Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 48

Episode Date: August 27, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. 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 got to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about how the world is falling apart and sometimes about how people are putting it back together. What it is today, it's me, I'm James, if you haven't worked that out yet, and I'm joined by Shereen. Say hi, Shereen. Hi, this is Shereen. Thank you. And I'm joined today by Vicente Calderon. He's a freelance journalist and the proprietor publisher of TijuanaPress.com, and he's covered the situation on the ground in Tijuana for a very long time. It's an excellent

work. Vicente, what should people know about you? Nice to have you here. Thank you for the invitation, and in advance, I have to apologize for my English, because it's a mixture of Sesame Street and the Tijuana streets. Excellent. Take a picture in the Woodrow kind of English. I'm originally a psychologist. I graduated from the School of Psychology here, but I only worked for a couple of years, and then I got stuck with journalism, and I have been here for more than 30 years by now. I've been doing journalism from radio, and then I moved to television, and then I went to the US to work with Spanish language media twice in LA, and then I came back, and now I'm doing online or

digital, medium journalism, so to speak. So I'm a native here, and again, I was just supposed to be working in this for a while until I got old enough to look like a psychologist, but I just got caught on the addiction for journalism. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. All right, so the reason we're talking to you today is that we have seen a dramatic increase in violence in Tijuana since Friday, right? We're recording this on Tuesday the 16th of August, so if people listen to it later, they'll know. But can you explain a little bit of what happened over the weekend in Tijuana and then across Mexico as well? Well, the thing began on Friday here in Mexicali, and Tijuana Mexicali is the capital of the state of Baja California,

which is in the northwestern side of the US-Mexico border. So we began seeing people burning cars on the road. They were just ordering people from public transportation to get off the vehicle, not in a very, so to speak, threatening matter kind of way, because they said, well, the problem is not with you, but you have to get off, because we're going to burn this bus. And nobody was actually, nobody was really hurt intentionally. We have, just in Tijuana, we have about 15 cases like that. It was mainly public transportation vehicles, or some cases, drugs, target drugs, or private vehicles, but most of it were public transportation vehicles. We're working and we're moving people from their homes to their works, or to run one

errand on the other side. So we began to see that this was in a very limited space of time, happening not only in Tijuana and in Mexicali, but also in five out of seven cities of Baja California. Nobody was claiming responsibility, but it looks like it was a coordinated effort in basically the main cities of the state. We were very surprised, because even though we have been dealing with drug violence for many decades by now, we've never seen something who looks like the narco blocaos or blockades of the streets with drug traffickers, which are, unfortunately, very common in other cities like Monterrey, for example, recently in Jalisco, on the Pacific coast, very in the central part of Mexico, but not here in Tijuana. I know it

sounds rare or strange for many people who know Tijuana for its bad reputation, but no, we never had cases like this before. That's why it was so surprising. At the end, that was on Friday, and then immediately the local authorities began to display not only police from different agencies but also soldiers who were coincidentally, so to speak. We're here in big numbers, in large numbers, because there's a really big push to put out more soldiers to help with public safety in Mexico. Not everybody's pleased with that, because they say that Mexico is becoming a militarized country, and it shouldn't be, because we are trying to be a democracy, and in a democracy is not the military or the army in charge of so much responsibility, but that's something that has

been changing specifically with this new federal administration with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They sent out all of the soldiers and police officers, and things basically diminished, but at that time, in about less than two hours, people were already really scared. Obviously, the news spread in social media, and people began worrying. Also, they began seeing that the public transportation was not enough, because many were just came to a halt. I mean, and not just the public transportation, the officials, the city, but all the digital platforms like Uber, Diddy, and other services were just worried that it might be the next one. So, if I stay on the roads, am I going to be the target of these guys? We were not sure what was going on. I guess everyone

has an idea that this was coming or linked to drug trafficking, but we were not sure at that time. So, in a couple of hours, we didn't see more of these cases, but at that time, the city was really disrupted. So, they began closing. I mean, the first thing that affected us was public transportation. So, people were stranded without, with no ways to go back home. And some schools were cancelled in classes, and since the students were not able to find transportation, some offered places to stay or spend the night on the schools. Also, that happened with other companies with the Maquiladora plant, the manufacturing plants that are very popular. There's thousands of people here in Tijuana who work there, also in Mexicali, but here also,

they in some cases have to open spaces so they can spend the night there. And we went out and was a lot of people stranded with no place, with no way to move from where they were when this began. Yeah, I saw even like Cali Max that the supermarket was closed, right? Like... They closed early and they announced that the next day they will hold their operation, that they will not open. So, they will not put in jeopardy to the safety of their workers. I mean, during Friday, we didn't know really what was going on, how severe was this happening. And just keep in mind that on Friday, Friday was the end of a week of very violent scenes in different cities. It began in Guadalajara, where the army was trying to capture a couple of

drug lords or chief of cells from the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is the quote-unquote newest and the strongest and most rapidly expanding drug organization in Mexico. And the progress there, the dynamic was very, very different. Again, in Tijuana, even after the weekend, nobody was killed. Just one person in Mexicali got injured due to burns while they were burning his truck, but apparently nothing major. So, in the case of Guadalajara, that was a bit different. They were at gunpoint pulling people, families out of their private vehicles and also buses. And there, they were really actually blocking roads in an effort to disrupt the operation from the soldiers trying to capture

their buses. And so, the violence were way more strong, so to speak, there. And after that, it moved to Guanajuato, another state where there's high presence of Cartel, Jalisco, New Generation. And two days later, we saw the worst case in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juarez is also another border town or border city, should say, that has been dealing with a lot of drug traffic in the case. And the thing was terribly worse there. I mean, they were there killing civilians randomly. They got to convenience stores, like think about your 7-Eleven. Also, it's a very big chain. In one of these cases, they just went in open fire to the cashier and they killed him. In other cases, a pregnant woman got killed. And another one,

since they burned these places, there's two persons who died due to asphyxiation because they got caught up. They were not able to flee the place when these guys were showing up there. Many of these guys were also yelling or screaming, hooray, for the Jalisco, Nueva Generación Bosque. It's called Mencho Oseguera. Mencho is his nickname. Mencho Oseguera is the leader of Cartel Jalisco, New Generation. And they were just praising him and just saying that they were people from Mencho and they were just celebrating him as they were doing all this destruction and terrorizing people. So the worst part was in Ciudad Juarez, sadly. I'm not saying that this was not bad, but we have to put it in perspective. And fortunately here, sadly for the people of

Ciudad Juarez, fortunately for the people here, nobody was injuring those activities on Friday. That diminished on Saturday, but we got more cases on Sunday night in Mexicali. And we actually have about four cases on the last hours of Monday in Ensenada. We are still seeing if all of these have been related to the same effort due to organized crime or are just copycats. Because unfortunately, unfortunately, that also is happening. Some of the cases in Mexicali that happened on Sunday night were, according to the Chief of Police there, just copycats were just taking advantage of the situation. I see. Well, that's interesting because until someone takes responsibility, even if they do, all the talks about what cartels are what, that's just in theory,

right? Because they don't know who's doing what, am I understanding correctly? Well, yes, because it's not like when a terrorist organization claim responsibility for a bombing in the Middle East, for example. But here, the thing is, now the authorities are saying that it was not just one, but different organizations. They blame it mainly on Jalisco New Generation, because it's one of the, along with the Sinaloa Cartel, more broadly extended in the different states. And in this particular case, they can link it in the case of Jalisco and Guanajuato, because they got information of these two bosses getting into a meeting, and that's why they reacted. And in the case of Ciudad Juarez was different because everything

began there with a dispute within inmates of the local jail, where there are clearly two factions from the two main organizations who have been controlling in Ciudad Juarez. Here, we were not sure because unfortunately, we have not just one or two, we have three drug cartels or traffic in organizations who have been acting or the LinkedIn for the several years right now, which is the Jalisco New Generation, the one we talk about, which is the relatively newest organization. The Sinaloa Cartel, who has been from the cradle of drug trafficking in Mexico, the state of Sinaloa, expanded the routes that I'm sure they know. El Chapo from the Narcos series, very popular now, has been the public anime number one, according to Chicago,

for about eight years ago, and now in a jail in New York. But their sons and their associates are still operating their trafficking organization along different routes in Mexico, and Baja California is one of those routes where they have a lot of strong presence. And also, the Arellano Felix Drug Organization, the so-called Tijuana Cartel that is very popular, has its own series on Netflix as part of Narcos Mexico. This is the relevance of these kids who grow up as criminals at the border between Tijuana and San Diego. So nobody has claimed responsibility as in other cases, but I think it's safe to know that these are the main suspects. In the case of Tijuana, it's also the possibility that the feud between these three organizations

was an excuse for this level of violence. I mean, everybody's trying to be the strongest force, so they challenge themselves, not only on the streets, but on social media, and this was also a way to challenge the authorities because even though the authorities reacted quickly and kind of should do more or frustrated more events, they were able to burn 15 cars at the end of the week and were 36 in different areas in different cities. So that is not something that you can say. Now the military chief of the country is saying, well, in Tijuana, they didn't attempted against the civilians. Well, they did. They didn't kill them, but they burned their property and they disrupted the whole operation. So we are also seeing very carefully

the way the local and national authorities are reacting because we were lucky now, but this is probably will happen again if there's not a really strong response from an intelligent response from the authorities. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if this is silly, but is there any deeper meaning to it being specifically public transportation? It just seems so specific to target how civilians are transporting themselves. Is it just like a show of power to be like, we're going to make everyone freeze or is there any deeper meaning to what they're targeting? Not that I understand so far. For me right now is because as they did, they were successful and bringing the city to a halt. I mean, we went out and just think this was a Friday

summer night in Avenida de Revolución who has seen a renaissance since the last 10 years. There's a lot of people coming from the US side and from Mexico to enjoy the gastronomy local, the bars, the party scene was dead. The only people we found there Friday night was workers that were not able to find an Uber or the Uber was, I talked to some of the Uber drivers, the DD drivers told me, it went from one to seven. I mean, something will cost you $10 were costing, the price was now $70 due to the high demand and poor offer. So I don't find another explanation so far with the information that we have until now that could explain, but they did reach a big impact with these relatively easy actions after all these coordinated attacks.

Yeah, it's probably worth mentioning the context of in one of Guzmán's kids was arrested in I believe 2018. I'm not good at dates, but around then and there was a huge, huge increase in violence immediately following that right. And eventually, Amlo, the president gave the order to release him. Yeah, that was more recent was Obidio, one of the main sons in something that we call the Culiacanazo. Culiacan is the name of the city is the capital of the state of Sinaloa. As we said, I have family, my mother is from Sinaloa and some people from Sinaloa get offended when we say that it's a cradle of drug trafficking in Mexico because most of the power, the drug lords come from Sinaloa. But yeah, you're right, you're right. And that's something that has become

a big recurring topic when people criticize, especially the political opposition, criticize the current president, because they said this is the origin of these kind of demonstrations. So when the government wants to act, now the criminals know that an effort, a coordinated effort to get out on the streets and to show their muscle could make the government to think twice, to hold their operation and to free in some cases these guys. Again, in the case of Jalisco, they were on the way, according to the official statement from the Mexican army, to try to capture these two leaders. But didn't happen. I mean, the criminals get organized to blockade the actions of the authorities. In the case of Tijuana, we didn't get to that point. There's also one theory

that says that the local chapter, so to speak, of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, was just trying to replicate what happened there just to show the force, to demonstrate the muscle as a criminal organization here in Tijuana. That's basically the two theories that have dispute between them. And the other one is that they were just replicating a little bit in a different dimension, so to speak, what happened in Mexicali. Just to tell them, do you do the same here? This is what you're going to be facing. And that was a message for the authorities. Yeah, I saw a resident compare it to what it was like in the early stages of COVID, like how ghost town it was. And I mean, what do you think about it? That's pretty powerful

if a cartel can have the impact of a pandemic. If not more so, it's terrifying, I can't imagine. I think it was worse when we were now, when COVID first began in the lockdown. And this will be too silly, but there's the red like districts that never sleeps here. We went to that particular corridor. Nobody was in the main drag there. But it's a reality. We went out and we got video of these streets basically empty. Yeah, your video and your Twitter, we'll find a way to link to it. It was incredible. It was just like, it's normally like the strip in Las Vegas or something. And it was just a ghost town. A ghost town, yeah. Again, the only people we found there was people looking for transportation. Yeah, it's crazy. So there's been a massive at least show of state

power in Tijuana in the last, I don't know, four, five, six months, like they're constantly rotating new troops in, they do the parades with the big flag. And it's like to looking from the outside, from a less informed perspective, it looks like there are these various actors where in each of them sort of flexes their muscles in a different way. And is that relevant here? Has the army, they discovered a tunnel, if I remember correctly, have they done much else in Baja since they started these big deployments? No, that's one of the main complaints of the locals, organizations, civil or civilian organizations here, because even though we have, I make some notes, and we have 5,660 soldiers right now in the state of Baja, California,

most of them in Tijuana, who have been deployed since August last year, which is when the national strategy of peace, as the government call it, begun. But unfortunately, I can give you another statistic. We have only just in Tijuana, in the municipality of Tijuana, so far this year, almost 1,200 homicides. I mean, we as a city, as a municipality, we have way more homicides than many Mexican states. This is the level of violence that we are dealing with in a daily basis. And this is when you hear the authorities talking about a reduction on homicides. Which is probably true in terms of the numbers of statistics, but still, 1,000, we are a little bit past half the year, and we already passed 1,000 homicides. I mean,

when people get alarmed in Chicago is when you are hitting, I remember a couple of years, like 500, and the whole year, we have this in three months. And this is the kind of problems that we are dealing with. But you have to also keep in mind, last week, the DOJ of the US, the FBI, the DEA, Customs and Border Protection, have a gathering to announce that San Diego became the epicenter for smuggling of fentanyl. 60% of the seizures of fentanyl in all the nation occur between San Isidro, the main port of entry here in San Diego, to Calexico. And there are six ports of entry in this stretch of land at the end of the border, on the western end of the border. Well, these places were more than half of the fentanyl that

is being smuggled to the US, it's going through. That will explain partly the level of violence that we've been dealing, and how, even though there's good efforts by the local authorities, state and local authorities, I mean, even given that there's cases of corruption in any other agency, as we said, that we have great, very capable detectives and police officers in Mexico, but in many cases, there's no political will from their bosses to really act on the benefit in the public. So this is the kind of problem that we're dealing in. Fentanyl is now the most lucrative drug to transport or traffic between Mexico and the US, even with all the problems that is causing in the US with more than 120,000 people dying in the last year or overdoses linked

to opioids. But also now we have a problem that is growing with people dying with fentanyl overdose, besides the methamphetamine problem that also has been increasing the traffic here. And now we are seeing the comeback of some drugs trafficking in deep and new levels like heroin and cocaine, who came out of fashion for a while, but always doing like kind of a resurgence, at least in this corridor. Yeah, that's fascinating. Like there's been an increase specifically coming through that Baja California area. Maybe then we should explain a little bit about these three actors, right? The CJNG will call them the Cartel of the Sinaloa and the Ariano Felix or Tijuana Cartel. Can you expand a little bit about who they are and where they sort of fit into this, where they come from,

maybe? Well, I basically all come from the people watching Netflix, Narcos and Netflix, they talk about this federation of cartels. Again, everything, the main power was from the state of Sinaloa. And between mid-90s, 1994, mid-90s, when the rest of Felix Gallardo, they distribute the routes and one was the one of the Pacific, along the Pacific, from Sinaloa to along the Pacific. And they basically cut the country into different the main routes. And then you have different organizations. Those organizations, who used to be together, became a powerful house on their own. And that has increased the violence from the 90s, because now you have, from the beginning, the Ariano Felix, who used to be partners with El Chapo,

ended up in disputes and feuds among them. So the main one was, the main one and oldest is the Sinaloa Cartel, head by the Chapo Guzman. And now Ismael El Mayo Sambada, which is still a gentleman, a gentleman around, probably getting to their 80s, I'm not quite sure, but but who has been on the run for many years, but relatively calm and with big investments and with the high presence here in Baja California, with that faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. And the Sinaloa Cartel also, when the after the arrest of El Chapo is its run and the other big faction for the sons of El Chapo Guzman, Obidio, and, they call it Los Chapitos. Yeah, the Los Chapos.

