Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 65

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

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Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you take your own decisions. Sacred Twenty Three. I don't know. It's finally, finally 2023.

That means only funny things can happen this year. That's your intro to the system. That's right Sophie. It could happen here. I went here any criticism. Yeah. Yeah. It could happen here.

Five stars. Welcome. Well, I don't know if I'm going to say they're welcome, but it is 2023. So. Lord. Mm-hmm. Good work. Enjoy your year of discord as if any year of the last like 10 has not been a year.

Yeah. Every year previously was totally normal and not chaotic. Yeah. So. Well, downhill from here. So. Welcome. Welcome back.

We, we love some of you, probably, presumably, I haven't met you. Any of the ones that I love, but I assume that you're out there. How's everybody doing? How's everyone's new year? Wow. Just an absolute. That was a lie. Absolute slap in the face to anyone you've met on any of your live events.

That's a fan. Yeah. Hey. So nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in person. For my event. Also. Fuck you.

That's what you said. This whole episode is a series of slaps to the face because it's not 2023 for us. We're lying. We're all lying to them. Yeah. Right now. Who knows if we make it that far. Today.

We're recording this on December 19th, 2022, and what is what has happened today, friends? Also, who are you? Who is on this episode? Well, Garrison's here as I have already spoken into the microphone. Oh my God. Do you know who else is spoken into the microphone? So. Shereen.

Question mark. I'm Shereen. Sophie. Yeah. Sophie. Yeah. James. Oh.

Yeah. There's only one left. Oh, no. Mia. I don't think I've actually spoken into this episode yet. So. Now I have. Now you have.

There she is. You have. You've started the day. We did it. So. That's how you introduce a podcast. That was so awkward. Incredibly awkward.

No. It was perfect. Magnificent. As if we had never done a podcast. Yeah, before we get to some of the Q&A stuff, what has happened today when we're recording it? Oh, well today is the day is the one day anniversary of me showing Garrison the movie Strange Days written by James Cameron, a New Year's classic.

Wow. Such a good movie. I've not seen it. No. Oh, you got it. You got to watch it. It is. Robert got an alert on his phone.

That was just like, memory is one year. A lot of. One day. The one day. One day. One day. One day. One day.

One day. One day. One day. Yeah. One day, one day. Yeah. One day. One day.

One day. One day. Yeah. One day. One day. One day. One day. One day.

One day. One day. One day. One day. Yeah. I will say. Definitely not a pro LAPD movie. Also.

Anyway, what actors are in this movie? What's his name? Ralph Fiennes? Yeah, Ralph Fiennes is the main character, and he looks exactly like 10 years ago. Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper in this movie. Don't insult Ralph. Don't do that.

They both look good. That's what I mean. No. Okay, well, that's cool. He's great, and Angela Bassett is fucking incredible in it. He's amazing. Queen. And then another character that's more is present in the movie.

We're just gonna go to Vincent D'Onofrio's cast and your episode. He's a cat for Robert. Yeah. All right. My favorite is Vincent D'Onofrio looks exactly like Tim Heidecker's character in that I think you should leave sketch where they're at the UFO themed restaurant. It's uncanny. Great film.

I got to know that you're still doing, I think you should leave references in the Lord's Year 2023. Well that actually leads into my… I showed my family it before they left to go see other family for Christmas. How did that go? I set my family down to watch the second half of season two. And? Magnificent.

Yeah, I love that. It's divine. And that leads into my only prediction for the next year, which is that… This is not prediction. This is not prediction. This is not prediction. Robert, get it together. What are you doing, Evan?

Oh, God. Come on. All right. What's the first question then? Well… What do these sons of bitches want to know? In an alternate universe where it could happen here has a corporate office. Does the staff get a Robert Evans book for holiday presents or a gift card?

And we can actually answer this because despite not having a corporate office, there still was a holiday gift, which I have not actually received mine yet, so I can't say what mine is. But I know other people have received theirs. Why did you receive yours? I ordered yours. I don't know, Sophie. I ordered yours for you.

Well, Sophie, you know, sometimes it'd be like that. Tracking. It's probably going to be… Yeah, Sophie, about to ruin some UPS Drive's day. Yeah. Chaos. But what did everyone else receive for their… It could happen here.

Dearest Garrison will be delivered by 5.45 p.m. today. Out for delivery. Today. There you go. It's okay, Garrison. I didn't get shit either. Oh. Oh.

I actually did buy you something, but it hasn't come yet. Devastatingly. What did everyone else get for their holiday gift? Was it a Robert Evans book? No, it wasn't. Oh, my God. That would be deeply unhinged. Robert.

Oh, my God. Imagine you're that fucked up. Imagine you're that unhinged that you're like… I think you should do that to I-heart. To like the higher-ups I-heart. Send them your book as a gift. Maya, the second job I ever had, which was… Or third job, I guess, which was working for this accountant guy.

That seems not right. He was a retirement, like, advisor guy. He would help old people get their money in order to retire. It was mostly, like, helping him host events at, like, a Texas roadhouse where we would try to get old people to buy annuities. But, um, so I worked for this guy and the day I started the job, he gave me a copy of his self-published novel, Operation Night Watch, which was about a group of Navy SEALs going rogue to stop drug dealers.

Wow. And is one of the worst things I've ever read. Have you read it? Oh, I mean, I attempted to. What a kind person. Someone, when I mentioned it once on the show, somebody found and bought a copy and, like, posted that. Well, that probably was sales.

Yeah, give that money to someone else. That's unhinged. Oh, he can't be alive anymore. There's no way he's still alive. It was probably on, like, eBay or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That man has been dead for years, I'm sure. We still haven't answered the question.

Wanted to the point here. We got tiny cans of mace, two little personal maces. One for the left hand, one for the right hand, so you can dual wield. I really like it. It's very compact. New pepper spray has been on my Tobias for, like, months because mine was expired, like, a year ago, but I've never actually bought one, and so it was perfect. And now it's just so tiny.

I can put it in, like, my fanny pack and just continue on my day. That's right. How do you know it won't work if it's expired? I just looked it up. I looked it up and I was just like, I don't want to, like, I don't know. It was on my Tobias. I obviously didn't buy it yet. It wasn't like.

You don't want to, like, hurt somebody with expired pepper spray. It's a propellant that expires. Yeah. The can itself gets, like, false. Mace yourself. Yeah. Got it. Yeah.

Well, there you go. There you go. Yeah. Let's see. So we're going to be going through some of the questions that we got for the previous... Sorry, my cats are making... Also, I do like that that person... Mason.

That person really thought that Robert was that person that was like, hey. Hey. Yeah. Happy holidays. Here's my book. I do get the royalties. You're welcome. You're right though, Sophie.

We should use the corporate cards to buy more copies of my book. That's a good idea. We can just ship them to the sea though. It doesn't matter where they go. We have a book burning. For the next question, we're using the questions from the previous. It could happen here live stream for this, by the way. So if we didn't get your question, we're getting to some more of them right now.

Unless your questions sucked. Yeah. Yeah. Always very personal. Always very... Yes. That's what I meant by sucked. So do you know of a way to get involved in mutual aid without using social media?

I don't really use it for mental health reasons. Good decision there to not use social media. Continue not using social media. Yeah. I don't know if mutual aid organizing or requests happen on social media. But I mean, there's... I guess it depends on how you use social media, I suppose. It might be useful to have a friend that follows some of the social media stuff in your local area,

whether that be on Twitter or Mastodon or Instagram, and then can relay to you if there's local events. Or you can just section off once a week, you check on just a few of those things, and then you delete the app from your phone again. Because once you are plugged in to a local community, then people can just directly send you flyers and stuff. But you have to have those connections there in the first place. And those connections are really best made by going to things on the ground,

whether it be a food not bombs type thing, whether it be a clothing swap, lots of local events do happen in people's cities. And once you actually go there in person, that's where real community actually gets built. So it's just kind of just breaking the ice to actually go to a few in-person things. And then people can send you direct flyers and stuff, if you don't want to be doom-scrolling looking for things.

You don't have to even have an account if you don't decide not to. You can view profiles on Twitter and Instagram without an account. You can't see the comments or whatever. But if you just want to see their profile every once in a while and check on what they're doing, you can do that online with no account. Yeah, often as well. We're doing mutual aid things here. It tends to focus on the border a lot or unhoused people.

