that, I would disrespect a fence. Yeah. They, so like cattle fencing is generally not sufficient for buffalo fencing. But buffalo fencing can be built. It does exist.

Starting point is 00:47:08 When people are building it, it's better if they are conscious of other wildlife, right? Like another of the megafauna, you know, megafauna that has existed here for Melania, but it's now in much, much, much lower numbers, are like prongon antelot. Do we have those here? Yes. Oh, wow. I guess I don't really, I have never really been out west. So you guys have such beasts out there.

Starting point is 00:47:30 If you would like us to make a podcast where I take Molly camping across the west. Yeah, we just look at animals. That would be my ideal job, a podcast where I just talk to someone about an animal every week. Like we go camping, we see an animal, we talk about it. I didn't know ferrets lived outside. Like, think of all you could show me. Yeah, it'd be amazing. God, we could have so much fun.

Starting point is 00:47:54 if we start with the ferrets. Yeah, but pronghorn are amazing. You've not seen a pronghorn. I thought they lived in Africa. And what am I thinking of? Like an ibex. Yeah, I mean, Ibex does live in Africa. I think some of them live on.

Starting point is 00:48:06 Okay, we're going to... Oh, man, everyone's finding out. I don't know anything. Podcast a version. I'm Googling pronghorn anelope. Yeah. You see them? And these are just out there.

Starting point is 00:48:18 Yeah, they just like they live on the landscape. They actually were massively numerous. like before the various extinction events. So it's like a reindeer that lives in Colorado. A reindeer. Reindeer are only reindeer in North America when they're in captivity. Caribou when they are wild. We don't really have a lot of like wild animals out here.

Starting point is 00:48:43 Really? See, this is, yeah, because the East Coast is much more urbanized, right? Like every now and again a baby bear will wander into town and it's like big news. Sick. Okay. Yeah. I like it when a bear. Bears are another animal I have massive respect for. I love how they don't give a shit. I respect any animal that eats from the trash.

Starting point is 00:49:01 Yeah, the prongorns are actually massive, like, I think Antelocatrodite is the genus, and then there were different species. There were tons, like we at one point had tiny, like wean dog-sized antelope. Oh, like a dick-dick. Yeah, yeah, like a dick-dick. That's a cool guy. But fast. Oh. So one of the thing about prong-horns is they can jump.

Starting point is 00:49:21 Like, I've seen them jump. Yeah, it looks like a jumping guy. Well, they don't like to jump a fence, is the thing. Oh, so then now you have like a problem. The buffalo are stuck, but so is the antelope. Yeah, because their speed was always their like defense mechanism, right? They're super there. I think cheetahs are the only land animal that's faster.

Starting point is 00:49:39 And they don't live in the same environment. No, I knew that one. Different continents. Yeah, there is not a North American cheetah. I mean, at this point, you could. I think there might have been at one point. I think there might have been at one point, like a prehistoric cheetah. look at the time they had like ground slows and things.

Starting point is 00:49:55 But yeah, when you're building the buffalo fencing, you have to allow the prongorns to go under if you're trying to build an ecological fence. Oh, I guess because they could like bend over in a way the buffalo can't. Yeah, exactly. There's just more... Buffalo's too big.

Starting point is 00:50:08 Yeah, there's a lot of chunk to a buffalo in the way it couldn't get under there, right? So the other reason people don't like buffalo is because of brucellosis. Do you know what brucelosis is? Is it a buffalo disease? Well, it's a disease that Buffalo can have. Maybe you know from the Warren's Yvon song.

Starting point is 00:50:25 You don't, okay. This is funny, I'm talking to Molly about really American shit and me that he's a British person. I don't know any of what you're saying. Okay. Warren's Yvonne, a very good famous musician guy, is that dead. He has a song about Buffalo disease? He has a song which in part, it talks about brucellosis. It says, the cattle all have brucellosis.

Starting point is 00:50:47 What a great journey we're going on. That's the service I provide as the podcast idiot, because I have. know nothing. You have a very deep, very deep well of knowledge. It just doesn't extend to Warren Zee, but no listener left behind. Like there's no one sitting here listening, wishing that something had been explained more because I'm making you explain what Antelope are and what a Warren Zivon is. Yeah, we could go off on a tangent here because I don't know this song is about the fact

Starting point is 00:51:15 that Sweet Home Alabama is a deeply, deeply hateful song. It is. But it does, that does get mentioned quite a lot. But yeah, the brucelosis. But I feel like once you're touching a buffalo, you have worse problems than whatever this is. Oh, hebrose. Well, not great. Yeah, it depends.

Starting point is 00:51:35 It depends who you are, right? Like, what bruselosis does is generally it infects heifers. So, like, young lady cows, it will cause them to abort their first calf. Oh, that's sad. Yeah, it's sad. Also, like, because of the way it's controlled, your herd can get, killed out if you have brucellosis. Oh, like it would be contagious to people's like cattle.

Starting point is 00:51:57 Yes, and that would be very bad. So, okay, when you say people don't like buffalo because they're worried about bruselosis, they're not worried that they will get brucellosis. They're worried that it will affect their cattle. Yes, I do believe people can get brucellosis. I'm not as familiar with that. Apparently, I'm looking here. Apparently, if you do get it, there's a 20% chance that your testicles are going to

Starting point is 00:52:15 swell up real bad. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. I guess that's why they don't want it. Yeah. Well, that would also be bad, right? Like, uh, big ball brucellosis would be painful like that. But no, okay. So we're talking about the cattle industry. I'm on board. I'm on board. Yeah, it's the cattle that they're concerned about. They can take or leave the testicular swelling. Like, they're tough like that. Why are they touching the buffalo in the first place? They're not. Okay.

Starting point is 00:52:39 Yeah, they're not. Okay. Yeah. It's a, it's a buffalo coming out and causing the cattle to get brucellosis, right? Here's the deal. Elk also can get brucellosis. I know about elk. We have those. Okay, yeah. Okay. So an elk also travels widely, right? An elk, it's not generally an animal that is kept behind high fences. Sometimes there probably are high fence like game farms where people pay to go and hunt elk. I think we have some in Virginia. Yeah, that's kind of gross, in my opinion. I don't like that. But elk also carry brucellosis, right? So if we're concerned about brucellosis, we also need to be concerned about elk. But it really doesn't get brought up in the elk discussion. gets brought up in the buffalo discussion. So these are the reasons that some of the reasons that people don't like buffalo, right? Right, because they carry a cow disease and they don't like to stay inside the park. Got it. Yeah, yeah, they don't like to stay inside the park.

Starting point is 00:53:35 We've talked for a long time, Molly, talking of things that might cause your testicles to swell. Here is some products and services. Or maybe it'll help. Yeah, maybe you'll have bought your first calf. Who knows? Roll the dice. All right, we are back. So let's talk about the area where this is happening, right?

Starting point is 00:54:10 This is happening in kind of northern central Montana around Livingston. Lots of the land in this area has actually dropped below the population density that Turner considered to be evidence of the closure of the frontier when he was developing that thesis, right? I'm not a big fan of the concept of the frontier. If that's another podcast, I don't make one day, but I don't like it. But there's like no people there. Yeah, it's, yeah, there are very few people there. In part because cattle farming is hard, in part because it's harder in a globalized

Starting point is 00:54:44 economy, in part because of climate change. There's this theory of the Buffalo Commons written by two people called Popper. And they considered, like, this specific area to be a tragic. of the Commons where this beautiful plains ecosystem has been destroyed. And they put forward the idea that the presence of Buffalo on the landscape could return it to a sort of short grass prairie commons. This isn't a direct link to the American Prairie Reserve, but this is kind of what they're trying to do.

Starting point is 00:55:18 They're not putting Buffalo on the landscape because they are a Buffalo organization. Right. So they're trying to restore the grassland. Yes, that's the idea. Because we don't have a prairie national park, right? When colonization was moving west, as the Department of Homeland Security, likes to highlight with its use of that image, Liberty was floating across the planes there. Sorry, let's just put an image in my head. Remember when the Trump administration was getting very aggressive towards Somali people? I guess it still is. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see the AI version of that, whereas a Somali woman, like, crossing the planes? No. No, okay, it was pretty funny. It was one of the...

Starting point is 00:55:57 You're doing a pose like the mermaid on the front of a ship? Yeah, exactly, yeah. It was like this is a Somali promise land. They were like, I guess, parodying American rhetoric towards indigenous people and being like one... Okay, so like Somali people can't do Manifest Destiny? I thought we loved that. Yeah, yeah, it was very funny. It was kind of amusing to see that American rhetoric reflected back. Somali people have incredible hosting abilities. that the CHS was not ready for. So what the APR is trying to do is, yeah, use the Buffalo here as like a landscape engineer, right?

Starting point is 00:56:33 Like an animal that will help return this area to, I guess, natural state is a problematic term, you know, but like. So it's pre-industrial state. Yeah, yeah. When we think about like why isn't there a plains of National Park, we have to consider the role of capitalism plays, right? Because no one would go visit that. Yeah, well, I think they would. The planes would be beautiful in their way. Right, but I guess, like, you know, just thinking of like, is the role of the National Park to preserve this landscape, this ecosystem, or is it to create a place where people could go and buy things? Yeah, exactly, right. And increasingly, it's the latter.

Starting point is 00:57:09 Yeah. And I think there is a bias towards preserving, yeah, there's, there's like a scenic vista bias. This is an area where people could ranch cattle. And so, like, that happened instead, you know, and then we, we. got to a point where no one was going to give up their private land to make a massive park. Well, they didn't want to in any of the other times either. Yes, it didn't. Yeah, I think the government could force you back in the day. I mean, I just can't imagine a new national park ever coming into existence. We just don't have that kind of political will anymore. Yeah, I mean, we might get like the Donald Trump's birthplace national park or like something similar, you know, like.

Starting point is 00:57:48 Right, but we would never get Yellowstone again. Yeah, we wouldn't. And like, part of that is. because they violently removed the indigenous people from those places in order to... Right, I don't want to romanticize that. Like, I live near Shenandoah at Valley National Park where people were forced out in a pretty brutal way. That's a big part of the history here. So I don't want to romanticize the creation of the national park. I just mean, like, the government is not going to spend a lot of money on something that's just for everyone to enjoy ever again.

Starting point is 00:58:15 Yeah, yeah. And they're not going to say, like, to an extent we are removing this piece of land from the rapacious capitalism that has destroyed the rest of our natural spaces. So if somebody's going to eat this grass, it's going to be hamburgers. Yeah, yeah. We wanted to turn into the cheapest meat possible. Also, like, I should point out

Starting point is 00:58:33 that, like, land back and national parks are very, very, very, very different strings. I like to kind of illustrate this with the idea that during the Nespersz-war, as a Nes-Perserser fighting their way towards a Canadian border, they are having gunfights in Yellowstone National Park as tourists are coming,

Starting point is 00:58:50 to Yellowstone to like check out the mountains and see the guises and stuff. You know, that's, that's America. That's actually really beautiful. It's perfectly America, right? Like, look at with, look, we're preserving this for you as we violently remove the indigenous people. And just like coming to spend your tourism dollars, never mind that there's a war going on there.

Starting point is 00:59:10 Yeah, just being like, just kind of letting that go past. Like whatever the time period equivalent of a visor and a fanny pack was, that was cooking. Yeah, yeah, for sure. probably a cigar and I don't know, like those trousers to stop past your knee. So you'll hear people saying a lot of shit about the APR, the American Prairie Reserve, right? And so I did what I should do as a responsible journalist and I pulled their 990s. That's my favorite thing to do. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:59:38 Where's the money going? Yeah. Where's the money coming from? Yeah, where's the money coming from? You'll hear a lot of like anti-APR stuff, some of it's from the cattle industry, right? If you go through that part of Montana, you'll see signs that say, like, save the Cowboys, stop the American Prairie Reserve. I think we have a different understanding of what a cowboy is, me and the signmaker.

Starting point is 00:59:57 Yeah, right. Well, it is inherently tied, I guess, to cattle, right? And the idea being that these bison are displacing cattle. It's not a direct contract with cattle. In fact, the APR has like 10 times more cattle on its land than it does bison. Like most ranchers, the APR has deeded or private land. they graze on leasing right to adjacent public land. What the APR is spending its money on, among other things, among like some staffing costs, office costs, paying consultants, paying

Starting point is 01:00:27 fundraisers. Not pay consultants. Oh yeah. They're dropping some coin on consultants. They buy up ranches. The way land ownership works in this area is kind of like a checkerboard. And you've got public land and private land. So they're trying to make like pathways for the bison by buying contiguous plots? Yeah. They're not. They're not. all contiguous, but their goal is to have a large contiguous area in which... Right, and you just have to buy them when they come up. Exactly, yeah, yeah. I think the argument is that they're pushing up land prices, right?

Starting point is 01:01:00 But in reality, this area is depopulating rapidly. It might push up land prices a little bit, but it's not like there's massive bidding wars going on here for each of these ranches. Right, because are there new, like, people seeking new cow ranching opportunities who are trying to move in, who are being prevented from doing that? Well, it'd be people trying to either expand their ranch or if a family is subdividing its ranch or if you didn't inherit your family ranch, I guess, want to buy some land. Generally, how it works here is you buy a certain part of land. It'll be like 60, 40, 70, 30, something like that.

Starting point is 01:01:36 So you'll buy land. And that will give you the privilege to have like first dibs on grazing on the public land that is adjacent to your land. So most of these ranches are checkerboarded. It's not like a big contiguous plot. So not being able to grace a bison on the public land, kind of fucks that up in these plots for the American people, right? And like I should say that like I have some sympathy for people watching in this area.

Starting point is 01:02:00 Like my family of farmers, like it's got to be really fucking hard right now when fuel prices are insanely high to be trying to farm on these, especially the way that like American people farm are massive expanses, right? You have to be in a vehicle a lot. I was reading about the brucellosis stuff and it made me think of foot and mouth disease which happened in the UK when I was a child.

Starting point is 01:02:21 I remember how traumatic that was for people having their whole herds killed. Several people who were like within our extended family social circle killed themselves. That's horrible. When they lost all their cattle. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:02:34 Like it's really fucked up. Like at least in that part of the world like you might have, it might have been your great grandfather who started breeding these cattle, right? Like it's an intergenerational project that like joins lying through your family. So I do understand these people are deeply tied to this land also, not in the same way as indigenous people.

Starting point is 01:02:51 Not quite. I can see that people like, you know, don't want it to change. I understand that. And like consolidation in agriculture, climate change, the way our food ecosystem works, that is an issue we should address if we want to take care of the land. What the government is doing is not how we address that. Sometimes you'll see people saying that the APR is entirely a tax avoidance system for the Mars family. Like the chocolate people? Yeah, yeah, big chocolate.

Starting point is 01:03:15 The Mars family are rich as fuck. I didn't know they were involved in the Bison industry. Well, they have donated. I couldn't find an exact figure rate. With the change of nonprofit, like the reporting laws, it's a lot harder now than it used to be. So they don't own or operate it. They've just made large donations? They've made large donations as a unit called Mars Vista within the APR, which has some private housing on it.

Starting point is 01:03:42 But, like, I think people have fundamentally misunderstanding how they're super wealthy. Like, these people are worth more than $100 billion. I would highly encourage anyone who thinks that an NGO, which is going through, like, in the tens of millions a year, maybe. By 2015, so in the first 14 years of this project's existence, they donated $20 million. That's not touching the edges. I'm sure they have a complicated tax shelter system set up for themselves that doesn't involve Bison involves bank accounts in countries you haven't heard of.

Starting point is 01:04:14 Yes, exactly. Like, the Panama Papers had zero bison in it for a reason, right? Like, you're just being very, it's very sweet if you think that, like, the way that they're avoiding paying federal taxes is buying land to put Buffalo on. Like, all these families have their own whole foundations that are just about moving money around in opaque ways. Yeah, if you're trying to avoid paying taxes, you don't donate to a real charity that's actually doing something complicated with physical animals and land.

Starting point is 01:04:39 You have a foundation that does grants for something obscure. Yeah, like, it's just not, it's just not it. That's not how taxes work. That's not how rich people work. So we talked about brucellosis. We're going to move past brucellosis. I had a diversion on chronic wasting disease and elk feeding, but maybe we'll make that a whole other podcast.

Starting point is 01:05:01 So we also talked about this checker boarding a public land, right? Lots of these ranching operations that they're buying, rely heavily on public land grazing. So in 2022, they applied in 2019, the BLM allowed them to graze bison on seven plots in Phillips County, right? So that's saying that you can put your bison on this public land, which is adjacent to the private land, which you own. And that's standard practice. Everybody's doing that. It depends on the particular plot, right? So they had to apply to the Bureau of Land Management. Basically, it's like pretty common for people to be grazing, to get these permits to graze on the public land? There have been bison on public land for 40 years.

Starting point is 01:05:42 There remain bison on public land across the west to include some tribes grazed bison on public land as well as on tribal land. But like the cattle farmers are doing this as well. Oh yeah, the cattle farmers are all doing this. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm saying like if you buy this plot of land, it's like kind of common that you would also be grazing on the public land adjacent to it. Yeah, it's entirely understood. Like, or not even adjacent to, but sometimes like interspersed with. Yeah. Like so, If you look at like a, sometimes you'll see like a deeded and a leased acreage when you're looking at like a land. Like if you were, if you were interested in buying a ranch, Molly. So like when they, so when they bought this land, it would be reasonable for them to assume that they would be able to use the parcels adjacent and interspersed within it.

Starting point is 01:06:23 Yes. Yeah. Yes. And they would have known that that would have required in some cases asking the BLM, right, which is what they did. And in 2022, the BLM said, go ahead, put your bite some on this on these particular seven plots, right? So they were amended to include Bison. They got environmental impact study done. You know, they did all the things.

Starting point is 01:06:44 I'm doing an environmental impact study of the presence of a native animal. Yeah, on its native range. What would happen if a Buffalo lived here? Yeah. We asked 10 government scientists. Yeah, we spent thousands of dollars finding out what happens if Buffalo lives in Buffalo home. Turned out it didn't do massive ecological damage. So BLM said, let the Buffalo back.

Starting point is 01:07:06 What is interesting about this rule change is the justification the BLM is using. And that is the thing that people should be worried about. In my opinion, that should be the headline. The headline should be. So the BLM is trying to regulate these leases that have their roots in the 1994 Taylor grazing Act. I'm noddingly. Yeah, yeah. The Taylor grazing act is a big deal when it comes to public land in the West in farming, right?

Starting point is 01:07:29 It is trying to regulate these leases to quote unquote productive purposes. It doesn't say productive purposes anywhere I can find in the Taylor Grazinget. It does use a term, I guess, domestic livestock. A bison could be a livestock. Well, they are a livestock. I've eaten them. Yeah, these bison are vaccinated. They are fenced.

Starting point is 01:07:51 They are tagged. They'll be handled. I'm guessing the way the API does it is like a kind of non-invasive handling, like trying to keep them not acclimated to human contact per se. But like, these are livestock. A bison to human contact. Yeah, you can get like beefalo, right, which is like a hybridized bison. They sell bison at my whole foods.

Starting point is 01:08:12 That's livestock. Yeah. The APR is not raising them to kill them to sell them for meat. But they could if they wanted to. Because I don't think the government is ever going to go to a cattle rancher and say, you have to kill X number of these or they're no longer livestock. Yeah, well, that is the question, right? Like, what if we choose, if you gave me a million dollars today,

Starting point is 01:08:31 I would immediately cease making podcasts. I would buy a large plot of land. And I would have an ungodly number of rare and endangered domestic livestock species. Right. I'd have Jacob's sheep. I'd have polyseric sheep with four horns, you know, like Satan looking sheep. I'd be all about it. And they would remain legally livestock, even if you had no intention of eating them.