There's like three Ivan Archivaldo, and I can remember the name of the other one. So that's Sinaloa Cartel with great presence, but mainly in the northern part and really mainly basic, basically, their thing is to manufacturing methamphetamine and now fentanyl and send it to the US. Then the Adriano Felix Drug Organization, who became as a result of that division, that distribution that according to the most commonly known narrative about drug world, Felix Gallardo distributed after his arrest, established themselves in Tijuana. They are from Sinaloa too, but they established themselves from Tijuana in the, actually in the 80s, but at the 90s, they became powerful on its own. And they, due to the proximity of

San Diego and to the fact that they mixed with many of the border lifestyle elite of Tijuana, they changed the image of the drug trafficker. They became more entrepreneurs and they wanted to become the main, the first Mexican cartel, Colombian, Pablo Escobar style according to the narrative. And they did, they became, in the 90s, they were most one of the most powerful drug organization in the world for the amount of not just marijuana cocaine that they were moving, I mean, they established relationships with Colombian. And after a while, Colombians were not trafficking in Mexico. They were just sending the drug to the Mexicans. At the beginning, they were, Colombians were kind of leasing the routes in the Mexican territory to send the drugs into

the US. But then when this division of and new commerce and the drug trade in Mexico, they decided, and I think the Ariano Felix have some, something to do with that. They want to go and get the drugs from Colombians in the South, in South America and bring in and just take care of the whole thing. So become their own cartel. And then, Jalisco de la Generación is another offshoot, offshoot is what you call it? Like a, a spin off, spin off kind of, would be another way of the, of the Sinaloa Cartel, because they used to have a presence in Guadalajara. And the different factions were killing each other, changing loyalties. And they became a force on their own after a big division between

the Beltran Leyva Group and the Ignacio Coronel organization. And they become their own cartel on its own. And that's what according to the DEA, and also Mexican authorities is expanding more rapidly in very short period of time. And then unfortunately have been moving not only to drug trafficking, but there's many small groups that now are making their money. And the old way of the mafia, the Costa Nostra was doing their money in New York in the 70s or before, not that they were just extorting money out of local businesses from a well-established chain of stores to a little Pakistan on the corner. There's also the trafficking of gasoline in Mexico and has been doubling, I mean, anything that they, once they get powerful,

they began to move to other activities. For example, in the case of the Ariano Felix, kidnapping wasn't a thing, let's say before the 90s in Baja California. They weren't kidnapping people who used to be their associates. It's the, where's my money kind of thing, right? Like you think about good fellows and they were killing each other, there's everything among themselves. But later they began that they were, they were acting with a lot of impunity, that they had a lot of cops and authorities on their payroll. So they began to move to other ways to earn money. And that's what we have seen now, that this expanding, this little, in Colombia, they used to call it baby cartels. We now have like a new chapters,

it's modern organization, not as powerful, but as violent as the original. I wanted to ask, because I saw a lot of these supposedly like they come up on TikTok or Facebook, right? These little announcements from the different cartels. And they tend to say, at least in the context of Baja California, that like, we don't want to disrupt ordinary people or good people, good citizens of Baja California, you know, but we need you to stay in your homes this weekend, right? Things like that. But it obviously does have an impact on the people who are just sort of doing whatever they do, just running their business. And so I was wondering sort of how people get through these difficult times in Tijuana and Baja California.

Well, times have become more difficult because many people believe this because the widespread possibility of disseminating these messages, no? And you never know which ones are real. Yes. And which ones are not. I mean, you guys have the same with the gangs, do you remember? Like dumbling your, your headlines because then the gang will start killing people left and right. Just take that on steroids now with social media and now everybody with a phone that can get that messages. And that was, that played a big role in what happened on Friday here in Tijuana. And they were recycling a video of three guys videotaping themselves in front of the attorney general's office in Tijuana says, oh, mainstream is here. We're going to kill everybody and just

being very loud and with a lot of insults and trying to scare everybody, the rivals, but everybody else. So during the hours of Friday, somebody began retweeting that. When it was at least a year old of them claiming that they will, they were already here. So some people think this, all this commotion happening, all this cars burning, they didn't know exactly what was going on. Some people began to call it narco bloqueos that just scare more people. And then you see this. So the level of anxiety increased significantly. You have to be very careful. And there's also, you have to also keep in mind the political feuds that we are seeing. What you have seen between some people loyal to Trump and the

Republican party and some people that are against Trump is the same here with Morena and non-Morena actors or people who likes the Morena, which is the, the political party funded, created by the current president, there's Manolo Pesobrador or the ones who are against them and are very unhappy or angry with all these social policies. And, and for example, we have here a television station run owned by the former governor of Baja California, who has, is a very close friend of Andrés Manuel Pesobrador, the current president, who became a very powerful figure. And, and due to his proximity with Lopez Obrador, basically the current president revived this gentleman, which by the way,

lives in San Diego in Chula Vista in a big mansion, because he exiled himself from about 30 years ago when he was associated with the last PRI government, the pre, the political party to run in Mexico for the last 70 years in a row. He was a very close associate with Jico Tencatleba Mortera, which was the, the current governor who didn't finish his, his term because the, and then president of Mexico, Carlos Alinas, accused him of corruption. So he just removed him. And this guy, Jaime Bonilla, became a pariah. So the PIN, the new power, basically marked him because also he had some previous suspicious relationships through the baseball team here in Tijuana and from other endeavors that makes them

looks like very close to the Ariano Felix drug organization. The Ariano Felix drug organization has been linked for many years with the last administration because they claim that that last PRN is the one who basically opened the door for the Ariano Felix to establish here in Baja California. So this is what we are seeing that, that this message, well, now this guy, we just left the office, the, the, Jaime Bonilla just finished his governorship on December last year. So there's a new governor, but he also owns a television station. So he is always criticizing the current governor, which is by the way the same political party. It was using some of these messages with no proof or no validity or very suspicious.

And he was saying in their newscasts, we're saying, well, there's also this happening, there's this threats, and they know that this government is corrupt. And they were just adding to, to the fire. And I mean, as an analog, you know, to the real fire, but to the concern of the people. Right. And in this term, like saying that, oh, we're gonna start a lockdown and we'll be talking to, what's the word for talking, the expression for talking to, like the, you cannot go out, go out the street. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. March alone. Yeah. March alone will start at six. If we see you on the streets, we're gonna kill you. That was a message that that television station was repeating once and again, every day. So I was just adding to it. So all

these, like all these new novelties sort of speak with a digital era are also creating bigger fires in the political spectrum and in a place where you never know what exactly the line is between the criminals and the government. Yeah, I think that's a very good thing to highlight actually, this idea that there's like distinct blocks, right? Like, and then this applies in, I don't want to say like, this is a Mexican thing, because it's not, this is a global thing. But like, there's a distinct block between like crime and media that you consume, and the government and the people that like are working for the state, like, like the idea that these are very separate and that they're walled off doesn't, it doesn't apply here. And I didn't think we should say it elsewhere either.

Yeah, it's a problem is becoming worse and worse, because this faction out of this other arena, I mean, we are seeing it here also with the official statements from the authorities. I mean, I was telling you earlier that the military had the secretary of the military says, well, in Tijuana, they didn't went against the civilians. And the governor also repeated that. So, well, here, fortunately, they didn't affect the life of the people. Of course, of course they did. I mean, we were lucky they didn't kill anybody, but but no, they did. And so you have to also be fighting that propaganda from the government against the propaganda from the criminal groups and the different political legal factions in other quote unquote, non state

actors just to put it in a different context. So it's becoming very difficult. And I always say, excuse me if I repeat this, but honestly believe, I mean, there's always great investigators, detectives in Mexico willing to put their lives on the line for the good of people. But it's not always in the best conditions. And this is like just the character of traffic. Probably you were you guys were very young when traffic came across. I mean, a very popular movie she's about from the 90s and end of the 90s, probably. Yeah, one of the three main characters is an honest Mexican cops. I fortunately, I met several of cases like that. But some of them have been killed due to their honesty, but also others that learn to survive and play along

and try to do as much good as they can within the circumstances they are dealing with. Yeah, I think talking of good investigators who are trying to deal with difficult circumstances, maybe you should touch on the violence against the press that we've seen in Baja California and in Mexico as a whole. Is that something you're comfortable talking about? Yes, yes, unfortunately, and this is terribly sad. A couple of hours ago, we just learned that the one of the reporters who was reported missing in the neighbors in state of Sonora was being found dead. So we have another killing of a reporter. We also saw that the case of Ciudad Juarez, they killed four employees or four workers of a radio

station. Yeah, that was terrible, a broadcaster. Yeah, apparently randomly, apparently randomly. Okay. But then, I mean, we, I mean, depending on which toll do you take, you look to, because there's like the official from the government, federal government from the CPJ, the committee to protect journalists and or reporters in front of the other organizations, there is no, but there's about 10 or 15 between, I will say 10 or 14 or 15 journalists or media workers killed so far this year. We have two of those killings happening here in Tijuana in January. One of them, I'm convinced by now that he was killed for the leader of drug trafficking cell was operating in the east side of the city who was in police with some of the stories that one of the media outlets, his name

is Margarito Martinez, one of the media outlets that Margarito was working to as a freelancer was, was pushing very revealing stories about his, the operation of these drug traffickers. So he ordered and pay for some other people to kill Margarito because he, in my humble opinion, was the weakest link because he was living in the same neighborhood that these guys were operating, working the night shift that is very common that only a few of them are left to, to do that shift, that beat. He was easily identifiable, identifiable for the groups because Margarito will show up at the crime scenes. And in many of these cases, you have people who work for the same organization showing up to make sure that the guy was really killed and who showed up and, and I mean, even

when the killing is done, the criminals are still working the scene. And in some cases, we met with these guys, guys without knowing. I mean, these guys were, were even willing to go to the funeral of Margarito. The only reason they were not there is because they, when they approached, they saw a lot of military presence on during the funeral. So I'm convinced that Margarito was killed due to his work as a, as a photographer. In the other case of my friend, all co-worker Lourdes Sandoval, I'm not sure what was the motive. In both cases are people in jail, but the procedure is still on the begin stages. We are not proved. And the main thing is we don't know who order and pay for their killings. Well, we know, or I think it's, I have a big suspicion

about which one is the guy who killed them in the case of Margarito, not in the case of Lourdes and the authorities. I'm not confident enough that they're going to be able to solve the crime in this particular case. The other one, there's two cases in Michoacan. There's other cases in Tamalipas. I guess by now we have to count at least two or three in Sonora with the sad news that we got today. So it's difficult. I mean, not everybody is, is risking their life when they're doing journalism in Mexico, but you never know when the danger will come against you. I have always told this story about a photographer who was called to cover a traffic accident. Minor thing, no, not a problem. Well, the problem is that the guy

who was involved in the traffic and the accident was a drug lord, a very well-known operator, very dangerous operator, and he kept taking pictures. Thanks to some of the officers, firefighters, and ladies who saw that he was being treated not very nicely and the ladies that intervened, he was able to get away. They have to leave town for a while. That's it, but that's the kind of environment that we are dealing with. It's not that every story makes you put you in danger, but you never, I mean, you can do a lot of, you can be a reporter and not be on danger, not dealing. You don't get into subjects that are tricky. You don't get too much in political corruption and you don't get too much on drug trafficking, on key and on homicides. You pretty

much going to be able to do fine, but the problem is sometimes if you are doing a story non-related, there may be some link to put you in danger, and that's the situation. And unfortunately, the level of impunity and on crimes against journalists is even worse than the level of impunity of general civilians in Mexico. I will say that in general, it's about 90%, 98% for case of journalists, 90% of civilians. So our case is worse. The possibility of somebody will be punished for killing you. It's very, very, very bad. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's terrible. I don't know. Again, like you said, it's not just a Mexican problem. You see in so many governments across the world where press are targeted specifically. But yeah, I appreciate your work

even more knowing that the percentage of cases are just violence against you so against you as a journalist is so high. It's very sad. And it's very disencouraging. But I always, I mean, my family who is not copy because I'm still working on Friday, they call me the one they want me to stay at the office. They don't want me to get out. And I understand. I understand perfectly. It's one of my main concerns. But also, on the other hand, it's, you know, this is important information, even when we are dealing with an avalanche of information that is not necessarily well treated. We need to have good information so people will make good decisions. We are in the very small, young democracy. We just began to make inroads on electoral democracy.

It's relatively recent, begun basically at the end of the 90s here in Baja California and has been moving to the 2000s. And now we are unfortunately back in many ways. But now you can rely now on who is running the elections to get that information was very important. Now we need to be also very make a lot of big efforts to explain people that you can make progress. Mexico is making progress, even this dire conditions, but you have to pay attention and also try to learn where the information is coming from. That not all the media is the same that we have. We come from a big tradition of government control media. Now media control also do traffic in organizations. And in some cases, both are linked and working

to give you trouble. And also there's a lot of press that has chosen to just go with the flow and just leave out of propaganda. And sometimes they do good things like they go and give voice to the people in the local community so the water is reestablished or there's more need for to fix a park or to public transportation. And they do good. It's important. The job of the reporters is good. But in the bigger dimension of the bigger problem, they tend to be on the side of the government because the government found this way to give you a lot of public advertisement and to have you under their control. And many reporters want to be good journalists with journalists, but their editors or the owners of the companies are not willing to lose that

easy way to get a lot of money from the government and more easily than to start putting themselves on the risk, which implies when you do heavily digging or criticizing the powers of being. Yeah. How would someone know that they're getting accurate information in that case? This applies to every country in the world. You have to really be conscious and seek out particular sources. But in this case, what do you recommend for people? It's difficult. You're right. It's the same problem everywhere, but I guess the same recipe works here. I mean, just double-check their sources, try to compare several media outlets and to see where is reporting, whether each of them is reporting. The same way that you find the way they are leaning in the U.S. is what you find here. But the problem

is the established media or the, how do you call it, the traditional media is becoming less relevant because most of the main good journalism is done by small rebels who began their own entities, their own platforms. I mean, some cases there's good reporters working for good media outlets. Normally, those are not local. I mean, when you see the big media companies, they don't have, with some exception, they don't have any good journalism at the local level. You will find good local journalism with these renegades of rebels that have people who have been fired from the big, larger organization. And you have to be looking for those options. I mean, that doesn't mean that it's a guarantee that they're going to be independent completely.

You also learn how to read them. For example, there's a good case of two reporters who just were, they resigned or were fired. We don't know exactly, but they, from a well prestigious publication locally, they began their own operation. They have, they are good proven, proven as reporters. You know what I'm trying to say that they have a good record. Yeah. I thought that was what it was. I was just like, I don't, I don't actually don't know. Do I don't know phrases even? Yeah. Yeah. They made a name for, from themselves doing good journalism with other publications who began their own media outlet. And some people was complaining about that they were too close to some state agency with the new government. And they have great information. They

do good, good reporting, but you have to look carefully and which, which type and where are they leaning to. So I always read them. I just take it with a grain of salt that you will see, say in English, to try to balance my intake of information from different sources. It's difficult to tell the people because they are not, general, the general public is not as involved or interested in media on, on the newspaper or on the news. We are because we live out of it. But if police doing their life and making the, the, the will to move around for all of us in different fronts as a doctor, as a housewife, as a teacher, and they don't have enough time to analyze media the way you do. So we, I think we need to do a little bit of that.

Try to tell them, this is, for this reason, we believe this media outlet is leaning in this direction. This is subsidized or is getting, we do that. This is getting this amount of money from the government and, and not this amount of money from the government. I will give you a hand to take it and to see who are they dealing with. I mean, there's guys who have been working for the government and now are back to reporters. I mean, there's cases like that in the U.S. Stephanopoulos used to work for the, for the one of the presidents and the guy of Harbaugh from MSNBC used to work for Nixon also. I mean, we see this, but in this environment, it's more difficult to, to leave out those connections. And it's always tricky to be moving from government jobs

to, to journalism jobs, because it's not, I mean, you have to, some, I mean, when, in my perspective, I never worked for, for the government. I hope I would never have to do that. I respect the ones that they do, but you, we need to be more transparent, transparent in that sense, to be able to be fair with the people. Yeah, that makes sense. There's this interesting development in, in Mexico that I've seen in some areas, like if I want to learn about like what's happening in the Yaqui Pueblos in Sonora or in Chiapas, like these people who will just be like citizen reporters on Facebook doing very local reporting, that seems to get really popular, but they'll sort of blow up really quickly doing this, like Facebook only reporting. It's really

interesting. Because there's a big need of information and they know many people in Mexico have learned to be the strutful of the quote unquote legacy media, the expression I was looking for, legacy media and the big companies. And, and the problem is there's this risk that many of those media, new media outlets, which is basically Facebook accounts or TikTok accounts now, the people doesn't know how to deal with. I mean, they, they are, they have good intentions, but they don't really know how journalists should work. And in some cases, they think, for example, that they, they can take money from different actors, and that will help them to grow. And, and I guess you can, but, but you have to be very careful. And this has been a big problem that I'll

try to emphasize every time I talk about our situation. For many years, the government was too close or the reporters were too close to the government. The government will make easy with a lot of privileges for the reporters. So they learned to deal with this, to work in this scenario. So if I was close to the government, they will expedite a lot of things for me, so to speak. I can get money, I can get probably a license to up for a bar way quicker than somebody who is not, doesn't have that access to the government. I can probably get like a taxi licenses, for example, because I'm a reporter, because I'm, I'm close. I can get close to the movies and checkers and the political arena, no? But you, so they did that. And when the

drug trafficking with the narcos became another power, many, many reporters began to see it in the same way. So they were cozy with the government was a power and then we're cozy with the businessmen and they were cozy with the, with the unions because they were giving them handouts or pretend in preferably, or they were able to do some traffic of influence will give them some benefits. When the narcos became a problem, a regional power on their own, some of the reporters didn't see the different or gain too close to that power. And that has put a lot of the reporters in danger. I think the reporters are learning a little bit more to stay away from those, but there's also with the abandonment of social media, many people who are really crooks or that

they were not very interested in doing things ethically from the beginning that now see that with a Facebook account, with a Tik Tok account or Instagram or any other platform, you can pass by a reporter. So there's this need of information, but also is, is filled with, with good and bad people as in any other case. And I always tell them, I mean, this is the whole analogy of a gun. Is the gun bad or good? Well, depending on the circumstances, you are using it, no? I would say. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a gun guy, but I don't want to get into your, your, your, your political discourse about your first amendment. Oh, that's a whole, yeah, that's a whole other episode. Yeah. Neither do we. Yeah, that's fine. Sure. Do you have anything else? No, that was awesome. Thank you

so much for all the information. Yeah. Talking of reliable media, where can people find you online? Where can they find your work? Where can they find your social media? The main thing is tijuana press.com. That's our main platform. It's just an online native media outlet. It's not a newspaper. It's just when we, we have been changing our way of work because we began as a daily, we no longer do that because we don't have enough resources for that. But also there's plenty of daily media outlets, digital media outlets for the daily stories that we want to do a little bit more in there, more investigative, more give you context of what is going on. We are in Spanish, but you can follow us on Twitter on ad tijuana press. And because we try to, with our poor English,

try to do some, some tweets on English with the help of Google translator or other guys who, or their colleagues that will correct our spelling. But that's the main way to get a hold of us. Well, I think your English is great. You talked to us for an hour and I understood everything. But yeah, but thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you Vicente. No, thank you guys. Always help us to spread the word and to be able to put ourselves to be judged by the public. This is what is more important for us, but we don't invest in algorithms from any social platform because we believe in and that the people will be willing to find us

if they are really interested and you guys help us about that sense. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be here if you could be of any help. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Welcome to Ika Dappen here, a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. Now, a thing that has fallen apart that we have talked about at length before is the protection of the right to abortions previously enshrined in Roe v. Wade and no longer enshrined in that. We've come at this from a number of angles, but one angle that

we've neglected so far is the labor angle. For reproductive autonomy to exist, you need health care. Healthcare, especially under capitalism, requires labor and that labor isn't done by abstract organizations. It's done by workers who are facing not only the ball of the death of Roe, but the intransigence and often the belligerence of the Roan bosses. Here to talk with us about that is Crystal Krabowski and Elizabeth Villanuevo from the wonderfully named UE Local 696. I'm going to read a pseudo-legal disclaimer here, which is that they are not representing Planned Parenthood. They do work at Planned Parenthood. They are not representing Planned Parenthood. They are there representing themselves as

individuals. Are they our local union? Yes. Proud members of Local 696. Impeccably named union. Purposefully named for any of us. They were like, you have to choose a number that starts with six, and then we just looked at each other, and we had that moment where it's like, yes, and then we can add another one, and it'll be a good time. It's a nice, fun little threesome of numbers. Healthy, safe. That's good. This is our round one of pro-union propaganda. Join the union, and you too can be in union Local 69. Or what if I told you the number could start with four? Yeah. Boom. There's just so many options. I'm sure there's other fun

numbers that besides those. You have the entire world in front of you. We could have done six, six, six. Can you imagine if we did six, six, six? We could have. We had that choice, and we went with six, nine, six because we're a self-sexual health organization. It's great. To prove that workers will always make the right decisions. Yes. This is the power of the union. We can evaluate these decisions when it's important and do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you to you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having us. We're both super excited. Yeah, thanks for inviting us. Us lowly abortion workers. I'm going to dispute heavily with the term lowly.