And in both cases, you can just show up and you'll meet someone who's helping in most instances. And then they can direct you. They can text you or signal you whatever. There were tons of people in 2018 when the migrant caravan arrived who were much older, not on social media, often with church groups. And they didn't hugely have, I would say, a lot of experience in that kind of area, but they deeply wanted to help and they showed up

and people were like, hey, can you go to Costco and get this? And they were like, yeah, absolutely. And we use WhatsApp and it was fine. And check around another option to be, obviously, if you have a radical meeting space in your city, you can check there. If you don't have those, you can even check, see if there's any radical coffee shops or cafes that maybe have a bulletin board.

People will often put up flyers for stuff there. You really have to start trying to be plugged into your actual IRL local community. And that's generally how that goes. You have to be more proactive than if you had social media as the main thing. You still have to show up, by the way, right? Yeah. Do you know who else wants you to show up online? Oh, Robert Evans. I don't.

These products and services that want you to follow the link. We're now exclusively only sponsored by Robert's books. Yes, let you do it, Robert Evans. And here's an excerpt. All right, and we're back. Speaking of the internet, Robert, or anyone, I suppose, do you think there's a way to get back to fulfilling the promise of the early internet? No, I don't.

I think the early internet was a thing that happened that, in part, was the way that it was because our brains did not have any kind of tolerance or were not, like, prepared for it. And it kind of grew up as we became capable of, like, I don't know. Like, the internet grew more social as we got used to it, and I don't think that can ever happen again. Like, those weird little moments where, I don't know, my answer is no. I don't think it'll ever happen again in the same way that, like,

you're never going to get those weird little moments that you had, like, the birth of, you know, the printing press or whatever. Like, it was a unique moment in history, and it's never going to come again. Which doesn't mean that something else won't happen. But the internet's not, like, the fact that we've all lived through the social media era means even once all these companies go bust, our brains have still been changed by them. Too much to ever go back to posting the way we once did. No, we're too far gone, I think.

On a kind of similar note, in a few days, we have an episode from Andrew on Digital Commons, and that kind of revolves around this same kind of question. So, in a few days, we'll have an episode kind of about this topic ran by Andrew. But James, you had something? Yeah, sometimes, like, obviously, like, the internet is terrible in many ways, but, like, when we talk about, like, what happened in Myanmar, that series that Robert and I did, like, that seems to me like it's delivering on some of the promises of the early internet. Like, it's mad that, you know, a young person, like, who is facing a coup

and wants democracy in this part of Asia, can go online, speak to some dude in, and these aren't real people I've spoken to, but, like, some guy in his garage in Ohio who's 3D printed guns, and that person can help the other person on themselves and defend their right to choose who governs them or if they're governed at all. Like, that is really fucking cool, and that doesn't happen without the internet. Yeah, there's also... Yeah, it's not that there's not going to be good things done with the internet or that it can't be made better, but it's never going to be what it was,

because we simply know too much. Let's see. What are some inspiring recent examples of cooperation increasing survival odds to show the type that thinks they just need ammo to survive? Another good touchstone for this would be the movie Trimmers, which shows that while... I think, unfortunately, actually, he's right. The survival plan. Nobody lives without community.

Unfortunately, I think Robert actually is correct here. More broadly, this person's, like, consciously paraphrasing Kropotkin, right? But, like, we have all just lived through a pandemic, and they are still living through a pandemic, I guess, which has changed the world, killed hundreds of thousands, millions of people. And, like, the reason a lot of people got through that, a lot of people who weren't able to work or were immunocompromised and couldn't go out as much, is because other people helped them.

Like, no one shot COVID, and no one fed themselves in the lockdown because they had, you know, tons of 5.56 docked away. Like, a ton of mutual aid happened. A lot of terrible shit happened as well, but that's a bigger example, I think. Yeah. What genres of music have each of you been listening to lately? I'm a big classical head.

I don't care if that is, like, nerdy. I just love classical. I also listen to a lot of classical. When you're driving, everything becomes, like, cinematic, and it's calming. And sometimes words distract me, so my go-to is classical. To what I would consider classical music, which is second and third wave ska. Oh, my God.

Based. The only classical music, in my opinion. No, I've... I listened to The Clash, Suede, and the Manic Street Preachers more or less exclusively. Yeah. They're the only bands that matter. Yeah. I think if it's not classical, I'm trying to, like,

be, I don't know, I'm, like, dancing around. So it's either, like, it's like two extremes for me. It's either classical, and I'm, like, chill, going to sleep, or I'm getting ready, and I want to feel something. What about you, Mia? I have the most absolutely dog shit music case. Brave. Brave.

But the music that I listen to that I think is legitimately good, that's not, like, power metal or, like, weird shit, is I've been going back to, like, my youth, and my youth is a combination of, like, surf rock, and, like, A's, like... Oh, I was not... Oh, God. No shame.

This is a safe place. Also, like, there could be some shame. Like, what? Okay, like... I support you, Mia. Like, Pat Benatar sort of, like, there's a sort of error of, like... That's beautiful.

I don't know what you call it. Like, lesbian glam rock? I don't know. You shouldn't have to defend yourself. This is a safe space. Yeah. This is, like... You keep saying that.

I don't think we ever agreed to this. I usually listen to a lot of music while writing and researching. I just finished up two pretty big writing projects, so I've been listening to a lot of music. Most of it's, like, Ambient Electronica, some classical stone in there if I need to get a little bit more, like, energy. Listening to some Trent Reznor kind of Ambient stuff.

And, like, a lot of... I also listen to a lot of remixes of the Mario Galaxy soundtrack. Wait, what? There you go. Wait, send that over now. No, I like that. Wait, okay, okay, okay. All right, I need to plug a truly awful song.

What? Like, the worst song ever. Don't give them attention. No, no, no, no. We got it. Donkey Kong has to slam this way. It has to be this way. X Space Jam X DK Rap.

I need y'all to know that this exists. It is incredible. It is an otherworldly experience. There's also a version of it that's the DK rap, but also One Winged Angel. Oh, no. Okay, I think this... Wait, Garrison, do you listen to Max Richter?

I think you would like Max Richter. He does a lot of soundtracks for shows, so his stuff is kind of melancholic and piano-y, but I think you might like it. I will look him up. Good name. Yeah, it's spelled Richard. I'm pretty sure.

I got it. Yeah, okay, great. Yeah, you should also listen to the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, who did a wonderful album. Oh, no, don't. That is the worst song ever. Oh, God. Oh, fuck.

Oh, God. No, don't. So, it's so bad. Check out their 2020 album. Yeah, their George Floyd song is literally a fine. Incredibly appropriate, deeply appropriate. Speaking of listening to things? Speaking of things that are problems,

what is the most troubling thing that isn't being reported on or isn't taken seriously by the wider public? The fact that none of you said you listened to any rap music or any type of music that wasn't just... I thought Tupac was a given, okay? Scott is a kind of... Level on his own, okay. Kind of rap, so to speak.

I listened to a little bit of Biggie every now and again, and I got my Moe's death always loaded up, especially around the new year. I love listening to Life in Marvelous Times. Tupac's my guy. Black on both sides is a hell of an album. Let's see. I've always been more Biggie.

There's a guy called Christian Parish takes the gun. He raps by Superman. He's from the Crow Nation. I think his stuff is cool. The most troubling thing that isn't being reported on are taken seriously enough by the wider public. Besides our musical tastes. I'm going to be biased and always say Middle Eastern news

and Palestine and hair and balance reporting. Even Syria and Yemen and all of that stuff, I think none of that gets enough attention. Absolutely. I'm going to say fucking scams. Just on a daily basis, I feel like my phone gets six to eight spam calls, scam calls at least. Someone was making a note of this earlier

because a bunch of scam stories have been, people have been sharing them this year, but there's all sorts of fucked up things. If a relative gets arrested, as soon as the police post the fact that publicly posted they've been arrested, the family, if they have numbers that scammers can find, will start getting auto dialed by accounts claiming to be

the police saying that you need to put money in their account now where they're going into general population. These are all low-hanging fruit things. They're targeting people who are not very savvy, often people who have some sort of mental disability. Folks who are living a marginal existence in a lot of ways as it is, and it's making it incredibly difficult. Folks who are cognitively impaired for whatever reason,

including the fact that they're elderly, it's never been like this before. The sheer density of scams that people have to wade through. Again, most of you, we've all noticed it getting more common, but we may not have noticed how brutal it's gotten because you're not the target demographic for this stuff. That's why they all have filters in them to try and weed out the people who are savvy enough

to know that they're being scammed. There's a number of things, this is the result of decisions that the FTC made in order to make it a lot easier for people to use shit like auto dialers and to carry out phone-based scams. It's just been punted on by every presidential administration in our lifetime as the internet has made it easier to automate this stuff.