Starting point is 01:08:50 Well, that is the question, right? The productive purposes definition could be extremely broad. What if you're doing practices like restorative ranching? Right. What if the Bureau of Land Management was concerned with the land being properly managed? Well, at a point, I guess, the BLM was, right? Because there was a rule, this is actually kind of funny. It was called the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule.

Starting point is 01:09:17 And the BLM rescinded that last week. So previously, that was one of the considerations for managing land, for managing public land. And I guess, like, we should just briefly say that there is no such thing as government land, right? it's all native land. And the land which is currently managed by the government is paid for by me and Molly and everyone else. Doug Bergen doesn't own it. It is there for future generations, right? It's like what is, what are they going to do with it if they kick the buffalo off of it?

Starting point is 01:09:47 Cathal will be my guess. The cattle only leases. So they're just going to lease it to someone else? Yeah, but like I guess some portions of public land in that part of Montana entirety land locked by, private land. Like one of the things that APR did that made people like it there is that the APR bought a bunch, bought a ranch and then opened up a gated road, which allowed people to access 50,000 acres of public land that had previously been completely islanded, right? So like, right. What their plan is to do they have to sell these ranches now? So the government

Starting point is 01:10:19 just is saying you can't use this public land anymore in such a way that might negate your ability to use your privately owned land because we don't think bison are liable. stock. Yeah, because Bison are woke. More broadly, like, this conservation and landscape health rule is worrying. Very amusingly, the BLM has forgotten to take down the website that explains the value of the rule. So at the time of recording, the BLM's website still says, quote, the rule recognizes conservation as an essential component of public lands management on equal footing with other multiple uses of these habitats. Americans rely on public lands to live, food, energy, clean air and water, wildlife habitat, and places to recreate.

Starting point is 01:11:01 The BLM knows the importance of balancing our use of natural resources with protecting public lands and waters for future generations. The rule will safeguard these lands and waters to protect our way of life. Still a bit cringe, but they've now rescinded that rule, so I guess our way of life is now under threat. Because I just don't understand how this is justifiable at all, but I guess that's not really the point. For a lot of people, right, like it sort of flies under the radar

Starting point is 01:11:35 because it's not, you know, like a big Washington thing. I can see how like in our major population centers, it can be easily to be like, you know, the fuck cares where the cows and buffalo go. But I think even aside from, from an ecological argument, which I think is very important, right, the restoration of these grasslands, this is the government saying, no, we're going to take this public resource away from someone who is rightfully using it and paying to use it. And we're going to sell that right instead to a capitalist concern over a bullshit fake reason. Yeah. Not that the APR is not, I suppose, It's not really a capitalist concern. It's like a nonprofit.

Starting point is 01:12:11 But there has to be some sort of big cattle lobbying at play here. Yeah, I think there are elements of the cattle industry which have been opposed to Bison, especially due to that departure of Bison from the park is really something that for years has been like a point of tension in Yellowstone. It's worth knowing like who, yeah, who is for this and who is against it, I guess. It is cattle ranches who are opposed to the grazing of bison out here. And who specifically is getting? those seven specific plots. Yeah, well, I think the reason they rescinded those

Starting point is 01:12:44 is because they were the seven most recently approved. Because there are other plots. I think there are tribes in California, for instance, who have applied for buffalo grazing on public land. And I should point out that like a tribal cultural herd, a food sovereignty herd is a very different thing to the APR. I hope that APR would acknowledge that I know that tribal interests would. But I guess as far as the government is concerned,

Starting point is 01:13:05 it's the same that the answers just know. I don't know yet. We don't know yet, right? We don't know if those tribal leases have been approved. What we do know is that like this production standard is a theory of threat to them. The coalition of large tribes actually wrote a letter opposing this decision. I'll quote from it here. It is offensive and unacceptable that the federal government would still seek to keep Buffalo off of these lands. Chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, Ryman Leboe wrote, adding that BLM lands are all former Buffalo lands. He calls the decision a painful reprise with genocide of the federal government,

Starting point is 01:13:37 attempted to commit against us and our relative buffalo. They also called it affirmative action for cattle, which was kind of funny. Wow, true. Yeah, but yeah, it's true. Like, it's like saying... They're doing cow DEI. Yeah, this is one, our one angular is fine and the other one is in. I want people to be concerned about this because it could be deeply damaging to the attempts of tribes

Starting point is 01:13:58 to recover their buffalo population. It could be deeply damaging to our public lands. I guess I want to talk briefly about the buffalo genocide because I think it's something that people have like a grasp of but not like a maybe in-depth understanding. What I want to briefly say is like the government played a massive role in wiping out of most of a buffalo. We ended up with fewer than a thousand head of buffalo. Like there were times when a tree falling down, a lightning strike, a bad flood could have significantly like altered the future of the species because there were so few. Capitalism also played a role, though. The idea that the buffalo hunters were like just following orders from the government

Starting point is 01:14:41 relies in part on books written by former buffalo hunters, trying to absolve themselves. I would suggest that we also look at the incentive to kill the animals and to not make use of their remains after people did that, right? Because as much as the government did, like, the capitalism that the government was bringing with it killed the majority of the wild buffalo in this country. and that is what's happening again, right? We look at public lands management today. Like last year, I was in Chaco Canyon.

Starting point is 01:15:11 Chaco Canyon was the site of the biggest building in what is now, the United States until the 1880s. Oh, wow. Chaco and civilization built these massive great houses there. Really, really beautiful, amazing place. One of the less visited units in the National Park system. Gorgeous, amazing. I saw some out there, too.

Starting point is 01:15:30 This is all news to me. You've got to go to Chaka Canyon. We have to find something we can record that gets me down to the Southwest. Yeah, I bet there are some bigots. You know, they are because they use the they appropriate Zuni Sacred Sun symbol in some of their Nazi shit. Because have we not fucking done enough? Well, apparently not, right?

Starting point is 01:15:49 Because there is a campaign to have drilling to like de-list areas of Chaka Canyon. I also spent time last year in Gwitchin homeland with Gwitchin people. There, what's happening is a tru-listing. Trump administration is trying to grant drilling permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Man. The Gwichian people, I should say, preferred to use the term Arctic refuge. So I'm going to try and use that going forward. They don't like ANWR, just the acronym.

Starting point is 01:16:17 So what that will do, right, is on the plane there, drilling is the place where the caribou migrate, the porcupine caribou herd makes the longest land mammal migration in the world. So we're just speed running the devastation of every cool, big animal we have. Yeah, like we're going to do drilling in the place where the caribou carve, right? And if they don't go there to carve, then it's over. Yeah, and there are so few of these animals left, right? They can cross political boundaries, that can travel their great distances unimpeded by capitalism. Largely that's because the Gwichin territory is not a reservation.

Starting point is 01:16:54 It's like they own it. So they can go off public land onto Gwichin land. And without the Caribou, like the Gwichin culture cannot be the same as it is, right? the caribou is sacred to them. Like that culture and the existence of the caribou, I guess, are tied together. And like, the same could be said for bison, right? Like that is part of the reason that we don't have bison on the plains anymore because indigenous people and the bison went hand in hand.

Starting point is 01:17:17 In the genocide of the indigenous peoples, there was also genocide of the buffalo, I guess, and those two things weren't separate or distinct. And I think, like, there's this idea in the American liberal psyche that, like, bison being on the land constitutes a return. And, like, that's not it, right? Like privately owned bison being on the APR is not land back. I mean, it would restore the grassland to some degree, but that doesn't have the same cultural impact as returning the land to its natural stewards. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 01:17:45 And allowing indigenous people to like manage the land for future generations in the way that they did for millennia before this massive extinction event, the European colonization. I hope nobody thinks they privately owned Buffalo flock is the same as land back. Yeah, I hope not. I really hope not. Like, did you see like when the forked pet tribes were like killing some of their buffalo to feed people during the last shutdown? I do remember that, yeah. Yeah, there was kind of a strange reaction being like, oh, how sad that they have to kill their buffalo. But that's what the buffalo are for. Yes, that is why they, the buffalo are there so the culture can exist.

Starting point is 01:18:23 It's not like a sacred cow situation. Yeah, yeah. That is sacred to them, but not in that way. Yeah, like it is sacred to them and that it is sustaining to them, right? And like, that's my understanding at least. And having spent a little bit of time with people who have that relationship to other animals, like when I think about my inference and their caribou, like they will fight as hard as they can to preserve their caribou herd. That doesn't, that's not like a different thing from them. They also hunt the caribou and eat it. Yeah, part of the natural relationship with them is sometimes eating them. Yeah. And like they did in that way, the culture is. sustained by the ongoing presence of the animal, right? I guess I just, I don't know, the Western mind, we can only hunt something to extinction. We can't contemplate. Yeah, wanting to coexist with it.

Starting point is 01:19:11 A symbiotic coexistence where we eat them sometimes, but we don't want them all to be dead. Yeah, right. We're not just going to be like, okay, that was fun while it lasted. On to the next one. Yeah, I just do the next species now. So, like, people should be worried about this. This is not the end of bison on public lands.

Starting point is 01:19:28 it's not the end of bison on tribal lands. But this productivity standard should really concern people. BLM is the biggest public lands management agency. Sometimes it gets jokingly called the Bureau of Livestock and Mining, which is pretty much the way it's going, right? Right. So is there a legal definition being used here, like something from a statute or something from a contract?

Starting point is 01:19:51 Like, what is this? What is productive use? So productive use is a standard that they have derived from the term domestic livestock in the Taylor Grazing Act. And then how is domestic livestock legally defined? Any domesticated animal? Yeah, well, they are claiming that it is domestic livestock if it is productive. But this is circular, right?

Starting point is 01:20:11 So productive use means livestock and livestock have to be productive. But what is productive? It's livestock. The livestock is productive. Well, there has to be like a cash exchange. I guess they're saying that it has to be raised for sale. But then like how exactly are we measuring that? Does it have to be profitable?

Starting point is 01:20:27 Does it have to be extracting the maximum, like, output out of that given area of land? Do you have to be exporting something? Like, do you have to have a government? Like, what is the threshold here for what's productive? Yeah, APR has given bison meat to food banks before. So apparently that doesn't need the standard. Right. So, like, without a hard and fast, like, clear written standard, this is the government just

Starting point is 01:20:53 deciding who does or doesn't get to do business with them. Yeah, and who does and doesn't have access. There are issues, big issues with grazing cattle on public land. Ecological, social, climate change, animal welfare, there are issues, many of them. But the idea that if you wanted to, let's say if you wanted to raise fewer cattle and do what they call regenerative ranching to something more sustainable, you couldn't, because it's not as productive, it's bonkers, right? On public land, like on...

Starting point is 01:21:22 Right. So now you lose your government contract because you tried something, try something new, try something sustainable. You tried to be too nice to the land that supposedly belongs to everyone. So in order to use this land that is supposed to be for public preservation, you have to be as exploitative and destructive as possible. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Doug Bergam.

Starting point is 01:21:42 Yeah, cool. Are we going to extend this to, like, I'm not as familiar with mining, but you can stake a claim on public land, right? Lots of most mining claims I imagine are staked on public land. And you can exploit that claim. is it now going to be the case that like you have to exploit that claim? Like if we don't have this standard of maintaining the land and that is that it's gone now and that the only standard is there has to be as productive as possible.

Starting point is 01:22:07 Then how is that land management? Yeah. The Bureau of Land Exploitation. Yeah, the BLM is just, and I know the BLM has done this for many sentences. This isn't new for the BLM. But having officially rescinded their rule on conserving the land. Yeah. then this could be really bad, right?

Starting point is 01:22:25 Like, massive chunks of the West are managed by the BLA. And, like, the idea that they're only going to allow it the most productive uses or force the most productive uses. Like, this is one of the many ways the Trump administration is attacking public lands that people should talk about more. And again, without adequately defining it, I just feel like this is another vector for just handing out government resources to donors, to allies. Yeah. And like without any change in statute, right? This is the law that Bergam is reinterpreting here, you've got a 1934 Taylor Grazing Act. And then like it's a 1976 law. And the statutory language is that the BLM should manage the land for multiple use and sustained yield. That is broad. But like, we're not going to get this Congress to pass a better one. No. And if anybody does try to take this to court, the Supreme Court will just say, no, you have to strip mine the field. Yeah, like your only choice is... You have to frack.

Starting point is 01:23:25 Even whether there's gas there or not, you have to set up fracking. You're like obliged to do feedlots even though you can't. Like, it's just like a really concerning area that I think has been approached kind of almost tokenistically in some of the press. Like, this is bad for everyone, right? If the government is saying you can only ranch this way on public land, like that's also bad for ranches all over the West. Right. I don't think that like the way that we restore our land to its custodians and to like its natural state is big private parks. Like APR is like a private national park, right?

Starting point is 01:24:04 Like you can walk through lots of it. You can hunt on it like public land in some places. You can camp on it. They have dispersed camping. That's nice. I don't believe in the benevolence of the rich because like look how we fucking got here. Right. But that half measure was the best thing we had at this.

Starting point is 01:24:21 moment. And now it's illegal. Yeah. Now it's, and like, I'm glad that these rich people are putting Buffalo on the landscape because we need more of them. Like if we're ever going to have truly wild herds, we need that genetic diversity. Right. They've been through horrible genetic bottlenecks in getting up to this half a million number. Right. It's not like we can just try again later. Let it, let the number drop back down. We'll try again in a hundred years. Like at some point, we've missed the boat. Yeah. And as the climate continues to change, right, we have to think about. how land management, food procurement plays a role in our future. And like, this is the opposite of doing that.

Starting point is 01:25:00 And I think people ought to be concerned about that. There's not much you can do about it. Like, these are people who weren't elected, like ruling on things that are not statutory. But it is something that I think people ought to add to that many concerns with the Trump administration. Be more worried. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want you to be more worried. I want you to go outside.

Starting point is 01:25:20 like see a buffalo, it would be nice. No, but at least know that, I don't know, the future existence of the world as we know it as being attacked from all sides, even from directions. I wasn't aware of. Yeah. There are attack vectors that I just had not considered. Yeah, this is a new and exciting way

Starting point is 01:25:37 that they're making shit worse. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed a little diversion about Buffalo. Next week, I want to talk about bears. I'm on a tear. The bears I'm excited to learn about. Because I've seen a bear, and I know they live in the United States. They do.

Starting point is 01:25:53 They do. I guess I was thinking of like Springbok maybe. Pronghorn. They kind of, yeah, prongorns. They both have like a pea in it. Mm-hmm. I don't know what I said. I've been to a zoo and they got of antelope type animals there.

Starting point is 01:26:09 So I just, I don't know, everything at the zoo must be from far away. Now the pronghorn is like it's a, there's a cool zoo. I'm not a big zoo guy. No, you got to make sure it's one of the, one of those ones that, I don't know, is accredited. A work zoo. Yeah. There's one in Palm Springs where you can see, I've seen big, I've been fortunate enough

Starting point is 01:26:27 to see big horn sheep in their natural habitat. Oh, wow. But for most people, your best chance, again, they look at a big horn sheep is to go to that one in Palm Springs. When you see a pronghorn, just pronging, you know, like. Do they like, do they like? Yeah, they, they bounce along. They got those giant tendons, right?

Starting point is 01:26:44 They, they, they, they, uh, a buffalo can go 35 miles an hour and they're faster than a Buffalo. I don't want to see a buffalo go 35 miles an hour. I don't want to see that. Oh, they can be, yeah. It's like seeing a minivan, like doing muscle car shit, you know, like they can jump. They could, they have this incredible buffalo can like jump over stuff. They're actually very nimble despite looking, you know, like a, like a cinder block. Well, they're so cute, though. I want to touch one so bad, but I don't want to get bruselosis. Vise against it, yeah. Bracillosis is going to be a long-term issue. It's, yeah, it's the trampling. There'll be a short-term issue for you.

Starting point is 01:27:17 So yeah, don't touch Buffalo. Don't touch them. Send Molly pictures of your prong horn encounters. Yeah, if you have seen a wild animal in the United States, let me see it. I didn't know we had those. Yeah, getting Molly's replies with your raccoons in your trash. Raccoons I know about. I've seen a raccoon.

Starting point is 01:27:36 Yeah, yeah. Skunks. I was in South Korea many years ago at a theme park that had a zoo in it. I don't know. It was a while ago. Perfect. But in the zoo area. There was this huge display.

Starting point is 01:27:49 Everyone was crowded around this very cool zoo animal. Was raccoons? Oh, really? They don't have them. They play such a cultural role in the American cultural hegemony. I don't want to see a raccoon, but I guess, yeah, if you can't see one, that's an intriguing get. Yeah. I remember my initial engagement with raccoons was through the movie Pocahontas, which is a whole other shit.

Starting point is 01:28:14 So when I first saw a raccoon, I wanted to visit it, right? because, you know, they have biscuits. Yeah, you thought it was going to be like chatty. Yeah. Like a little friend. Yeah, it was very aggressive, be unnecessarily aggressive. Not a little friend. Yeah, I was approaching it.

Starting point is 01:28:28 Spirit of kindness. I think, like, generally, I also have been victimized by a skunk for several years now. I think maybe I just... That's not a friend. No, it finds me. You wonder what those ladies on TikTok that have pet ones will tell you. That is not a friend. Apparently, they're very nice if they, like, can be encouraged not to...

Starting point is 01:28:44 I don't know. I don't think... Please don't capture a skunk and bring it home. you, like, the skunk wants to live on its own. But yeah, this one skunk will find me every time I'm going through. Like, I'll be coming out at night. He's thinking about you. On my head, like, it's like a fucking exocet missile.

Starting point is 01:28:59 I see him coming from like 200 yards away. It's that fucking guy again. Yeah, he's pissed at me. I'm pissed to him. He turns around. He squares up. Did you get caught? No, no, he'll show his ass to me.

Starting point is 01:29:11 And then I'll just kind of give him a wide berth and think, oh, that was unusual. Seeing a skunk do that. And then two weeks later, there he is again. Yeah, he's waiting for you. He does not want you to come back. Yeah, no, he doesn't. He's also trying to exercise control over the public lands and an aggressive. I was to say, he's doing land management and you're not part of it.

Starting point is 01:29:30 He's returning into its natural state by keeping European people off the land, which I guess is... Honestly, valid. Respectable. He's heard horror stories from his great grandparents. Yeah, I can respect that. No, I know I think of it in that way. But yeah, I've got some good pictures of the back end of him. Well, after he kept doing it, I thought I may as well photograph and document this tendency.

Starting point is 01:29:50 So, yeah, I have them. I'm just going to use some kind of greetings card or something, but I haven't yet. Perfect for the family Christmas card, I think. Yeah, yeah, just keep people on their toes. We've rambled enough. Okay. Yeah, please send us your wildlife pictures. We would love to see them.

Starting point is 01:30:05 And next week, bears? Bears, yeah. Molly, before we go, do you want to plug your podcast about people who probably don't engage with animals very much? Oh, yeah, you can listen to my show, Weird Little Guys. I don't think there's been an animal in the show in a while. Although I guess eventually I will get around to those guys that occupied that BLM land. Yeah, yeah, that's it. But it's that kind of show.