Y'all are the people who make all of this possible. Now, having said all of this, I'm going to ask you a very depressing question. We've asked a lot of the people who've talked about abortion access, who work in abortion access stuff, this question, but I think you two had a very different experience of it. What was it like on the day when Roe died? Do you want to go first, Crystal? Yeah, I've talked about this a lot because I'm getting asked a lot. I'm happy to talk about it. It's been hard to listen to other people talk about it because then I start getting in my feels, but when I'm talking about it, I'm processing it.

It's probably healthy for me, somebody would say, but it was incredibly traumatic and it's been incredibly traumatic since the fall of Roe v. Wade and the Dobs decision. I'm saying this while knowing that we all knew it was coming. It was a given and it wasn't surprising. There's just something about knowing that it's been coming for months and years that it just did nothing to actually inform you. What would it be like? It was like a tidal wave crashing and just sweeping you away. We're still swept away. The only language that I can find that's appropriate is natural disaster language. I keep repeating it and saying it's like a hurricane, it's like a tidal wave, but those are the words that are most fitting to me emotionally and just

in terms of the violence that people are experiencing and just the emotional and mental and bodily harm is equitable to a natural disaster. I think during one of our debriefs, during a particularly difficult day, this was pre-Roe, we were talking about how sometimes it's really hard for us when we can see these things coming and yet there's nothing we can really do about it and I know that we talked about how it felt like we were just tied to a train track watching and waiting for that train to just come and hit us and then when it did, it was just knocked the wind out of all of us. I think we all cried for sure. Oh, we all cried. I'm emotional and I am a crier, but I didn't think that I would

sob immediately the second I saw the news and then I always knew we were going to get a lot more calls because Elizabeth and I also answered phones in the abortion clinic and I was okay, we're going to get way more calls, but you don't know what that feels like or looks like or sounds like. What does it feel like to have a hundred people calling you pretty much at the same time? What does that look like? Now I know and it's traumatic and it's awful and it's a natural disaster, but it's a man-made disaster. Actually, it's not a natural disaster. There are people who have inflicted this upon us and now we know what it feels like and it's fucking awful. Oh, I should have asked if I was allowed to swear. Oh, yeah, I swear all the time.

Okay, cool, because I've been on podcasts before where they were like, oh, we gotta edit that out, which cool. Well, it's a fucking nightmare. Yeah, we work in healthcare. I think we swear more than the average layman because we keep saying somehow. There's so much more to say. I don't even know where to go from there. It's like a never-ending nightmare because the call started and then it's just person after person after person driving two hours, three hours, four hours, five hours, coming from states that are like three states away, coming from states in the South, people taking planes and people staying in hotels. We've had people pay hundreds of dollars for an Uber.

Then just bringing in the labor angle too as unionized abortion workers who we have been vocal and we've been rallying and making our demands like publicly known, but we are doing this while understaffed like skeletal crew staffing. We didn't have enough staff before Roe fell in the dops decision and now we just, it's bare bones and it's like we are. So we're taking on this title wave, this like man-made title wave while just giving every last ounce of our energy and doing multiple roles at once. Yeah, I don't know if you are able to tell from the fact that Crystal and I both work directly in the clinic, but we also answer calls. When we signed up for our job, we knew that we would be doing

multiple things around the clinic and it's just, it's funny to not really know what that means until you start doing it. So one day you'll be holding a patient's hand while they're having this procedure done, like giving them a little baggy in case they feel sick. You'll be talking to them on the phone. So some, there are days where I will meet people who I've spoken to on the phone when they called to book their appointment and it just hits me like a title wave because I'm like, that's the person, like that's this person specifically. I remember because I remember hearing the sound of their voice and every single time they call in, they are sobbing. This is a horrifying moment for them. This is a moment where they feel like trapped. They feel like they can't share with

their family, with their friends, depending on what state they're from and the legalities of that state. They are even afraid to make these phone calls. Some of the first things that patients say to us when they call it is, is this okay? Am I allowed to call you? Am I allowed to talk to you? Am I allowed to book an appointment? What's going to happen next for me? Will my appointment be canceled? Yeah, because we're not lawyers, because everything is so fluid right now, we don't have answers to give them. We can just say, well, you're coming to Pennsylvania and it's still legal in Pennsylvania. And just to like paint the picture a little more too about like both the skeletal staffing and the emotional turmoil and the emotional weight of it.

So the DOB's decision happened on June 24th, which was a Friday, and we're in Pennsylvania. And that evening, the evening of June 24th, a trigger ban went into effect in, in Ohio. It was a, it's a fetal heartbeat bill, which is a deceptive language because it's not actually a heartbeat, but it's technically a fetal heartbeat bill. And so people after six weeks could no longer access abortion services or once any sort of like electrical impulse was detected. And everyone had their appointments canceled. So we were actually at a protest, like the staff was like, at a protest that evening with our, with our doctors, our abortion providing doctors, and the news came out like, yeah, shout out to them. We love them. And we got the news that Ohio

had just did this. And we were just like, Oh my God, tomorrow, because we knew the second our call center and our phone lines opened, everyone whose appointment was canceled was going to be calling us. And then we, we pull up the staff schedule. And we're like standing in the middle of the street at a protest, we call up the staff schedule. And we're like, Oh my God, there is one person scheduled to answer phones right now. And it is an older woman who's been doing this since like the seventies or eighties. And it's like, we cannot like, and we were like, all as a union, like, we turn to each other and we're like, Oh my God, this is the situation. We cannot leave her alone. We've already worked our five days. We already worked our 35 hours.

But we are going to call ourselves into work. And we just, we were like, we've notified our managers, like we're going to come into work and we're going to help to answer the phones for these canceled Ohio patients. Like that was a decision that we made to work those extra, that extra time on our weekend off because it was a Saturday. But this ties into what Elizabeth was saying, where when you hear the person on the phone and then they come to you and like, it's just very emotional because like, you're doing your best as a healthcare worker to get them the health service that you have been trained to provide and that you know is very important. So knowing that we were understaffed, knowing that we're not making that much money, and then

just being like, I have to go in and be there. I can't leave my coworker alone because I love my coworker. And we can't, and like somebody has to be there for these, these patients when they're calling. And if it's not going to be the employer and the bosses, then it's going to be you. And then we all just, we did that. And then there was another clinic day, a lot of us arranged to come in for an extra workday because we were like, yeah, we have to be there for these patients. So we're really giving all of our energy. And it's exhausting and traumatizing. I can't, I feel like I can't say that enough. But and we need more staff. We need better wages. We need better working conditions because it's so,

it's like, at the end of some of these days, it's like, how am I going to keep doing this? My body hurts. My brain hurts. I started having like issues with my memory where like, I couldn't remember anything because my brain just gave up on retaining information. And I'm like, I think this is like a trauma response. Like, yeah, yeah, I'm overwhelmed, system shock. I think this is one of the things you get with, with working for NGOs, which is that like, we're doing something like this is like, there is work that needs to be done. But, you know, the employer's not giving you the resources that is necessary to do it, right? You have one person on a call line, like the day after a fetal heartbeat bill goes, goes into effect. And

it's, I don't know, it seems like one of the, one of the things that's that, that these NGOs do is they, they were, you know, they make, they make a mistake or they do something deliberately because they don't want to pay people. And then they don't want to pay another more people and they make you go deal with it because, you know, it has to get done because these people need you. And that somebody has to do it. Yeah. And that's so gross. It's disgusting. So for me, I like to equate it as kind of like being emotionally gaslit because the whole point of healthcare. And I've said this to other people in different healthcare roles that I've worked before, because as we know, healthcare is chronically understaffed, like there's so many like

nursing shortages, like, and things, is that healthcare is designed to draw people who want to help to have these like very strong moral and emotional beliefs. And we are paid to care, like it is our job to care. And that is how they can get all of these things out of us is because it's very easy to feel emotionally manipulated when somebody's like, well, somebody has to be there for this patient, this person, this like thing that can't wait. And so a lot of us, even like I said before, I worked here at like different positions that I've held, I've been like, I will take an extra shift because somebody has to do it. And I love my job so much. I love working in healthcare. It's something I've been very passionate about since I was a small child.

So I, for years, would burn myself out and be like, I'll take the extra shift at a different position. When I used to work at a care, I worked at an intermediate care facility for adults with intellectual and physical disabilities for a couple of years. And I remember routinely working 16 hour shifts, like day in and day out. I think there was like six, seven days a week of just doubles where I would work like 16 hour shifts. I don't think I like slept or ate or did anything. And then at one point, I was so burnt out that I just couldn't do it anymore. And I started to get frustrated with the people that I worked with and like the patients that I cared about. And this one particular day, I like, noticed myself getting incredibly annoyed with everything that was like

happening, like sounds, patients, like just being themselves. Like I didn't, you know, take it out on anything or anyone. I just like noticed myself getting like slightly more irritated. And then I was like, this is not sustainable. I keep doing this. And I compared this like recent change, posted the DOPS decision to what it was like when I also used to work for distributing medical equipment to hospices. It felt like every single moment was an emergency that I just did not have the resources to be able to help with. Because on one end of the line, you have somebody that is having this emergency. And then on the other end of the line, there's another person pulling you because they're also having an emergency. And so you have to kind of weigh which one of these

patients like needs you the most right now. And which one of those can you reasonably help? It's like that psychology, like psychology puzzle where they're like, if you move the thing on the track, like one of these people will die or seven people will die. And you have to decide which one of those you're going to pull. Because there's only so much that we can give as healthcare workers, as abortion workers, as reproductive health workers. There's only so many hours in a day, and as much as we want to keep giving for us to keep pouring out of an empty cup, it's just not sustainable for ourselves. I know many of us have lost sleep. Many of us have stopped being able to focus on anything outside of work. Because as soon as you turn on the news, or you open your phone,

or you open up Twitter, there's more and more and more information. Because everything is consistently changing all of the time. And like, West Virginia is currently having, like, they're Yeah. So that's new. And we had a couple of calls come in from Kentucky. Yeah. So that was new. And we're just starting to like really have a good pattern of resources for patients coming in from like Ohio. And now we're like, okay, well, what about Kentucky? So we just like, we feel like there's just one like hole in the dam that we put our finger on. And then another one shows up. And at some point, we just have to know that we've done our best. And that it's okay to take a second to rest. And do you know, go home and maybe like, watch TV or listen to a podcast?

Yeah. And not about abortion. Yeah. Forget about abortion for two seconds. And we will inevitably have to do it again tomorrow. This reminds me a lot of, I did an interview, like, I don't actually, it'll be a couple of weeks, I guess, by when this comes out with some organizers who were like, trying to do like relief and aid for the migrants who are getting bus to DC from Texas, I think from Utah too. And it was like, they were talking about exactly the same thing where it's like, we have to do this, we have to do this, because otherwise no one's going to help these people. But like, at a certain point, it's

like, everyone has COVID, like we just can't. And it, I don't know, it's, I think it's especially frustrating that this is happening. Because like, those people were just like, they have no resources, right? It's just a bunch of people who are doing mutual aid thing. But like, this is Planned Parenthood. Like they have resources. And they're not, they're not doing this. And they're doing this. I talked to a nurse who's a friend of mine a long time ago on this show. And he talked to, you know, he was a nurse during COVID, he's gotten COVID twice, I think. And like, you know, he was talking about how like, yeah, he, he said this to me like thing I've always remembered was like, I've seen people die because of, I've seen people die because of staffing decisions.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, it's this, it's this borrow blackmail thing where it's like, in order to accept this thing needs to be done, we're not going to actually supervise you with enough resources to do it. And we're going to make you responsible for the consequences of our actions. And yeah, it's, it's grotesque. Yeah, I think that really is just kind of like part of the trauma for the workers. And I'm honest with the patients and for everyone in our communities, because this impacts literally everyone is just like turning, like we do turn people away, because pregnancy is a time sensitive issue. And, you know, you have to get in, in a certain number of weeks in order to get, you know, the type of

procedure that you want in order to get a procedure at all. And these are people that are often parents, the majority of people who have abortions are parents. And they have children and they have jobs and or they don't have like PTO and they live four hours away. So it's like, how am I going to get to this appointment? So there's so many people that we have to refer. So it's, it's so much on your soul to be on the phones. And you speak to mother after mother, like a single mother, or somebody who lost a partner, or they are, you know, they got evicted. And you're referring them to Detroit, which isn't also four or five hours away. And just to refer people to say, I can't help you, try calling this place and to do that,

like multiple times in a row every day. And then you're like, you're working seven hour days. It is really soul crushing because it feels like any, like you tell yourself, like, it's my, you know, we don't have the resources, we don't have the staff, we weren't prepared for this crisis. It's not on me, but it's very hard not to feel awful when you are turning people away. Because you don't, I don't know any, I probably turn like probably over a hundred people away on the phones and told them who to call. I don't know if they reach those places. I don't know if they called those places. For all I know, they continue to high risk pregnancy and they might suffer health consequences or things that debilitate them for the rest of their life, things that make their

children's lives worse. And I have no way of knowing. So it's just very traumatic to constantly be hanging up on the phone with people and just like sending them into like, just a desert. I think the hardest part too is that these phone calls aren't like two seconds long, they're not two minutes. When we, when we answer the phones, abortion appointments take about 15 to 20 minutes to schedule. So this is a half an hour that you are getting to know an individual, a person. They tell you everything about their lives. They tell you exactly what they're feeling, what they're afraid of, what they're going through, what their family's like, what their financial situation is like. And then at the end, when you tell them, or at the beginning,

which I do often just to let them know what they're getting themselves into, when you tell them that you're booking like three weeks out, four weeks out, you can just hear it in their voice that they are so scared and so desperate. And there's nothing you can do about it because there's just not enough of us. There's not enough clinic days. There's not enough hours in the day to see all of these patients. There is so much red tape that these patients have to go through to even get to this appointment. There's a 24 hour phone consent in the state of Pennsylvania. If they miss that, they can't be seen. And these are often depending on the time of the phone call. Some people work multiple jobs.

They're like asleep. They can't make the phone call. They're sick. They don't have working cell phones or they're in a situation where they're like have intimate partner violence. So they can't be on the phone for that long without risking their personal safety. And it's just really traumatizing. And I know that it's really common on the left and with like pro-abortion people to say like you can't stop abortion. You can only stop, save abortion. And I totally support the sentiment behind that because people are going to get abortions no matter what. But people also need to think about the people who give up because I have been on the phone with someone and heard them give up. And it's traumatizing because like you know that you gave them the information that

broke them where they were just like when I'm like okay you have to wait four weeks. You have to drive four hours. You have to do this. You have to pay this. You have to do that. And then just for them to say I'm sorry. I don't want to waste your time anymore. I just can't do this much right now. It's just too much. And just to hear their just resignation because you know I think I feel like you know working in jobs you might have heard people just like reach that moment where they hit their point. Whatever their breaking point might be, whatever the context is, whatever the topic is. But like when it's your life and it's your health and it's your family and they're just like this is my breaking point and witnessing in that. That does happen. And it's a tragedy every

time that somebody abandons what they really want and their health and their well-being. And it does happen. And that's why this is a tragedy that needs to stop. And I don't know when it's going to stop because like just kind of seems like it's going to keep happening and keep going and going and going. In which case the trauma is going to like move. Like right now we're like bearing the brunt of it. But it's going to like radiate from us and our patients. And we're going to see the ripple effects across the whole country. This should be a generational trauma that's going to continue for multiple decades. Yeah. Yeah. And it's I mean just on a basic like level it's not fair that even you have to deal with this. Like this shouldn't be happening

at all. And it's that like all of the evil of the American settler state falling on like a bunch of people who have nothing. And then a bunch of workers who are expected to show up and have to deal with all of their all of their trauma to every day. And it's just like a trauma palooza. Yeah. And it's it's like flags and teacups. Yeah. And then we had a union rally recently. And we were very open and talking about how a lot of us work two jobs. And we have staff members who donate plasma. So it's like we're doing this on top of a second job and donating our like bodily fluids. I spoke at this rally and I was like we're literally giving our flesh, blood, and tears

to this whole thing. Because it's just we love it. We love all of our patients. We care about the work. We really want to make sure that our patients are going to be okay. And I think that's why we do it and also how we can justify feeling this way day in and day out. I want to I think move from this to talking about the contract negotiation process because like, okay, it is not okay for anyone to have like a 14 month long contract negotiation process. It is especially not okay for you to have to do this. So yeah, can we can we talk about what plant like what Planned Pairage has been doing and why this? Yeah, Crystal might be better at answering the questions because she's on our bargaining committee. I'm on the bargaining team.