The explosion of machine learning tools that are widely available, these kind of AIs that people are joking about right now, it's all going to create the capacity to more effectively automate scams. I had one that could have gotten me the other day where I got a call from my bank that was listed as from my bank, it was my bank's phone number.

It came up as them on the... And they were like, hey, there's some charges, can we run them by you? And they were like, chart things I had not bought. They were like wire transfers and shit. And they were like, oh, it looks like somebody's gotten access to your account. And the call dropped before I could finish it

so I called them back. And when I called my bank back, they were like, oh yeah, that was someone spoofing our number. There's personal information out of you. This shit is so fucking endemic and no one is doing a goddamn thing about it. There's one anemic attempt in Congress to slightly address it primarily through education,

but it is a massive problem. It's part of what's breaking society, the fact that everyone is constantly flooded by this low-level cloud of people trying to destroy their financial lives. It's real bad. Do you know what else is trying to destroy your financial lives? Oh, the products and services that support this podcast.

And Robert's book. And we are back for one final time for this episode. This is actually a question that I feel is pretty important that I wish people thought about a bit more, at least within our general sphere. Where do you draw the line between fascist politics and non-fascist conservative politics? Well, at the moment in the United States,

I don't think there's a line to be drawn, because the mainstream of the Republican Party has completely thrown themselves in behind one of or both of two fascists. In terms of, like, personally, I guess it depends on whether or not people support their being, like, things like penalties on... Do people... Like, does somebody support banning books?

Does somebody support arresting folks for expressing political opinions that differ from theirs? Does somebody support, you know, expanding the penalties for petty crimes to include, like, violence? Those are all things that can suggest that somebody is a fascist. But at the end of the day, anybody who supports the Republican Party right now is supporting a fascist movement.

So I don't feel there's any sort of... I don't draw a line in my head anymore, to be entirely honest, because they elighted the line. I try to be very specific when I say fascist versus just, like, a regular conservative in my reporting. Like, when we were inside Colorado, we talked to people who were conservatives, who were against fascists,

and against local fascists in their community, and actually doing things to help stop fascists from gaining power within their local community. I think if you look at a lot of the rhetoric around queer people right now, whether it be, like, drag shows or trans people, that's a specific style of rhetoric that is, like, innately fascist.

Like, talking about, like, there was a tweet from... It says his name, like, Lindsay James. What's that guy? Conceptual James. He put out this little, like, meme, being, like, don't call them drag queens. Call them, like, some bullshit groomer thing. I forget the exact thing.

But, like, that specific style of rhetorical framing is, like, a pretext to extermination and genocide. That is what they're doing. And I think that is, right now, is what it crosses the line, is when they're creating these scapegoat groups that are going to be targeted and posing these groups as, like, a threat to civilization, that's where I kind of use that word.

Like, fascists, like, that is generally in my research where I start employing that versus, you know, some random guy who I'm talking to who, you know, wants there to be lower taxes and less regulation. Because, yeah, that position, as we've seen now, can eventually lead to the type of fascist policies. But I think that there is... When it comes to, like, people in your personal life

and when it comes to, like, regular people who are not politicians, I think having a little bit more discretion is useful because I think there's still a chance that some people who are currently conservative can not become fascists. Yeah, I would agree. I think in the US context, one sort of useful litmus test

for people on the right is, like, are the rules of the game more important than the outcome of the game? Like, so when you look at, like, the sort of fascism we saw around Donald Trump, right, like, there was a point where the outcome of the game, i.e. the maintenance of power, right, became more important than the rules of the game, i.e., like, basic human rights.

And I think that's a useful sort of... Is this person dangerous? I like Paxton's definition of fascism generally. It's not great, but it's... It's useful, yeah. Yeah, it's useful. And I think your scapegoat group one is really key. When people are scapegoating people

and they don't really give a fuck about how they eliminate those people or stop, quote-unquote, right? When people are seeking to use the machinery of state to eliminate people and ideas that they find uncomfortable by using the force of law against them, they're fascists.

And when people are supportive of ending democratic... Like, ending the democratic transfer of power in order to support an individual that they think embodies their conception of, like, what their country is, those people are fascists. Absolutely. And I think that it's one thing,

and I don't think it's usually useful if you're having a conversation with an individual to call them a fascist, even if they're behaving in ways that are kind of flashy, if you think that a productive conversation can be had that might move them in one direction or the other.

But at the end of the day, if somebody is supportive, for example, of a third term for Donald Trump, that person is supporting a fascist movement. Yes. And I don't think that there's a... I don't think it matters that, like, their individual reasons for doing it

may be less flashy than someone else's. Like, at the end of the day, they are supporting that. And that's kind of what matters to me. I think it's also worth taking a little bit of a look at what happened in neoconservatism in order to sort of understand what's going on here, because I think there was an important sort of fracture.

A, in terms of the fact that George Bush, like, basically orchestrated... G-dubs. Yeah, like, bait, bait. Like, he didn't technically orchestrate a coup, but he, like, he rigged an election such as to put him... It's like, so as to put him in power. Right?

Like, that's what the Brooks Brothers riot was. That's what... That's sort of the process that gets us to Bushwood in 2000s. And there... You know, this is an interesting moment, because if you look at what happens to conservatism over the sort of, like, the...

I don't know, the last 25 years of the 20th century, there's this interesting pivot where they make, where in order to... You know, if you look at, like, what is the conservative response to communism in 19... Like, 1939, right? It's just like, we're gonna be fascists. Right?

It's like, literally, we are going to be the Nazis. But, you know, by the time you get to, like, post-World War II, and by the time you get really to, like, the 70s and 80s, they start realizing that, like, people don't generally like fascism that much. And so, the form of anti-communism that they take starts to be this sort of, like, rights-based,

like, weird support for, like, freedom in human rights and, like, free markets and democracy. And there's this point where that stuff meets with, like, another kind of fascist politics, which is the sort of, like, the 2001-era state of exception stuff that happened after 9-11, where, you know, like, people start talking about the gloves coming off, and this is getting into your sort of, like,

looking at, like, Walter Benjamin's, like, conception of what fascism is, or am I blanking on that guy's name? Like, Carl Schmitt's stuff, right, where it's like, here is a part of the state that can just, like, destroy, like, that has sovereign power and can just sort of trample over the entire legal order in order to sort of perpetuate it, right?

So this is, like, okay, suddenly after 2001, like, after 9-11, there were just, like, people disappearing into torture dungeons, right? And you get this moment where, on the one hand, yeah, George W. Bush is one of these people who's, like, the sort of, like, freedom democracy people, but then beneath him is, you know, it collapses very quickly

into this, we are the torture dungeon stuff, and this willingness literally to rig elections. And I think that's this sort of important moment, because, like, there are sort of normal conservatives, right, who still have that kind of, like, freedom and liberal democracy, whatever thing. And they're not really that fascist kind of,

but in some sense, it doesn't matter that much institutionally, because the part of the Republican Party that survived was a combination of the torture dungeon, which is, like, Gina Haspel, like, and then Trump, who is the sort of emblem of this, like, the sort of, like, we're going to take the election, we're going to take power,

we're going to use the power of the state to just, like, murder everyone we don't like. And I don't know, like, I think, I think, like, you can find individual people who are conservatives who, I guess, like, aren't Nazis, but the

way that neoconservatism fragmented and the way that that kind of state of exception politics and that politics of sort of just, like, mass torture and then also the willingness to just steal elections, like, that, I don't know. That stuff, I think, forms this

another sort of core fascism that's there alongside the sort of queer extermination and stuff, and there, I don't know, these things fuse together in ways, and, yeah, I've rambled for long enough. We're going to do one more question,

and I think we cover a lot of upsetting things on the show, some things that maybe are not, you know, super fun to think about. We also cover some, like, hopeful stuff as well. But what's one thing that the crew who works in the show

due to decompress and clear our minds after, you know, wading through the trenches of the digital hellscape? Uh, pass. I feel like we might have answered something similar to this on the live show.

I saw Robert playing Cyberpunk 2077 last night, so I know there's at least one thing. It does allow me to pretend that Keanu Reeves is my friend, which is nice. See, so you... He's going to meet him first. He's very nice guy.

I like to go camping. I like to go outside. I like to swim in the ocean and ride my bike and hike and camp in a rock climb. Yeah, I second that. I need to go outside and just, even like a simple walk with trees and hiking, I think it really helps me just

decompress and be present again. Hanging out with queer people, they like not, and intentionally not talking about Twitter bullshit, just like going and doing something, just like playing around in the grass and just like

talking about gay shit. It rules. It's the self that heals the heart. Absolutely. Well, thank you everybody for listening. What's your answer? Me? Oh, see, I... I was going to try to just like... Nope!