Starting point is 01:30:25 Yeah, I bet they love wolves. I bet they think a lot about wolves, even if they don't see them. Oh, yeah, yeah, there was a guy who had his username on a Nazi forum was the device of wolf, which is incorrect German for the white wolf. So they do love wolves. Yeah, yeah, I could, I guess. Thank you very much, Molly. Thank you, James.

Starting point is 01:30:58 Renno mishap? That's embarrassing. You know what's not embarrassing? Using FIG for Home Improvement Loan. A quick, simple, and transparent offer in minutes. Borrow Better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news.

Starting point is 01:31:15 What's the news, name? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. First people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts.

Starting point is 01:31:28 We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down?

Starting point is 01:31:50 Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast. We could call in and say, hey Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen.

Starting point is 01:32:10 We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Starting point is 01:32:33 Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen, kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering, Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world. He doesn't look back.

Starting point is 01:32:59 Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levin this plant to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life.

Starting point is 01:33:32 Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to I Kidapid Here, a podcast where I try to explain economics to you and Molly. I'm your host, Bia Wong, and thank you, Molly, for agreeing to do this, especially on extremely short notice. Sorry, I appreciate it. I am so excited to struggle to learn. So, okay, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the central thing that this episode is about nominally is a concept

Starting point is 01:34:14 called monopsony and it's actually really easy. No, see, you said that. You said that in the word chat earlier. You said monopsity and I was like, oh man, she's so tired. That's not even a word. Well, okay. This actually gets into the thing because this is a. word that was made up specifically for this concept. Unfortunately, I do also have to do the bad news,

Starting point is 01:34:33 which is that to actually understand the history of this, we do have to explain stuff that's legitimately very complicated. So, I'm locked in. Yay. But, okay, okay, modopsony, the hook of this, this is part of the reason why you get paid like shit is because of monopsony. So I first was interested in writing about this specifically for this show, because weirdly, and PR's Planet Money, like, discovered the concept of monopsony and did it a couple of pretty interesting pieces on the history of the concept. And the place that they go with it is they start talking about one of my favorite economists, Joanne Robinson, who is really good, and we're going to spend most of this episode talking about her. But one of the stories that

Starting point is 01:35:24 they tell, this is a very famous story in the circles of economics. that I'm around, I guess, is about her sitting down with like a British classicist and inventing the term monopsony. So, okay, what is, what is monopsony? It's one something, mono. You know what a monopoly is. So monopoly is when one seller, right? So, okay, it's like, yeah, you have, I don't know, you have like Google, which is a monopoly on like search engines, right? And, you know, monopoly doesn't necessarily, and what we'll be getting into this more in a second, it doesn't necessarily have to mean that there's literally only one. Right. But, you know, like the U.S., like every market you are dealing with in the United States is some kind of monopoly where,

Starting point is 01:36:08 you know, sometimes there's like a big three or sometimes there's like two or sometimes there's maybe five. Or sometimes it's quite literal. Like we only have one power company in Virginia. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and sometimes monopolies are deliberately set up by the state, right, where sometimes, you know, a state will just be like, yeah, fuck it. There's only one power company. here. Oh, no, it's a private company. It's a private company. Yeah, right. Yeah, but sometimes private companies will be handed monopolies like this. Right. Utility companies are a thing where it does kind of make sense because having two companies setting up rival electrical grids is like a nightmare, but... Well, that's why the state should do it, Mia. Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah, this is the issue,

Starting point is 01:36:46 though, right? And this is why monopoly, in theory is like a thing that economists are not supposed to like because monopoly screws up the sort of like perfect competition between all of these one million different companies that's supposed to like make your life good because they're all forced to sell everything at like the lowest possible price because they have to outcompete everyone else and there's like all of this stuff but then if you have if you have one monopoly they can charge you whatever the fuck price they want because there's only one of them and the alternatives are to eat shit or like amazon choking out was it was one 800 diapers right was a diaper company that offered like affordable mail-order diapers.

Starting point is 01:37:23 And they undercut them really hard for like a concentrated period of time. So they went out of business and then they jacked the prices on diapers. Yep, yep. This is basically just what the modern tech economy is is that some company will come in with like $100 billion worth of tech money.

Starting point is 01:37:40 For example, there were a bunch of ride share wars in India over this where like all these ride share companies were basically giving people for like really, really low-cost rides. I mean, they were obviously still screwing the drivers. But like, oh, yeah, naturally. Yeah. Yeah. And so they were just trying to, like, edge everyone on the market so that they could take control

Starting point is 01:37:56 of it and raise the prices and stuff eventually. I guess it's like, you know, the capitalism enthusiast likes to imagine that the economy is like, you know, Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest, right? Yeah. We evolve and compete and the best man wins. But actually, it's more like intentionally introducing mongooses to the islands of Hawaii. Yeah. Like, that's, yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:18 This isn't evolution. you just introduce a giant weasel that ate all the bird eggs. Yeah, right. And it's like, you know, if you look at how capitalism spreads historically, it's not even, like, capitalism doesn't outproduce other, like, economic systems. Usually what it does is like, you know, there's this line in the communist manifesto that I think Marx was extremely wrong about. Which he's talking about, like, trade is the canon that will bring down Chinese walls. And he's talking about, like, free trade will, like, destroy China's trade barriers.

Starting point is 01:38:47 It's like, well, no. like China's trade barriers were brought down by the opium wars, like the British Navy, like sailed in and like besieged to the capital. Like, you know, but when people talk about monopolies, they're talking about selling goods, right? Right. And what Jill and Robinson realizes very quickly is that, hold on, this is also true for employers. Right? If you are trying to find a fucking job, right? Oh.

Starting point is 01:39:19 Under sort of like the models of perfect competition, that like neoclassical economics, the economics that like you learned in school, they just normally assume that, oh yeah, you can just switch jobs really easily, so obviously companies have to pay you. Right, but in most towns, there's one major employer who kind of sets the bar. Yeah. Like here it's UVA. Yeah, like it's Walgreens or like Walmart. And like, if you've ever had to find a job, like you understand how this works? I actually have it. But I understand in theory.

Starting point is 01:39:50 Yeah, you're the listener. You've had to find a job. You're speaking to the only person who's never applied for a job. They've literally never applied for a job? It's a complicated situation. Yeah, I've never like... Oh, wow. Good for you.

Starting point is 01:40:06 I love this for you. This rules. For everyone else, yeah, like it's really obvious that, you know, there exist conditions where you have monopolies but for like hiring people. So Joan Robinson, like, at this meeting with this class, this coins the term monopsony to be like, okay, there's one seller. Okay, I'm usually against a neologism, but I understand the need for this word. I'm on board.

Starting point is 01:40:28 Yeah. I'm on board with Joanne. It's a good word. She's really cool. Yeah. I probably mentioned the caveat here, which is she does do the, like, classic 1950s communist thing of like going to China and then getting led around on like state-sponsored tours and then coming back and assuming you understand what's happening in communist china and

Starting point is 01:40:49 that didn't go great but you know the rest of her work is really good and and this is kind of where planet money does a really interesting history skip where in their version of the story they go oh yeah and then everyone just kind of ignored it until recently it got picked back up by these economists who were like wow we did peer-reviewed research and we found out that like it turns out that, yeah, actually there isn't perfect competition in the labor market, and that, yeah, labor markets are controlled by these, like, monopolies. I mean, I guess you have to do studies to prove things. You can't just vibe it out.

Starting point is 01:41:28 But I would say just the general vibe, like, I could have told you that. I could have told you that. Molly, Molly, okay, I have such bad news for you, which is we are going to meet the person in this story whose idea it was to be like, hey, we should, like, figure out how the economy works using data. That was a new concept for them. Yeah. Tite.

Starting point is 01:41:50 Yeah. Was invented by a guy who we're going to get to the story of the invention of. And it was in like 1987. It was like the 30s, 1930s when we invented this. It was in 2004. They brought math into it. Oh, God. One of my absolute favorite stories of all time is like, you know, in like the 90s,

Starting point is 01:42:13 there was like the craze over chaos. which I think the only artifact of that is like the chaos theory guy in Jurassic Park. Matter of my flasked's wings and all these things happen. Like chaos theory is like a, it's a, like a genuinely very interesting math concept. But the thing about chaos theory is that it only applies to things that are third order equations. A thing I definitely know what that is. Yeah, we could go off on a tangent on this, but I'm just, I'm just going to tell the econ joke. No, we don't need to. We don't need to.

Starting point is 01:42:40 So everyone economics immediately was like, oh my God, there's just a hot topic. But the problem is it doesn't apply to the economic. stuff people are doing in the 90s because they don't use third order equations. They only use second order ones because they're dumbasses. This is like one of the trends of the show is that the people who do mainstream economics are extremely dumb. And I've always had that feeling, but because I don't understand the economy, it's hard for me to be sure.

Starting point is 01:43:01 Yeah. Well, it's because it's ideologically motivated, right? You know, the reason that you study economics in high school. Who studies economics in high school? I didn't. Oh, there are like economics classes in high school, right? Like that, right? Sorry.

Starting point is 01:43:12 When I say studies, like, yeah, like you had to take economics. econ class. I didn't go to a great school. Yeah. The reason there are economics classes in high schools is not to teach people economics. It was specifically designed as an anti-communist thing. Cool. To like teach kids how capitalism really works through like, again, a model where they don't teach you that monopolies exist. And, you know, obviously like some of this has been incorporated into more modern stuff. Like the concept of a monopsony, like kind of has entered into the lexicon of like, the economics you get taught as like a little tiny baby child, which is not actually economics. It's literally propaganda. That's what it was designed to be. I mean, how fun to get to pretend

Starting point is 01:43:54 to be a scientist when you don't do real math. And really, you're just a propagandist. Oh, it's so fun. It's so fun. One of the other things is like, if you're ever like in university settings and you want to just like listen to someone complain about shit for a while, go talk to the math people about the shit people get Nobel Prizes for in economics where it's like, This is like shit that like a child who studies mathematics could do. Math doesn't even have a Nobel Prize, right? If you want to get like a Fields Medal. There's not?

Starting point is 01:44:22 Nope. That's so sad for the math guys. Math doesn't have one. Yeah. And the other thing is E.com's Nobel Prize is fake, too. This is another thing that's important. It's not one of the prizes that was set down by Nobel, which are like the Nobel Prize. They created their own.

Starting point is 01:44:35 And the dynamite guy knew what he was doing. Yeah, but it's like literally like the central bank of Sweden made the, their own and called it a Nobel, and it's not a real one. It's a fake one. Wait, so you're saying that if we are confident enough in our assertion... Oh, yeah, we could just make a Nobel. We could tell people that we are Nobel laureates in podcasting. Yeah, I mean, as the huge thing, you also have to have an extraordinarily large amount of money to do, to do propaganda for this, because the reason this works is that the Nobel Prize in Economics is also a propaganda effort, right? And one of the ways you can tell

Starting point is 01:45:08 that as a propaganda effort is that they didn't give one to Joanne Robinson, who was one of the most influential economist who has ever lived. Justice for Joanne. Genuinely, like, it's outrageous. It's just like one of the few things, even the people who hate her are like, yeah, no, she should have gotten one, because she's one of the people who invents the idea that competition isn't perfect. Like, she invents imperfect competition where there's like monopolies and shit.

Starting point is 01:45:33 So this is all like, stuff that's like foundational to like everyone's to some extent understanding of economics. But most of her ideas are completely ignored and same, like, monopsies. is like a thing that you put in textbooks, but then what you're trying to like, you know, you're an economist at like, not even like the fucking Heritage Institute

Starting point is 01:45:51 or Heritage Foundation or whatever. You're at like a, just like a random economics think tank, right? Like you don't take an obsceny into account when you're like, hey, we can't raise the minimum wage because if he raised a minimum wage, then everyone's going to get fired. And it turns out to like,

Starting point is 01:46:04 well, no, that's not true. And the reason that's not true is because if you assume that neoclassical economics is real, is that companies aren't hiring people at like the lowest possible wage that like that they could do without someone going to somewhere else. They're hiring them even lower than that because they can suppress the wages because where the fuck else are you going to work. Right. Right. But also like people, like human behavior is not subject to the rules of mathematics in that straightforward kind of way either.

Starting point is 01:46:34 No, it's very dumb. And like, because this goes back to something that's important to all of this, which is that like economics is. of fields is not, it's not a science. It doesn't come from science. It comes from moral philosophy. The economy guys, they're always saying stuff. They're just like confidently asserting something and showing me a graph. It's just like just like just not reflect my lived reality at all. But they're very confident about the graph. No. And that's the thing. Because because it's originally philosophy. It's like no, the economy's going great. It's like not right. Not in my house. No, it's like it's fucking bullshit. That's a reflection of the fact that economics as, as

Starting point is 01:47:10 a discipline works backwards from the way that a science works, which is economics starts out with assumptions about how humans work, right? It starts out with the assumption that like everyone's like a rationally calculating actor who's like seeking to maximize their own utility. And I've never met that person. Yeah, it's philosophy. Oh, actually no, I love maximizing utility. Don't get started on maximizing my economic utility. It's literally utilitarianism, right? It's not something that's derived from empirical data, it starts with an assumption about how things work and then projects that assumption onto the world? I don't want to be melodramatic, but I'm having a breakthrough here in my understanding of what

Starting point is 01:47:51 economics is. I thought they were just being dumb before. Suddenly, I see it completely differently. Yeah. It's ideologically motivated reasons. They have a philosophy. They're attempting to mathematically define, like, project their philosophy onto the world. And it doesn't work very well because it's philosophy.

Starting point is 01:48:09 It's not... Right. They're trying to prove a conclusion rather than map reality. Yeah. They're going backwards. Yeah. And this is something that we're going to get into in a second. But first what we're going to get into are the products and services that support this podcast.

Starting point is 01:48:22 Wow. Speaking of the economy. Woo! We are back. So one of the things that's actually interesting about the story of Joanne Robinson is that there's a reason why... almost no one, I mean, I don't know. People listening to this podcast have a higher likelihood of knowing who Joanne Robinson is than like almost any other group of people on Earth. But like there's a reason why she's not extremely well known by normal people.

Starting point is 01:49:00 I'm going to be so honest with you, Mia, the only economists I know are the ones that Javier Malay named his clone dogs after. That makes sense. Well, like, you've heard of like Adam Smith, right? That's true. That's not one of the clone dogs. John Robinson is an economist who is important enough that you should know who she is. Yeah, but he would not have named one of the clone dogs after her. I think they're all boys. No, absolutely not.

Starting point is 01:49:23 He probably, like, he would chainsaw her. It's bad. But the reason that you don't know who she is, and the reason that monopsony kind of, like, sat in the closet of mainstream economics and so people started digging it out recently is because Joan Robinson is part of a tradition of heterodox economics, which is, you know, the economics that's not the mainstream ones.

Starting point is 01:49:47 And all of those people got systematically purged from every academic institution over the span of about 30 years by the neoclassical economists. Because the government doesn't want you to know their ideas. I mean, like, genuinely, what happened was it was like, it was a bunch of these people, like, hired by capitalists in order to do propaganda for them. And they went through and systematically took over and purged all of the country's economics departments. If what she's saying is the entire framework of your worldview just, like, functionally doesn't work. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:50:17 Yeah, that's not a good vibe for them. So let's talk about. the kind of tradition that Joan Robinson operates in. Because this is actually a story that really, really tangentially, the planet money people kind of allude to and then never talk about again, even though it's fascinating. So Joan Robinson is, I guess you could call her one of the sort of first people in what you would call the post-Kanesian tradition. Absolutely. I'm always saying that. Do you know who Keynes is? An economist.

Starting point is 01:50:52 Was his name Maynard? Yeah, John Maynard Keynes. His big thing... He's like, like, if you remember one thing about Keynes, like if you need to just be like, you have a flash card, you need to be like, someone says Keynes, he's the, I guess like the saddingal term is like counter-cyclical spending, but he's, he's the guy who's like,

Starting point is 01:51:10 when economy bad government should spend money in order to make economy not bad again, that's like the most basic part of Keynesianism. And that's all I need. Yeah, but like the thing about, Keynes is that like he wants like a nicer version of capitalism but he is like a capitalist. And so there's a sort of milieu around him that John Robinson is kind of part of. But there's a lot of elements of it and people who Keynes like take stuff from who are extremely obscure now because, you know, Keynes did a version of it that like took the radicalism out.

Starting point is 01:51:46 I promised earlier you were going to get to the guy who like invented the concept. of actually doing scientific studies for macroeconomics. That makes me so mad that the answer to that question isn't the first guy. Who decided that we should do math and economics? Oh, the first guy that did it, the first economists, right? The guy who invented economics, right? Economists do a bunch of math. It's just not math that's...

Starting point is 01:52:14 But we should study the currently existing reality. Yeah, the world first. versus trying to force reality into this chart that I made. That's awesome. Yeah. And so the guy who was like, hey,

Starting point is 01:52:29 what if we observed reality? His name is Michael Kalecki. Good for him. Great job, Michael. He rocks. Yeah. He has a long and convoluted history of stuff.

Starting point is 01:52:43 Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say I don't endorse everything he did. I don't know anything about him. Honestly, he kind of rocks. So, Kalecki, like, foundationally is a Marxist, right? It's not true that he's from this school,

Starting point is 01:52:55 but he's the guy from which one of the major schools of Marxist economics is born, which is called the Monopoly Capital School, who are kind of the Marxist version of the people who were like, oh my God, hold on, monopoly has gotten so out of hand. We have to change

Starting point is 01:53:11 how our economics work. Robinson kind of discovers Kalecki a little bit later in her career. It's sort of like a 40s thing. where she's originally writing about imperfect competition and monopsony in like the 30s. But Kalecki is one of the people who is responsible for a bunch of these ideas

Starting point is 01:53:29 around, like him and Robinson are responsible for a bunch of these ideas around like, okay, yeah, actually, it turns out that everything we've been talking about is like the world is composed of monopolies and monopsonies and everything exists at best in the state of imperfect competition. and this becomes kind of its own school

Starting point is 01:53:54 and like, you know, it branches out in a bunch of different ways through the work of some other people who start to look at like how is price set? And this is something that we've talked about on this show before. So like, okay, if you've ever seen the graph that like all of the econ people use where it's like prices supply and demand, right? But is it?

Starting point is 01:54:18 Well, okay, so at a certain point, and we've talked about this on the show before, our friends at Strange Matters. The magazine Strange Matters have written about this a lot. If you like ask a person, it's funny, I actually did this by accident with a fringe who runs like a very, very small business. Well, it's not that small, but like runs runs like a very small business. And I asked her like, she was talking about like, okay, how do we figure out how to like price something? And I talked to her about it. And she goes, yeah, it's cost plus markup. Right.

Starting point is 01:54:48 And the thing about price, right, is price is not set by a graph. Like, prices are set by a person in an office who figures out what the price is going to be. Right. And the way that they do that is cost plus markup. It's like how expensive was the item for us to obtain? And then what's the like additional price that we need to sell it for in order to both make profit and pay everyone? And this is really obvious to like anyone who's done a job, but like, well, yeah, no shit. Of course it's costless market.

Starting point is 01:55:22 In economics, this is considered an extremely radical idea. Right. I guess, you know, in this supply and demand model, it's just like whatever people are willing to pay, you just keep increasing the price until demand drops off and then you back off a little. Yeah. In economics, that's called like companies being like price takers. The theory in like normal economics, quote unquote, is that. companies, they don't set prices. They take the price from like what people are willing to pay.