Yay me. I've been doing this for 14 months and like just oh god, I'm so sick of these meetings. I'm so sick of them. I'm sick of talking to their lawyer. It's been long. They've been just really just dragging themselves. It's like carrying a dead body. It's like, oh, come on, come on, are you are you okay? We're gonna we're gonna get there, you know, like we're just like dragging them. And they are afraid of everything. Everything is we got to see, we got to check, we got to we got to look into it and then you never hear back. Or maybe you hear back like three months, four months later. They constantly want to bring in a mediator constantly. And it's like there's nothing to mediate. Like, yeah, what are we going to mediate you telling us that you

got to get back to us? Like, what was there to mediate there? And they're like, it will move it along. And it's like, yes, because they're doing the job for you. We want you to do it. We want you to have answers. You to figure it out. You're the bosses, you make the money, you're one running the organization. Sorry, I started getting salty. No, it's the bargaining team has has being on the bargaining team has really nurtured my rage. It's been very exhausting. And I know we're going to win a good contract because we are bad asses. And I think we're really strong union and really strong team. And we need, we need a livable wage because we're, we're getting pommeled. So it's been really frustrating, I guess, is like, in short, it's really drawn out frustrating

disrespectful. I feel like my time's been disrespected. You know, I turn up every day for, for my employer in the clinic. I'm an excellent worker. And, and they just waste like two, three hours of my evening constantly. I could have been on my porch drinking tea or something. I don't know, something relaxing. Yeah. And I guess like any other part was like, every, every day that they don't like sign a contract is another day they get to get away with not paying you, not bringing more staff. And it's, and they're constantly trying to get delay contract negotiations to where they're like, Oh, if you do this, we can, we'll give you a couple pennies. And then we won't make any, you won't be able to make any economic changes until the next

fiscal year. And it's like, you think I want to wait till next July? I have a life. I have plans. Yeah. And I mean, I think we've talked about on the show before that like one of them, one of the most common ways that, one of the most common ways that unions fall apart. And one of the things that corporations do and NGOs do to crush them is by trying to make sure the first contract fails. And yeah, it's a union busting thing. And it's grotesque, especially that like, okay, like with capitalist firms, like, yeah, you expect them to be union busting, right? Like that that's their job, their job is to ruthlessly spatially. But it's like, this is an NGO, like their job is to provide healthcare for people. They're supposed to be a progressive organization,

they're still doing this. And it's, I don't know, it seems just really grim. It is grim. And it doesn't give a lot of hope to, I think, just everyone living in this, in this country, because it's like, okay, so there's been a, I was going to say attack, but like attack doesn't feel appropriate. Like they have gutted abortion access, hurting everybody, causing like violence to people. And who do you look to? So you would think that you would look to these progressive abortion related organizations like Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Federation, NARL, but all of them have nothing to give. And nothing, they're, you only hear bad news, you hear them shutting down, you hear them union busting,

you hear them requiring ridiculous regulations that aren't even necessary. And it's just, there's no, they don't do anything to inspire hope. So it's like, well, you know, like prison culture and Maryam Mikaba says, like, you know, hope is a discipline. So I feel like a lot of us are like always looking to like a place to exercise our hope. And you're not going to get that here with some of these organizations. I think you are going to get it in, I think the repro unions, because I think there's a lot of us. And I think there were, I think that we are working our little hearts out. And I think you're also going to get it with some of these other organizations, like the abortion, like abortion funds, and some of the practical support organizations that are

really like getting on the level of patients who are patients or former patients, and are like, we're going to get people abortions. I think that's where hope is right now, but not with our employer. Yeah, I wanted to, I guess some of the other things I wanted to ask about was sort of on a macro level. I mean, basically, everyone we've talked to has talked about how, like, the ability to get an abortion is based on like a pretty small number of people who are like some, you know, people who are abortion clinic who are escorts who are who are like a lot of time volunteers, or it's people who are like you two who are being like horrifically underpaid to do the actual work of this. And I was wondering what you two think that like the way this like, I don't know, I guess

like the way everyone has sort of been run ragged even keeping the system how it was like what role that played on a sort of macro level in terms of why row was like destroyed in the first place and what that's done to the sort of the broader movement. I mean, not they didn't do anything to prevent it. Like, yeah, like it's just what have we seen what show of force or strength or commitment to abortion access. Have we seen in ever? Honestly, like, yeah, I can't even think other than like some loss or some legal wins we've celebrated. Like, I do remember Whole Woman's Healthy Hellerstead. What was that 2016? That was like a win and we were excited and we were like,

this is good news. And that's honestly the last. And that again, that was just a court decision. So it was like not in our hands really anyways. So I just either so little there's so little to work with and so little look at outside of I think just some really excellent organizing from workers and practical support groups. And I really think that our community has been fabulous. This last whole like month me, all of the support that we've gotten for our like personal morale has been through like friends or local businesses or like people who know people who like are there to offer us like an ear, a hand, a cup of coffee. Some of our doctors bring in bagels. This is like from their own pockets. We'll bring in bagels.

We've had like people donate and organize to bring in like coffee and stuff. I know that Crystal was receiving a lot of like donations herself that we all use to buy ourselves like food, drinks, stuff for people were just like sending me money for the staff. Yeah. And I thought that was really great. But I also noticed that it came from outside sources and not from internal sources. These are all other people outside in our community who understand and value the work that we're doing and like actively listen for what we need and what we're asking for. And I think that there's a lot to be said about that. Yeah. Honestly, the most hope and the most support has come from just like regular people. You don't really see it from

anyone with anything, any actual money or power. And on that note, this has been Naked Happened Here. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Happened Here Pod. And you can find Crystal and Elizabeth Union at PPWPUnion on Twitter. I'll for part two of this interview. And until then, goodbye. Welcome to Naked Happened Here, a podcast about NGOs portraying the working class and casting reproductive autonomy to the wolves. I'm your host, Christopher Wong. And this is part two of my interview with Crystal and Elizabeth from UE Local 696. They are once again, representing only themselves and the union and not Planned Parenthood. Yeah. So let's get back

to the interview. Okay. Should I do a incredibly long and drawn out metaphor about migrant workers in China? Go for it. It's your podcast. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to do a metaphor. Okay. So all right. All right. So one of the one of the sort of engines of Chinese economic growth for a long time is that China's economy is built on migrant labor. There are, I think it's like 250 million migrant workers. It's like, like, if you put them together as a country, I think like on 290, if you put together as a country, it'd be like the fourth largest country in the world. And this was able to happen, you know, and like the secret of the Chinese miracle is that it was a bunch of workers who were exploited horribly. And they also had a lot,

a lot of these workers are coming from the countryside. And there's still sort of like kinds of forms of like communal land ownership that are left over from the socialist period there. And so what happens is you have these sort of like, I don't know, like kind of socialist collective error, like collective land ownership stuff that's like basically subsidizing these workers so that they can move into the cities. And this means that their bosses have to pay, their bosses can pay them less because part of their income and part of their support network is coming from something that's outside of the system. And that's what this reminds me of, where it's like, this stuff is happening because of this incredible community mobilization.

And like, that's where the support's coming from. But that also means that like the actual, like the organizations who are getting the most money and the most resources and who are like, you know, who are your bosses don't have to do that because it's, you know, and this is the same thing with your labor too, where it's, you have these, like, there's this way in which solidarity is mobilized as a way to sort of like stop gap the fact that these groups don't want to pay people and don't want to give people the resources that are necessary. And so because it has to get done, people will like people will do it and people will people will donate stuff, people will help support people will do this work. But the thing that it winds up doing is that

these people are never actually forced to see the full consequences of their actions. They're never, they're forced to like actually see what what the staffing decisions like does what what the fact that they don't pay you anything like actually does they don't they never have to face it because people are like desperately trying to patch the boat together so it doesn't sink. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot like what would it be like if, you know, one of our higher up managers turned away all of these patients. And it was them. Yeah. Yeah. What if they knew what it was like? I remember picking up the phone a couple weeks ago. And the only thing that I heard when I picked up that phone was a blood curdling scream. Like this was like a scream out of a horror movie.

And then there were two thoughts and then dead. And I don't know what happened to that person. I don't know if they were able to call back. I did it call back because if that person is in danger right now, I'm not going to subject them to any more danger. There's a reason that when we dial out, it's the restricted or block numbers. But it's moments like that that stick with you. And the fact that we're having more and more of these moments where like every other call is not like exactly to that level, but like emotionally still sticks with you. And just for some additional just like to kind of like build out this kind of like misogynistic context that we're working in. It's actually super common to get people calling in for abortion services like in the middle of

a fight with their partner. Yeah. I have had like men like actively obstructing the caller. And you know, I'm trying to schedule them and they'll have me on speakerphone and everything. It was when you were training me too. And I was like, are you able to get to like another place because I can't hear you over him. And you know, and he's like, I'm not doing anything. And I'm like, I just need to be able to hear you. And like, yeah, so you do you get that because that's you know, because there's people want abortions for every reason under the sun. And it's totally fine. People get abortions for lots of different reasons. But a very common reason is because their partner sucks and he's a piece of shit. He was abusive and they got to get away from him.

And that's unfortunately common. And we're on the phone getting that. Yeah, sometimes we get to meet them in real life too. And that's always super fun. I always say that I say to patients constantly that boyfriends either only go one of two ways when we meet them in our clinic. They're either wonderful and fantastic and very supportive. Or they're just the worst. I've had patients, boyfriends who literally while this person is mid procedure will be like, you're being dramatic and you need to stop. And they'll like take a phone call. Yeah, or something. They'll be playing games on their phone and they won't look at anybody. Or they'll actively leave their partner there. And these are people that like where they're

right. Oh, yeah, we've had people get abandoned. Yeah. Yeah, they'll just be like, I'm done. I'm bored. And then they'll just leave. And it's just so frustrating. Lots of deal with we have a lot to deal with the staff. And I always tell people because I train staff at the clinic. And I'm always like, we see everything here. And when I say that, I mean it, we see literally everything like you just. And I'm sure there are other similar health provisions like health services that it's kind of similar. We just kind of see everything. But yeah, we literally see everything because people when people come in for an abortion appointment. Yeah, like we don't just talk about the procedure, you know, we do birth control counseling,

STD screening. We provide resources for housing, legal support, therapy, finding therapists. And we just, we do so much because we're providing a comprehensive health care service. Yeah. And again, like something that we tell patients is that they can expect to be here for like four hours, six hours. Or five hours, yeah. It depends on the individual patient, their individual needs and what services we can provide for them. And sometimes patients need a lot of TLC. And we're not going to rush that. They're going to get the services that they need and they want. And we're going to do it on their time because they're very, they're very fragile. And that's not the time to run through. They're not always so sometimes they're fragile and like

sometimes they're like, let's get this done. I just, I just want to, the whole range of, we get it, we get it. Yeah. But sometimes they're very fragile. Yeah. We have had some really confident patients that I really like talking to though, that are very like ready to get it over with and are like, thanks for being here. And they just make my day. I love it when we're like, oh, because we have to, you know, we have to do like, make sure that they're not being coerced and everything. And it's like, so, you know, how are you feeling about everything? And they're like, I feel great. I can't wait to not be pregnant. And they're like dancing. Obviously, that's nice. But, you know, in reality, a lot of times when we

ask someone how they're feeling and what's going on, we're like the first person to have asked them that in like two years. So then we're like opening up a space, which I'm so glad we get to do. I love working with patients. I love the services we provide. But it's, what sucks and what's a failure is that I'm like the first healthcare provider to like ask them how they're feeling. I actually care. And actually care in like years. Like we really get some, we get some patients who have been like, chewed up and spit out by the healthcare system and no one's ever given a shit. And we all, we all are very good at giving a shit. So yeah, it really seems like just like everything that's wrong with this country gets thrown at like you specifically,

because this is like, like every, every sort of like every bit of racism, every bit of sexism, like every like failure of the healthcare system, like every, every, like, it's not even like everything on a political level and on a social level that goes wrong with people's lives. Not forget good ol ableism too. Yeah. Yeah. I think it comes up a lot with stigmatized healthcare, like abortion. And then also hormone therapy, I imagine was pretty similar as you're facing a lot of obstacles that are put up by the communities, the institution and the healthcare system, the employers, like your family. There's a, remember, we did an interview with a promotion activist from Mexico. And one of the

things that she was talking about was she called it social decriminalization. Oh, oh, is it kind of like de-stigmatizing? Yeah, yeah. But it's like, like, I think she didn't talk about it a huge amount, but it seemed like the concept behind it was like, okay, so you have legal, you have like legal criminalization, but then yeah, like social segmentation means that it's still not really legal because there's like, there's, you know, there's like social laws against it, right? So you have to like deal with both. And that that struck me as like a really, I don't know, as a really powerful like way to think about it, I guess. Is it kind of like a moral thing where people think like it's not okay to get an abortion so you get like that pressure and that? Yeah. And I think,

and also, I mean, like it's, it's, it's the pressure like applied on a person from just like, you know, like in Mexico, it was a lot of like people were growing up Catholic, right? But also like it's the pressure from your family, it's the pressure from your friends, it's the pressure from everyone around you and you have to like socially like legalize it because. Crystal's been doing this work longer than I have. Like I said, I've only been working at our current job for a year, which I love. But definitely when I started, there were people in my life that I didn't think we're gonna get weird about it. Because I know a lot of liberal people, most of all of my friends are very liberal, very open, pro choice, like very union friendly. And immediately

I noticed that when I started talking happily about abortions, people would get really quiet and really awkward. And they would be like, that's great, I'm happy for you. But then that was like it. Like I couldn't. And I'd be like, no, but like abortions. And then they're great. They're great. People need them. It's an essential service. Yeah. And so I just upped up the anti more. Yeah, a lot more. This is what I got to do. Got to weed out the week. Like if you're in comfort with my job, my job, I'm not gonna talk about it with you. Yeah, that is a component to like also on top of literally everything else, like, you know, like how hard the job is and how then we got to like rally as a union and get better wages. And then we like can't even sometimes

talk about it because, because of stigma, like with friends or family, like I can't talk about my parent, or I can't talk with my parents about my job. So it's just like this whole big part of my life, because I'm pretty much like an abortion access activist, and I just can't talk about it. And with them, which is just, you know, it would be nice if I could, but I can't. And I just kind of deal with it. And then also, even tiny normal situations, like getting a haircut or getting an Uber, it's people ask you what you do all the time. I lie every time. But that's a decision you have to make, because sometimes I lie. And sometimes I don't know what it is. I'm like, I'm gonna tell the truth. And it's like a gamble. Because I've

told the truth before. And then an Uber driver starts praying for me. And then I've told the truth before and had someone like open up to me and we have a real conversation. And then I've told the truth before, and had really awkward conversations, they're like, I support abortion. I think some people have too many. And it's like, why are you telling me, let's get out of here. But um, yeah. This was a decision that I made for myself personally, because of this one time I took an Uber to work. And I mentioned what I did. And then that guy started like talking about me to the anti is in front of our job. And they were like talking about it was it was actually it was a woman. It was a it was a female Uber driver. I mentioned this to her. And she went up and was

like, I think that like what you guys are doing is like, she was talking to the anti specifically. She was like, what you're doing is too aggressive. You need to buy the building next door. Oh my God. Set up shop there and make it less antagonizing. So people want to listen to you. And then immediately in the group chat, everybody was like, who's talking to the anti is not like, I just mentioned that I worked there. Um, it was just a lot. So after that, I was like, on my way to work at the very least, I'm just not going to talk about it. I'm going to be like, I work at a doctor's office downtown right now. It's like risk assessment. Yeah. I feel like the anti has learned my name by listening for the Uber drivers. And I've gotten Uber drivers. They're

like, who are you? What's your name? And I'm like, I'm not going to tell you because there's a dude standing there that wants to follow me. So you're going to deal with Uber driver. Yep. We got to switch up patterns while we come into work sometimes too. And I do what I actually started um, when I call an Uber to work because I don't have a car all the time because I don't get paid that much. But um, uh, when I have to Uber to work, um, uh, I've started getting dropped off like somewhere else and just walking in because it's just too, too many problems. Too much. Too much. Like it's too much. I got, I got dropped off at like a different location, like a couple of blocks away from work at a different spot usually. And then I just walk in

like, if you, you might just want to go to work and drink your coffee and you have like your Uber driver joined in the protest outside. It's like, it's worse because they know they picked you up. They know where you live. Yeah. And they know your name. Yep. I want to shout your name out the door. It's like, because yeah, the protesters learned my name and they like chant my name and we're like, I'll walk by and they'll be like the whispering my name. I'm like, what is this? This is kind of, this is kind of kinky, but like, yeah. And we decide that they don't actually know who you are. They just think everybody with bangs is you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for the listeners, I have like pretty blunt bangs. Blunt bangs. Yeah. But I'm not the only worker

in the building obviously who has bangs. But so everyone in the building is like crystal, crystal, crystal. Everybody with bangs is a portion worker named Crystal. I guess that's reassuring, but also bad for other people with bangs because they might get killed. Yeah. It's like funny, but not funny. I'm just, we try to like make light of it. We all, we have to. Yeah. So the other thing I just wanted to ask about was Crystal. Yeah, you've had like the bosses doing disciplinary action for stuff that you've been doing in terms of union stuff. I'm going to talk about that a little bit. Technically, pre-disciplinary, but I mean, like, what does it matter? Because like the point is the same is, is intimidation. Yeah.