Just like go right past that, wrap up the episode in a nice little bow. I don't know. I've been trying to get back into doing more kind of art stuff with my camera, whether that be photography or filmmaking, in like short form stuff. What else have I been doing? Yeah, I don't know.

Taking drugs. Oh, yeah. Wow. Shrooms. There it is. Shrooms are healing. Shocking. Yeah, incredible to say that on the podcast. Now you can wrap it up if you want to. Well, thank you everyone for listening to our Q&A episode.

That's what I do to relax. Thank you. See, that's the thing to do. That's how you can all... Actually, there is one person who has tried to skirt past this this question, Sophie. Yes, Sophie. What the hell?

She looks... What do you want? Sophie, you not only have to deal with, you know, all of the bad stuff that we talk about, but you also have to deal with us. So, what do you do to compress and clear your mind? De-compress. Well, first of all,

each and every one of you are the best. So, let's start there. I really like making food for my friends and meeting a friend for coffee and just walking outside or finding a little place

that's a local place and when you go in, you don't see anyone in there, but then you get to talk to the people that work there and then order a nice little dessert or something. It's that kind of thing. I love that.

I'm like, I have friends. That's literally what I read it. I said it and it sounded horrible. And then, obviously, having pets and being around animals is really solid, but it's also just like having a healthy balance of, you know,

the negative stuff, but really also putting your energy into a lot of the positive stories. I know that a lot of people feel like it could happen here, it tends to lean towards the negative, but I really feel like we're a hopeful show and I feel like as a network, CoolZone Media tries to lean towards the hope

and find, you know, the good and the bad and, you know, that's what we have shows. Like, CoolPeople did cool stuff, which is with Margaret Kiljoy that really helps balance out a lot of the other things. So, yeah, I think finding the good and the bad,

eating yummy food with your friends and petting all the pets you can. You know, I also think a huge thing for all of us is taking plenty of Alpha Brain supplements. I like to take them. That doesn't for us gamers. Thank you for listening to It Could Happen Here.

Have a Have a Good Year of Biscord. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say.

For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup.

Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with

forensic science is that it's not based on actual science. The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted

pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens

when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on

Trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23

I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut

who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Kreklev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth his beloved country the Soviet Union is falling

apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts and get your podcasts. To It Could Happen Here a podcast. Do you guys want to hear my Boston accent? Nope. No. I support you. That's it. That's my Boston.

Anderson literally started growling as you did that. That's how much he hates the Celtic. Everybody gets angry at my Boston accent. Oh jeez. That's Australian. What are you doing? Just pick one word and say it. Boston is the Australia

of the Northeast. In this episode, we're going to be going through our predictions for 2023. Prediction number one, Robert might not make it. Oh no. He's spiraling. Sophie, you predict that every year and it's barely ever true.

Little piece of you guys every year. Robert's going to get too drunk buy a plane ticket to Boston and get lost and never return. That would make me so sad. It's okay, Garrison. I can blend in with my seamless Boston accent. No.

No one will be able to understand you. You'll be like a foreign country just like trying to get in. Classic Boston. Why are you just doing Australia? It's Boston. You know, the home of the koala bear. It's not my fault that all accents

eventually loop back to being Australian. I respect Garrison constantly trying to get back on track. So yeah. What are we doing today? What are we doing, Garr? Who are we? We're trying. Well, where could happen here? The same people on this one is the last episode is Shereen, me, Garrison. James, Sophie, our producer

Mia and Bad Boston impersonator Robert Evans and we're talking about what we think might happen in 2023. I feel, I don't remember all of our predictions for last year but I feel like we got most of them correct.

Yeah, I think we were right about everything. Yeah, so to continue that trend what do we think is going to happen this year? I think Elon Musk might wind up sawed to pieces by the Saudis. There's like a solid 18% chance of that.

There is a non-zero chance. You know, okay, the thing that's actually the most sort of surprising to me about that is that the soft bank guy is still alive. As much Saudi money as Elon has blown through the soft bank guy

like fucking the soft bank guy lit the GDP of a regular country on fire in Saudi money. It's so funny. Investing in the most batshit companies in the world. It's amazing how bad they are with their money. They need to lose money

by being landlords. Do you know how hard it is to lose money with a landlord business? There's a German guy who wrote a book about it. It's so true. Anyways, I think we'll get a really good leak from the British Royal Family

doing something absolutely despicable. That's just a thing that has to happen this season. It's really high quality audio or video, hopefully video. I don't want to see a video of what Prince Andrew is doing. And then it will make UK politics even worse than it already is.

Not possible. That part I disagree with, but yes to horrifying leak from the British Royal Family. Horrifying leak, yeah. I honestly I don't know how British politics could be worse. That's fair, that's fair. Keir Starmer is going to win an election

and somehow make it even worse despite being notionally the left party in the United Kingdom. I gotta say somebody has to get you people on lockdown for the names. Keir Starmer, that's not a name. Wait, are you not familiar with Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition? Unbelievable. I'm livid.

Yeah, well, we had Boris Johnson and it really can't get any worse. Yeah, I never forgave you guys for letting a Boris into power. Can I get my bad pop culture prediction out of the way? I think Pete Davidson will date

a high profile politician in the next year. No, no. Sophie, I have a better one. Pete Davidson is going to date. That's a free space prediction. No, sorry. I have a better one. Pete Davidson is going to date Grimes.

That's on everybody's list. I've seen that seven times. I think it's going to impregnate someone. That's my take. That's boring. I think that we're going to find out something juicier. All right. Well,

it'd be easy to stick with pretty grim predictions like, oh, there's going to be a mass shooting at a drag show. It's going to happen. Because that seems to be a good chance. That's less to prediction and more just like, looking at where the temperature is going.

Can I do my like hack version of that? That's slightly less hack. I think we're going to get an actual shootout between armed fascists and armed anti-fascists in a city that the press actually cares about. So I'm not Portland. That is entirely possible.

We haven't had a shootout in Portland yet. I mean, that's the thing. There's been an exchange of gunfire. We've had the same fucking time and make Daniel's life hard. One of you speak at a time. Because we hate Daniel. Welcome to 2023, Daniel.

I love you, Daniel. 2023 is the year we break Daniel. We have had an exchange of gunfire though. No, we have not. I think she means like... Oh my God, it has not gotten better. It hasn't gotten better. We have had a person shooting into a crowd

and another person shooting that person. We have not had two different people exchange gunfire with each other. And neither have we had groups of people exchange gunfire with each other. That has not occurred yet. I agree. I think there's a real good chance it does.

I'm more worried about the police opening fire on a group of anti-fascists than the fascists joining them. But all of those things are on the fucking table and it gets more likely every time we roll the dice on that shit. One thing that gives me some hope

is how the recent events in Texas have been going. The size of the community that has been showing up at the last couple of drag events and how outnumbered the right has been as a general rule. If anything is going to make it less likely

that either the police or the fascists fire, it's being tremendously outnumbered. So I don't know. I'm in between hopeful and despairing about where the future of that's going to be. Here's my hopeful prediction.

Crypto.com Arena will not be named Crypto.com Arena for the end of this year. That's a good one. That is my hope and dream. I do think that Crypto.com is... Well, it looks like Binance

is on its way to collapsing. That's nice. Slightly less badly than FTX did, but it's not going to be around much longer. Crypto.com is kind of in a similar space. I think there's actually a real chance that we see the functional death of cryptocurrency.

It's possible that we've already seen it. Does that mean my stadium gets to be named a normal thing and not something viciously embarrassing, Robert? No, it's still going to be embarrassed. Because they paid up front for that, I think. FTX paid $150 million up front to get their name on that stadium

in Florida. They are trying to change it, but I think they're stuck with it for a little while. Scam Stadium. I'd rather be called Scam Stadium. That would be great. Yeah. Gotta go fund me going.

The Charles Ponzi Memorial Stadium. I still don't understand how you go from here's office supplies to that. It's so embarrassing. And doesn't even flow. We're not doing this right now. Yeah, I think that we should change the crypto.com

stadium. We should name it after Bad Dragon, that company that makes dildos themed after mythological creatures. Yeah. It's based. This isn't like hopeful, but I feel like there's going to be another virus because there are some people that are going too hard

in the other direction. I feel like every year there might be a new virus introduced that we're going to have to grapple with. And with it, new racist theories about where it came from. But we're past the point of being able to lock down.

You know what I mean? I think that's what's going to make it stop. Yeah. Yeah, part of one of the scary things about the COVID response is that how politicized the concept of a lockdown or mask wearing has gotten

means that there's effectively no way for US culture to stem the spread of an airborne virus. It's impossible. There's not even a chance. Yeah. We don't use the parachute. We lit the parachute on fire.