Starting point is 01:55:51 And that's objectively not true. There's just constantly standing there tweaking the dial. Yeah, it's like no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, just on an objective level, what's happening is, you know, this is what's called like administrative prices, right? And this is like the basic, like one of the basic revelations of like post-Cancy in economics is that price is set by a person who sets it by cost plus markup. And like, there's, there's a pre-cog who floats in a pool of goo and just intuits the prices. Yeah, they like see the data. It's like, no, no, no, no.

Starting point is 01:56:24 It's literally just a person. They set the price. It's cost plus markup. There's some like psychology stuff there about like what kinds of prices will break a consumer's loyalty to like a store. Right? Because if you like raise the price at a store too much, people will stop shopping at the store. But like that's like the way this stuff. actually works.

Starting point is 01:56:47 And this is one of the big post-Kanesian innovations. It's like, hi, we're trying to figure out how price works. So we went and we asked a bunch of people how it works. A remarkable choice. Yeah, right. God. But this is an issue for neoclassical economics because the whole, like, supply and demand setting price

Starting point is 01:57:09 is like the basis of their whole thing. And it's the basis of all. of their politics. Now, at this point, we need to talk about the thing that's legitimately complicated. Before we get into that, we're going to talk about something that's not complicated, which is how to use these products and services. Wow. We're actually doing the economy right now. We are. We are back. Okay, so we're going to stop doing the economy. And the reason we're going to stop doing the economy is that, you know, when I talked about there being an ideological purge, right, People as Strange Matters wrote about this economist named Frederick Lee, who was an IWW member and who was one of the sort of, I don't know, like the guy trying to pull the 5,000 different strands of heterodox economics together.

Starting point is 01:58:06 And he writes a really, really detailed in-depth analysis of at each individual school, how did the neoclassical people come in and purge everyone and then maintain control of it. And one of the ways you can tell that this isn't about who is correct. who has power is something called the Cambridge Capitol controversy, which I'm going to assume, Molly, you haven't heard of this? No, I was just really sort of marveling and turning that phrase over in my mind. It's not about who is correct. It's about who has power. Yeah. I'm going to store that one away. That's a good turn of phrase. It's a good way of understanding this. And it's a good way of understanding the central thing of like, hey, why did everyone kind of ignore monopsony for 80 years? And it turns out that the answer is that being right doesn't do anything in economics.

Starting point is 01:59:00 That's heartbreaking. Yeah, it's bleak. And some of these people are people who have institutional power. So one of the things that Joan Robinson is most famous for doing is her and her collaborator, Piero Saraffa, who's another whole story, who's an extremely wild guy. Seraph is the other person who a bunch of this, like, heterodox economics, is based off of There's a large extent to which heterodox economics means that, like, you think seraphra was right instead of the Chicago school people and like the neoclassical people or Marx. Or you're sort of like fusing the two of them.

Starting point is 01:59:34 And he and Joanne Robinson are writing out of Cambridge, the one in England. But then there's also a whole bunch of neoclassical economists are at Cambridge, the one in Massachusetts. They really can't be doing that. Yeah. We got to rename at least one of these. They fight it out. That's why it's called the Cambridge Capital Controversy. They go to war.

Starting point is 01:59:56 Yeah. So, okay, the thing that they're fighting about is extremely convoluted. At some point, Molly, I'm going to drag you on here and we're going to do the actual full version of it. But the short version of it is really funny. And the short version of it is that this is a fight about, okay, so you have like, two different kinds of what are called capital goods. So you have like, I don't know, I think the capital's power one. It's like tools that make ice cream and tools that make airplane.

Starting point is 02:00:31 And the question is, how do you figure out how much those tools are worth together? Well, are you selling ice cream on the airplanes? You know, they, where you're selling them doesn't have to be really. I'm just saying, is there synergy at play here, me? Like, And I combine these business. Well, legitimately the idea that you could use the same equipment to do multiple things is like a really serious problem for an enormous number of economic schools. Like, it's like real bad.

Starting point is 02:01:04 It's like kind of, it's kind of even bad for like the mathematics behind like classical Marxist political economy. It's, it's really bad for like, classical people. It's not great. So my new airline where everyone gets. a free ice cream is really throwing a wrench into this. Yeah. Well, as long as, as long as the same machines can either be making ice cream or you can be making airplane and you can't tell which one.

Starting point is 02:01:31 What are they teaching at economy school? What is even happening? Nothing. So we're arguing about ice cream machines. Well, so what they're, what they're arguing about, right, is if you are doing like normal, neoclassical economics, can you point at like, like, factories and go, how much is this worth? And this is a real problem because it turns out that the way the neoclassical economists do this is circular. So, okay, you're trying to figure out how much money a factory

Starting point is 02:02:02 is worth. I'm going to quote here from the book Capitalist Power, which has a very good explanation of what's happening here. The money value of any capital good, that is, the amount of investors are willing to pay for it, is the present value of its expected future profit. computed by discounting this profit by the prevailing rate of interest. So value equals expected profit divided by rate of interest. So basically what they're saying here is that like, okay, you're trying to figure out how much money is the factory worth. The amount of money that the factory is worth depends on how much money you make from using the factory to make plain or make ice cream. That's like basically what that's saying.

Starting point is 02:02:41 And then there's a discounting rate because you're making that money in the future. The problem with all of these principles is it's a perfect blend of stuff that's like completely fucking obvious like statements of observed reality. Yeah. And then also stuff that somebody just made up based on a feeling that they had. And you can never tell which one you're doing. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like what the factory is worth is based on how much money it can make, obviously. But here's the problem.

Starting point is 02:03:07 This is one of those, you know, you know the Calvin and Haas meme where it's like you can divide everything into two categories. This one surprisingly seems like it's observed reality. is actually bullshit. Because, because the problem is, all right, you so, okay, so in order to find out the value of the factory, you need to know what the profits are going to be. Well, I thought the value of things, I thought the price of things was set by supply and demands, the value of the factories, whatever someone's willing to pay for it. Right, but here's the issue, though.

Starting point is 02:03:36 Like, that's, like, sort of true. I'm just making a joke that, like, prices and values appear to be disconnected. Legitimately, that is drilling into the problem with what's happening here, which is that, Okay, but how do you know how much money the factory is it going to be worth? So we're saying like the factory has an inherent value versus the factory has a price. Yeah. So are the price is not reflected in an inherent value? So this is also kind of the core of this issue, right?

Starting point is 02:03:58 Which is like... That money isn't even real. Well, yeah, but it's like, okay, if you want to compare how much two different types of machinery are worth, you need to compare them in terms of money because they're making two different things. You have to be able to compare them. But the problem is the moment you start doing that, you then, have to go, okay, how much is it worth and how much is it worth in theory? It's like marginal utility, right? So in order to know how much the machine is worth, you have to know how much money it can

Starting point is 02:04:27 make. But in order to know how much money it can make, you need to know how much the machine is worth. The issue here, right, is that you're trying to find one price for how much the factory is worth. But you can't find that one price without knowing how much profit you're getting from using, the factory to make the thing. But you could have multiple different levels of profit from that same factory. The problem is how do you determine, you know, you could make $10 from the factory, but the factory could also make $20. How do you figure out which one of those it is?

Starting point is 02:05:02 Because that's what determines the value of the factory is how much money it makes. So, okay, you turn around to the neoclassical theory of how you figure out what the profit is. But that theorem requires you to know the marginal utility of the factory. So it requires you to know how much profit you're going to get from using the tool. You have to know how much the tool is worth in order to figure out how much the profit is. But then you have to figure out in order to figure out... So this is why they just make stuff up because otherwise they get trapped in the infinite loo. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:05:31 It's worse than that because the value of the factory depends on how much money you're going to make from the ice cream. but how much money you make from the ice cream depends on like how expensive it is to have the ice cream machine. Right. So they're both set by each other. Right. If you only have one of them, you can't calculate the other one. They're both like X and Y.

Starting point is 02:05:55 And in order to figure out what one of them is worth, you already have to know the other one. Right. You need a constant at some point. Yeah. And legitimately, and this is a shit show because it means that you actually can't figure out how much the capital goods are worth in order to move on to stage two of the process where you figure out the profit,

Starting point is 02:06:14 because you already need to have the answer to the question you are asking. And so, like, this is an issue bad enough that the IMF publishes these, or I think it's, maybe it's the World Bank, publishes these, like, giant tables of, like, the value of capital stocks, right, in a country.

Starting point is 02:06:33 Well, they'll go through it. They're trying to produce economic data about, like, a country, and they're like, okay, like, how much are the factory's worth? and the people who are trained to produce these books, there's multiple different values that these factories could have depending on how much money they make.

Starting point is 02:06:47 And they're literally just chose to choose one of them. Like at random, they're like, fuck it, pick one. This is not making me more confident about the economy. No. But this is a shit show because this is what this fight is about. It's about like the whole Cambridge Capital controversy is like Joe Ann Robinson going hold on in order to like figure out your equation for how price works, you need to know something that you can only figure out by knowing the price already.

Starting point is 02:07:15 That's why you just feel the price in your heart. Well, yeah, but this causes like a decade of like fighting about this. All of the like famous neoclassical economists, actually, hold on, can you list Javier's dogs? Yeah, okay. So Milton from Milton Friedman, Murray from Murray Rothbard, and two dogs, one Russian. Robert won Lucas for Robert Lucas Jr. Wow, I think he actually dodged all of them. I think he meant by not naming someone, Paul Samuel said, I think he actually dodged it.

Starting point is 02:07:49 He considers these dogs to be Conan's offspring. So these are all clones of his dog Conan. He considers the dogs to be Conan's offspring and thus his own grandsons because he believes the dog is his son. Jesus fucking Christ. Anyway, yeah, but that's the only reason I know who any of those people are. Oh my God. Wait, hold on, hold on. I'm not looking at.

Starting point is 02:08:09 Which Robert is this named after? Robert Lucas Jr. from the University of Chicago. Oh, he dodged it. It was mostly the other Robert. Robert Slowell. Slow out. God damn.

Starting point is 02:08:21 I think he actually dodged having any of his dogs be named after the people who got their ass kicked in this. I think he managed to do it. So Paul Samuelson is like, after Milton Friedman and maybe Hayek, He's like probably the third most influential neoclassical economists. And he's like one of the people at the American Cambridge who are like arguing with like

Starting point is 02:08:43 classical people. And they lose. They just straight up lose this fight because they're wrong. And the consequence of them being wrong is every single thing they've ever written is wrong. Because if you can't calculate how much a factory is worth, literally nothing you've ever written functions. That's so funny. And they can't do it.

Starting point is 02:09:03 Did any of them kill themselves? You would think, but they were just like, oh, well, we'll just guess. Because I bet a lot of people were like at the end of their careers, right? You're like 60, 70 years old. You're like Professor Emeritus of macroeconomics at Cambridge or whatever the fuck. And you find out that everything you've ever written was no longer. Like we all agreed that everything you ever said was wrong. How do you deal with that?

Starting point is 02:09:26 Well, here's the thing. They just kept writing as if they didn't lose. Oh, okay. This is why I was saying it doesn't matter. Because who can say who wins or loses because it's all faith. Yeah. And so literally what they did is that this stuff, this fight never like broke out of like academic economist circles. And so no one today has any idea any of this shit happened.

Starting point is 02:09:48 But no, because it doesn't mean anything. Yeah. Well, it does in the sense that like you can demonstrably prove that like these people can't tell you how much a factory is worth. I've read the Wall Street Journal. I know there's no such thing as an economist. Yeah. Part of what's happening here is that like the reason we all intuitively do that is because these people win. Right. So this entire like academic field just kind of shrugged and said, it doesn't matter of what we're saying. Does it mean anything?

Starting point is 02:10:15 Yeah. There were like a couple of people who tried to like actually work with it and everyone eventually just stopped paying attention. Legitimately, the answer for like modern economics is just to pretend that it never happened. And then go like, oh, well, these people never produced anything of note academically. And it's like, well, all. On the one hand, that's, like, not true because the stuff that they did write is really good. But also, their descendants, yeah, didn't get academic positions because you purged them all. And this is one of these things where, like, part of the reason that the new classical people took over in the first place was because they thought that they were right about this argument of, like, what caused the 70s economic collapse, which had, like, supposedly disproved Keynesianism. But then in this time period, they got just. obliterated. Like, they have taken an L, the size of which genuinely, I don't know if anyone in an academic

Starting point is 02:11:12 field has ever taken a bigger L than these people did in this fight. They got just, like, beaten into pulp, and it just didn't matter. It's like Naomi Wolf finding out live on air that her entire book was based on a misunderstanding of a term. Yeah, it's like that shit. Like, except this is like every economist. Except in this case, they went on to continue to produce work based on that premise. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:11:38 You know, but this is the part of the story that like isn't in the accounts, you know, when Planet Money has to explain like why the work of Joanne Robinson, like, isn't something that mainstream economies pay attention to. Oh, full circle. Okay. Yeah. That's where we were going. Yes.

Starting point is 02:11:57 It's because like Joe and Robinson had the temerity to A, be a woman. B, be a leftist and C not be one of these like neoclassical freaks? And D, she beat them. Like, Julian Robinson is one of the major people in this fight. I should have had more faith that we were coming back around. I thought we were lost. I was confused.

Starting point is 02:12:20 No, I get it now. So when they were writing by like, it's so crazy that nobody uses this term anymore. Yeah. The underlying truth there is that they are. This is why. Blossing over the fact that the reason this term isn't better known is because the entire field of economics is based on suppressing challenging truths.

Starting point is 02:12:38 Yeah. And there's one other aspect, too, which is, the economics is an example of how this works on like a small scale, right? But this happens on a macro scale with just about everything that you consume, which is there are two models for sort of suppressing how information spreads and how, like, you know, how social movements develop, where one, you just suppress them or two, you co-operating. them. And you do what's called recuperation. And, you know, it is interesting, like, the concept monopsony will appear sometimes, like, like, in, like, textbooks. But they'll just be like, oh, yeah, this is another thing that can exist. And, like, monopolies can also exist. Let's go back to spending all of our time dealing with, like, a bunch of stuff that's incredibly fake.

Starting point is 02:13:23 And they will strategically, like, misuse the concept of monopsony in order to deal with it, like, as a critique. They'll recuperate like the word, but then they won't use any of the political conclusions of it. That's clever of them. That's clever of them so that you don't go looking for more about the term because you have it and it's defanged and you don't need to worry about it. Yeah. And the thing is the political consequences of it is this is the thing I talked about at the beginning, which is like, yeah, monopsonly as a concept is why you get paid. One of the reasons you get paid like shit. And Joan Robbins' conclusion is like, yeah, capitalism is an inherently exploitive system.

Starting point is 02:14:02 Yeah, that's the logical conclusion there. Right. Yeah. But that's not allowed. No. And so, you know, like Robinson's legacy is that part of her work is co-opted and recuperated in a way where they teach the tiniest part of it that can't be used to challenge the system. And the part of it where she deals a kind of intellectual death blow to an entire

Starting point is 02:14:26 field of economics that in like the history of academia. I don't know if anyone has ever been so decisively defeated intellectually. And yet they just sort of brushed it off and moved on. Yeah. Which I feel like that is so damning, right? That you're just, I mean, you've just admitted that everything you've ever said is based on nothing. If you can just disregard this. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:14:50 God, I can't find the exact quote. But Samuelson has this line about how, like, they need to just treat it as an article of faith that this can be done. And they just kept going. And it is just like... So you can't tell me this is a science if you're like, well, it's just based on... You just have to have faith. You just have to believe.

Starting point is 02:15:09 Yeah. I mean, the economy has always put on tinkerbell rules, right? Like, you have to believe or it won't work. You have to clap for her. Yeah. In order for the entire system that these people are paid to propagate because this entire school of economics is created by a bunch of right-wing billionaires

Starting point is 02:15:25 to get them together in order to push against like both communism and like the Keynesian, an idea they should pay taxes. This is something also, I guess I kind of want to conclude about this, is like, there are a lot of times where you see like a newspaper columnist and they're saying the most unhinged thing you've ever seen. Or like, you know, I'm going to take a very incendiary example

Starting point is 02:15:45 and you look at like Ezra Klein. And Ezra Klein is like, being like, oh, you have to like take the ideas of like some random fucking Nazi seriously. And... No, I don't. No, you don't. But the reason he's saying this, it's not even about what he believes.

Starting point is 02:16:03 Oh, these people believe nothing. Yeah, this is what they're being paid to say, because Klein's job is to act as a way to sell like fascist tech oligarchy to liberals. Like, and this is the same thing with like, you get these newspaper columnists who'll like say like the most unhinged shit you've ever seen. And yeah, they're saying that because it's their job to produce this, right? Like they're not acting as individual people. They're acting as cutouts and projections.

Starting point is 02:16:29 of like the people who they've been hired by. And those people have a monopsony on opinions. Yeah, well, every opinion writer is saying the dumbest shit you've ever heard because of monopsony probably. Yeah, I mean, but like literally it's because they can, they can choose who the fuck to hire. Right.

Starting point is 02:16:50 Like, that's the actual reason. And, you know, and like journalism is one of these things where it's like, these newspapers have an incredible about of power because there's like seven fucking newspapers papers left. And if you want to do journalism, like, you're fucked. You either, like, fall in line and accept them paying you, like, absolute dog shit, or you go unemployed. Or you're, like, one of the very few people who was able to, like, make a living doing this independently, but, like, or you're us. We found a way. Yeah. Or, or, like, a rich and successful podcaster picks you out and

Starting point is 02:17:25 goes, hey, we're going to pay you to do this, right? Like, no, but I think, I think about that all the time that it really, this is such a unicorn job. Because almost every job in media, you do, you have to, you have to suck it up and eat the shit and you have to say the dumbest thing anyone's ever heard because that's how you keep your job. And that's not our reality. And I'm so grateful for that. Yeah. I think, I think that's a good place to end, I guess. I don't know. We're going to end on a hopeful note, which is we got, well, okay, we're going to end on the cynical note, which is like the only way to have an even sort of good job in this economy where employment is

Starting point is 02:17:57 controlled by employers is to get really lucky. Like, be the most lucky person in the entire world. Yeah. So, I don't know. If you want to live in a world where you don't have to win the lottery in order to have like a pretty well pay in order to, I am so close to hitting the median salary of a cis white dude in the U.S. I'm so close.

Starting point is 02:18:17 I can see it. I can taste it. If you want that. I love my union podcasting job. You got to win the lottery. Or you got to build a world where that's not how any of the shit works. which is what Joan Robinson would have wanted. Sorry, Joanne.

Starting point is 02:18:42 Renno mishap? That's embarrassing. You know what's not embarrassing? Using FIG for Home Improvement Loan. A quick, simple, and transparent offer in minutes. Borrow Better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news.

Starting point is 02:19:00 What's the news, new? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts.

Starting point is 02:19:10 Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was...

Starting point is 02:19:32 This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys.

Starting point is 02:19:49 Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

Starting point is 02:20:08 This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect.

Starting point is 02:20:30 We were God's chosen, kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levant this plant to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history.