It's very easy to do is to get your lawyer, get your HR and have them talk to someone and then everybody knows about it because everybody talks at work and bad gas travels fast. And then they, and the whole idea is to, to scare people into not talking to reporters, not talking to people about what's going on. And I feel like it's difficult to talk about what's been happening. Like this is like, I keep saying it. It's a, it's a national health crisis. It's a disaster. It's a tidal wave. It's a hurricane. And it's generational trauma. We're using all of these words. And then like, I feel like I'm pressured into not even talking about it because I'm talking about everything. I'm talking about how we're understaffed. I'm talking about how we're seeing

patients from all over. I'm talking about how, how traumatizing it is. And for whatever reason, it's just more comforting for some of these organizations to hide under the table with their lawyer and just like shaking their boots and say like, we could be sued for this. We could be sued for that. And what if that happens? What if this happens? And like for me, it's like, well, you know what, what, what if someone dies because we can't get them in and they can't get to us because of legislation and there being no healthcare infrastructure because part of healthcare is also getting to the appointment. So if like, none of that exists and like people are suffering because of it, like I just can't keep my mouth shut about that. And I definitely

feel like as like somebody, a member on the bargaining team, and I also MC our rally, I feel like there's been a lot of pressure on me and my big mouth. I feel like they're trying to intimidate me and scare me. And I'm blessed for a couple of reasons. Number one, my dad, who is otherwise conservative and doesn't support anything that I do, but he was a union steward. And growing up, I would see him resolving conflict as a union steward. And that was very influential and inspirational to me because it really instilled some good values, even though we don't have the same values. Yeah, obviously. But um, and, but there's that, like I developed like a strong sense of labor rights and labor activism from him. And then two, my first career

choice was a middle school teacher. So I taught seventh and eighth grade for about seven years. So like literally nothing scares me because after you've talked to a cafeteria full of 120, 13 year olds, it's like, that's it. That's like the scariest thing ever. So I'm not really afraid of the bullying and the intimidation, which is good because it definitely is very effective. And I'm sure a lot of people would be pissing themselves, but I'm pissing myself a little bit, but oh, I'm fine. I have a second job after all. That's like, fuck, you have to work another job like wait, they're like, one of the things I noticed is they're doing they're doing the working you for 35 hours and not 40 because yeah, so they have to pay benefits.

Like I don't know, like the impression that I get from this, the thing that makes me really angry is like it really feels like like the like how worried they are about being sued. It feels like like the fact that that's sort of like the basis of all this and just like they they're behaving as if they've already lost and they're trying to like like claw and hold on to whatever they have. But it's like if if you're if you're fighting from the position of we have already lost, you're you're just going to keep losing. And it's like and and you know, it's not just that it's like, okay, like if they were just doing that, but then you know, like not passing like not literally forcing everyone else who's working with them to also be

in the same sort of defeatism, like it would be different. But it's like, it's like, no, they're then inflicting that on you and it's just infuriating. Yeah, I think this also to segue to something that I actually had happened to me today, as part of, you know, being in a call center for an abortion provider, is that we I think this instills like a sense of fear for providers as well, for their own personal safety, it just makes it feel bigger, because you have all these other people. It'd be like, well, it's it's like these are all these things that could happen to you, this is what might happen to you. And I think that it makes providers have to evaluate, you know, their own risks to what they do.

And if you are somebody with not as strong values for this work, like it's not a strong opinion towards this work, it causes you to just neglect patients. Because I had an incident that happened today where we had somebody call from a different state where abortion is not legal. And they had their best friend in the car with them. And they were like, my friend is like actively hemorrhaging, she's been like, bleeding for days. Do you have like an emergency appointment, like we can drive up to PA? Like, what do I do? She's been to her doctor three different times, and they refuse to treat her because the pregnancy is like viable. And in my brain, I'm just shaking because I'm like, this is a, this is your job, like your first thing as a doctor is to make

sure that your patient doesn't die and they might die. And I'm not a doctor. And so I was like, if your friend is losing so much blood that you are worried for her safety, I know on the phone, they were talking about how she felt like she was like getting dizzy and like losing a ridiculous amount of blood. And I was like, I strongly suggest that you go to a hospital where abortion is legal since you're planning on, you know, coming up for an abortion anyway. Because in that case, they would have to treat you no matter what. And if, you know, it's going to result in an abortion, then at the very least, you're protected because you're here in your cross-state lines. And I'm like, because any, any hospital has to treat you for something that serious. And that's,

it's scary to think that there are definitely other, other providers and other places where this kind of thing is also happening. And I just worry that, you know, what if I was 10 minutes late? What if I was two minutes late? What if I was 30 seconds late? What if I told her to wait? Like some places kind of have to, or I told her that I couldn't help her, like some places kind of have to with these laws. I don't think that I could live with the guilt of that. Yeah. It's just another, another added trauma to the day. And I feel like a lot of people said, and like these people suck, but a lot of people were saying that like stuff like this wouldn't happen. I know for a fact that I had so many,

I'm very vocal about abortion access in my work. And I've had people tell me like, people won't be hemorrhaging and driving across state lines. And I'm like, absolutely they will be. Absolutely. And this was like a month ago. And then, well, more than a month ago, time goes fast. But like this was like prior to Dobs, I should say. But um, and it's just when they were telling me like, I don't believe you. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't believe me? This is the most believable thing. And then to have had people say that it wouldn't happen and to like call me a liar and like a drama queen. And then now to like, I mean, I wasn't, I didn't get a call like that. But like to hear like my coworker and like, and then just like hearing it happen elsewhere

because like, you know, we have comrades and union, um, siblings in Ohio, um, with other unions, and they've talked about it happening. And just so hearing my, my, um, my peers talking about it, and just knowing like, we knew this would happen. And we, I just, it feels like we just like, walked right into it with no plan. There's still no plan. People are still in cars, drive across state lines while actively hemorrhaging. And I don't know what it'll be done other than us workers really stepping up. And hopefully the community then supporting us. Um, because we can't do it without community support. Like, like Elizabeth was saying before, you know, oh, and when Elizabeth was actually talking before about the food that we've been getting

from the community, and this also made me think of, um, what it looks like to turn up for workers in general, because, you know, we're all workers here. And like, we know what it feels like where you're too busy to stop and eat and, and you're just going through your day and you're running on fumes and you're exhausted. But the fact that our community was like feeding has been feeding us and like turning up for us, to the point where like, I was having good, healthy food consistently from day to day. I haven't eaten that well since then. And then it really got me wondering, like, is this is what it likes? This is what it's like when you have well fed workers and that are cared for. So, you know, if the only people answering the call for these, these people who need healthcare

are us, we're exhausted. We don't have time to go out and get food, especially since we got people following us down the street and whatever, while we go get a hot dog, trying to bother us. But then to have like the community bringing us food, and then being well fed, it was just like, oh my god, what if all workers were well fed and all communities turned up for their workers? Wouldn't that be so nice? And it got me thinking like, like, wow, this is like a really positive thing that is not really talked about. Like, I mean, we talk about feeding people, but like, what if workers were well fed? Like, I don't know, like healthcare workers, it's just, it's been really nice. And I love our community. I love our city. I love the organizations that have been organizing

it. We're incredibly grateful. Yeah, they're fantastic. They're so good to us. I know that for those couple of weeks where we had food in our break room, I think we worked a lot better. Everybody was in like, much better moods. Then get shaky hands, you know? Yeah, we were all like, really excited to like, see each other and talk to each other and talk about our days, just over like, actually good coffee. And it was just a huge morale boost to have the community supporting the workers. And then now we have the community coming to our union rally saying, we support you. We want you to get paid more. We want you to have better staff. And that is just like, so necessary right now, because we need the community. We need everyone.

What else can listeners who are like, want to help but are not in the industry do just to support you all? Well, I guess on two levels, like one is like, what can they do sort of in general in their communities? And then two specifically to help you all with your fight with the hospital. We're just a little clinic. Yeah, just a tiny little tiny little guy. I know that for us, specifically, I think do what you do best. If you are a person who likes to make art, we love seeing your drawings. We love seeing like your handwritten notes. If you're a person who makes a really good cup of coffee, or if you're a cafe who just wants to like bring us coffee, we love coffee. If you're a bakery that wants to donate like doughnuts or

you know, cheesecakes, we will happily eat them. Yeah. If you want to like send us a Bluetooth speaker so we can like listen to music during the day, whatever you do best is what we would love as long as it comes from like you comes from your heart, like we love weighted blankets and fluffy things and snacks and just all of those things that come like from the heart make us feel like it's worth it, at least from the community. And things also that we don't have to think about. Because as beautiful as make your own taco kits are, we still have to have time to make our own tacos. Assemble the taco. Yeah. So if there's anything that you could just like throw at us and it's already like put together, like assembled has very little thought

like a zombie or a toddler or a burnt out abortion worker can put two and two together, we love those two. And you could also follow our union and there's actually a bunch of abortion care worker unions. We're not the only one, we are many, we are legion. So you could really follow any of us and just boost what we need. Because yeah, right now the PPFA union like New York City, San Francisco is is needing a lot of boosting with their what they're doing. Guttmacher Union needs a lot of love and support. But our union, UE Local 696, our social media is at PPWP union. Not to self promote. But if you go on there, there are videos of our rally and I'm in uterus shaped pinata. If anyone wants to see us busted open, it's pretty, it's pretty

cool. We busted open a uterus shaped pinata at our rally. And as we brought up a union family child because it was it was the son of a local union member. We brought him up and we helped him smash the pinata, the uterus pinata. And as he was swinging, it was like, this is what we think about low wages. This is what we think about SCOTUS. This is what we think about understaffing. And then candy just like burst out of it. It was like a normal birth, you know, you know, glitter and candy pop out. Very realistic. Actually, abortions to people don't know this, but glitter always comes out during an abortion can confirm. There's going to be there's going to be like three people who actually believe you. They're going to they're

going to like tell their friend this and their friends going to be like, what are you talking about there? You're like, no, no, I heard it on a podcast or like the cervix sprays glitter when you when you touch it, dilating the cervix is really just opening it up so that you have glitter come out. Yeah, I guess. Well, okay. So logistics wise, yeah, if you send me links, I will we will put them in the episode description. Sweet. Yeah. And yeah, I guess do you have anything else that you want to say? I don't think so other than like, thank you for having us. Yeah, of course. This is super fun. We had a great time. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it was good. I love talking about abortion. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God, me and Elizabeth on the phone just gabbing

away and we'll like be on 20 on a call 20 minutes talking to like someone who who needs help and then we'll like get off and then we'll be gabbing about whatever for like 10 minutes and mostly take talks. But um, yeah, no, it's so important to that we can be platformed as like abortion care workers as union members, as people working in a stigmatized field during a crisis. It's very it means so much and it's meant a lot to me to see how many abortion episodes this podcast has. Like, yeah, you're really covering everything. Yeah, I was looking them up and I was like, there's that's it's every angle of abortion care and I love it. We love to see my knowledge too. We love to see it. You're going to run out of topics so eventually, but you really should

have an episode about the cervix glitter. Yeah. So this will this will be our actually wait, our April Fool's episode is actually booked. Give me the second April Fool's episode. More people need to know about this phenomenon. All right, this has been it could happen here. You can find us in the places where you know where to find us because we say this at the end of every episode. Yeah, thank you to you again. It could happen here is a podcast. Sometimes it's about good stuff and ways people can fix things. Sometimes it's about frightening stuff like today. Today's a scary episode. Joining me to scare everybody is Professor Calvin Norman. Calvin, how are you doing today? Oh, Robert, I do well

some days, but most days not. I work on climate change, invasive species, forest health issues and chronic waste disease. So are there problems with those things? Okay, well, actually, you know, last time we were talking about climate change, solve that. So we're good there. That's all been solved. It turned out we locked that down, right? Yeah, you get is we got that we got the eels fed. That was the problem. Oh, yeah, yeah, there's like a car company that's electric. We're good. Yeah, we're nailing it. So yeah, I get we had you on the show once before to talk about how the forest is bad. Yeah, yeah, still bad. Still bad. Still a lot of problems in the forest as the people who are watching their forests burn can probably say, although there's other problems

than that as we talk about in your episode. You didn't mean email a while back. It took a bit for me to get my shit together to have you back on. But it was a frightening email about a disease sweeping through the country that could have massive effects on the lives of everybody listening to this. And it's not one of the diseases that you're all thinking about. I know there's a couple of things that meet that decision that like there's a couple of different diseases running unchecked throughout the United States at the moment and the world. We are not talking about either of the ones that are big in the news right now. We're going to talk about chronic wasting disease. Calvin, do you want to kind of introduce that concept to the people because this was not something I really

I'd heard of it, but I didn't. It was just kind of like, you know, animals have weird diseases, right? Cats get lymphoma or whatever. I never thought about it much as a thing that was a problem other than a problem for some deer. But it is quite an issue. Yeah, yeah. If it stays in deer, I will be happy. Let's put it like that. So we're going to actually like do a little throw back to the past year. Watch out. So we're going to go back to the 90s. I'm going to get my shoulder pads on. I'm going to get my ex files poster stuck up on the wall. I'm going to vote for serial sexual abuser. Well, that's that's every decade. Okay, sorry. So so chronic wasting disease is a prion. The reason we're going back to is a prion disease. And the reason

we're going back to the 90s is to to look at the the most the biggest like reason anyone would have heard of a prion disease outside of like, you know, some like, you know, brain scientists and stuff. And that's, you know, bovine, bovine, spongiform encephalopathy, or more commonly known as mad cow disease. Yeah. So I, you know, Robert, I'm not sure how much you are aware of mad cow. It popped up in the US in the mid 2000s, but it killed a bunch of people in the 90s. Yeah, isn't there like, there's still restrictions on like blood donation and stuff if you lived in England at a certain period, right? Like there's some weird shit like that. Yeah, you can't donate blood for that. It's a very good reason. We'll go into that in a second. Actually, I was in

England not too long ago, and I did not eat beef there, because I've read too much about prions to mess around with that stuff. Yeah, I mean, thankfully, here in America, we have health food standards, unlike those filthy Brits, but yeah. Yeah, we had a scare. Canada had a scare. And we'll talk about the repercussions of that later. But so the reason we're going back is we're going to look at the most recent time prions have become mainstream. So what happened there? So let me just unfold this a little bit. That's a joke you'll all understand in three minutes, hopefully. So a prion, it's a protein in your brain. Now, I'm not a neurologist. I am a wildlife biologist and forester, so I'm not going to be able to answer every question out there about

brains and proteins and stuff like that. But what the prion protein in your brain does is it moves copper around, which is important for cell stuff. I personally think that mankind should have never looked through a microscope, and everything at the cellular level is just heresy. We should look at it all. I'm completely on board with you there. There's certain things we never should have studied and anything that involves a microscope is one of them. Oh yeah, you lost me there. Handlands I'm good for, you can like see like small stuff, but microscopes Audi 5000. Okay, so in your brain, you're moving around copper and stuff, and it's important for like cell stuff. So we're going to go back to high school biology for most folks, you know, proteins,

building block of life, important. So your protein structure is dictated by the elements in it and how they're like arranged, you know, like stacked on top of each other. So that's basic, you know, high school biology. But then, you know, as you get a little bit further in biology, you find out that it's a little bit more complex. So proteins like, you know, all things in our real world are unfortunately not like in the textbook, and these are 3D. And so they have like shapes and folds. Now, when folded correctly, it just the prion protein operates normally, it just moves copper around. Unfortunately, doesn't always, you know, sometimes it doesn't fold correctly. And when that happens, it doesn't move copper. And so brains have a little bit

of an issue, because they don't get copper to the right. Yeah. And this is why all those truck stops sell those copper bands that you can put on your wrist to solve diseases, right? It's to deal with that. Yeah, you just keep that copper band on your wrist, sure. Solve that problem. Yeah. So what happens when that happens is you get a prion disease. There are some that evolve in that just like they don't evolve because they're not living. Yeah. They just pop up in nature. So like a spongebob, bovine, spongebob form, and sepulopathy, mad cow. We often said a little bit earlier, talk about that in a second. Scrapey, feline, spongebob form, and sepulopathy, which comes from cats that ate meat that was infected with mad

cow. And then there's kuru, I think. Yeah, kuru. That's the one cannibals get, right? Like this is famously why cannibals, quote unquote, go crazy. Actually, a lot of cannibals were well aware that you don't eat meat from certain areas, but it is a thing. If you're going to eat people, be really careful about the spine. Don't eat brains and spines. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's, and in humans, it's called the spongebob form and sepulopathy. I'm going to explain the big word in one second. It's called Kramhelt's Jakobs disease. It was, I figured out, two Germans, really neat stuff. Yeah, it's one of my favorite disease names, because you just know you're in for some like horrifying shit. When you see that spelled out, you're like,

well, that's got to be something bad. Yeah, well, luckily, like, you know, for two German guys, alive in the 30s, did good stuff. Two of the four German doctors who were Nazis in that period. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like one of them died right before things, like the, you know, things went south there and then one of them did themselves. What great timing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I've been throwing around this word, spongebob form and sepulopathy. And then like, you know, I changed like the, you know, bovine feline, whatever. So a spongebob form means something looks like a sponge. And then sepulopathy means brain. So your brain turns into a sponge. And that's because you're not getting copper. And so cells are falling apart.