Yeah. To own the libs. I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but I haven't done it because I don't think it's feasible for work. But I think people are going to start using flip phones more. I think people are going to step away from

traditions. There's even a psychological study going on right now where a bunch of teens did that and they've reported much better lives or whatever the shit. I would love to do that myself, but I think more people are going to go that route. I saw a graph the other day saying

the happiest that American teens have reported themselves being was the early 2000s right around when I graduated high school. All we could do with our phones was text each other to buy drugs and play snake. What we need is the ability to play snake and buy catamine.

Hope to do it at the same time. Yep. That's what it's going to do the arena next. It's going to be the catamine arena. In LA. Well, do you know who could buy the arena? Rob Evans.

Any of these products and services that support this podcast. And we're back and this is a section that we're calling Death. This is the Death segment. Who is going to die in 2023? Can I start this one?

It's going to be Noam Chomsky. That's who I'm calling. I think Noam Chomsky is going to die. I think we are going to have the worst two or three weeks. A lot of cursed media that we've seen in years. It's going to make

48 hours. It's going to make pog patrol discourse look like a game. People are unironically going to be doing Stalin as a POC discourse again. You have to pause and explain it.

You have to pause and explain all of this because nobody, no reasonable person is going to know what you're talking about. We have to blaze through that and pretend it never happens. I want to know what pog patrol is. I legitimately refuse to explain that.

If you want me to explain it, you need to pay me more than I'm being paid. Okay. I'm sure someone will DM me now to explain it. Thank you very much. They're the people who are behind all of this insufferable left-wing discourse that occasionally breaks through to the mainstream.

They did round two of Anne Frank, white privilege discourse. Oh, no! Jump off a bridge. Death. Who is going to die? You think Elon Musk is going to die? I'm making a Hail Mary.

Elon Musk. It's going to be Musk. Drug addiction. Maybe he overdies. Maybe he shoots himself with that happy fake gun yoga in his duffle bag when he shoots himself in the back of the head by accident. That's very specific, Draves.

It's almost like you played that out. It's almost like someone already did it. In London. I think Joe Biden's going to die. I think it's just makes sense physiologically. I have that

in my head too. I didn't specifically say Joe. I said one of the two people running for president in 2024 that are the clear front-runners. One of the two will die causing the election to be even more stupid than it already is. My runner-up is Nancy Pelosi.

Maybe Nancy Pelosi will date she's not a speaker. If she dies, it doesn't matter. Runching, she'll be at vineyard, she's going to be thriving. All that will happen if Pelosi dies is that people will sell out of those weird political

action figures. We'll just sell out of all the Nancy Pelosi ones. That's all that will happen if she dies. I'm not saying I want her to die or not want her to die. I just think those are the two people that every time I see them, I'm like how are, how? I feel that way with Boris Johnson.

That man has lived a rough one. I wouldn't be shocked if he... You know what would be the funniest thing? You know what would be the funniest thing based on it being 2023? What if the king dies a year after the queen dies? There's a decent chance.

You've seen his fingers. That man's not healthy. That would be so funny. It would be pretty funny if it ended up with Meghan Markle being queen after all just because those people hate her so much. That would be pretty funny. What I will throw out there, I think there's a decent chance it's Fuentes. I think he's gotten

Nick Fuentes. His profile has increased so much so quickly. That he gets killed by one of his enemies or fans? I think there's a good chance it's one of his fans. He's already had... That wasn't Louis B. That was George Lincoln Rockwell.

Part of why I think there's a chance of that is the weird sex-related drama he's had with a number of his followers. He's already messing and waiting into those waters. He's done shit like going over their rooms

with a blacklight and stuff. He's had weird uncomfortable relationships with his followers that are distressingly personal in a way that makes me think that one of them might lose it on him.

I don't know. I think there's a non-zero chance it's Fuentes. He gets swatted a lot. He gets swatted. I'm less worried about that. I think like, murdered by another weirdo right-winger. There's a decent chance. Jason just had a good thing on Fuentes.

I think Rudy's dying. Oh! Which Rudy? Giuliani. I disagree. He's either going to live forever or he's already dead. I think he died four years ago to be fair.

That man is made of wax and melting. He is thriving. I just read a great interview with him in Cigara Fish and Auto magazine. My favorite fact about Rudy, you're not supposed to inhale cigars unless you're one of a tiny chunk of people who think

that's the right way to smoke them and Rudy's an inhaler. Do you know who else is an inhaler? Steven Crowder. He's had a series of pretty significant medical issues. Steven Crowder goes back in the hospital

and I think he'll survive, but he will have to live and have to be hooked up to machinery to be able to keep going. He's going to be doing his show while hooked up to medical equipment.

That's another one of my predictions. Jordan Peterson is not healthy, right? Is he still... There's a Twitter dedicated to if he's going to die or not, it's pretty funny. There is a Twitter dedicated to if Jordan Peterson's going to die or not.

Good point, Shirin. Speaking of Twitter accounts, I do think this is the year. Kissinger. No, I don't. It's never Kissinger. Always bet against Kissinger. Yeah.

He's going to stay alive. At least to see another electric rig somewhere in the world or a coup. Wait, he's 99. I think he gets to 101. He gets to like 108. He carries on

way longer than what he should. 108, 109 maybe. How are people, because I know several of us have said this in the past, they're talking about Kanye. Is he going to make it? There's a decent chance. Absolutely seriously.

Absolutely seriously. There's a decent chance that he dies from a number of reasons. Garrison and I have talked about this a lot. We both are on that side. I agree with that, I think. I think the real money is on does Kanye take anyone with him?

Oh my God. What if he takes a flutes? What if Kanye and flutes go together? Garrison, there's not terrible numbers on that. That's so likely.

That is not a zero percent. I just got a single spark of hope in my dead soul. I think this is the year we lose OJ. Oh wow. I saw him give an interview the other day and he looked

unwell. OJ is just like Kissinger. He somehow keeps winning, even though he shouldn't. The smart money is never on betting against the juice. Oh my God. Do you know who else loves betting?

The products and services that support our projects. That's gross. Michael Jordan's dad for a while. Robert. That man was murdered. The guy who founded the donut shop is a Cambodian guy. He loves betting.

That's his problem. Are we on break or is this all before the break? Who's to say so? We have no idea. All right, we're bad. Any honorable mentions? Like any last throws? I really hope it is in Britney Spears.

Thank you so much. All right. Let's see. Final predictions for 2023. There is not the midterms. There's no significant kind of election this year, at least inside the US.

This is a prediction that's going to hurt Sophie. I think something really bad comes out about Harry Styles. I'm praying for it. That hurt Shereen too, first of all. Something really damaging is going to come out about Harry Styles. I saw that.

The only predictions I saw about Harry Styles was that he was going to come out with a val of celibacy. Let's go with that instead. Honestly, that is so likely. I think Garrison's on the right track though. I think whether it be Harry or somebody else,

I think there's going to be a huge pop celebrity scandal. Hopefully it's not Harry. There was one. Every year there's a celebrity scandal. I don't know if it's relevant, but Nick Carter. That's right, Sophie. I don't know if it's relevant

because he's like 40. Nick Carter's going through some shit with sexual assault. In the early 2000s, he assaulted a bunch of people and the main person that's... Since they're Backstreet Brothers, I'm like Backstreet Brothers.

Backstreet Boys who are Cuban Honors. Oh, yikes, didn't know that. I think someone more relevant than Carter will be exposed. Another prediction that's less of a prediction, more just looking at current trends

and recent reporting, that there will be a big shift away from like... a shift away from solar towards nuclear fusion. We're going to... I think the fusion stuff's too far out.

But no, no, no. I think on the governmental level, whether or not it works or not, there's going to be a big shift towards talking about fusion as the solution to climate stuff. I think that'll particularly be influential

around people who don't want to support meaningful climate change mitigation activities now. I agree with you there. Yeah, like a shield. I have a China take, but it's really hard to get good information about exactly

what... The thing that's been happening as a result of the protests is that the CCP's done like... I don't know, they're doing a traditionally really stupid CCP response,

which is that they've basically flipped their policy on its head in a lot of places. They've gone very quickly to mobilizing state resources to keep people in lockdowns, to mobilizing state resources, to forcing people to go to work.