Starting point is 02:21:09 You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Nostalgia is a relatively new feeling for me. I'm in my mid-20s, and for the first time, I'm seeing stuff from when I was a kid, come back in style. We are fully in the throes of 2000s nostalgia. I'm talking emo, indie slees, denim, Y2K, standard definition digital video, and one of my favorites, the bubbly Frutiger-Aro design style

Starting point is 02:21:55 that partially inspired Apple's new liquid glass. But now that our cultural nostalgia cycle has cut up to when I was a kid, I'm starting to realize what kinds of things I'm nostalgic about. One of the biggest is 2008's Lego Batman the video game. This game is great. No dialogue, Danny Elfman music, simple classic designs. This game is what introduced me to the Gothic Art Deco World of Gotham City and the dark carnival of Batman characters.

Starting point is 02:22:32 Growing up around the prairies of Saskatchewan Canada, this game was my window into the big city with its cathedrals and skyscrapers, and likely planted the desire to one day move to New York City. After a 12-year hiatus, the fourth game in the Lego Batman series comes out today. Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Night, a new installment that blends stories from across the Batman films, shows, and comics, featuring classic Lego puzzle gameplay with the movement and combat of the Rocksteady Arkham games.

Starting point is 02:23:08 I actually got to play a demo version of this new Lego Batman game last October when I attended New York Comic-Con, the largest pop culture convention on the East Coast and the most attended in North America. New York Comic-Con is a four-day fan fest for everything. Superheroes, comics, sci-fi, and fantasy held once a year at the Javitts Convention Center in Manhattan. This is It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. part of my intention in attending New York Comic-Con was to gauge how the big media companies and pop culture in general was reacting to the movement against Wokeness,

Starting point is 02:23:45 which was a large force throughout 2025. One of the first panels I attended was the 10th anniversary panel for the TV show Mr. Robot, with creator Sam Esmill and stars, Rami Malick, and Christian Slater. Most of the panel was spent reminiscing on the show's production, which was probably what most fans want out of a panel. but Mr. Robot is a relatively political show. To his credit, Esmell discussed the show's origins

Starting point is 02:24:12 as an anti-capitalist and anti-corporate hacker story inspired by the 2008 recession and the Arab Spring. What I took away from that is that the world felt in crisis, how naive was I back then, that that was what crisis was like. But, and that these young people in not just Egypt, but in the entire Middle East was using technology

Starting point is 02:24:37 to organize and start a revolution and that really inspired a lot of what the story of Mr. Robot and specifically the character of Elliot. Esmel went on to call

Starting point is 02:24:50 the show's imagined dystopia a quote-unquote pleasantville compared to our current political situation. Honestly, I feel like the show we did was not nearly as fucked up as what it would be. like today. I mean,

Starting point is 02:25:07 it's like Pleasantville now. I mean... At a panel for the Tina Romero queer zombie movie Queens of the Dead, trans actor Jack Haven referenced then recent and somewhat misleading

Starting point is 02:25:30 reporting that the FBI was declaring trans people as terrorists. In another panel, a trans comic artist also mentioned that trans people were being designated as a violent extremists. This artist also discussed queer censorship in comics. She had drawn a cover for the DC Comics series of a character called Red Hood. But this cover was never released because the

Starting point is 02:25:56 comic series was cancelled by DC after the writer, also a trans woman, made two posts joking about the death of Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile, one of the cis guy artists for the hit series Absolute Batman drew art of absolute Batman snapping the neck of an ice agent, literally at New York Comic-Con, and this artist continues to draw covers for this series. Speaking of Batman,

Starting point is 02:26:23 I also attended an industry panel on Batman animation, hosted by directors, character designers, and showrunners. James Tucker, creator of Batman the Brave and the Bold and a producer for the show Batman Couped Crusader, mentioned having to ignore

Starting point is 02:26:39 the anti-woke-backer some recent shows received for depicting certain characters as black or gender-swapped. Nerd culture has been dealing with this stuff for a while. Gamergate was a contributing factor to the rise of the all-right. And since then, pop culture fandom has been one of the main battlegrounds in which the culture war is waged. At New York Comic-Con, while hints of the domestic political climate did slip through in brief moments during panels, the prevailing most of the of the convention was falling back on comic fantasy as an escape inwards, but not really an escape out. It's like your parents are fighting, and rather than leaving the house or trying to intervene,

Starting point is 02:27:24 you crawl into your closet and hide with your stuffed animals, video games, and comic books, soothing yourself with the comfortable familiar. While walking around the convention floor, I felt like I was a ghost trapped in 2019. This particular form of nerdy superhero fandom culture was stuck in stasis, living in the undead husk of the MCU. The main thing differentiating New York Comic-Con from a pure pre-pandemic Avengers Endgame era time capsule was how much it felt like an anime convention. I attended my fair share of Comic-Con's in the 20-teens, but the volume of anime stuff at New

Starting point is 02:28:07 York Comic-Con really surprised me. New York Comic-Con itself has had a troubled history with anime. Shortly after New York Comic-Con was created in 2006, the same company behind the convention also started an anime con called New York Anime Festival. But as New York Comic-Con rose in popularity, it started to eat away at New York Anime Festival. The two conventions merged in 2010, but that meant that superheroes and anime had to compete for time and space at the convention.

Starting point is 02:28:38 and around 2010, superheroes were winning that battle. To quote anime news network, the New York Anime Festival was, quote, slowly and quite literally, shoved into the basement at the Javit Center over the years by New York Comic-Con management until it ceased to exist altogether, unquote. Come 2012, the New York Anime Festival component

Starting point is 02:29:02 was phased out altogether. At the time, anime and manga were not doing so well in the United States, having just to suffer a market crash due to a combination of factors related to the Great Recession, the pivot from DVD to digital, the bankruptcy of the Borders bookstore, the shutdown of the U.S. distributor Bandai Entertainment, and manga publisher Tokyo Pop, followed by the 2011 Tokaku Who earthquake, which disrupted manga and anime production. So it wasn't at all surprising that Western media and the then-ascendant superhero genre dominated the New York Comic-Con show floor.

Starting point is 02:29:43 But now, oh, how the tables have turned. Come 2025, the exhibition boots for major Western pop culture companies were outnumbered and dwarfed in size by Japanese animation, manga, and video game booths. This humiliation wasn't isolated to the show floor. Even before entering the exhibition space, huge banners hung in front of the main entrance for anime like My Hero Academia, Digimon, Gundam, and the new manga Love Bullet. Banner ads for Crunchyrolls, new manga reading platform covered the glass walls at the Javitts Convention Center.

Starting point is 02:30:20 The only banner that rivaled the anime ones in size was for the Anne Rice Gay Vampire Show on AMC. Once you got to the show floor, the company with the biggest single presence was Japanese entertainment company Bandai Namco. This was by a large margin. The Bandai Namco presence was significantly bigger than the Marvel and DC booths combined. Most but not all of the Japanese and South Korean companies were concentrated in the middle of the exhibition floor next to the main entrance on the north side.

Starting point is 02:30:56 Toe Animation of Dragon Ball and One Piece Fame had their booth right at the show floor entrance. And it was bigger than the Nickelodeon avatar and Paramount Star Trek booths combined. The Adult Swim and HBO Max booths were even smaller. Combined, they took up significantly less floor space and were less busy than the exhibition booth for the Japanese animation company behind Chainsaw Man,

Starting point is 02:31:20 Jiu Jizu Kaysen, and the Attack on Titan finale, Studio Mapa, who had a booth at New York Comic-Con for the very first time. Anime and manga distributor Crunchyroll had a larger presence on the show floor than the combined presence of publishing giants Scholastic and Penguin Random House. The crunchy roll booth was also bigger than the one for DC Comics. Manga publisher Viz Media has maintained a large presence on the show floor for the past decade. Viz Media is the largest physical publisher of graphic novels in the United States,

Starting point is 02:31:56 with 25% of the market share, and is owned by the same company that publishes Shonen Jump, which is the largest physical comic publisher in the world. The biggest global publisher of comics in general is the South Korean digital comic platform Webtoon, who also had a comparatively large exhibition booth, as did Japanese video game companies Konami and Capcom, the video game Ninja Guideon 4 had a booth to itself,

Starting point is 02:32:24 and collectible card game company, Buschee Road, had a booth rivaling that of Card Game Titan, Wizards of the Coast. Even the sort of third-party merch slop that you find at these types of conventions was selling more and more anime stuff than I'd seen in previous years. Looking back at the New York Comic-Con 2018 show floor map, Bandai Emco had a much smaller booth about the same size as Dark Horse Comics. This was less than one quarter of the size of Bandai's show floor presence in 2025. Besides Bandai, the other anime or manga,

Starting point is 02:33:02 related booths in 2018 were for Dragon Ball, Square Enix, and Viz Media. Looking back at the other large booths from 2018, feels like a snapshot from a bygone age. Comedy Central, rooster teeth, Shira, Funko Pop, and the Sci-Fi TV channel. Of these, only Funko still had a booth in 2025 and a much smaller one at that, as the company has suffered a massive drop in sales, and what was once a pop culture giant is now in severe financial distress. It could happen here.

Starting point is 02:33:39 We'll return after these messages. We now return to... It could happen here. Outside the Comic-Con environment, I have seen anecdotal evidence of anime's growing popularity. Besides random Instagram reels or TikTok videos, the most common thing I see people watching while riding the subway is anime.

Starting point is 02:34:06 When I was in Berlin last October covering a convention, on my way back to the Airbnb, I came across a group of about 50 people cosplaying Chainsaw Man because that night the Chainsaw Man movie released in German theaters. Most of the costumes worn at a weekend Halloween party at the mood ring nightclub in Brooklyn were from anime. Also, fun fact,

Starting point is 02:34:34 mayoral candidate Zara Mamdani made an appearance at this party ahead of the upcoming election. U.S. Olympic figure skater and gold medalist Alyssa Lou talked about anime during interviews at the Olympics and was seen carrying around a chainsaw man plushy. Your top five anime.

Starting point is 02:34:51 Okay, I'm not going to rank these in their exact places, but Jiu-Sukhasin, Chainsaw Man, for sure. A new challenge. after drop today, actually. So today's big day. You're a manga eater? Yes, I am. Okay, sweet. Okay. Attack on Titan. Yeah, that one's really good. Was Aaron justified? Um, yeah.

Starting point is 02:35:08 Okay. Madoka Magica. And I think, I could be forgetting some, but soul eater. Okay, okay, that's a good one. I appreciate you. But does this perceived rise in popularity actually reflect in sales? Well, in September, the Demon Slayer movie Infinity Castle won the US box office with a $70 million opening weekend, eventually earning almost $800 million worldwide, becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 2025 and the highest-grossing international film in the United States,

Starting point is 02:35:47 surpassing the 25-year record held by Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. In October, the Chainslawman movie opened number one at the US Boxer, office beating the Bruce Springsteen biopic starring Jeremy Allen White, which no one really saw. The Chainsaw Man movie grossed almost $200 million worldwide. For the past eight years, Netflix has been heavily investing in anime. Last summer, Netflix claimed that anime is watched by half its global users. In 2025, Netflix users watched almost 9 billion hours of anime, a 10.5% increase from 2024. In fact, the rate of viewership growth

Starting point is 02:36:30 for anime on Netflix is 10 times that of all other content on the platform. In January of 2006, Netflix announced a new deal with anime studio Mapa to exclusively stream a slate of original Mapa shows.

Starting point is 02:36:48 Polygon and Vox Media pulled over 4,000 people in 2024 and 42% of Gen Z participants in the U.S. said that they watched anime every week. But it's not just anime, manga exploded in international popularity over the pandemic and continues to outsell American comics domestically. Manga sales have quadrupled in the U.S. since 2020, reaching a yearly market value of about

Starting point is 02:37:16 $1.3 billion. By 2023, of the 44.7 million graphic novels sold by American bookstore chains and online sellers, 21.8 million were manga. That's almost 50% of sales. Coming in second place was Comics for Kids, which made up about 38% of sales, approximately 17 million copies. In 2023, just the year we have the most complete data on, seven out of the 10 top-selling comic book authors were Japanese. And this is in the United States. Of the 750 top-selling comic books in the U.S., almost 400 were manga. Here's a clip of a PBS news piece from 2024.

Starting point is 02:38:08 Over the last few years, Japanese animation and comic books have seen an explosion of popularity in the United States. We couldn't fill the stores fast enough. Barnes & Noble Senior Director of Books, Shannon DeVito. The readers in the space are so voracious. It's a good thing that the series are so long and so beautifully. drawn because not only do they look for 10 other series to read once they finish one, they go back and reread. Manga sales in the U.S. quadrupled from 2019 to 2022 with a peak of 28.4 million copies sold.

Starting point is 02:38:40 It is now the fourth largest fiction category overall in the United States behind romance, thrillers, and fantasy. It's one of our top 10 subjects any day. During the pandemic, it was in our top five pretty consistently. Meanwhile, shelf space for superhero graphic novels has been reduced at Barnes & Noble the past few years, sometimes to a single shelf to make way for an expanding collection of manga. Manga sales are also rising in the superhero Holy of Holies direct market comic bookstores, where manga was up 33% in 2025.

Starting point is 02:39:18 The main driver of sales for U.S. comic publisher Dark Horse Comics is through licensing manga like berserk. So what might be causing this? As pop cultures become one of the main battlegrounds of the culture war, maybe anime and manga serve as a safe refuge from the divisive all-consuming politics of the United States. A few months ago, we got behind-the-scenes news about the Endor Press tour. Creator Tony Gilroy admitted in an interview with the Hollywood reporter that Disney requested Gilroy and the cast refrain from using the words fascism and genocide in early promotion of the show to avoid political outrage. When James Gunn described Superman as a quote-unquote immigrant, right-wing news pundits manufactured a backlash with a Fox News

Starting point is 02:40:11 graphic reading Super Woke. And Jesse Waters is saying, you know what it says on his cape? MS-13. Former Superman actor Dean Kane also complained about Superman becoming too woke, a month before he joined ICE as a part of a publicity stunt. American culture war issues do affect the way our entertainment industry operates, from what projects get greenlit to casting and even corporate mergers. The Trump-aligned Ellison family bought Paramount in 2025 and now seek to acquire Warner Brothers. All that considered, it would seem that anime and manga may not get nearly as cut up in our American culture war debate and be relatively safe from both woke and anti-woke influence.

Starting point is 02:40:58 Though this idea demonstrates the limits of woke as an understanding of politics. Because of course, Japanese media is in fact very political. Take Gundam, Godzilla, Attack on Titan, films like Love and Pop, Jin Rao, or Kiyoshawa's new movies. cloud. A lot of Japanese media wrestles with their extremely punitive judicial system and the country's relationship with nationalism and the military. Not to mention, the growing popularity of media that plays with gender and sexuality like Yaui and boys love, or the common presence of gender non-conforming characters in works like Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen and Chainsaw Man. And yet there aren't as many angry YouTube videos decrying woke chainsaw man for having a beautiful non-binary twink.

Starting point is 02:41:45 America is just largely insulated from Japanese political issues. Last February, Japan's Conservative Party swept a parliamentary snap election, gaining over two-thirds control of the lower house, the largest majority since World War II. But both chuds and woke alike can enjoy anime because it feels outside American politics. And it is true that Japanese creators aren't trying to navigate around a potentially hostile American audience, which means they can do certain things that American companies might find too risky. The vitriolic reactions to The Last Jedi definitely affected Disney's plans

Starting point is 02:42:26 for Star Wars, which soon prioritized the comparatively safe and sanitized Mandalorian TV show, which has a movie version coming out this week. Most of the non-Andor Star Wars shows are primarily trying to capitalize on nostalgia, whether for the original trilogy, the prequels, or even the Clone Wars TV show from the 2000s. Andor was championed and protected by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, but now she's transitioning out of that role. In an exit interview with deadline, Kathleen Kennedy alluded that, going forward, Lucasville may not pursue risky projects that break the mold. Quote, you have to be bold and you have to be willing to take risks with people and ideas.

Starting point is 02:43:11 Otherwise, you are just doing the same thing. Right now, we're in an era where companies are so risk averse, and I get it. I hear all the conversations. They've got Wall Street to please, and I get it, but I also believe that that's what contributes to things disappearing ultimately, unquote. This reliance on nostalgia and this extreme risk aversion has landed us in a pop cultural recession, and Japan is ready, willing, and able to fill the gap. This is not simply a matter of thing Japan, but rather this points to rebuttural recession. It's not simply a matter of real differences in the production and distribution process. A lot of manga is read in Japan. As popular as it's getting here, we are nowhere close to how much manga is read in Japan

Starting point is 02:43:57 despite their smaller population. Japan still is, the primary producer and consumer of manga, with a market value of almost $4.5 billion a year. Manga that sells really well often gets adapted into an anime. And when that anime airs in the U.S., the show then helps drive sales of the original manga. The top-selling manga in the U.S. usually follow whatever is the most successful currently airing anime adaptation. In recent years, that's been Chainsaw Man, Spy Family Demon Slayer, Berserk, and Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen. This model doesn't really exist in the U.S. We don't have regularly airing 22 episode seasons of comic book shows anymore, especially any that appeal to a wide age range.

Starting point is 02:44:47 The closest comparison is what Amazon Prime has done with mini-series like The Boys and Invincible. But even the juggernaut that was the MCU did not meaningfully boost sales of the original Marvel comics. It Could Happen Here, we'll return after these messages. We now return to It Could Happen Here. In an interview last January, Jim Lee, chief creative officer and president of DC Comics, talked about why manga is beating Western comics.

Starting point is 02:45:25 The stories told in Japanese manga and anime are incredibly powerful. I often find myself wondering, what is missing in Western comics? And why aren't they able to achieve the same flavor? I think manga has an advantage over American comics, which are mostly about superheroes. and that's where the majority of sales and readers are concentrated. In Japan, it's closer to literature. And anyone can read it, and it's not just hero stories. There's a much wider range of genres, like stories about cooking and soccer.

Starting point is 02:45:57 You can draw stories from that. So I'm very happy that manga has been so successful because it gives me a goal to aim for. The manga market is bigger than our industry, so the question becomes, what can we learn from this? unquote. Jim Lee is right, but this is only getting at one part of the equation. It's not just that manga has a wide range of genres, but also a constantly growing collection of original characters and new series within familiar genres like Shonan or Boys Action Comics. Japan is actually generating new culture, not just recycling the same four IPs over and over again. Something like Chainsaw Man, has its fair share of Japanese and American inspirations, but importantly,

Starting point is 02:46:47 it's not a simple spin-off of one of those franchises, but an evolution of the genre. Most manga series have a defined beginning and end, usually written by a single author, as opposed to the perpetual continuity of most Western comics, where opening up an issue feels like jumping into the middle of a story that's been going on for years, passed on from one author to another. This certainly has its own appeal, but it can be challenging for new readers. When people first get into manga or anime and finish a series, there's then this massive backlog of different series, all with unique characters. A collected manga volume is also much cheaper than a DC or Marvel trade paperback, about $10 compared to $20.