And your brain just doesn't work to be real simple. It's kind of like Alzheimer's. That's how it like presents humans, which is why it's really hard to figure out. And then when you want to determine that something has spongebob form and sepulopathy, you got to cut the brain open and look at it under a microscope. Hell yeah, you do. And as you can imagine, that doesn't usually happen in people, you don't usually cut their brains open. And also in a lot of animals, you don't usually cut their brain open, look at it under a microscope. Well, it's bad for them, right? Like that's not, yeah. Yeah, it's always lethal. Always a lethal sample. So like that's the basics of like what a prying disease is. And then when we saw it in England, what had happened

was I got into cows, cows got it from eating other cows that were fed back to them. And then it got into humans because we ate, well, we, the Brits in the third, in the thirties, in the nineties, eight cows that were infected with bovine spongebob form and sepulopathy. And you had to eat a good amount of it for it to build up in your brain. And what I mean by that is we're Americans. Right, right. So not a problem for Americans. I just want to kind of like lay a foundation so we all understand what's going on. And so what I mean by build up in your brain is like, you know, you get like one, two proteins in there, you're fine. It's okay. Proteins miss a little time. It takes, you know, brains are big, especially in humans. So it takes a while

for this to become a problem. But what happens is over time is one is once you build up enough, you're exposed to enough prions that are misfolded, like the prions in the brain start misfolding, and then slowly your brain just starts, stops functioning correctly. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's like a chain, like a slow chain reaction. So that's the basics of, of prion diseases and your spongiform and sepulopathy. Now, we're talking about chronic wasting disease, which can be easily described as the dear equivalent of mad cow disease. And like when you see a lot of stuff about it, people just, it's like called like zombie deer, because like deer get weird when they are like dying from chronic wasting disease.

Like the name chronic wasting disease comes from because they like wasting away, they're like drooling and also drinking a lot. They act weird, they look dumb. They just do weird stuff. And so people call it zombie, like deer, but they're not. They're just infected with a prion disease, and their brain is falling apart. It's like, it's like a person getting Alzheimer's. Like, you know, they do weird stuff. My grandma has Alzheimer's, it's terrible. Yeah, don't get it. Yeah, I, yeah, my grandma had the same thing that Robin Williams got, the Lewy body dementia, and it's pretty much the same thing, right? Like you can just see somebody kind of falling apart piece by piece. But that probably does make the deer easier to hunt.

Yes. And it also makes it really easy to identify when it's in its advanced stages in deer. So we got kind of an understanding about it. But like, you know, why do we care? We are people, we are not deer, right? Robert, are you a deer? Not right now. I mean, I have been to a furry convention, but, but I didn't commit. So we all got our things. Well, so I hunt deer. Robert, I think you hunt, I don't know. Yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting ready for, for hunting season as we, as we speak. Yeah. So, so lots of people hunt deer and they eat deer, which is, which is cool. And it's fine. And it's important to do in, you know, certain ecosystems. I mean, in most of the US, like deer have been hunted by various, you know, humans for as long as people have been here.

Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's a natural thing to do. Yeah, it's very normal for people to hunt deer. And it's very normal. And also there are areas where we killed everything else that hunts deer. Yeah. And so there's, there's, anyway, whatever, we don't need to defend deer hunting here. I've done hours of webinars on the importance of deer management. It's, it's a real fun subject to go into. But we don't care about that. We're talking about chronic wasting disease, fun stuff. So, so we care about that. We care about chronic wasting disease because it impacts all members of the servant family or deer. So that's, you know, elk, moose. I just learned the Europeans call moose,

uh, European elk wild. Arrogant. Arrogant. Yeah. Look at a moose, look at an elk. Super different. Wildly different animals. Like they're both very big, but they're also different sizes. It's like the difference between like an armored car and a tank. Like a fucking moose is like, it's basically an elephant in terms of its footprint. Like, oh, yeah. They're so cool to see. They're enormous. Yeah. Yeah. They impact, it can get in all servers that we know of. It's, and, you know, people like, you know, people like to see servers. They like to hunt servers. We'd like to do it, you know, in different countries. They're delicious. They have the best meat. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So much better than fucking beef. So much better than, uh, pork, in my opinion.

Like, oh, I fucking love venison. Oh, yeah. Moose. I don't know if you had moose. I've had it once. Oh, it's delicious. Yeah. Moose and elk, wonderful meats. That's actually a big thing Joe Rogan and I talk about when we're hanging out is elk meat. He's a big elk meat guy. That's good. I've, I've, uh, I've never, I've never hunted an elk. I've put in for the lottery every year, but it's hard to get, hard to get elk tags in Pennsylvania. I know it's a real surprise. Yeah. You know what? I'll go ahead and reach out now. It's easy to get the tags here, but it is hard unless you have a friend with land that elks are on to actually hunt them as, as much as it could. Yeah. Anyway, if you've got land in Oregon and you want me to hunt elk

on it, hit us, hit us up. Yeah. So, so, you know, as we could see, there's a clear demand for cervids and cervid products. And so in like the fifties and sixties, people started, you know, they're like, well, you know, sometimes you're not always good at hunting and not everyone wants to hunt. So they started trying to domesticate and farm them. Right. Um, cervids famously like running away. I've seen a lot of deer tails. Robert, you know, I'm sure you have. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of like tracks that you can tell and like with shit or something near them that like, oh man, I fucking miss that son of a bitch by like 30 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. And if you, even if you drive around, you'll see just like, oh, car, I'm outing 5,000 that don't need to be here.

Sometimes they go across the road and hit them. That's the story. Um, so sometimes it's bruised a heck, but that is how I get to eat some moose. Someone hit it with a car. Hell yeah. Um, but, um, so they don't like being in captivity at all. Not a fan, not a fan. And so they're very, they were very stressed in captivity. And then like in the sixties in Colorado, um, at on the Colorado University of Colorado on their deer farm, they noticed like the deer were getting skinny and weird. And that's how that's where, uh, chronic wasting disease was discovered. Cause we tried to fucking farm an animal that's not so, okay, awesome. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. There are some folks who think that it's a natural thing, but it doesn't look like

it doesn't look like it. Uh, no reports of it being around from before the sixties. And as we laid out, lots of people ate a lot of deer and saw a lot of deer before the sixties. So probably came from, uh, farming servants. So then since then, um, there's the deer, uh, farming is not really regulated. And also deer are not really easy to keep in captivity. They like to jump and like when fences, fences blow down. And so they'll get out of captivity and like also other deer, they like come up to, you know, captive deer and they're like, yo, what's up with you though? You're in a cage, huh? And so you can actually see them. They'll like interact through the fence. Um, and that's probably how it got out of containment is through interactions and

you know, servants being spread, uh, around the country. And so now chronic waste disease is found in 30 states, I think four Canadian provinces, uh, Scandinavia and Korea. So I think it's four or five countries. Uh, so, so it's out there. It's out there. Um, and it's, it's infecting certain populations across the U S and across the, across Canada and the world. Um, uh, it's real bad. It's real bad. So yeah, it seems like a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're a deer, what happens is you either interact with them to pick up chronic wasting disease, we'll go through the deer, kind of the progression in deer to pick it up. You either interact with the deer that has chronic wasting disease. So you go up and smell them. You lick them a little bit. Oh, deer groom

each other. You know, the animals. Um, you eat a plant that another deer pooped on. Now it doesn't have to have pooped on that plant. So like this is a deer. It's effective with chronic, uh, chronic waste disease can poop in the soil and the plant will pick up the prion from the soil. And then yeah. And then another deer can come in. It can just spread. Yeah. Cool. That's that's some real scary shit. Yeah. Yeah. And it can also, you can also pick it up from water, but it has, spreading in water is really tough. So, um, those are your main vectors is, you know, deer to deer and environment to deer. Um, and that's why it's pretty tough to control once it gets into a state because to destroy it, you have to dig up the soil and you have to burn it at

a thousand degrees for an hour, or you have to expose expose it to bleach for an hour to destroy the prion because it's not a living thing. It's a protein. Yeah. I mean, and there are a couple of towns that I would be okay doing that too, but on a nationwide scale, that seems difficult to pull off. Yeah. I can think of a state that starts with an O and an H that I wouldn't mind losing. You know, if we just, we're like, you know, let's just try it. Why not give it a shot? Right? Yeah. It's just Ohio. Come on. It's not a real state. So in deer, we're going to just, we're going to stay just from the deer where we're not going to get scary yet. So in in deer, this slowly builds up throughout the population and you get worst case scenarios like in, uh,

southwestern Wisconsin, where like 50 to 75% of the deer harvested, uh, bucks harvested a year are positive for chronic wasting disease. And because it's an always fatal, you know, brain disease, you're looking at population collapse and extinction. Great. Yeah. Because it remains in the soil too. Like, yeah, it's around for at least two, probably more years, but the studies we've done are only two years because, uh, these are not fun things to study. Yeah. People have died studying these diseases from prions. Like when they, when they've done work on like, uh, BSE, uh, lab tech actually pricked herself with the tool, uh, and got, um, CJ CJD and died from it. So yeah, they're not fun to study. Really, you know, that's, this is like, we're talking like

Martian suit style study stuff. It's not fun. Oh, so like the, yeah, the stand level shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, so like, you know, it without, you know, when chronic waste disease is not addressed into your populations, like in Southeast or Southwestern Wisconsin, you're looking at extinction level stuff because all of the deer that are out there are most, you know, 75% of them have chronic wasting disease or at some point in getting chronic waste disease, which just means that they're putting more and more of it in the environment. And they're more like, if you're an unaffected deer, you're, you know, three cores or buddies are infected. So you're going to get chronic wasting disease

and be dead within two or three years. So you're looking at extinction of all servants in that area for some amount of time until it comes out of the soil. That's bad. That is a problem. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. As we have established, neither of us are deer. So why do we care? I mean, outside of like the fact that deer are pretty important to the ecology of local areas and that that collapses bad. Yeah. Why, what is, what is the, like, what is the risk to human beings beyond that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We put ecology aside all the time. Right. This is the world. We don't really care about that. Yeah. I deal with what happens when you put ecology aside. So I'm super used to that being

done. So the risk is if it jumps into humans, because all of a sudden you have a disease that's really hard to detect, that can live in the environment, that can be transferred from not just spinal fluid, but like if you eat a lot of infected meat from deer, you know, if you eat some of the organs, you can get at a high risk. So, you know, all of a sudden you have a large portion of the population that could be exposed through, you know, direct consumption. But the other thing is, is prions are really hard to kill. I said they live in soil. They also live on steel surfaces, glass surfaces. Every, like, surface that they've tested, like trying to kill prions, like, you know, putting prions on and seeing how long they live there, hang out there. There was

some surgical equipment that was infected with a prion, gave someone chronic wasting, not chronic, CJD three years after using it on someone who had CJD. Great. Yeah. And that's like, you know, surgical grade stainless steel stuff. So like not supposed to hold things, gets like cleaned, but not like super, like not prion level clean, because they didn't know about the time. So there's the risk is, is it could potentially develop into a human, you know, something that impacts humans. Like right now it hasn't. We do have eight different variations of it out there in the landscape. And as more and more deer are exposed to it, what happens? We get more and more variations of it, because that's just what happens in nature.

Yeah. As we're all becoming familiar with, with COVID, yeah, it keeps changing because nothing has been done to stop it from spreading. Yeah. And like the only thing you can do to stop is just like reduce deer numbers. You can't really eliminate out of the landscape, because it's in the soil. Yeah. Yeah. And you can't, you can't test live deer for it. You got to kill them to do it. There's, they are developed, there are some tests being developed to determine if animals are infected that are faster, but I, you know, it's still, it's still in progress. So that's called RT quick. It's a protein test. That's, that's much faster than current testing. But it's still in progress. So the thing that really scares me is the other, well,

the other thing about that makes chronic wasting these different from, you know, BSE, mad cow diseases, mad cow was in cows that were in, you know, captive spaces. Right. And, you know, you know where the cows are. Yeah. It's a problem, but it's a problem that you can like with enough fire and or other tools eradicate. Yeah. Yeah. And it didn't, it didn't seem to be, you know, very president soil. And it was like, you had to feed dead cows to dead cow or to get the live cows to get them infected. Chronic waste disease is a different beast. So the real scary potential here is that it's in soil. So it can get into plants. And we know that plants get transmitted chronic waste disease

to other deer. So it could, you know, transmit it to other animals, like things that eat plants, you know, for example, you and I eat plants. If you're an American, you eat corn in a couple of different forms. Deer love hanging out in cornfields. Oh, yeah. So there is an exposure vector right there. And it's, you know, when you're when you're processing corn and corn syrup, let's say, you take a bunch of corn from a bunch of places, smush it up, grind it up, you know, you do a bunch of stuff to it in on steel surfaces, and you don't heat it to 1000 degrees for an hour. So all of a sudden you have like a case of soda that could be infected with chronic waste disease. Oh, cool. There's the potential, the big potential damage.

If this shit jumps to people, which it hasn't yet, I want to be really clear about that. So we're not causing to, but if it does, the containment thing is like even an order of magnitude beyond fucking COVID shit, right? Like it's because it's spread through the soil, it gets into the fucking basic ingredients of food. And we simply the way that we process that stuff isn't set up in a way that will eliminate it right now. Yeah. And I would tell you, you really can't on a large scale, like process anything that's then make it safe from, you know, right, like chronic wasting disease, because you'd have to like, you know, if you if you like cut up, like, let's let's let's go back to like, assuming like, you know, it's just in you,

you're handling an infected deer. If you cut that deer up, you use your knife, you got to put it in bleach for an hour. And then you can go back to bleak is really corrosive. So eventually destroy your knife. So there's there's your end thing there. But you can also get through your hands, you know, touching it, you can get it. Yeah. So there's the scary part there. I mean, like you, like, as you pointed out, and I start, I really totally fail to my part dimension, it hasn't jumped to humans. Yes. We are not, we are not saying you are going to get the disease tomorrow. That is not the but it also like, isn't like there's nothing that says it can't jump to humans, right? Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. So there have been a number of like

three or four, there are two studies, I know, there's a third one I've heard about looking at if, you know, human like animals can get chronic wasting disease. So that's macaques, which are kind of monkey. And when they have been fed chronic, you know, meat infected with chronic waste disease. And they were exposed to blood, they were fed it, they were exposed to blood. And so it was just injected right in the back of the brainstem. The monkeys got chronic wasting disease. That's good. So it looks like it's possible. And then also hamsters, which are also used as a human stand and have also been fed meat infected with chronic wasting disease. And they were able to get it. And they really get it from a number of different sources.

There are some really like fun and by fun, I mean scary papers out there about like all the ways you like chronic wasting disease moves around and survives. And the studies about like using human standings are not always fun to read. No. And this is this is definitely one of those things where it's like, yeah, what is the other option other than, yeah, you have to try it on shit that's yeah, that's that's very unsettling. But like, yeah, what else are you going to do? Like you have this is something you do have to know. Yeah, yeah. And the other problem with prions is detection when it comes to like, you know, different species, because it presents like Alzheimer's. And so the only way you know that something got a prion disease is if you cut

their head, if you cut its head open, you look at its brain. So when and in humans, it can take a long time for these symptoms to present. I think like, if you look it up on Wikipedia, it says like the average like age detection is 60 years. Oh, then we're good. Fine. Yeah, yeah. The researchers that I've spoken to say it takes like 40 years for enough prions to build up in your brain for it to like, you know, start to show symptoms. So it, you know, if it is to jump, if it jumps the species barrier, the first time we detect it, will probably not be the first time anyone has been infected. Yeah, it will already have spread quite widely. And then people will, yeah, hopefully not. But yeah, so so that that's the scary part. That that's the human side scary part. But, you know, we don't

always have to keep you inside scary. Sometimes, you know, things work in, you know, monkeys and hamsters that don't work in humans. And we've cured cancer, you know, hundreds of times in mice, right? Yeah. And in humans, it's a lot harder to do because we're not mice. We're not monkeys. We're humans. So it doesn't always work like that. But the other scary part is when it comes to agriculture and the impact on agriculture. So pigs can pick up chronic wasting disease. They're what's called a prion amplifier. So they can pick it up. They can like, you know, hangs out in them just fine. It doesn't kill pigs at all. Nothing kills pigs, but people. Yeah, it's true. That's the truth right there. That's the truth. Yeah. So so, you know, if it,

you know, as people, you know, governments become more aware of it and more concerned about it, there there's the real possibility of, you know, agricultural exports getting hammered on, you know, exporting it because, you know, other countries, you know, are concerned about spreading it. So right now, you know, it's pretty hard to, well, it's getting increasingly harder to export live deer is probably should be probably farming service is not a great idea for their health and ours. But, you know, also there's the concern about spread. So if if chronic wasting disease is, you know, crosses from humans to cows, like we've seen, you know, like, if, you know, BSE just pops up in some cows, you know, that might be from chronic wasting disease. And

the impact of that is going to be huge. I mean, Canada, they were shot out of the Japanese market for 14 year Japanese beef market for 14 years following a case of mad cow disease in 2006. I got left back in two years ago. And the studies in that was like a couple of billion dollars in damage to the Canadian beef market. And so, you know, and that was BSE, which does not do doesn't transfer via plants. So imagine is the US, you know, agricultural export market got shut down for plants. That economic damage is incalculable. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the scary part about chronic wasting disease. Those are all the scarinesses. This is what keeps me up at night. This is frightening and important for people to be aware of because it's a serious threat.