And it's really unclear exactly what, like, how bad the COVID waves are going to get is. I don't think it's going to be as bad as the really... There's a lot of predictions that are like a million people are going to die

in six months. I don't think that's true. But I think COVID actually does get into this sort of like... China has this very large population of like very, like very, very not vast, like, old people

basically, like particularly in rural areas. And if COVID gets into those people and those people start dying, I think we're going to see shit in China that makes like the current protests look like a fucking joke. Like, I think we're going to see like, like people, like party officials are going to be getting, like, dragged through

the fucking streets. Like, it's I don't know, like, I... This has been one of my long running beliefs about Chinese society, which is that I don't think you can actually kill a million people in China and not or like, even like a 40 or 50,000 people, I don't think you can have the government

just straight up do policies that kill that many people without stuff going really, really fucking wild really quickly. And I think people are underestimating the extent to which, especially in these rural areas, if

those people start dying en masse, I think shit's going to get fucking wild. Yeah, that's my... That's my 2023 China hot take. Alrighty. Alrighty. I bet someone does something horrific

with a 3D printed gun of some kind. Oh no. Yep. And there's a whole bunch of panic and... Yeah. The next thing I was going to say, my prediction was going to be there's going to be significant pressure on a federal level to ban the production

of 3D printed guns. Yeah, and on an international level. Yeah, because I think there's a really good chance that happens somewhere in Europe in the same way that, like, you had the Badeclan massacre kind of done using

remilitarized, demilled, like, prop guns. I think there's a good chance that we get something maybe out of Germany with a high body count that pushes internationally for restrictions and crackdowns. Anyone have a prediction on who Trump will pick as his running mate?

Ooh. Sarah Palin. I think it could be me. He's bringing it back. I think I could get it. Honestly though, like, if you're on the ground in Alaska, almost every single person that, because Jamie was just working on a story for us

in that space in Alaska, they like her there. They're like, she's not that bad, we don't get it. Literally, she's so popular. I don't know who Trump's going to pick. There's so many people he could that feel like too obvious

or too much, like, they're too popular that they could threaten Trump's, like, singular brand, because I don't think he wants another big voice. He wants someone to be slightly passive. Like, he's not going to pick like Marjorie exactly.

I don't know which one, but I think he'll pick a black Republican. Larry Elder. Yeah, whoever the quietest of them is. Larry Elder's too loud. Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker, oh god. Yeah.

Garrison, don't speak that into being. I can imagine that. That is my prediction. But Walker lost and he does not like losers, which is why he hated John McCain, who lost to Vietnam.

I think I'm probably, I think I see him picking a woman. Oh, I think I see him picking a woman which is what will be good for his optics. I just don't know what, I just don't know of a woman that's either, like, high profile enough, but still quiet enough that

Sarah Palin. No, he's not going to do Palin. People will be loving Sarah Palin. It doesn't matter what they love, what matters is that Trump doesn't want somebody who has the potential of distracting attention from him. And she's been a big enough

media figure in her own right that I think he'd be worried about it. No, they hate each other now. I'm just saying, that's the vibe I'm getting from what I think he thinks will help him. Like a black man that can speak

the same way Kanye speaks to his audience like maybe before the anti-Semitic shit. But this is a black man Republican I think is what will happen. Yeah, I don't know. I think he has two flanks that he can be hit from in the Republican Party. And one flank is just like the anti-vax flank

and then his second flank is like someone who tries to, like, tap into the evangelical voters who were kind of pissed off at him. I mean, I feel like DeSantis will probably go after that. But I think he's going to pick someone

either to shure him up in the anti-vax or he's going to pick someone like someone who every evangelical knows and who no one else has ever fucking heard of. I think the latter is more likely with those options. Yeah. Or somebody from his family.

I think he's that. That would be really funny. Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Yes! No, it's going to be Ivanka. Yeah, I think she's too woke. I think it would absolutely be Ivanka. Yeah.

She's on the dark side. He doesn't have an ounce of respect for the rest of them. He doesn't want to fuck them, that's why. That's actually not unlikely. Like, if he is going to pick a woman I think that is actually that's who I would predict. My money is still on Herschel Walker.

Yeah. But I think that is not a non-zero chance. Or he goes somebody that's not even remotely in the game at all. Yeah, absolutely. That's likable in either a religious community

or somebody that's on TV but isn't somebody that's on TV and in your face. Yeah. But yeah, so like he's not picking like a Kimberly Guilfoyle or anything like that, which would be so fucking awful. Oh my god! I thought about it, it's really bad for all of our ears.

But yeah, so I don't know. It's gonna be bad, okay? Can I ask a slightly like related election take on that? Do you guys think that Mike Pence is going to run against Trump? No.

He's making a stick about it. No, of course not. I don't think he'll actually run. I think he'll just if there's somebody that he deems that's like, you know, a true Republican and a true conservative

then he will... Pence will back DeSantis. He'll back the shit out of that. I feel like there's gonna be another person who's not DeSantis who's gonna like... I agree, there's gonna be another person. DeSantis, like that man on a stick, he has no charisma.

Robert and I don't think he's gonna run. We don't think he's gonna run, we think he'll wait it out for the next one. I don't think he's going to run if Trump is running in particular. Like, especially if Kanye is still in the news. It's too messy and he's young enough that he doesn't need to win this time.

And he's so unfortunately well-liked in the state of Florida that like he... Yeah. He's got a swing state. He's safe there. But he's smart enough to know that like going up against Trump even if he wins could get enough stink on him that it fucks him over

in the future as opposed to just holding on. He'll be 46 in 28, which is one of the youngest... would make him still one of our youngest presidents. Yeah. And he could spend four more years just like you know, sniping at whoever...

Yeah, just being a real big old piece of shit. Word. Giant turd. Well, I hope none of us giant next year. I hope none of us... That's how my anxiety brain works. I had to say it so it's not true. You know what I mean? That's how my anxiety...

Thank you, Serene. I appreciate that. I too wish that. Yeah. We got some work to its plan. Y'all don't catastrophize? No? Okay, that's fine. Is that it? I think that's...

Twitter will die. Twitter.com will not be a website... That's a very likely... I think there'll be a big shake-up with... There'll be a big story about healthcare and how certain people are not diagnosed

over other people and it's going to become a huge thing and there's going to be a huge story about that at some point. Here's hoping. Yeah, I mean, that would... There's been, you know, little baby stories about certain things, but I think it's going to become a

global issue. Yeah, and more... We will see more bullshit about migration than we have done. Climate change is getting worse. Everything that drives migration is getting worse and

it will continue to be this fucking strawman that Republicans use. So, we're already seeing Y2K and early 2000s nostalgia and the bizarre thing is that there's not much of a culture after that because around that time

is when we started to reset into like 80s nostalgia. So, I'm wondering what the next nostalgia cycle is going to be. Things like in Britain, like the whole landfill indie culture that came around in like the late

first decade of this century. Yeah, you're right, you're right. Maybe like hippie 70s. I saw a video of a youth. A youth trying on one of those cursed

stretch comb headbands. Stop it. Those things fucking hurt. You're gonna hurt yourself. You're gonna poke something. It's gonna be bad. They're not cute. No. You don't want them back. We don't need that. Okay, wristbands are already back.

I already keep seeing them. And the little plastic bangles back. The butterfly clips back. I see the snaps. Oh, my God. Please don't bring back. I should hear me. I heard. New metal is coming back.

We're gonna do it. We're gonna get new metal. We're gonna get early 2000s like goth bullshit coming back. That's already started. My prediction is that ska will continue to be the most relevant genre of music in American

culture. A fact unchanged for 30 years. Alright, well thanks for listening to our predictions episode everybody. We'll talk. We'll talk to you. We'll be back. You know. It's daily.

Stop talking about a death. Yeah. Sorry. 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 Bullock. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic. And occasionally ridiculous. Deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed

the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another,

do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From I Heart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find

your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful

lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me

as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize

that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little

band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories.

But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with the Soviet Union. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost.

This is the crazy story of the 313 days he's spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

Apple Podcast, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Things fall apart. The center will not hold, and journalists will make a pretty good living writing about it all. It's a good time to work the dystopia

beat. The pillars of our society have been crumbling for most of my adult life, and probably yours too. One exception to this, up until recently, has been the tech industry. When the rest of the economy shit the bed back in 2008, big tech

roared into the gap to prop up the groaning timbers of capitalism. Sure, the housing market was in freefall. Huge numbers of people were out of work, and American infrastructure was crumbling like a twice-baked pot brownie. But then Steve Jobs magicked up the iPhone, and the iPad, and the app store.

Google brought us Android, and a dizzying array of smart and connected devices followed. Companies like Uber disrupted massive industries, and briefly made hailing a cab the cheapest it's ever been, although they did this by lighting massive piles of VC cash on fire.