Starting point is 02:47:33 Part of DC Comics' strategy of trying to learn from manga has included the creation of a new line of paperbacks called DC Compact Comics. Regular Western comics are significantly taller and wider than manga, printed on glossy, full-color paper about 7 by 11 inches, whereas manga has cheaper paper, usually in black and white, in a more compact package, usually 5 by 7.5 inches. DC Compact Comics offers quote-unquote new

Starting point is 02:48:03 reader-friendly stories in a manga-sized package at a cheaper price point. But this is only copying the form factor of manga. In 2023, three of the top five selling DC Comics titles were old classics from the late 80s, Watchmen, Sandman, and Batman Year 1. These are the type of comics that DC-combacked comics is reprinting. It's all of these old comics retrofitted into manga size for 10,000. bucks. And this is helping DC with sales, but it's still a self-cannibalizing process. These things can't run forever on nostalgia alone. And if they keep trying to, they're going to lose to whoever

Starting point is 02:48:47 can make new stuff en masse, which right now is Japan and South Korea, with China right around the corner. Even when DC is promoting new stories, they're still relying on the same handful of characters. And this has forced them to do a series of confusing, continuity resets to attract new readers, though this often has the backfire effect of alienating existing readers and making the whole ordeal seem too complicated to bother investing time and money into. Japan does have their own version of IP recycling, like Pokemon, Dragon Ball, and Gundam. But in a long-running series like Gundam, new installments are often completely separate from one another, remixing key concepts in a new canon or premise.

Starting point is 02:49:33 Gundam Wing introduced Gundam to most Americans when it aired on Tsunami, and that show is entirely distinct from the original Gundam series from 1979. This continuity separation is continued with new installments like Iron-blooded orphans and Witch from Mercury. Something similar is attempted in the Marvel Ultimate Universe or DC's Elseworlds, or more comparably in something like the critically acclaimed Absolute Batman or Absolute Martian Manhunter series. but historically, these concepts get roped into multiverse slop and crossover events that feed into the same nostalgia loops and franchise self-cannibalization. The risk aversion among U.S. media companies not only restricts what types of stories can be

Starting point is 02:50:20 told, but also who is telling them. Even the new darling of DC Comics, Absolute Batman, the groundbreaking series that's redefining the character, is written by a guy who is, been writing Batman since Obama's first term. At the New York Comic-Con Batman animation panel, I recognized animators and directors that I've known of since I was a little kid because I watched the bonus features on all of my Batman DVDs. The big announcement at that panel was that they were adapting Batman Nightfall, a comic book run from the 90s, into a multi-part animated film series. I also attended panels for Gundam and the Chainsaw Man movie,

Starting point is 02:51:03 and the Japanese directors on the panels were considerably younger. The Chainsaw Man movie director is in his 30s. Likewise, Gundam, Iron-blooded Orphan, was written and directed by people in their 30s. And we used to let young people make cool superhero stuff. Batman the Animated Series was made by kids in the 90s. The problem is, those kids, now in their mid-60s, are still the only people allowed to make Batman stuff.

Starting point is 02:51:32 The manga industry has pipelines for young writers and artists to submit their work and get published because publishers are always looking for new stories. And the huge popularity of digital comics in Japan and South Korea also provides easier opportunities for young creators to get their comics in front of a lot of eyes. Keeping this balance of new stories and old IP is working out pretty well for Japanese capital. On a global scale, they are much better at producing cheap, widely available branded merchandise. Pokemon and Hello Kitty are the top two highest grossing media franchises in the entire world. Most of that is merchandising revenue. Out of the top 10 highest grossing media franchises,

Starting point is 02:52:18 five are Japanese. The others are Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Disney princesses, and the MCU. American audiences suddenly deciding that, Goku rules and Batman drools doesn't cause this state of affairs. Rather the opposite, production and economic conditions determine which characters or franchises are seen as cool and culturally relevant. As the anime and manga industry has seen rapid growth the past few years, there's been discussions within the industry about whether anime should continue to cater to a Japanese audience or try to appeal to the growing international market. In December, the Japanese Prime Minister met with entertainment industry figures to discuss

Starting point is 02:53:02 how Japan's media market could expand overseas to enhance their diplomatic power. Neon Genesis Evangelian creator Hideakiano has argued that anime should not adapt to a growing overseas audience, but that the audience should adapt to uniquely Japanese aspects of anime. The government of Japan has recently announced that they are boosting state investment in the creation of Japanese media like manga, anime, and anime. and music, and strengthening its global distribution networks. While speaking on a government panel of experts, Hideyakiano pointed to labor shortages negatively affecting production studios, but some of the new government efforts may actually

Starting point is 02:53:42 do more harm than good for the international market, like AI-driven translation tools and assistance in combating online manga piracy. Capital goes through periods of growth and recession, while retracting, capital pushes living labor out and increasingly relies on dead labor. Like DC Compact Comics, reprinting the past over and over again. This is the part of the cycle that Western companies have been stuck in the past few years. But the rise of anime itself grew out of the Great Recession. It was the collapse of the DVD market and the rise of internet piracy that laid the groundwork for early streaming platforms like Crunchy Rule, which would play a significant part in pushing anime and manga

Starting point is 02:54:26 into the mainstream come the 2020s. According to the Japan Times, overseas sales of Japanese content reached $37.6 billion in 2023, surpassing Japan's semiconductor exports. And if you look at the revenue for Pokemon and Hello Kitty compared to Star Wars, the MCU, and Batman, it makes sense that Japan wants to keep growing

Starting point is 02:54:51 their international market. But this commodity warfare is not a matter of East versus West, but a battle between old and new capital. Old capital in Europe and America had early global dominance. Europe fell off, but then came Japan, and now South Korea is growing

Starting point is 02:55:12 and is gearing up to steal Japan's lunch money. Last September, Disney announced a new partnership with the South Korean company Webtoon to create a new digital comic platform using the Marvel and Star Wars catalog. But Marvel and DC aren't going to overcome the dominance of Japanese media by just reprinting old comics as webtoons or manga-sized packages. That doesn't fix the core issue,

Starting point is 02:55:38 which is caused by Western companies not investing in new labor. They are increasingly relying on the dead labor of their ubiquitous iconography. Even my beloved Lego Batman is an instance of this. The game is primarily pulling from plots of old Batman movies, with combat ripped from the Arkham games. In the marketing for the game, the different Batman skins literally have a nostalgia meter. Moves like DC Compact Comics is an attempt to manage the crisis while still not taking risks and investing in living labor. They don't want to invest because superhero comics aren't growing, which just further compounds the problem. Meanwhile, anime and manga are rapidly growing in the United States,

Starting point is 02:56:23 which is why Japanese companies are buying almost half the show floor at New York Comic-Con, whereas 10 years ago, they were in a tiny corner of the basement. A little too relaxed during yoga? That's embarrassing. You know what's not? Debt. Consolidate your debt with a loan from FIG. No early repayment fees and low interest rates, so you can pay off your debt faster.

Starting point is 02:56:53 Borrow better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, new? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it.

Starting point is 02:57:07 We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it.

Starting point is 02:57:27 One of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.

Starting point is 02:57:47 But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends.

Starting point is 02:58:02 Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app,

Starting point is 02:58:23 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcasts. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levin this went to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history.

Starting point is 02:59:08 You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am wearing my women want me fish fear me hat. This is, it could happen here, executive disorder. Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you.

Starting point is 02:59:39 I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Proper Defense. Mia Wong, James Stout, and James's hat. And James's hat. What does it say, Garrison? Oh, they hurt. I think the audience heard. We've got to leave that one in, are we?

Starting point is 02:59:55 Yeah, women fear him, fish, want him, something along. those lines. Fish want me. It's a whole thing with fish. Fish fear women. Women want fish, something like that. I don't know. Del Toro made a movie about this.

Starting point is 03:00:06 Yes, he did. Yes, he did, Garrison. What happened? Did nothing happen this week? I guess we can all go home. It seems like an uneventful news week, right? Yeah. Nothing happened with the IRS or anything, shootings overseas.

Starting point is 03:00:19 All good. Cuba fine. Nothing happening in Bolivia. Nothing happening with very little bit of New Mexico. Roel Castro. Well, that does it. for it's not happening here. Thank you for listening.

Starting point is 03:00:31 We'll see you next week. Yes. It's not happening here. A podcast brought to you by marijuana. And sleeping bills. Should we start with some little things and then move on to some big things? Not the little things are important, but we're just covering them in less detail now and maybe more detail later. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:00:52 Former Interior Secretary, now Representative Ryan Zinke, is once again attempting to delist brown bears from the aged species act he hates those brown bears he fucking hates a bear they're trying to do the same thing with grizzlies too they're a little further behind but there's a push going right now to like grizzly numbers have recovered a lot they're starting to do bad stuff we got to start hunting them yeah the ground bears brissy bears are the same species they're just uh brown bears This would be the term I would use to describe all of the Ursus Herobulus, I guess, in North America. Yeah. Like Codiak, brown bear and grizzly bear.

Starting point is 03:01:26 But yes, you're right. The justification that Zinke has given is that populations are getting higher, and he specifically cited a tragedy in which a hiker lost their life in Glacier National Park. And another attack on two tourists in Yellowstone. Yeah. The Endangered Species Act has nothing to do with how dangerous an animal is, nor does population size really play a role. And it's not like these bears attack these people because they were hungry.

Starting point is 03:01:49 hungry because the other bears had out-competed them for food. Now, one person walked up on a sow with cubs, so that group came across the sow was cubs and the other one, I think the bear was probably foraging for berries and a person surprised it in some thick timber. A lot of people thought that they would de-lister grizzlies, but they didn't straight away in January, and they so far haven't. I'd wrote a whole 2,000 words on this when you's left if you want to learn more about bears, a lot of little bear content. We will also bring you a bear episode in the coming weeks in which I talk to Molly about bears because it seems like you like me talking to Molly

Starting point is 03:02:19 about animals. Talking of animals, Trump administration has re-approved an exciting way to kill them. The M-44 cyanide trap has been re-approved. Thank God. Single issue cyanide voters. That's

Starting point is 03:02:35 been my one issue for years, Garrison. You know this. I'm all about, and it's not just this. I'm just in general, supportive of anything that increases regular Americans daily access to science. You know? That's why I'm also against clean air regulations. Continue, you, James.

Starting point is 03:02:50 I will. I've bumped into a few of these. Like, maybe you have two. It's not a coyote get. So, coyote get is a different thing. But what this is, it's like a spring-loaded trap. It's a little thing poking out the ground, normally covered in cloth and baited.

Starting point is 03:03:03 And it's triggered when something bites and pulls it. So it's designed to then squirt cyanide up into the mouth of, it's normally canines, right? It's not much else. Yeah. Bites and pulls them. These things have killed dozens of pets. and livestock.

Starting point is 03:03:16 It's a pretty fucked up kind of trap. Like, it's really bad. Yeah, it's pretty bad. The old ones, they used to use like a 38 special blank that would really fire the cyanide up. Jesus Christ! That was a massive fucking issue. That's awesome.

Starting point is 03:03:31 That's cool. That was a coyote getter. See, I just want to put those in my normal 38 and just conceal carry a cyanide piece. Everyone dies. Get really close. Get really close. See what happens.

Starting point is 03:03:43 Unless they attack you from like upwind, you know. and then it's just you. Yeah, why don't you open your mouth and get really close to me, you know? Yeah. I guess people will maybe be familiar with these from an incident where a 14-year-old boy was injured and his dog was killed.

Starting point is 03:04:00 This was back in the 20 teens. In that case, the M-44 was not on the family's property, but it was less than 100 yards from their house. Wow. And they've discontinued using them in Idaho after that. But the BLM as a whole discontinued their use, only in like late 23, early 24. Trump administration hates

Starting point is 03:04:19 or every living creature, so it's not really surprising that these are back. Obviously, like the issue here is livestock, right? Like, they're protecting livestock. Yep. From Canids, yeah, there are better ways of doing that. We shouldn't be fucking putting cyanide in a public lands. It's not, sorry, this one gets me kind of annoyed.

Starting point is 03:04:35 Yeah, just the general belief that anything that might interfere with a livestock animal justifies like widespread genocide of crucial species is really bad. Yeah, and also dominant in a lot of the American West. Yes, and like coyotes are some of the smartest creatures we have. They've resisted all attempts to control their population. They continue to thrive. I believe in all 50 states.

Starting point is 03:05:01 I think they're maybe not in 49. I don't think they're any in Hawaii. But yeah, incredible animals. Coyote America by Dan Flores, good book about them. In the Channel Islands, Channel Islands National Park, a fire has already hit over 14,000 acres. It is on Santa Rita. It's threatening a grove of very rare Torrey Pines. Tori Pines, really, we have some here in San Diego and some up there.

Starting point is 03:05:25 The initial reporting suggested that the mariner himself had fired distress flares, and those flares had ignited the fire. What the coast guard is now saying is he's on like a 52-foot boat by himself. boat people mad about me saying boat not whatever I don't care the boat had run a ground and it was rocking I'm guessing that rocking either shorted something or cut a fuel lime that caused a vessel itself to ignite and then the vessel igniting caused a fire on the island and he then fired flares standing within a previously burned area so the fire had burned past him he fired flares quite why he wasn't able to signal with his radio or if he was able to signal with his radio and then the radio got burned or other

Starting point is 03:06:12 means of communication right like a personal locator beacon, e-perb, I don't know. All I know is what's been reported so far, but nonetheless this is really tragic for one of the very few areas in California, which has been less ravaged by capital. Move along to immigration, I have seen evidence that USCIS income is plummeting. And this is because they're processing fewer applications, right? Then they're moving much, much, much more slowly with actually processing the applications to give people the right to have visas or to permanent residency citizenship. The agency is normally funded by fees, and it seems that it will soon not be funded by fees anymore. So despite all these Doge cuts and efficiency cuts, the agency is going to end up costing taxpayers more money,

Starting point is 03:07:01 which is great. Today, United States Marines boarded the motor tanker Celestial, which they quote, suspected was en route to Iran. Flights from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, are facing new arrival restrictions due to the outbreak of Ebola in the region. With USAID funding slash, the US would have normally led a response to something like this, or at least helped fund it. Now, it won't. This means that the outbreak will be bigger and more people will die.

Starting point is 03:07:29 Scott Besant has said that the United States will temporarily allow, quote, the most vulnerable nations to access Russian oil selectively. and temporarily lifting sanctions. Also, Ukraine has begun using unguided rockets on first-person-viewed drones. And this is a pretty serious development for local remote control warfare. They're using them to suppress Russian air defenses, but they released videos of that for the first time this week. Finally, for me, it appears that a large batch of new immigration judges will be starting work.

Starting point is 03:08:01 Immigration judges, it's worth noting, are not judges in the sense, so we understand the word for other judges in the legal system. they're more like bureaucrats. Like Robert. Yes. Robert's more real of a judge. They're certainly not reverend judges. Their ranks have been purged by the Trump administration

Starting point is 03:08:16 since 30, 2025. I know lots of them have retired or quit or been fired. I can imagine that this new cohort might be more favorable to the Trump administration's immigration goals. So there's been, in the past few days, a massive intensification of month-long protests in Bolivia, that has escalated into a general strike. It's also turned into one of the traditional Bolivian protest tactics,

Starting point is 03:08:42 which is a series of roadblocks blocking access to the capital. These are largely the result of two kind of different kind of related fights. The first one was an attempt to agricultural reform that would have done a whole bunch of sort of, I guess you'd call it in 1994-style Mexican constitution, like neoliberalization of like collectively held indigenous land. And then now the protests have been gaining steam over dire economic situation and neoliberal reforms passed by their right-wing president after the MAS effectively imploded during 2024 and 2025, leading to the first right-wing president in Bolivia since the early 2000s and also the re-emergence of Carlos Mesa, a guy I literally never thought I would hear about again, but apparently is back somehow after getting ousted by like basically effectively these exact same style of mass. roadblock protest in 2005. He's now also back for some reason. But yeah, these protests are probably

Starting point is 03:09:42 going to continue to escalate. We've reached the miners throwing dynamite phase of oblivion protest, which tends to proceed governments collapsing. We will see how this story progresses. For our first main story, we'll discuss the shooting at an Islamic Center in San Diego. James, do not start us off. Yeah, so the shooting happened on Monday the 18th of May. Three people were killed. We'll go for a little bit about them in a second here. It happened at the Islamic Center of San Diego, which is the largest mosque in San Diego County.

Starting point is 03:10:19 People might be familiar with the Islamic Center of San Diego because of other stories about surveillance on the mosque over the years. In this case, the two shooters were Kane Clark 17 and Caleb Vasquez, 18. shortly after the shooting took place, police searched Kane Clark's house. It took them a long time to get a warrant. Normally they can use an e-warrant for these things and get one very quickly, but it some reason took several hours. Officers were actually at Clark's house when the shooting began. This was because his mother had called police to report her son

Starting point is 03:10:53 was missing in her car, in camouflage, and had stolen her weapons. She called them two hours before the shooting. began. Despite that, they were able to make it to the Islamic Center of San Diego, kill three people, then move further down the street and fire at a landscaper, who seems to have been largely uninjured or not injured in a serious way. Then they proceeded further down the street before ending their lives. I think one of them shot the other and then shot themselves. I think it's worth noting that, like, Santiago has driven itself into debt,

Starting point is 03:11:29 spending massive amounts of money specifically on cops and specifically on surveillance, and neither of them did anything to prevent this. The San Diego Police Department received a call two hours before the shooting, to quote police chief Scott Wall, quote, she believed her son was suicidal, and she began to share information that several of her weapons were missing. Her vehicle was missing in addition to her son, Woll said. She also said her son was with a companion,

Starting point is 03:11:55 they were dressed in camo, but it's not consistent with what we would typically see from someone who is suicide. idle. They tried to use their automated license plate readers, commonly referred to with flock cameras. Flok actually doesn't provide the hardware in San Diego. Their only lead was a single hit in Fashion Valley, which is several miles away from where the shooting took place. Also, further from Clark's house than the site of the shooting was, but Vasquez comes from Chula Vista, which is much further south. There is no way that I can see to get from Fashion Valley who I ICSD without passing automated license brake readers.

Starting point is 03:12:33 You can't take surface routes and avoid them. I've ridden most of that route. This was the way I used to commute on my bicycle when I was teaching. In the end, that didn't make a difference. They weren't able to get there and prevent the shooting. Not a single officer discharged their firearm. Last month, the San Diego officer did discharge his firearm and a lady with a ballpoint pen missing several times in a busy street.

Starting point is 03:12:53 Let's talk about the three people who were killed here. Yeah. I think they're more important. important than niece. Well, yeah, because they undeniably saved any of those kids from getting killed. Yeah, in a way that is genuinely laudable and heroic. Yeah. So Amin Abdullah was a security guard of the mosque. I saw a report he had

Starting point is 03:13:13 eight children. He seems to have significantly delayed the shooter by exchanging fire with both of the shooters and initiating the mosque's lockdown protocol. Yes. So he used his radio to initiate the lockdown protocol. The shooters live streamed the shooting. and I've reviewed some elements of that. And you can see they basically get into the entrance of the mosque and then get hold up there. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:13:36 Because they moved past him and he engaged them. Correct. Yeah. Because they were attempting to get past him to the kids. And he engaged them, drew them back. And yeah, I mean, all of this would have been so much worse if he hadn't done what he did, which cost him his life. Yes, exactly. Like, yeah, he engaged him.

Starting point is 03:13:53 He continued to draw their fire, like until obviously he passed away. The other two victims, Mansour Kazija, known as Abu Aziz, who worked at the mosque for decades, like since they broke around. He was managing the store, like the little gift shop, snack shop. And Nadia Awad, whose wife teaches at the school, and he lives right next door. He actually was at home when the shooting began, and he ran toward the mosque when he heard the shooting. And it seems that both of them were in the parking lot, directing people away from the mosque. and again drawing the attention of the shooter, right? So that unfortunately resulted in them both losing their lives.

Starting point is 03:14:34 The shooters, as I said, then fled in a white BMW, shot at a landscaper and then took their own lives. It appears that they met online. Vasquez lives in Chula Vista, like a good distance away from where the shooting took place. There was a press conference shortly afterwards where the mayor was heckled. Gloria is a pretty unpopular man.