But are there things that can be done at the moment? Like, is there is there an actionable you're not just like not on a what can our audience do? But like, is there a thing that could potentially be done by, you know, states or the federal government or whatever that would help this? Like, is there actually do we do do we have any fucking idea of like what could be done to make it less likely for the kind of nightmare scenarios that we've alluded to to occur here? Yeah. So the best, you know, the best things we can do are to, you know, hunt deer, reduce your population. So that way you're, you know, taking deer out that might be infected. And when you hunt deer in most areas that infected you, there's a you test them for free with your

state or various authorities. And so then those carcasses are destroyed. So you can remove, you know, disease off the landscape that way. And then by also just hunting deer, you reduce population levels. And so you make it, you make the disease loading in the landscape lower and it less likely to spread, you know, both to other deers and then potentially vector to other animals exposed to other animals. Excuse me, New York is a great example of this. They had a case of chronic wasting disease pop up, took it out, really, you know, hunted that area hard. I think that they even brought in professionals and did some real serious deer reduction, and they haven't had a case since. So it, you know, in areas where it pops up, you can just hammer it with, you know,

lethal removal of animals, harvesting, whatever. And you can prevent spread. And you can knock it, you can really not get back. The other thing we got to do, we need to be very serious about, we need to take the captive servant industry. So I've used the word servant a couple of times, I never defined it, my apologies. Servants are members of the deer family. So elk moose. Yeah. Seek a deer, all those guys, red deer, fallow deer, whatever, bunch of them. We need to make sure that we're very closely regulating that industry. Because of the potential spread, there was a farm in Wisconsin that sent like almost 400 different infected deer to like 197 different farms over the course of like four years. So, you know, it's regulation is incredibly

important. And it's, it's rarely, you know, it's not really enough on most farms. My home state here, we have, you know, if you make less than $10,000 from your servant farm, you don't have to report it, you don't have to track it or anything. That's a real problem, because we are experiencing expanding chronic waste disease. So regulation, you know, that's not fun. Maybe we just shouldn't be farming servants. Maybe that's bad. Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all there. Yeah. Yeah. Not a fan. Yeah. From an ethical standpoint, too. There's many, I raise several different, I raise bunnies and chickens and goats, and I help raise sheep for meat. There's plenty of different things that you can raise for meat that are used to it, because we've been raising them for

meat for like tens of thousands of fucking years. Like the sheep I have orangoras, which I didn't go back like 20, 30,000 years, like they're, they're, they're, they're meant for it. We have changed them into animals that are supposed to be raised for meat. Don't take new animals and try to farm them like that, because it seems like it causes problems. Yeah. Well, there's a really neat, there's some really neat work out there about the, about domestication stress. And like, you know, domesticated sheep don't care about being domesticated, whereas like they've compared like domesticated sheep to wild sheep. Wild sheep die really quick when you put in a domestication from the stress. But yeah, like you said, maybe, maybe we don't, maybe we don't

play around with some of these animals and try to force them to do human, what we humans want them to do, you know, it's okay for animals to just be animals. No, I'm wrong with that. Yeah. So the other thing, there was a large amount of money set aside, and I can't remember which legislative package it was, they got defeated a while back, that put money towards chronic wasting disease research. So, you know, legislators in states can be, you know, legislators and governments can be taken seriously and put money towards it. Right now, it's, it's not a lot of money going towards it, because it's like, yeah, it's a zombie deer thing, who cares? Yeah, you could get into agriculture. This is not just a problem for deer hunters,

this could be a real issue for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I mean, it's kind of like a larger symptomatic thing too, we don't really take environmental problems that seriously. No. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the scary thing about this is we don't treat the environmental problems seriously when everyone's saying, hey, the consequences that like, all of Florida will be uninhabitable, right? Like we don't take that seriously. So when you're saying, this is much wonkier, which is definitely a barrier to effective action. Yeah, I did a legislative testimony about chronic waste disease a couple of months back, and no one was paying attention. But yeah, it made me feel good. I was doing something. Oh, here's a fun thing about Florida and chronic waste disease.

So Florida, you know, full of invasive species, obviously it has chronic waste disease. Yeah, that's a, come on, it's Florida. Obviously, you got to pick up a new disease. Yeah. You know what else is in Florida? Huh? Colonies of macaques. There's like two colonies of wild macaques. I was unaware of that. Yeah. Was it because people were on ill-advised keeping pets? I think one of them started that way. And I think one of them was like some monkeys that had been like kept protesting or zoo stuff escaped. But there are at least like two like colonies of like macaques in Florida, which also has chronic waste disease. So, you know, there's, I don't think the chronic, they're like near the Everglades. I don't think chronic waste disease is made that far south

of Florida. So there's a fun possibility of the lab experiments done under highly controlled conditions getting, you know, performed in the wild setting. We could see if macaques can pick up chronic waste disease in the wild. There's a fun research project for someone who, you know, is able to handle dark sides of things. Yeah. Thank you, Florida. But more importantly, thank you, Flo Rida. And a lot of people are unaware of this. Was just a couple of years ago in the Eurovision Song Awards representing San Marino. So, you know, 20 second overall, not bad. Yeah, that's pretty good. Better than I could do. I think out of tune on a good day. Yeah. And also, you are not technically a citizen of the

Republic of San Marino. No, but yet they offered me citizenship. I would consider it. Absolutely. Who wouldn't want to be a citizen of the most serene Republic of San Marino? Yeah, I looked at Andorra. So, you know, it would be a really, we're looking at European micro nations. I mean, if Andorra came knocking versus San Marino, obviously San Marino is getting kicked to the curb. I love that like dual like government between the president of France and like the pope of or not the bishop. Yeah. It's like a bishop of like somewhere in Italy. Yeah, it's very funny. Yeah. Yeah, you got to love those weird little micro republics. Oh, yeah. So, okay, well, this has been great. Yeah, I'm glad this is happening.

Yeah. Yeah, it's cool and fun. Yeah. I'm not usually fun to hang out with when I talk about work stuff. Yeah. I know. But it's like, it's again, people need to be aware of this. Like, this is one of those just in the same way that like people were talking about for years prior to COVID. Hey, we actually really need to be aware like a coronavirus could break out and it'll spread really quickly due to the way that global travel and transit and stuff works and it'll be almost impossible to control. You know, we should we should build structures into our societies to make it easier for us to deal with a coronavirus, which we didn't do, but maybe we'll do it this time. Yeah, well, what makes it really fun, I'm just going to build off you for a second.

You've fallen into my trap here. The same people who were writing about like MERS and predicted, you know, I can't remember which came first, MERS or SARS. I can't remember which one. The same people who predicted that and then who were also predicting COVID are also talking about chronic wasting disease. So it's like, you know, I really hope you don't get to be right on this one. Yeah. I just want you to lose one of these times here, bud. You're a nice guy, real smart guy, but can you be wrong occasionally just for like, you know, old time's sake, just be nice to me. Yeah. Well, there we go. That's been a fun episode. Everybody have a good time. Thank you, Calvin. Do you have

anything you want to like plug before we roll out here? Yeah, I would like to plug trees. Trees is real neat. Try that. We are supported by trees. Not the plant, but a club in Dallas that I took ecstasy at once. That's our primary sponsor. Yeah. I'm physically supported by trees. My computer is on wood, so. Oh, excellent. Yeah. There's that. Also good. Yeah. Trees like to plug also getting outside. That's good for you. Absolutely. Get outside for sure. Yeah. Tweet, tweets from birds. I don't do the Twitter. Not from Twitter. Yes, definitely. Yeah. Those are things that I'd like to plug. Yeah. Replacing the tweets from Twitter that you encounter with tweets from birds is probably among the best things you can do for your mental health.

Unless it's this one bird that lived outside of my apartment in Los Angeles. But anyway. Well, Calvin, thank you for coming on. I appreciate your expertise, even though it's always deeply unsettling. That's going to do it for all of us here today, and it could happen here, by which I mean you and me. Oh, boy, it is behind the it happened could hear. I'm Evans Robert podcast song. Hello. Who else is on the call? What are we doing? Where are we? It's me. It's Christopher Wong. I'm going to talk a lot this episode. There's also other people here. You are. Now, before we get into that, I should note that we're all just looking at the

latest episode of Podcast Magazine, which of course we all read regularly. I do like that they describe you as they describe you in a few funny ways, actually. Yes, they do. It's a list of the most powerful people in podcasting. Of course, got me, obviously, Trevor Noah, Joe Rogan, all the greats on page 47. We have Robert Evans, who and they do say that he has also undertaken an ambitious daily series called it could happen here that takes on some of the wadiest issues and problems facing policymakers around the world. I will say this. If you are a policymaker and you have ever taken a policy suggestion from us, you have a legal obligation to like light your own office on fire with a Molotov. I do like that Robert Evans is

don't listen to Chris do it policy makers. I do like that Robert Evans is right above the serial creators. That is nice. I'm above Trevor Noah. I mean, I literally don't think it's like it listed because there is no way in the list Ben Shapiro is above Joe Rogan and that's just not accurate to the way the industry functions, but it's a very silly list anyway. It's been fun reading through our latest issue of our favorite podcast magazine. Podcast Magazine, of course. Made by podcast news daily where you can get all your news about podcasts. I think that I totally knew about for I've known about this clearly for longer than 15 minutes. Actually, that's not sure. I've known about it for longer than eight minutes, maybe 12. Yeah. It's an amazing photo

of Robert. He was happy to get. I was happy to get in some fine reading today. So anyway, what's this? What's our episode actually about? That's a great question. It's a podcast power rating episode. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even have anywhere to go with that. No, the thing, the thing the episode is actually about is heat waves and very specifically a heat wave in China that has been going on for why this is day seven as we're recording this is day 72. I think by the time this goes out, it will probably be like day 74. Yeah. And this is an incomparable heat wave. I'm just going to read this from Axios. The extreme heat and drought that has been roasting a vast swath of Southern China for at least 70 days straight has no parallel and

modern record keeping in China or anywhere else around the world for that matter. Now, OK, so that sounds bad, right? But it's actually worse than that because, OK, so if you were to read that, you might believe that this heat wave is just affecting Southern China and that's like not true. It's also affecting North and China. It is affecting like most of China. It's like affecting almost like most people alive. It is 900 million people. Now, yeah, like Chris, quick question, is that a lot? So OK, so if you rank all the countries in the world, right, the people affected by this heat wave would be the third largest country in the world only behind China and India. OK, OK, so that's it. That's several people. It's fun.

Is it more people than the British people who have been logging on to post about it being like 85 degrees and then dying? I do love one of the things that's keeping me alive during this ugly summer is like all of the photos of British people just getting as red as possible because they think that tanning means burning 80 percent of the surface of your body. It's hard for me to explain how difficult it was for me to comprehend that in California, they won't serve you if you have your shirt off because it is a national tradition in Britain to take off your shirt and get as much sunburn as possible. Or if you're getting into a fistfight as well. I have witnessed a number of folks pull their shirts off and fights in London.

Yeah, it's part of our natural heritage. It's a beautiful country, but please continue, Chris. Yeah, OK, so, you know, to get a sense of like the stakes of this, right? So OK, and like just the sheer scale of this because 900 million people is an amount of people that like we like is incomprehensible. Yeah, you can't. That's a number that's too large. So OK, Sichuan province, right? This is this is one province that is being affected by this. This province has 83 million people in it. This is the entire combined population of California, Texas, Indiana and New York City. Here's here's from France 24 about what's happening here. Since July this year, the province has faced the most extreme high temperatures, the lowest

rainfall in the corresponding period in history and the highest power load in history, local authorities said. So it is hotter than it has ever been. It is drier than it has ever been, except and this is the fun part. This is similar to what's been happening in Texas. And I think, yeah, Texas is probably the best example of this. OK, so it's really, really, really unbelievably dry, except for when there's giant flash floods and they've killed like 22 people already have died from the flash floods in different province. But yeah, it is unbelievably bleak. One of the big things that's happening is that the Yangtze River is like the lowest anyone has ever seen it. Like anyone alive has ever seen it. It's the lowest we have recorded measurements

of because like everything is happening here. Like there is no record of it ever being this bad. And this is a real problem because particularly in Sichuan because 80 percent of this province's power is drawn from hydroelectric. And, you know, it turns out it's really bad if the rivers that you are relying on for your hydroelectric power are basically drying up. And like there's pictures of like, like you can go find pictures of this, but there are pictures of the Yangtze that like it looks like a riverbed on Mars. Like it is just just completely dry. Like it's like dry, cragged stuff. It's really good. Again, this is just to kind of bring out how worldwide this problem is. We're seeing pieces of this everywhere else, right? Like Texas, which is also in a

horrible drought has been having flash floods that have been disastrous recently because when it's been super dry for a while and you have these these heavy rains, it's it's a huge fucking problem. And you've got riverbeds drying up all across the Southwest and things like Lake Mead getting low enough that hydroelectric power isn't going to be reliable in a huge chunk of like the again, because it's important not to distract from like what's happening in China, but because it's important like this is this is everybody. This is everybody. Yes, in India all over. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, okay, so the the the sea wave in China, like there's been very, very little English coverage of it. And the thing that everyone focuses on is the fact that like

the power outage is well, the reduced ability to generate power and the fact that everyone has to turn on their air conditions to not like literally die is, you know, it's wreaking havoc on China sort of productive capacity. So such one has like there there's an enormous like industrial base there that produces stuff from everything from like Tesla to Apple. And this is what the sort of the Anglophone media cares about, right? Like everything almost everything written about the heat wave is about its effect on like supply chain disruption disruption to like semiconductor production and like batteries for electronics and so on and so forth. And I do not give a shit about this. And the reason I don't give a shit about this is because the actual human impact

of this is just sort of unfathomable. And the media outlets were talking about it like don't seem to be paying attention to it at all. So while I was originally, okay, so when I was originally writing part of this episode, I went and like looked back at weather data for Shanghai. And so, okay, when I was writing this on August 23rd, that day was 103 in Shanghai. Like two weeks before that it was 111. And I found out that from July 30th to August 20th, the tech like the high temperature like the daily high temperature like did not go below 100. On the 21st, it finally rained. And that dropped the temperature to nearly 94. I think either tomorrow, today or tomorrow, I think it will go below 90. This is at night as well. No, this is the temperature of the day.

But the temperature in the night aren't going below like 70 either. Then a lot of times we're in the 80s or 90s. And the temperature at night does just for people who are not aware of like heat. One of the things that's most important for like the survivability of a heat wave is whether or not it gets cool at night because you can survive pretty hot temperatures during the day if you're able to cool your body down at night. It's one of the like one of the saving graces that Pacific Northwest had during its heat waves. But yeah, and this is a real like so this is a real like so trunking, which is an enormous city. It has nine million people like regularly in the city. The city is also the municipal like government. There's a whole

sort of complicated thing there. But like the municipality of trunking is 32 million people in it. They had a night I think a couple of weeks ago that was 94.8 degrees. And which is again, like that is a night that is significantly hotter than the average summer day. And you know, I mean like I want to go back to Shanghai for just like a second because like Shanghai, I looked this I looked this up Shanghai has not had a day where the high has been below 89 degrees for two consecutive days since mid June. It has been over 90 degrees every single day, like without two days back to back. It wasn't that hot since mid June. And you know, okay, so like this is having enormous effects. One of the big ones, the most noticeable ones is like basically like any excess power usage

that a city can have is just getting shut off. There's been a lot of there's been a lot of stuff where like businesses aren't allowed to open before like 4pm, because it's literally just too hot. And you can't deal with the electricity load. And yeah, like and you know, the other the other problem here again is like it's not cooling off at night. And if it's not cooling off at night, yeah, like this is this is the thing that kills people. And so one of the things I want to talk about this is just like looking at this looking at what this looks like on like a very, very granular individual level, because this stuff also just sort of gets ignored. There was a really horrible story in six tone, which is like, it's hard to describe them. So six tone is a state media outlet.

But they're like, I don't know, I guess you consider them like they're like the left wing state media outlet, which means that like they have somewhat more like editorial independence than like something like China Daily or like a lot of the other state run things. And they like, they criticize the government a lot more than most of the sort of state run outlets. And they did this story about a migrant worker who was working at a freight depot about like he's this is this depot about like two and a half hours outside of Shanghai. And okay, so he's working and it is, you know, it is unbelievably hot. I think I think the last day that he's working here, it's 104 degrees. And that night, it only cooled off to 84. Here's from six tone about

sort of just the conditions that people are working in here. On the hottest days, the temperature side of the carriages is at least 50 degrees Celsius, which is 122 degrees Fahrenheit, says Yu Yidong, a worker from Zhangxi and other inland province. It feels like you're on fire standing here around noon. His employer, an outsourcing agency, hands out heat stroke prevention drugs, which he takes twice a day. At the freight depot, managers sit in air conditioned rooms, but workers like him rest under trees. The office is not for us, Yu says. Now, okay, in theory, under Chinese law, if it hits 104 degrees, outdoor work is supposed to immediately stop and you're supposed to move everyone indoors and like give them water and stuff because

it turns out if you're working like a hard manual labor job outside 104, you might die. But you know, you're also supposed to get paid heat breaks. And you're a bit like, you know, as anyone who is familiar with, for example, how American farm labor works, you know what happens about to happen next. It turns out that, you know, okay, so you can take a break, but your employers won't pay you for it because like they don't know who's going to actually force them to do it. Zhang, who's the worker, the story is about, you know, is extremely poor. His family is poor. He's trying to support a family like back home because again, he's a migrant worker and he, you know, he can't afford to take a break on his shift so he doesn't die.