It was in this period of what would prove to be irrational exuberance that I started my career as a tech journalist. That was the job title my boss gave me, and it's what everybody else in the industry called themselves. In reality, most of us were just extensions of big tech's PR agencies.

All the big tech news websites of that era, Slash Gear in Gadget, Boy Genius Review, and the place I worked for, I4U News, made most of their money off the back of a peculiarity in Google's search algorithm. The gist of it was this.

If a bunch of websites all published articles that were basically rewritten press releases about, say, a new gadget, or rewrites of someone else's report on rumors about an Apple product, Google would assume that this was a hot topic, and they would bump everybody up on the algorithm. You could make

a tidy profit just paying a handful of writers to rewrite press releases or copy reports from some of the few sites doing actual tech journalism. And this is where I got my start in reporting. I wrote 10 articles a day, 5 days a week for several years, until Google fixed their algorithm and

wiped my silly little industry out in the blink of an eye. It's fine. In this case, we kind of had it coming. It was nice to get paid to sit home and write, and the experience putting out a shitload of words every single day that were polished enough to print was pretty good for me. But it wasn't journalism.

And so, while I was doing it, I started seeking opportunities to actually get out into the world and do original reporting. And that's what first brought me to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2010. CES, as it's known, is a tech industry insider event

for analysts, manufacturers, and media. They come and they show off new products and gadgets and apps, and journalists walk around and look at everything and then write articles about it. Companies spend millions of dollars every year on massive multi-acre showrooms for their products

and dream up ludicrous demonstrations of their new tech. One that sticks out to me from, again, about 13 years ago, is watching some company or another charge an electric car inductively. That means there was nothing actually plugged into the vehicle. They just parked it like you would put your phone on an inductive charger,

and they charged it that way. The whole process was so energy-intensive that it dimmed the lights in the Las Vegas Convention Center, which, if you've never been inside of it, is about the size of a small city. The spectacle was always the best part of CES, and with all the money pouring into

big tech, it was a great place to be a reporter. Every big booth had free wet bars and piles of free swag. I left every year with a sack full of USB drives and thousands of dollars in products to test. There was so much goddamn money everywhere that even a dumb kid like me with no real connections

could do okay. Collapse was always and has always been present at CES, however. Looming in the background over doomed product categories and vast, tottering businesses that didn't realize they were already dead. I'm thinking primarily of RIM, the people who used to make

blackberries here. Another good example would be Motorola. In 2011, their booth was one of the largest at CES. Now, Apple was, and still is, the biggest name on the block when it comes to making consumer gadgets, but they don't go to CES, preferring to hold

their own annual event to announce new products. This has always irritated the people who run the show, and so in the early 2010s, when Android started to blow up as a rival to Apple's iOS, a huge deal was made about Motorola's droid line of phones. They actually had to license

the name from Lucasfilm for obvious reasons. In 2010, Motorola won the Best in Show Award for their droid phone, despite the fact that they hadn't actually brought a working example of it to the show. Something that kind of pissed me off at the time. Now, today, Motorola's

basically dead. It's a shadow of its former self. It's been bought and sold several times. His companies, like Samsung and HTC, beat the piss out of it on the open market. Other famous collapses from CES's past include the entire 3D television market. If you can remember

those heady days after the release of the first Avatar movie, the tech industry blew billions in R&D and ad money trying to convince everyone that people would actually sit down in their actual ass living rooms and wear fucking 3D glasses to watch movies or TV. It was preposterous and obviously

doomed. I have fond memories of harassing PR hacks on the show floor, asking them, isn't this just a big con from the entertainment industry to make it harder for people to pirate media? Are there any actual signs that regular people will pay thousands of dollars for one of these things? At one point, a rep

from Samsung, I think, tried to show me a glasses-free 3D TV. It only worked if a trained professional told you precisely where to stand in order to view it. I laughed so hard I snorted whiskey and lukewarm Starbucks onto a stack of glossy product brochures. Despite how obviously

doomed it all was, the internet filled with thawning articles about all of the exciting new 3D televisions that were surely going to be in homes in the very near future. Now, because the internet moves quickly, most of the websites that did tech news back then are dead, and the ones that remain

are filled with busted links. But you can still find monuments to the failure of 3D television if you know where to look. Take this excerpt from a PC World article on the best of CES 2010. It's titled, The 3D Revolution is Here and underneath a broken link to

an image that is no longer available is the line. I don't think it's a false start this time. The 3D product plans for the coming year represent the initial salvos of the coming 3D revolution. Panasonic's 3D demos were among the most convincing, but the best implementation I saw, unfortunately,

is one that won't be coming to market anytime soon. Sony showed us its 24.5 inch 3D OLED HDTV is a technology demo only. Now in retrospect, I think the hilarious failure of 3DTV technology is actually what prepared me more than anything

for crypto. If you actually just go over that paragraph I read a little earlier, you could replace the words referring specifically to 3D TVs with various shitcoins or blockchain related tech and it would more or less work. The thing that set me off with crypto was how similar

the claim was that like this thing is obviously legit because look at how many people are talking about it. It's gotta be real now because suddenly it's all over the news. This is why folks like Sam Bankman-Fried bought the naming rights to stadiums and stuck FTX and crypto.com up

as publicly as they possibly could. It was all a con to convince casual observers that the crypto market was a serious thing they should invest in. It's one of those things that really made me think a lot about the role journalists play in hyping up nonsense like this and you can see it in 3DTVs

and crypto and a bunch of other spaces. A big part of what convinces people that this stuff is real is suddenly they start seeing articles everywhere talking about it. Suddenly the press all over the place is talking about the price of bitcoin or talking about this new thing as if it's going to actually change people's lives

and so folks who maybe are not super high information media consumers just assume that okay I guess this is here to stay. It's a danger that still exists. All of this brings me to CES 2023. Collapse looms

larger over the proceedings this year than at any other prior event I've attended. Prior to the pandemic attendance at CES had topped out at around 200,000 people. Last year though only 40,000 showed which is probably still vastly too many folks to cram into hotel conference rooms

and can see in no restaurants during a pandemic and yes CES 2022 was a super spreader event Korea particularly had a problem as a result of it. The show itself for decades a central event in the global tech industry seems to be teetering it is not alone there. The

top 10 big tech stocks lost a combined 4.6 trillion dollars in market cap in 2022. That's significantly more than the GDP of the United Kingdom around 3.2 trillion or the state of California, 3.6 trillion. At CES

the rot is most evident in the utter lack of any kind of hype beast product this year. So far I've seen a flying hydrogen car or at least I've seen 3D renders of one. Also it's meant for formula one style races not actual civilian use. The guy at the booth somewhat angrily told me the

anticipated retail price was around 3 million dollars. The Macca Flying Car was one of many products that I looked into at CES unveiled which is one of the headline events of the show. It's basically a bunch of manufacturers and booths showing off their gadgets to

an audience of journalists to drink heavily from an open bar, walk around and prod things. In years past smartphones and tablets and other consumer gadgets tended to be the main focus. But all that kind of stuff is boring as hell now. The smartphone market has stabilized it's just not as exciting

as it used to be and CES knows it. The big hype it unveiled was around a mix of electronic and autonomous vehicle technology and virtual reality. Now at present I'm not in a good position to thoroughly analyze the specific promises made by individual autonomous driving companies at CES.

I'll just note that TechCrunch normally all in for hype about this kind of stuff. Published an article last October titled It's Time to Admit Self-Driving Cars Aren't Going to Happen. Here's a relevant quote Ford announced that it would be winding down Argo AI, the company backed

by itself and fellow automaker Volkswagen focusing on developing full level 4 autonomous driving technologies. Ford explained their justification in doing so when they released their Q3 earnings a few hours later, noting that not only were they shutting down Argo but they were also essentially deprioritizing L4

technologies altogether to instead focus on advanced driver assistance systems with internal resources. Ford CEO Jim Farley justified this by saying on the company's earnings call Wednesday evening that profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off and we won't necessarily have to create that technology

for ourselves. Now obviously autonomous technology will of course have niche applications automating transport of heavy loads at job sites and mines where routes are predictable and controlled. But mass adoption of full level 4 autonomous driving technology is at present

a fantasy. The same is true for one of the other major product categories at CES unveiled, virtual reality metaverse nonsense. The fact that Facebook let 15 billion dollars on fire last year chasing Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dreams has convinced some people

that the idea is inevitable. This excerpt from a market watch article published during CES is representative. You can see the same thought process that led people astray with 3D TVs and crypto. In the long run the metaverse will be a major substitute for in-person conventions like CES, said Jun Nichiguchi