Starting point is 03:14:55 for a number of reasons, making San Diego very unlivable for poor people. He's consistently attacked our unhoused population. I guess notably in this case, because of the presence of a pro-Palestinian artist, he boycotted our pride march. But what is worth, Gloria himself is gay. City has had a really bad record of hate crimes. And I think in San Diego, because of this long history of hate crime and bigotry and anti-blackness and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and the deep roots they have here,

Starting point is 03:15:25 people assumed that these two young people would have come from East County, which is, I think sometimes it's this myth, right? They're like all bigotry exists kind of east of the 15 and it's fine after that. That is very much not the case. And these two people do not come from that scene. They do not come from that world. There are groups that are white supremacist in East County without a doubt, many of them, and individuals who, I mean, Metzger was not living that far away, right?

Starting point is 03:15:53 this is not that. Claremont, where Clark lived, is one of the most diverse neighborhoods. I have taught in high schools in Claremont. I taught in the community college there. Tons of my students over the years have been people who attended this mask or they have children who go to the school and the preschool there. So yeah, this is like very close to home for me, I guess. We should discuss a little of the shooters kind of accelerationist worldview, I guess.

Starting point is 03:16:21 Yeah. Yeah, the imagery and associated manifesto that leaked online after the shooting. I mean, just the shortest thing we can say before getting into it is that this is a Christchurch-inspired attack. Yes. Motivated by anti-Islamic Islamophobia, right, obviously, but also these shooters were very motivated by anti-Semitic beliefs, by in-cell beliefs, and by general fandom of mass shootings, you know? Yeah. Yeah, the first inclination. we had that this was linked

Starting point is 03:16:54 to the Nazi accelerationism was some pictures that were released of the shooter's vehicle where a gas can had an SS sticker on it. Eventually pictures came out of their weapons, which had slogans like

Starting point is 03:17:09 race war and hate speech written, literally the words like hate speech written down on the weapon. Yeah. As well as wearing Nazi imagery on tactical clothing. Garrison will have more to say, and we'll

Starting point is 03:17:25 look at more about these shooters. But first, here's some ads. And we're back. All right. To start off, I pretty much agree with extremism researcher Jared Holt, who's one of the best in the business. That quote, these kids could not have

Starting point is 03:17:53 been any clearer that they cooked their skulls on a neo-Nazi accelerationist slop. Their manifestos are as sloppy as they are extremist, but they do make clear they sought to be copycats, unquote. Yeah. That's an entirely, entirely correct analysis of what happened.

Starting point is 03:18:13 It's one of the laziest manifestos in some ways. It's very patterned off of the Christchurch Shooter's manifesto, which was, you know, say what you will about it, a fairly original work. Like there's one of the more notable segments of this is a chunk where, and they're talking about their beliefs, they talk about the Freemasons. and whichever one of them was writing that portion is like, I don't actually know anything about them, but I know that they're bad, basically.

Starting point is 03:18:36 Like, I haven't had time to get into this part of the ideology, which is, like, it's very, it's very sloppy. It's very online. It's very much a product of pterogram, you know? Like, in, in, like, the sloppiness is part of the humor, I kind of expect for these guys. Yeah, large parts of it were just, like, parentheses unfinished. Yep, yeah, and I think that's part of a bit, you know?

Starting point is 03:18:59 Yeah. So the manifesto was titled Sons of Terrant, named after the Christchurch shooter. Yeah. About half of it was written by each of the shooters. And it states that Terrant was their biggest inspiration. The manifesto shows a deep referential knowledge of Nazi acclerationism. But in a very regurgitated sense, right? Almost as if you asked Chat DPT to make a neo-Nazi-Xleratious manifesto.

Starting point is 03:19:24 I'm not saying they actually did that. But that's the sort of like vibe that it has. Yeah, it's very generic. Yeah, it's slop. There's really nothing like new at all in there. It's mostly just referential. And it has that chat GPT vibe in part because they're just copying these other manifestos that were written by guys who were somewhat more original than them.

Starting point is 03:19:43 And they came by it, I think primarily not even from initially scanning the original documents, but from seeing chopped up pieces of them in these conversations that they're having in these, like, groups that they're in. And so it just kind of inculcates this slop. mindset. Like, this is kind of, it's not just the manifesto that Slop. The way these people were radicalized probably was also Slop. Yeah. Yeah, there's this big element of like Gen Z irony throughout stuff like this. And you can see that on the shooters TikTok and their Steam page, which has a whole bunch of like anime Nazi edits, little TikTok dances with accelerationist imagery and like anime art. The way that these two shooters,

Starting point is 03:20:29 identified with Nazi accelerationism and mass killers is very close to the way a lot of people just identify with pop culture fandom. The Columbine aspect is also pretty crucial here and one of the shooters writes about that in the manifesto, on their steam, they had an anime Columbine edit. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:20:48 Trying to understand a shooting like this as just primarily ideologically driven has its limits, right? That's certainly an aspect of it. That's very clear. ideological imagery is front and center. But there's also this copycat aspect and like the saint lineage of these shooters trying to make themselves infamous by associating themselves with these other mass killers. And the in-group signaling is what the fashion of ideology is resting on. Yes. The in-group

Starting point is 03:21:17 signaling is key because when you just say they're trying to like copy their copycast, they're trying to copy these other killers, then that makes people think of someone who is kind of purely narcissistically so focused on the outside on how people see them as a result of their act. But at least equally important is this group of folks that they socialize with in these telegram chats and other communities that they think are cool and that they like. And they are trying, that's why the manifesto is. That's why the Christchurch manifesto was the way it was. They're trying to signal to their differing communities of people online. It's like part of a fandom. Like the way that we think of pop culture fandom, that's what this is for a small number of young people.

Starting point is 03:21:58 online. Yeah, and it's like it go, it's not just even Nazi stuff. Like I've seen a lot of people making a big deal about the fact that one of the shooters had a profile image of a character Ashley Graves from the incest video game. Yeah, a video game called The Coffin of Andy and Lely, which is like a really fucked up incest video game. And she's like, she's like specifically like a really bad, evil person. And it's like the comments I've seen are basically like, yeah, I'm not surprised that he would idolize someone who would do this would like idolize a character like that. It's a bit. It's a bit. It's a bit.

Starting point is 03:22:29 Like that's, these are, these are all things that are, like, popular in these weird little chunks of the. Right. Like, it's, it's, it's an encompassing thing. It's not just these people are Nazis or these people want to be famous. And if you're just looking at that, then you're going to be confused by this, like, very sloppy simbing manifesto, unless you understand it's there to make their friends laugh, you know? Yeah. I mean, like, and as ideological as this is, it's just as memetic. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:22:56 Even if the overt Nazi stuff is very, very much. very strong in this case. And as much as people will focus on the Nazi stuff and a lot of the reporting, we can't overlook this sort of like fandom and like Columbine aspect. You know, crucially, there's two shooters here. That's very, very Columbine-esque and that's something they acknowledge in the manifesto. They did live stream, the shooting in a discord call. So there were people aware that this shooting was happening since before the shooting started, people to hop on to this call. Jesus Christ.

Starting point is 03:23:27 They said in their manifesto they were going to wait until they had a good number of people on the call before starting so they could ensure someone recorded it, which indeed someone did. Just as a side note here, I've seen a lot of people talk about this as like a quote-unquote 764 shooting. All right, 764 refers to a specific group of or a specific online community that does child like sex exploitation. They try to extract and black male children into providing child sexual abuse material. and sometimes convincing children to also do acts of violence. There is not an explicit 764 connection that I am aware of at this point. Sometimes these communities do overlap to intersect, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is something 764 related

Starting point is 03:24:11 that comes out about one of these shooters eventually. Sure. But I think that framing, that understanding is slightly mistaken. I think people jump to that very often. There was obviously the sort of like group, element of this shooting. They're streaming it in a discord call, but I think 764 does actually refer to a specific group. It's not just neo-Nazi accelerationist shooters in general. I've seen some people question why a mosque was chosen as the target if a lot of the manifesto

Starting point is 03:24:44 is anti-Semitic. That's kind of like the crux of their ideology. They did the Islamic Center likely because they wanted to specifically copy Terrant. right? That's even down to the clothes that they're wearing. The military fatigues that they're wearing are very similar to what Terrant wore. The manifestos even around the same length as Terrence manifesto. Yeah. And I think a vital part of this and when you're looking at this sort of what seems like things that are incongruent between what they're writing and what they're doing, it's that this is sort of the most advanced stage of the reduction of politics to aesthetics. And it's reached a point where like the aesthetic itself is like memetically alive. Yes. in a way that's, you know, in a way that operates independently of like what the people who made the ideology we're trying to do. And now the aesthetic itself is getting people to just do the things. So they're doing it for the aesthetic, which is what the politics has been turned into. 100%. Yeah. And, you know, even like the selection of video games, they have on their Steam profile. He's designed with this in mind. The incest game, one example. Parts of Iron 4 is also included on the Steam profile. God, of course it fucking is. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. The shooter unlocked no achievements. Yeah. So they weren't even playing the game. It's about being cool to your buds.

Starting point is 03:25:59 They weren't even playing the game, but he wanted to include the game on the profile because it references or has been a part of other neo-Nazi accelerationists in the past. Similarly, a lot of like the enemy visual novels included on the profile seem to be unplayed. Yeah. It doesn't happen enough. This gets looked at because of how horrifying the actions are

Starting point is 03:26:21 as something separate fundamentally from like all the other shit that like dumb shit young people do to be cool and it really shouldn't entirely. Or just being suicidal, right? Or just being extremely mentally unwell and like underregulated, socially disintegrated. I think the desperation to fit in anywhere is tied with that sort of thing too, right? Like the fact that you would lie about the stuff you're interested with in order to put on this image that is more fitting for what you think this community wants to see from you, you know? Part of the tragedy here is that these people as kids found community in these acceleration

Starting point is 03:26:59 of spaces that became the primary way they socialize in a very similar vein as a lot of people socialize online about Star Wars or whatever anime is popular on TikTok or like those other fandom spaces that are not designed around going into a place of worship or a school and killing tons of people. Yeah. I guess I should just say real briefly, the FBI

Starting point is 03:27:22 removed 30 firearms from Kane Clark's family home. It seems all the firearms are used for whatever it's worth. It doesn't make a huge difference, I guess, other than to say that, like, these were all compliant with California law. California has very strict gun laws.

Starting point is 03:27:40 It's very hard in this country to stop people getting the means to kill lots of people. Yeah. I mean, that said, it's entirely possible that that is why there weren't more people killed. You know, we really, it's impossible to say that the gun that they were using isn't wildly different from an AR in this kind of situation. But, you know, there's limitations on the amount of ammo in a mag or whatever that may have had some impact. I don't really have, I don't have enough granular detail about all of that. And it's also kind of impossible to say. But yeah, these were all Cali legal guns. Yeah, you see the kid I would not suggest watching the video I don't think anyone needs to watch a video It's not good for you

Starting point is 03:28:22 This is no reason to watch it or read the manifesto There's nothing in there Yeah, none of this will make your grief You know more real or it's your solidarity More completely you don't need to You see the kid fuck up the window for a while In a video which is good I wish someone had fucking shot him

Starting point is 03:28:39 When he was doing that One of the last things I want to add There has been an attempt by some popular right-wing figures to try to turn this into another trans shooting. Yeah. Specifically, Elon Musk. Yes, Elon Musk has boosted claims.

Starting point is 03:28:56 Yeah. Completely unfounded, false. Just outright false. Absolute lies. Admitted by the O.P. He's just lying. False assertions that either one or both of the shooters were transgender. This seems to be primarily using a picture of one of them

Starting point is 03:29:13 that has long hair as the sort of quote unquote evidence. They are not trans. Neither of them are trans. They write about hating LGBTQ people in the manifesto. They're not trans. It's not a trans shooting. No, they're right about hating trans people in particular. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:29:30 Yeah, but, you know, they're just like these people, like Elon Musk and all threatening people doing this, like they're just overtly doing the Julius Stryker, like Dair Stormer, like Jewish crime shit. Like, that's just all this is at this point. Yeah. They don't think it's true any more than like we do. They just know that you've got in this period of time right after something like this happens,

Starting point is 03:29:53 if you flood the zone with shit like that, some number of people will never get corrected. That's all this is. Reality is very malleable in those first few hours. Yeah. Yeah. I think some of them also think it's funny. Yeah. Like I think in the same way, it signals that you're cool to your friends and in the same way that these people did that.

Starting point is 03:30:09 Like, it's disgusting. Wow. It's all the same thing. Yeah. We're doing the meme genocide. It's arguably genocide's always been a meme. Yeah. The whole thing has been really hard on the San Diego community,

Starting point is 03:30:24 we have a big fire at East of La Posta as well. It's getting under control. We will share a fundraiser for the families of the three people who unfortunately lost their lives. It's already up a half a million dollars, which is nice to see. But yeah, I know that that mosque specifically has spent so much time on security. I know they've applied for grants.

Starting point is 03:30:45 Like, I know they've done everything they can. They have cameras. They had armed security. Like they, it's really sad that this community felt that this might happen and it happened, you know, that they felt that they weren't safe.

Starting point is 03:30:56 I filed some public records requests that will take weeks, months to come back. But if there is more reporting on this to be done, we will do it, especially like this is where I live. This is my community. So like I'm going to try my best to, find out as much as I can.

Starting point is 03:31:14 But yeah, it's a tragedy right now. Before we go on an ad break, I have one more story here. On Tuesday, there was a primary election in Kentucky. Incumbent libertarian Republican Thomas Massey lost the election by 10 points to APEC and Trump-backed challenger Ed Galerane. Massey broke with Trump over the release of the Epstein files, though unlike Marjor Taylor Green, he did not step down but continued to serve in Congress, opposing the one big beautiful bill, the war on Iran, and aid to Israel.

Starting point is 03:31:49 Trump selected, a Gowarin, a former Navy seal, to run against Massey. And this election became the most expensive primary in house race history. Great. APEC and other pro-Israel lobbying groups spent over $9 million to unseat Massey. Jesus. And overall ad spending in this primary reached over 30,000. $23 million. Jesus.

Starting point is 03:32:13 It's like a wide receiver one money. Yeah. It's wild. This is crazy for a Kentucky house scene. That's going to go to a Republican either way. It's just a Trump's ego thing. It's like a Trump Israel thing. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:32:27 It's pretty wild. Yeah. Israel too, obviously. Yeah, of course. The pro-Israel lobby funded a significant, a significant part of the ad spending here. That's crazy. Another interesting factor.

Starting point is 03:32:37 Pax on both sides of this race. used AI deep fake ads depicting the opposing candidate. I would have briefly show some of these. No. Not the whole ones, just very short clips to get like the sense of what the deal is here. Credible and pending sense of dread. Yeah, I love it. These Trump traitors, they can't stand our president and can't help but let it show.

Starting point is 03:33:04 Like Woke Eddie Galrine, Woketti left the Republican Party after Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016. Take a look for yourself. And when did Wokey change his registration back to the GOP? After Joe Biden was sworn in, Trump was in the foxhole, and Wokey

Starting point is 03:33:23 Gall-Rine touched his tail and ran. Kentucky 4th Pack is responsible for the content of his ad. Oh, my God. So it's done, Donald Trump is participating in World War II. This video. This is the craziest part of the ad

Starting point is 03:33:41 where a deep fake Donald Trump is in the trenches with a rifle. It just looks like a photo shot. It looks like a shitty meme Photoshop. It's like World War I or two. It could kind of be either. I think it giving D-Day, right?

Starting point is 03:33:55 Like you got the tank barriers. Like he's got the Garand. It's got the tank barriers. But that looks, is that a garage? Yeah, because he fired it twice without running the ball. I don't think they know what war are that supposed to be. We've got more thought into this

Starting point is 03:34:07 and they have already. His camera motor. doesn't look. Anyway, whatever. Yeah, true. So woke Eddie Gowran ran away as Trump was in the trenches. The foxhole, garrison, the foxhole. My apologies. Under fire.

Starting point is 03:34:20 This is the pro-Massi ad, right? So the pro-Massiads are trying to frame the Trump-backed candidate as woke Eddie Gowran. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Who abandoned Trump. Meanwhile, the anti-Massi ads looked like this. Thomas Massey caught in a thruple in Washington. What?

Starting point is 03:34:47 Oh, man. No, what is happening? Massey voted just the squad against finishing Trump's wall. He voted with them against hiring new border agents. Jesus Christ. This is worse than adultery. It's a complete and total betrayal of President Trump and Kentucky conservatives. On May 19th, fire Thomas Massey.

Starting point is 03:35:06 Maga Kentucky is responsible for the content of this advertising. the upside of this is the term thruples really gone mainstream, huh? They trust people in just like small town Kentucky to know what thruple makes. So this ad, frames Thomas Massey, is in a quote-unquote

Starting point is 03:35:23 thruple with the squad showing him holding hands. Also, the squad is more than three. Showing him holding hands with AOC and other deep faked interactions between AOC and Alon Omar. Yeah, great. Cool stuff.

Starting point is 03:35:39 Yeah, wow, the cable news generation really got to be having their minds melted by that shit. Lastly, an ongoing story we followed on ED the past few months is whether Trump will endorse in the Republican Senate runoff in Texas. Early reports indicated that Trump would back incumbent Senator John Cornyn over Maga hardliner and Texas AG Ken Paxton. But Trump seemed irritated that his intentions were leaked. And following that, Paxton started to make some moves, an event to win the president's favor in most. March, Paxton promised to drop out of the race if the Republican Senate killed the filibuster to pass the voter restriction bill dubbed the Save America Act. At the time, the bill was Trump's top priority.

Starting point is 03:36:22 And this gambit by Paxton seemed to work, as later that month, he was seen meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. And then this past Tuesday, Trump endorsed Paxton via truth on truth social, quote, He is a winner, in all caps. Ken is a strong supporter of terminating the filibuster, in all caps, and very importantly, the Save America Act. John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough, unquote. This endorsement seemed to catch Senate Republicans off guard, some of whom now worry the seat may be in jeopardy. Republican Majority Leader

Starting point is 03:37:01 John Thune is still backing Senator Cornyn. let's go on an ad break Yeah That was a lovely song Or are we about to hear the song What's the song status We're about to hear the song We're about to hear the song

Starting point is 03:37:23 Well I'm excited about that That must mean it's time to learn about tariffs My God, there's tariff news again So let's run through a few pieces of tariff news We have now technically speaking Started the tariff refund process People are starting to get their money back This is going to be a catastrophe

Starting point is 03:38:00 that unfolds over the course of genuinely who knows how long. My guess is I don't think this is done by next year. We've also seen a series of negotiations from the Trump administration with a whole bunch of different countries. The U.S. had a summit with China where Trump and Xi Jinping met and appear to be trying to wind down the trade war. There is an attempt to reduce tariffs on goods that aren't. under the sort of Section 301 national security tariffs. There's also been some attempt by the Chinese government to get the U.S. to back off of using the national security powers

Starting point is 03:38:41 for more tariffs. The deals on this one are still kind of inconclusive. We're going to see more as this unfolds. There's a very good quote that I think is interesting from U.S. trade rep James and Greer were in Reuters. Well, this is reported in Writers, it was on Fox Business News, where he said, quote, it's not really a situation where we go and get China

Starting point is 03:39:03 to change the way they govern, the way they manage their economy. Greer told Fox businesses last week, this was about three weeks ago now. That's all baked into their system, but I think there is a world where we find out where we can optimize trade between China and the U.S. to achieve more balance.