And so he literally collapses on the job and then gets back up and finishes his work and he tries to cool down by like laying in his tiny, young, un-air conditioned apartments with like an electric fan pointed at his head. And he died on a bed that was held up by two broken cinder blocks making maybe four dollars an hour. Yeah. And, you know, worker's paradise. Yeah. And I mean, you know, there's a thing about this, right? So in theory, he's working for a state-owned company, right? But, you know, as we talked about like a little bit in the sort of quote earlier, he's not actually working for the state-owned firm. What he's working for is one of these like labor agencies, which are these like sort of contracting things that allow you to actually get a job. But, you

know, what happens is that the state-owned firms like outsource labor to these contracting firms and the contracting firms just like pick people up and bring them to the site. But this means he doesn't have a contract. And the problem is if you don't have a contract, right, you can't get any government benefits, you can't get insurance. And it turns out this matters because, you know, China has like a payout, right? That they're supposed to pay to families when, you know, if someone dies in the job. But, you know, it's almost impossible to collect, especially if you don't have a contract, it is almost impossible to get this thing. And, you know, like this is how like most of the Chinese economy works. The Chinese General Chuang calculated that in

Dongguan, which is one of like China's big industrial cities, if companies actually paid out the insurance benefits they were legally required to pay out, it would cut corporate profit by 50% and bankrupt like most of the companies working here. So, you know, the entire economy is based on this. And Chuang's family drives like 350 miles to the city where he died and starts like harassing government officials and bosses for like literally weeks. They are trying to get people to like, hey, you know, will you pay out the insurance money you're legally required to pay us? And they refuse like the local officials like won't even give them like surveillance footage of him on the job dying. And, you know, after like several weeks of this,

like four or five weeks, they're finally able to get a sixth of the money they're supposed to get if you die, if someone dies under sort of like this, they're able to get a sixth of the money that you're supposed to get under Chinese law if one of your family members dies in the workplace. And, you know, I'm focusing on this story because it's one of the few stories that we have directly about sort of the sheer magnitude of the suffering this heatwave is causing. And part of what's going on here is that we don't know what the death toll of the heatwave is. There's nothing about it, right? You'll see a couple of reports, I'll talk about like two or three heat-related deaths, but it is literally impossible that there are that few deaths. There was a study

in the journal Lancet that was looking at heat-related deaths in China over the last 30 years. And it showed that like heat-related deaths have increased by a factor of four since 1990. And, you know, so there was another heatwave in China that was like pretty bad in 2019. And they calculated that 26,800 people had died from heat-related deaths. Jesus, yeah. And, you know, and again, that heatwave, the 2019 heatwave was pretty bad. This heatwave, like, it has just utterly destroyed every single record that heatwave set. Like, it is in, like, its own universe of heatwaves. So it has killed it, like, probably by the end of this, it will have killed, like, tens of thousands of people. Yep. And yeah, which is really bleak.

And, you know, I mean, I think, like, part of the reason also I wanted to talk about, like, this specific story is that, like, you know, so the weather itself, like, is trying to, like, is enough to kill you, right? But, like, okay, so, like, this kind of heat is survivable if, like, you know, if you're in a situation where you can be inside and where you can be hydrated and stuff like that. But, you know, hey, capitalism exists. That means you have to keep working during this shit. And that's just going to keep killing people. I wanted to sort of also look at sort of some of the historical heatwaves to also to get a sense of how many people, like, probably died in this one. I think, like, maybe the most famous heatwave,

like, in my lifetime, well, until this one, I guess, was a heatwave in Europe in 2003. And that one killed something like 70,000 people. And there's a lot of very interesting stuff that we learned from this heatwave about what heatwaves do sort of in general. The United Nations, like, environmental program, like, released a report about this. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff in it. I mean, okay, so the obvious one is that this has a massive effect on agriculture, which, okay, yeah, like, you can ask a four year old and they will tell you that this is bad. And this is happening, this is affecting China right now, too, because this drought is hitting, like, right in the middle of a lot of China's bread basket. So,

yeah, there's all these sort of, like, downstream effects that we'll see later. One of the other fun parts about this, this is what 2003 heatwave, I'm just going to read this quote, massive alpine glaciers decreased by 10% in 2003. And yeah, okay, so what you're seeing here, right, is this sort of circular thing, where each heatwave, you know, does things like melt glaciers, right? And that makes the next heatwave worse, because when you lose glacier mass, you're losing surface area that reflects light, which increases the level of warming. And this is sort of, you know, this is one of the sort of feedback loops that we're dealing with. You know, I know everything that we've been seeing a lot in the US 2020 had this, like,

pretty badly. I mean, I guess, like, anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, like, understands this, there's just, there are just fires constantly, because it turns out that when it's really hot, things just light on fire. In the in the 2003 one, there were 25,000 fires, and they burned something like 650,000 hect acres of forest. And even the places it didn't burn, it causes sort of, like, severe, severe ecological damage to these forests, because, like, the heat leaves trees, for example, like, a lot weaker than they're supposed to be, and this leaves them vulnerable to things like plagues, into like, into the waves of insects, and this, you know, like, everything that's happening here with these heat waves, like, weakens the environments that are supposed to be

sort of, like, mitigating the effects of climate change. So we also, like, on the sort of, like, human front, we talked about how heat waves can knock out, heat waves can knock out hydroelectric power. It turns out, they can also knock out nuclear power plants, because nuclear power plants rely on, like, dumping their cooling water back into rivers. Now, there's like, there's, there's legal limits on how hot, like, the water that you can dump into these rivers is supposed to be, because it turns out, you know, if, okay, if you dump a bunch of boiling water into a river, it's going to kill everything in it. But as the sort of pooling process, like, gets more difficult, because the water levels are lower, you have to take power plants offline, because otherwise,

you're going to just kill everything in the river, when you're venting your sort of exhaust heat. And into, it got, in 2003, it gets bad enough that, like, a bunch of companies get exemptions, right? They're like, okay, it's an emergency, we can turn this on, we can, like, we can vent all this hot water back in the rivers. But, you know, you can only do this so many times before you revivably fuck up the ecosystem of the river. And again, this is, this is, this is the problem, right? Like, you get, you're getting into these feedback loops, you're destroying it, you're destroying the ecosystem, you're showing the river ecosystems, this also, again, has problems with, like, it reduces, it's, it's, it's the river's ability to serve as a carbon sink. And, but,

but it's like, you know, what choice do you have, right? Because your energy consumption treat heat waves massively increases, because you need to cool yourself down, you need air conditioning, you need things like fans, or people are going to die. And so, like, every single one of these, like, heat waves, just sort of spirals. Yeah, I guess the last thing I wanted to talk about is something that we haven't, we talked about this in, like, the very, very early episodes of the show, but like, haven't talked about much sense, which is wet bulb temperature. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, for, for, for people who don't remember what this is. I mean, we were talking a little bit about it earlier, and that when you can't cool down at

night, like, the big things about a wet bulb temperature, but yeah, it's, it's more complicated than that. Yeah. So, like, I guess the basics of it is that, okay, so your body, like, cools itself down by sweating. And when, when the water evaporates off your skin, it cools you off. And this is one of the big ways that your body sort of keeps your internal temperature under control. The problem, basically, is what if your sweat can't evaporate? And that, that brings us to what, what wet bulb, what bulb temperature is. Here, here's NASA, quote, wet bulb, wet bulb temperature is the lowest temperature to which an object can cool down when moisture evaporates from it. So what, what it's measuring for us is how cool our bodies can actually get from sweating.

The problem is that at a wet bulb temperature of about 97 degrees Fahrenheit, your sweat stops evaporating, and you can't cool yourself, and this kills you really, really fast. Here's NASA, again, talking to Colin Raymans, who's from, I think he does climate stuff at the, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Once wet bulb temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit, no amount of sweating or other adaptive behavior is enough to lower your body to a safe operating temperature, said Rayman. Most of the time, it's not a problem, because the wet bulb temperature is usually five to 10 degrees Celsius below body temperature, even in hot, humid places. But, you know, it's a point to note here, by the way, that like the wet bulb, wet bulb temperature

is like not the same thing as regular temperature. It's measuring something like that's different from how hot it is. And it's worth noting that like the current heat waves, like, they're really bad, but it hasn't really been hitting, the wet bulb temperature hasn't really been hitting the place, places where they just are absolutely lethal and start killing hundreds of thousands of people, but that is going to happen, right? Even in sort of like, even in the climate models where, you know, we keep emissions to like two degrees, right? Which at this point is looking like some of the optimistic models, like this stuff is going to happen in that certain 50 years. And unless something drastically changes, like, we're going to watch this happen, we're going to

watch countries hit these temperatures, we're going to watch enormous numbers of people fall over dead. And yeah, this is where climate change is heading, and it sucks. And the heat waves that are hitting China, the heat waves that are hitting India, the heat waves we've seen here are like, this is, this is as good as it's going to get, it's just going to keep getting worse. I guess I should back up one second and talk a bit about the Chinese heat wave, which is that like, the Chinese heat wave, is it just like a, is it just a climate change thing? There's other stuff going on here. There's, there's, there's like a very specific like confluence of like, weather phenomenon, like the linear and stuff like that, that like,

coincide, had to coincide to make a heat wave this bad. But the problem is, like, that stuff is all going to happen again. And, you know, so we're going to, we're going to get like, yeah, we're going to keep getting heat waves like this. And yeah, unless we do something differently. Yeah, I mean, we won't. I mean, we'll, you know, we'll twiddle around the edges. The Biden administration snuck some language into the, the, the inflation bill that might allow the federal government to regulate CO2 still after the Supreme Court said they couldn't, but maybe not. Could you, Chris, would you, why don't we send a message to the people in Shanghai and let them know that? That'll, that'll help. They'll feel better. Policymakers, you're listening

to the podcast. Yeah, all the policy makers who listen to the podcast. I don't know, like it, this is, it's one of those, if we were to take, if all of the policy makers who listen to our show were to take all of our advice immediately, and we were to transition every city away from being vehicle centered and like effectively cut our emissions by 70, 80% or more, we would still be locked in to escalating heat waves like this all over the world for the rest of our natural lives because of the way the carbon cycle works. Not that that wouldn't help in the long run, but it would certainly not. Like that's one of the things that's so scary about this is we're all girding ourselves for the inevitability that this will just become more common and more devastating.

So true. And for everyone that has a hard time breathing, there's always, always the hope that via geoengineering, we can just pump more pollution into the air to reflect more sunlight, which will increase a whole bunch of other diseases. You know, I watched the first seven seconds of the movie Snowpiercer and that does seem like an idea that would work. It's funny, when I was in school, I read like, I read one of the first papers that was talking about this. And like the guy in the paper is like the opening of the paper is him literally going, this is a bad idea. We should only do this if there's literally no other choice. And then also, like this is a thing we do for like 10 years to buy us more time to deal

with regular climate change. And then as the years have gone on, and as nothing has happened, you just got to watch like, yeah, there's a Barack Obama's favorite book, Ministry for the Future, which is a legitimately very good book. It's just funny that he likes it because it absolutely embraces terrorism in defense of technology, killing politicians. It embraces sneaking into the house of oil and gas executives and murdering them in the night. Like half of the characters as well as a wonky carbon crypto fucking investment portfolio. But like there's a lot of different ideas. Yeah, like a lot of the characters in that book would have killed Obama like it's very like. But one of the things that book deals with so the inciting

incident of that book is a horrible wet bulb moment in India that kills I think it's millions of people just like a nightmare disaster. And one of the things the Indian government does as a result against the express wishes of the global community is start like essentially like an atmospheric seeding program in order to mitigate how bad the heat waves are. And like there's a bunch of consequences to that. And I kind of think one of the things that's most realistic about that book is as we have more shit like this happen, you will have nations on their own carry out climate mitigation efforts that could have serious effects on other countries because any of this stuff you do like if you if you if you seed clouds in the southwest or whatever in order to increase rain

to raise the level at Lake Mead that will like you can't fuck with the water cycle like that and it not have impacts other places. And this is a thing that certainly global law like like the international legal system is not ready to deal with. And it's certainly something that our media ecosystem is not ready to deal with. And it will happen. This is an inevitability in my opinion. I mean, yeah, one of the things that we do want to talk more about is the the reaction to this type of thing is going to be by capitalist countries and like the climate leviathan model is going to be to basically privatize the atmosphere and privatize the sky. And different ways that sky, sky, but ties. Sure. But in terms of all pure hate in your face there.

But between all of like the corporate like space projects, and then stuff with geoengineering, it's just going to be renting out sections of the atmosphere so that people can pump things into to for whatever for whatever kind of carbon neutral thing they want to do or pump and shit into the atmosphere is what got us into this problem. And it's what's going to get us out. So true. Make money somehow. It's it's kind of funny that in the US, which I don't know if you saw this, but like this month, which we're recording this in August, there was a discussion about how the water was going to be used in the Colorado River by the various states that I did. I did read that. Yeah, very depressing report. It's it's fucked up. Yeah. Yeah, I just I ended with like

basically each of them chest dumping at each other and big like, no, fuck you, I'll take as much water as I want. I'm upstream of you. I think Utah were the ones particularly belligerent in that case. But yeah, it is the opposite of what we need to do. But here we are doing it. I was in Utah last this month, looking at new golf courses being built by Fisher Tower sound at the desert there. And it's great. There's a fun. Okay, so Andreas mom's last book before he kind of went off the like, we're Nico Leninist rails was called fossil capital. And he has a really interesting argument that like, one of the reasons that we got into this mess the first person, one of the reasons like country company started adopting coal was that even though coal was

less efficient as like a source of electricity than having like watermills, water, like having a succession of watermills going down the same river requires a bunch of different corporations to like coordinate with each other. And they don't want to do that. And because sort of like the laws around who controls rivers is really sort of unclear, like they were just like, now screw this, we're just gonna use coal even though it's worse. And the fun part about this is now we get to get this again with like river law where it's like, Oh, hey, it turns out that capitalists and capitalist days are just utterly incapable of like, sharing resources with each other. And they're just going to try to section off increasing the large parts of it, which is going to go

increasingly badly. Yeah, I mean, it's like one of the things you're the failure to be able to imagine anything that exists outside of a profit and loss kind of mentality is is one of the major problems that we have, like all over with this, like there's right now, one of the big stories coming out of the UK is that as a result of the war in Ukraine and gas prices, the cost of heating is has risen fucking massively. This is a problem for all of Europe. And a lot of families in the UK are looking at the numbers I've seen or anywhere for like 4,000 to even six 7,000 pounds to heat their houses during the winter, which is like 10 to 15,000 real dollars. It's a lot of money. And it's substantially in excess of what they have been paying in the past. And it's like,

that is enough. I mean, imagine yourself, how many people live, I'm going to guess it's a small fraction of people listening who could afford an extra 10 to $12,000 in bills this winter and not have it completely fucked their lives up. So obviously, people cannot pay for their heating this winter. And like, if you can't pay a bill, you're not going to pay a bill, right? That's one of the laws of the iron laws of finance bills that can't be paid won't be paid. So the state is coming in, but the state is not again, these companies, basically, all of these companies are would be essentially insolvent, like if things were allowed to proceed naturally. So the government's going to have to do something. But the thing the government isn't going to do is like actually

nationalize any of these heating companies. It's just going to like pump more tax. Anyway, it's it's it's the same thing. It's a failure to kind of imagine anything outside of this. Well, maybe if capitalism has broken down around this issue, this isn't an issue that should continue to be in the hands of corporations. Yeah, well, but the fun part about this too is that like, okay, it's like, well, okay, well, okay, we'll nationalize this and that will save us. And then you look at like, what do act what do most of the world's nationally owned corporations look like? And it's like, well, okay, so the government owns it like 51% of the stock, but then it functions exactly like a normal company. Well, right. I'm not saying like the solution is is not sorry,

James, you're the actual Britain in this room. Yes. It's kind of funny because in Britain, people living on state pensions or certain other like state programs, state disability and stuff get a winter fuel allowance normally. And the winter fuel allowance is scheduled to go up like less than a tenth of that amount that you just said would be the the increase in the cost of heating, right. And it's still sort of, it's just so funny to see like in theory, Britain has several political parties, all of them, especially with Labour under Kirsten Dahmer, like a clustered under a neoliberal consensus and Kirsten Dahmer, like rather than considering doing anything, they are bickering over like how much of a pittance they want to throw to poor people. Yes. Yeah,

it's also very funny that Britain did build a desalination plant in the Thames estuary and forgot to account for the fact that due to it being an estuary, the river coming in and out, the levels of salt in the water would change and that would make the desalination. And it's fucking, I think it's biodiesel fuelled. It's just awesome. It's magnificent. Yeah, we've got great leaders over there and we don't need to change. Yeah, no, you seem to whenever I think of countries that have their shit together, I think the UK. Yeah, you've got to remember that Nazis use bicycles when you're considering your options for transport and climate change in the future. Deranged British tweets of the day. Yeah, I mean, hey, okay, look, look, the one very dim

silver lining is that maybe this will cause the British got the entire British political system to collapse. Yeah, but that happens like twice a year, right? No, but what is collapse here? Well, like, okay, here's the thing, right? If you have enough people who the government is trying to pay their bills, they start throwing maltops at stuff. This is actually a pretty reliable, like one of the very reliable things that gets people to go fight police is you've suddenly increased the price of gas that they need to drive or need to heat their houses. So maybe, I don't know. But then British people will also be barking for us to send the troops against the people who are protesting for the right to live with dignity. That's one thing we love to do.

Yeah, it's a fun country. Oh, yeah, it's a fun tree. Oh, man. All right, well, are we good? Have we solved this one for all the policy makers who listen to our show? Yeah. Hit me up, fucking Lindsey Graham, a huge fan of the pod, Lindsey Graham. Get a Molotov if you're old. Yeah. Lindsey Graham's actually just voted to subsidize Molotov cocktail production. So thank you. Thank you, Lindsey, our based fan of the policymakers who listen to our show. No, he must have been looking at a research. It's the only way it's the only real way to stop climate change.

People are illegitimate use of fossil fuels in Molotov cocktails. Yeah. 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 CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.