CEO of Teraru a Japanese company developing its own metaverse. So one of the barriers to any kind of popular metaverse is the fact that VR is actually not as immersive as it needs to be. The technology does a pretty impressive job of convincing your eyes that you are

in fact somewhere else and this is pretty neat. But the rest of your body is inevitably standing or sitting awkwardly in a room somewhere. This has led to a whole host of products that are in development right now that attempt to engage the rest of your body and basically trick it

into believing that you're somewhere else. I tried two products at CES that were meant to do this. The first was the tact suit X from Behaptix. It uses haptic feedback technology which is the stuff that makes your phone buzz when you press a button on your touch screen. Companies like

Behaptix hope to use advanced versions of the tech to mimic physical sensation. This would make the metaverse feel much less awkward and dissociated and also provide a whole new market for online sex workers. There are several of these suits at CES and all of them seem to have won innovation awards or at least

their honorees in the CES innovation awards which is a thing that basically anyone seems to get if they make something expensive enough and bring it to the show. To be frank I think these suits are bullshit. The one slightly cool thing about the tact suit is that the gloves, it had

gloves and a feet component I was able to test the gloves and the actual chest suit thing. The gloves do a pretty okay job of emulating a physical keyboard or at least a small keyboard on like a smart phone style device. Now that is not a cool enough thing for someone

to pay hundreds of dollars and deal with the hassle of wearing heavy battery powered gloves every day. The Behaptix folks eagerly showed me how their suit could simulate hugging and touching another human being in VR and this seemed to be the major selling point they saw for what they were bringing to the table. I actually tried

all this and it was among the saddest experiences of my life. Hugging someone in a haptic suit through VR feels like having a dozen or so in 64 rumble packs activate up your chest and arms. If you touch a virtual person's shoulder your hand will buzz and vibrate.

Now, buzzing and vibrating are not sensations I attribute physical intimacy with a physical person. I actually found this attempt at mimicking the sensation of human contact much more disturbing than the lack of contact in most VR experiences. The tech industry has also pinned

a lot of hopes on augmented reality. I think this is closer to being realistic but there is still a metric fuck ton of vaporware and snake oil products often marketed as increasing accessibility. One example would be the Luvik. This is a device you wear around your neck. It's roughly the size of a pair of headphones.

It's supposed to buzz on one side or the other of your body to let you know when to turn, all the while delivering audio map directions for you. Luvik's press materials highlight what a win this is for accessibility, saying Luvik is a device designed to solve the challenges of those who have difficulty

with spatial cognition. It is an IoT Internet of Things device that is worn around your neck and uses tactile notifications and bone conduction voice to guide the user along the way naturally. Now, this tech does identify a real need but I'm sorry to say, it does not work at all. I tried this thing. Luvik's people

put it on me and ran through a walking route of New York City. I couldn't tell which side of my body was being buzzed so that was useless. It just felt like a smart phone was ringing on the back of my neck and the speakers weren't loud enough to hear directions. Now, when I mentioned this, the Luvik people told me, well there's too much noise

in the conference room for you to hear it. Of course, New York City being famously quiet. And then there's the stuff that I suspect was just outright snake oil rather than being broken like the Luvik. This is probably best embodied by the electric circuit I saw there that's supposed to stimulate your brain

to reduce your stress while you sleep. They advertised, I think the number was 80% reduction in stress while you sleep. This is not a product I feel the need to review. Some claims are not worth taking seriously and this is one of them. So far, I've seen little at CES that struck me as likely

to be a massive financial success but there were some potentially groundbreaking products on display. Unfortunately, nearly all of these were in the realm of health and medical technology. Let me explain why this is troubling with an example from the show. The most potentially influential device

I saw there was called Viral Warn by Optiv. It is a multiple use breath analyzer self-test that will tell you if you are positive for COVID-19, RSV, or influenza. It just lights up if you're positive for one of them. They promise that in the future it'll tell you what you have

and say, eh, that's still useful, right? Still a hell of a lot better than anything we've got right now. Rather than sticking a thing up your nose, you just blow into this thing like a breath analyzer. It's about the size of a key fob and you can charge it with a normal USB cable. It can be used dozens of times before being reloaded.

Optiv's rough price point is around $100. If this thing works the way they say it does, I cannot exaggerate what a big deal it would be. Imagine being able to blow into a little device and know in a couple of seconds if you're safe in a store or a bar or a party go see an elderly relative

for a birthday. Lives could be saved by this thing if it works. And to their credit, the good folks at Optiv immediately told me that this was not on sale yet as it was still waiting for FDA approval. I take this as a good side and I sincerely hope it works as well as advertised. But products like this

do present a problem for the tech press. When I'm at a show like CES it's generally easy to determine if something has promise. By stepping to a booth for a company advertising rugged speakers well, I can drop those speakers from a height, I can drop stuff onto them, I can throw them,

I can test if they're rugged because I can try to break them and if I can't then they're rugged. Likewise I can strap on a VR suit and I can tell you if it makes the experience more immersive. Neither I nor any other members of the press can tell you how well a medical diagnostic device works

in the same manner. This isn't anyone's fault but as connected tech and AI are included in more healthcare devices the potential for snake oil and for dangerous failures to generate mass hype increases exponentially. I want to be clear that the medical devices I have seen so far

at CES do not strike me as suspicious in any way. Company representatives were extremely good at explaining what stage in the FDA approval process they were at and I saw some really cool shit. My favorite was probably a new streamlined AED from LifeAZ at $1,000 or $35

a month with a 4-5 years shelf life. This thing makes having a defibrillator on hand affordable for regular people. It's extremely light and small and can be easily carried in a backpack. I do have a little bit of medical training and I tried this thing out on a dummy in test mode. I can confirm it appears to work

like any other more expensive AED. The device is still awaiting FDA approval but it has been approved and is being sold in France and Germany so I feel pretty good saying this thing probably works the way LifeAZ says it does. And then there's my favorite product from CES Unveiled the Nancy Domestic Violence App

from Athbash which is a French company. This was first suggested to me via one of the most awkward PR emails I've ever received. Forward Media Alert! Groundbreaking Domestic Violence Reporting App launching at CES 2023. And when I got it in my email

it just said Forward Media Alert Groundbreaking Domestic Violence which, fun thing to get in your inbox. In fairness they're very nice PR lady. There's probably not a non-awkward way to title an email about this kind of thing. The app itself is really innovative though. It provides you

with options to record voice or video and to take photos of documents or to photographically document your own injuries. All the data that you save is stored off site so you take a picture or you record audio and it's immediately off the phone and off the app. You actually can't access it

without contacting the company directly to get it. All of it is stored on the cloud and it's also on the blockchain which is used to verify data integrity. Making this probably the first blockchain related product I've ever heard of with a realistic use case. Nancy seems to be pretty

well thought out from the top to bottom. Once you start recording you can swipe away from the app and it will keep recording without being visible anywhere on your phone. So if you're in a fight with a domestic abuser and they take your phone away they will not see that you're recording but it will keep recording. You can also change the logo

and name that the app displays itself under on your phone so that it won't say that you have Nancy anywhere. You can make it look like basically anything you want. It really does seem like they've thought this through and it's about the best version of this kind of thing that's possible. There's more. A particular note at the show was an

unpowered mechanical exoskeleton I got to try on. It doesn't increase your physical strength but it does allow you to sit while standing. The manufacturer Arkellis sees this as a way to let workers stand on factory production lines and in retail stores all day long without straining themselves. I feel profoundly

mixed about this product more so than anything else at CES. On one hand it works really well I got to try it on and it's kind of a marvel on the mechanical level. You can still walk perfectly well with it on but you can just kind of sit at any point going limp and it's actually

really comfortable. On the other hand it costs $3,000 which means very few retail workers are ever going to see one. So far its primary use in the real world has been helping to keep auto workers comfortable while they shotgun more cars out into a world with far too many of them. It's all very emblematic of the way

CES makes me feel these days. Inside the roiling sea of snake oil and broken shit are some really cool ideas but they're all wedded to an industry that has mostly forgotten how to do anything new. Over the coming days I'm going to look at a new smartphone from Samsung. It rolls up I guess.

Check out more VR haptic devices, none of which I expect to work very well, and I will hopefully get to lift some heavy weights wearing a powered exoskeleton. That one I'm actually looking forward to. I am open to the possibility of finding stuff that's cool here. But at the end of the day

nothing I've seen and think I'm likely to see has changed my overall impression of where the tech industry is today. It's a big bloated monster slowly bleeding out before our eyes. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse we're like a lot of guns.

But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian

trained astronaut? He went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells

my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for watching.