Starting point is 03:39:20 So this is effectively a pure back-off of everything they've been saying about like all of the all of the Chinese economy inherently having rigged trade because of government subsidies, et cetera, et cetera. It seems like they're kind of trying to wind this down, I think, largely because they have, with this war in Iran, they have dropped a second nuke on the economy and they want to make sure that the two bombs they've dropped on their own feet aren't going off at the same time. So in that vein, we've also seen the EU has finally gotten together to approve-ish, it's a little complicated,

Starting point is 03:40:01 a provisional deal with the administration that the details are also still a little murky on, but the short version seems to be the U.S. imposes a 15% tariff on European goods, while once again per Reuters, the EU would, quote, remove import duties on U.S. industrial goods and grant preferential access to U.S. farm and sea produce. We still don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but those are the preliminary details after these negotiations were thrown into chaos

Starting point is 03:40:30 when Trump was trying to invade Greenland. Yeah, we'll know more about what these deals look like in the weeks to come. Now, the other piece of news we should talk about here is that on Friday, on the Friday that you're presumably listening to this on Kevin Warsh is going to be sworn in as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. This has come as part of a deal where in order to get Warsh out of commasks out of community, committee, the Justice Department, dropped their investigation into former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. It is worth noting, though, that Jerome Powell, so Jerome Powell has obviously stepped down as, as the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Starting point is 03:41:09 Coward! That's all. I got nothing. My brain is too cooked on Federal Reserve to be able to react properly. But, Humma, Jerome Powell is not stepping down from the board. of governors, which he's still on. I think he's still also on the open market committee. So Warsh has his work cut out for him. We should mention, so who is Kevin Warsh? We've talked about this a little bit before. He is, I would say, more stable and more hinged than the previous candidate Trump has been talking about. He has experience in the Federal Reserve. However, he's also very, very close to a lot of the tech, right, particularly feel. and Andresen, that is absolutely a cause for alarm that these sort of tech fascists have gotten

Starting point is 03:42:01 their guy as the head of the Federal Reserve. However, he has effectively inherited a grenade. So how are things going to be going for him when he takes office in about two days as we're recording for this? Not great. The yield on the 30-year T-note is at 5.4%, which is the highest it's been since 2007. For people unaware of what high T-note yield means, it means things bad for the U.S. economy, and investors are spooked and kind of panicking. This seems to mostly be investors finally starting to price in,

Starting point is 03:42:40 wait, hold on, this war on Iran is not simply going to end. So he is inheriting a situation that is going to be a mess because these high interest rates means that there's going to have, to be sort of fed interest rate hikes in order to curve inflation. However, Trump wants exactly the opposite of that. So, Warsh is immediately caught between a rock and a hard place. The rest of the Federal Reserve Board does not want to slash interest rates right now. And Jerome Powell, who hates him, is still on the board and is still attempting to manage a kind of veer-flank resistance to Trump's control over the Fed. So, who knows, there's going to be some pretty dramatic

Starting point is 03:43:22 clashes, my guest, fairly soon between some combination of Trump Warsh and the rest of the Federal Reserve Board. And we will keep you informed. Nice. Speaking of money and taxes. Yeah. Giving Trump allies control of massive pools of money. And that, and that. Yeah. Of our tax money. Thank you. On Monday, President Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS after he negotiated with Trump administration. What a nice man. To create. a $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of political quote-unquote weaponization. Yeah. The lawsuit Trump levied against Trump's government,

Starting point is 03:44:05 alleged the IRS failed to prevent a contractor from leaking his tax returns in 2019 when Trump was also president. Part of the settlement. This is wild, right? I have to think this is, this is wild. You know, a headline. Yeah, it's very, it's incredibly silly. Trump wins law.

Starting point is 03:44:22 It's real. Yeah, against Trump's IRS. Yeah. You know, technically they didn't win the lawsuit. It was settled. And part of the settlement is this $1.8 billion fund. Garrison. 1.776 billion dollar fund.

Starting point is 03:44:42 Come on. Come on. Yeah. That's right. I was rounding up. That's right, baby. I hate this world. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:44:48 In this case, Garrison, he's unacceptable to round up because, uh, uh, uh, They had something they were going for there. It would be a shame to miss it. They really did. They were cooking. They thought, so despite it's for people who believe they are victims

Starting point is 03:45:00 of political weaponization by the DOJ. Yeah. Acting AG Todd Blanche said, quote, it is this department's intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done

Starting point is 03:45:10 while ensuring this never happens again, unquote. Blanche himself will appoint a five-member committee to evaluate weaponization claims submitted by the public. So this is basically a scheme to usurp Congress's power of the purse by literally weaponizing the judicial process. But this story actually gets crazier. Oh, yeah. Another part of Trump's settlement against Trump is that the DOJ has pledged that Trump

Starting point is 03:45:41 and his two eldest sons are to be forever exempt from tax audits by the IRS. It's amazing, then. Quote, the United States releases, waves, acquits, and forever discharges each of the plaintiffs from and is hereby forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing any and all claims, unquote. Incredible. Now, a DOJ spokesperson later told the Financial Times that this exemption only applies to existing audits. But that's not really what the document says, and that's not what the Trump administration is saying outside of this one. statement from a DOJ spokesperson. So who knows?

Starting point is 03:46:24 Julius Caesar didn't do this shit. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah, it's, again, the standard for a long time previously was that like the president and VP were audited like yearly because it's just like what you do, like in a democracy, just because you, it should be built into the system that you don't trust that the president isn't corrupt. That's a bad idea. Speaking of corruption, the whole idea.

Starting point is 03:46:49 the whole idea of settling a lawsuit. What is yourself? With yourself? It's... Yeah, using everyone's money. I would sue myself a lot. I'm going to be honest with you, Garrison. I'm going to be honest.

Starting point is 03:47:04 I don't, like, what the? I didn't know he could do that. I did. I just... This has somehow managed to turn me into a way they made Jimmy Carver gave up his peanut farm live like, yes, no, that was literally what I was thinking. But they did. Like Bill Clinton, not the most, not exactly analogous, but like Bill Clinton used to cross

Starting point is 03:47:29 the street to use a different phone to avoid transgressing the hatch act. Yeah. And now we're here. Absurd. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a Bill Clinton fan, but yeah, come on. But just thinking about the difference in severity between how Monica Gate, which is what

Starting point is 03:47:47 it was literally called often at the time. was treated and how the president creating a $1.776 billion slush fund for people who tried to do an insurrection is being treated. Like, it's insane. Yeah, right. And that's the other thing we should mention. This is going to be mostly used by people who are prosecuted for their involvement in the January 6th insurrection. These funds are not going to be granted to, like, left-wing activists who are being prosecuted by Trump's DOJ for political targeting. Like, come. Although, there might be some lawsuits around that. I mean, we'll see. Senator Ron White, Biden of Oregon has said that Democrats are going to fight every element of the self-dealing measure.

Starting point is 03:48:24 Not only is this another heinously corrupt act by the most corrupt administration in history. It's clearly a violation of the law that prohibits interference by executive branch officials and IRS audits. So we'll see if any of that is successful. Good luck. I'm not against trying, but it's not my odds on bet, you know? Yeah. Not to demean the effort. I'm just trying to be reasonable here.

Starting point is 03:48:43 Yeah. We can dream. back in 2019, when I was in film school, I was interviewing a federal judge. Wow, humble brag, huh? For some, like, documentary project. And she talked about, you guys, this is in 2019, so Trump won.

Starting point is 03:49:00 She talked about how she thinks that it's really going to be the judicial system that saves us from authoritarianism. This is the last line of defense we have against a dictator. Judge thinks their job good. To be fair, I knew a lot of journalists who are like the press, free press will save hundreds of time.

Starting point is 03:49:21 Meanwhile. Me, meanwhile, we want. Back in reality, like, the Supreme Court just like repealed the Voting Rights Act. That's what I was, that's what I'm getting to. Yeah. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Democrats' emergency appeal in the Virginia redistricting case, leaving the decision by the state Supreme Court to block the new voter-approved House map in place.

Starting point is 03:49:42 The U.S. Supreme Court offered no explanation in their brief one sentence unsigned memo. That might be the shortest shadow docket yet, which is insulting because they were already, like, one paragraph. Yeah. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled the new map violated the state constitution via procedural error during the referendum process. I often think about the conversation I had with this federal judge in 2019, as all this stuff's been happening. I'm like, I would really love to talk with her again. I should maybe try to track her down and ask because, oh boy. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:50:20 How do you conceive of yourself now, like your role in this? Yeah. How do you function ideologically as a person whose job it is to do the law when the Supreme Court has said that Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution when it says that Congress can pass laws to regulate elections, does not actually apply to Congress passing a law to regulate elections? Like, what do you do after that in order to make it so that black people don't get a vote? Yeah, like, where do you put your ideology now? It's all fake. Yeah. God, I'm extremely angry about this.

Starting point is 03:50:50 I mean, around that time was when, you know, partisan gerrymandering was, like, explicitly allowed by the Supreme Court. I mean, you can, yeah. We can track a lot of, a lot of the stuff to, to that ruling as well, right? And this was, I think that was around 2019, between 2019 and 2021. Will we move on to the war, which is not a war in Iran? I believe we shall. Okay, well, we'll start at the start of this week just gone, I guess, where the president set a deadline for strikes,

Starting point is 03:51:22 about which we found out through a series of AI-generated images, and then back down from it at the urge of Outt out in the region. As talks continue, meanwhile, Iran has not stopped using drones and missiles. to attack Kurdish groups, largely Iranian Kurdish groups in southern Kurdistan. Indigenously produced missiles. Yes. We're going to talk about indigenous production later. Yes, okay.

Starting point is 03:51:50 Okay. All right. I see what you're doing. Trump on Monday said he would hold off the quote-unquote scheduled attacks. Meanwhile, Iran has opened an X account using X.com, the everything website for the Persian Gulf straight authority, a direct contravention of my desire to not make this segment, Twitter review.

Starting point is 03:52:12 This is the worst episode we've done in a while. It's bleak. You know, you know 28 days later when it opens and all this bad shit is just like clicking through, yeah, that's every week now. Every new sentence one of us says, I just, my headache grows a little, a little bit, a little bit bigger.

Starting point is 03:52:30 Like longing for the halcyon days we thought that 2020 was the worst year ever. People are in nostalgic for 2020 now. Folks are getting hopeful about the Hanta virus out there. Oh, yeah. Please, God. So, yes, Iran's ex-account for the PGSA, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority,

Starting point is 03:52:49 is claiming that it is established a controlled maritime zone in the straight hashtag Strait of Hormuz. Hashtag Hormuz-U's undercourse straight, if you want to get in on that conversation. Why would you hashtag it that? This isn't important. You are the Islamic Republic of Rewood. Iran. What you're doing is creating a hashtag because Donald Trump has bombed you for three months without declaring war yet. Like, what a world. What a time to be alive. Meanwhile, CBS.

Starting point is 03:53:23 See, again, every fucking sentence, man. Only the best. Only the best. Oh, man. Every time I see it. I see full stop. I want to just go and walk into the ocean. If I did. If I did. I might eventually float to the straight of Hormuz where CBS is reporting that the U.S. has identified 10 naval mines. I spoke to my mine guy. This is the life I leave. His mind guy, the Supreme Leader of Iraq. Mind guy.

Starting point is 03:53:55 It's going to be my new bioreography. You could DM the old Ayatollah on Twitter. It's possible you can get the new one already. There's no way to know. Although the old one never got back to me about whether or not he liked anime. So that remains an unanswered question. He would post about American sports.

Starting point is 03:54:09 It's very funny. These are the Maham 3 and 7 mines. So seven minds here are the particularly advanced ones. They apparently can absorb some sonar, making them very hard to detect, and they can go off when you're searching for them. Neither of these are contact mines, right? The Maham 3s, for example,

Starting point is 03:54:30 they're midwater floating, whereas 7 is going to be on the bottom. They can go off using a number of different sensors. like the Mahama 3s could go off using magnetic or acoustic sensors when a ship is nearby. So you don't even have to directly bump them, which is great. If they have found 10, one assumes that there are actually tons more than that. We are now waiting until something bumps into one. Great.

Starting point is 03:54:54 For a long time, there was like Schrodinger's minds, right? We now, the minds are there. The minds are real. Yeah. So the cat is out of the box. No, no, James. I seem to recall several weeks ago, Donald Trump said Iran's offensive capability has been completely degraded. That's correct. Yeah, no Navy, no boats. So they must have got these very quickly in the initial hours after the strikes began, I guess, and it just took this long to find them.

Starting point is 03:55:18 Well, sometimes sea turtles lay particularly explosive eggs, but Donald Trump can't be expected to have anticipated that. Well, we've already denied the suicide dolphin program, so we couldn't stop the sea turtles. Yeah. Well, these are not suicide dolphins, right? What if these dolphins intended? to live another day. They're homicide dolphins. Yeah, the homicide. Yeah. That'll be a good band name.

Starting point is 03:55:41 Or like the dolphin from Seawest. Reach out to me of Homicide Dolphins is a name of your band. Reach out to me if you like Sequest. Yeah. Like a lot of Iranian military technology. These are entirely copied, right? I think I think Norwegian, Swedish minds and French minds. But Iran does this a lot, right?

Starting point is 03:55:58 It sort of plagiarizes other people's military technology. Yeah. Like a smart person does. Yeah, yeah. Like the U.S. did. Like everyone does if they see someone else make a good weapon. That's how war works. Yeah, and the Iranians do it in a more direct way than most, I will say.

Starting point is 03:56:15 They don't even pretend. But if the world has cut you off with sanctions anyway, what has you got to lose from my P-Fest? This isn't like fucking Android copying shit from iPhones code or whatever. This is just how war works. Yeah. What are they going to do? Bomb them? Yeah, we didn't sue the USSR for plagiarism when they got to.

Starting point is 03:56:34 a nuke. Like, that's not how this works. Yeah. I'm sure some like French guys are mad about it, but yeah, not going to change. Yeah. Let's talk about reporting from NYT today that Israel intended to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new leader of Iran and the way that they intended to do this. Fucking of course. And I think this is particularly telling of the IDF. Yeah. They bombed his house. Yeah, that's all. That's the only thing they know how to do, James. Yeah. It says when you only have a hammer, the world is a nail. When I read that, it made me think this great comedian, now dead, Bill Hicks had a bit

Starting point is 03:57:10 during the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, where he was like talking about the amazing guided missiles the U.S. has that we could like fire down chimneys. And he was like, couldn't we theoretically use that technology to shoot food into the mouths of hungry people? I thought about that. Did I read that story? Unfortunately, they injured Ahmadinejad. There's no shit.

Starting point is 03:57:34 Of course, they are in Israel. Again, because it's Israel, right? And, like, there's nothing they love to do more than a killer age or a Muslim person. And so, yeah, spectacularly, they attempted to install Ahmadinejad, a guy who wanted to wipe Israel off the map. Into power in Iran, this guy was the devil. If you remember, if you watched the news when he was first president of Iran, this guy was the devil. Also, a massive pusher of their nuclear program. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:58:03 Like, yeah. Fascinating. Probably the world's most famous hardliner. Maybe he's just, maybe he's the only guy they knew about. Like, do they have some incredible compromise? Yeah, like, did they just have no other names? Well, I mean, this is part of Israel's strategy, though. They want aggression to increase, so they have justification to, like, take over the region and, like, crack down, like, even harder. Like, that was part of their strategy with Hamas for years.

Starting point is 03:58:26 Yeah, sure, but they already have justification. They're already killing a bunch of people in Iran. Like, they could try to rope in even more. countries broken more people. This is like a scaling issue. They are the accelerationists of the international. No, really? Yeah, genuinely.

Starting point is 03:58:41 No. We also found out that Israel loki invaded Iraq, setting up two bases in the Iraqi desert and shooting at Iraqi troops and civilians who came near them. Hey, guys. Israel, loki invaded Iraq. Yeah, yeah, that's me. I am here to maintain our youth audience by using the language that they understand. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:59:03 That's good. Let's talk about the Senate. On Tuesday, the Senate advanced a resolution, quote, to direct the removal of the United States armed forces from hostilities with or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress. This is more of a rebuke than anything with a reasonable chance of actually stopping the war, but it's still significant because Bill Cassidy crossed party lines after losing his primary election in which Trump campaigned against him.

Starting point is 03:59:29 Only after losing, though. Yeah, right. Yeah. After this guy have destroyed your whole life, you suddenly grow a backbone. That makes sense. He was joined by Susan Collins of Maine,

Starting point is 03:59:39 Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Well, of course, do you guys want to guess which festering turd of a Democrat senator crossed the other way?

Starting point is 03:59:48 Federman? Yes. Yeah, of course. When you said festering, I thought of Federman. Okay, okay. Well, we can... It's always Federman.

Starting point is 03:59:57 I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're calling him Festerman in the chat. Oh, good stuff. John Cornyn of Texas, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and Tom Tillis of North Carolina didn't vote, which allowed the vote to pass. In practice, even if the resolution passed to House, I guess the president could veto it if you wanted to. It's interesting that they've been gradually peeling off Republicans, right? Markowski switched last week, Cassidy this week.

Starting point is 04:00:24 I don't think the non-voting was as much about this as they just didn't vote at all that day. But Cassidy, we can see why. Collins and Makalski are the ones that they talk about, like, swinging a lot. Ram Paul is plowing his own lonely furrow, as he always has. But it's interesting that they have gradually peeled these people away from the Republican Party. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the United States has carried out a series of strikes against Islamic State targets. They killed Abu Bakr al-Manuki, someone who went by several other names. You'll see a lot of other names in impressors.

Starting point is 04:00:57 he definitely was solidifying a power within the West Africa province as the Islamic State and definitely becoming globally relevant, especially, you know, post-territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Yeah, this is the stuff that most of that counterterrorism tragedy document was writing about. Yeah. And they have been pursuing this in Nigeria for some time. I wrote last Christmas about them winding up for grown strikes, right, since then they've stationed troops there.

Starting point is 04:01:25 Trump's statement was, as always, someone. were incomprehensible. Trump said he had been hiding in Africa. That man had obviously lived in Africa his entire life, never left. Trump called him second in command globally. That's not outside the realm of possibility, but it's also not clear. There's not like a direct like pyramid chart that we can go to. It was a joint US-Nigerian operation. We saw overhead videos, looks to me like it's from a drone. It seems like there was a helicopter component, potentially a ground component as well. The US, of course, has had special and conventional forces in Africa for decades, but this is still a remarkable strike for them.

Starting point is 04:02:02 It will be maybe the first of many. It seems like they were doing several, almost every day this week, judging by the Centcom Media Ready's page, which I will link in the sources. Well, go ahead and email us, gone. Yep, Coolzone tips at Proton.com. Sure. We reported the news.

Starting point is 04:02:23 Arguably. Put a trans girl on your couch. RIP Stephen Colbert. Is he dead? We reported the news. 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, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Starting point is 04:02:53 You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts.

Starting point is 04:03:16 We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

Starting point is 04:03:42 This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed.

Starting point is 04:04:07 And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akela Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing,

Starting point is 04:04:37 and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks, and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I, like, was just so wanting to, like, be out of that phase out of my skin and I just like really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 233

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.