Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/28/25: Trump War On Venezuela, US Aircraft Crashes, AI Replaces Thousands Of Jobs

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump doubling down on war with Venezuela, multiple US crafts crash near China, whistleblower speaks out on American journalist killed by IDF, AI replaces thousands of jobs.   Pablo Torre: https://x.com/PabloTorre    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer.

That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast.

So we'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of okay. Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Cal Penn. And on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes, to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again

with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have Crystal. Indeed, we do. Taking a look at Venezuela, Barry Weiss in 60 Minutes with a terrible piece of propaganda that we will break down for you. We're also going to update you on a variety of stories with regard to Israel. But specifically, we've just had revealed a cover-up of the murder of Shereen Abu Akle, who is a Palestinian-American journalist. A lot to get into there about our own government's involvement in that cover-up. AI is coming for our jobs. And we have new numbers and new statements from companies to back that up. Two military assets crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other.

Seems like things are going great there. Kamala, apparently running for president, unbelievable, really quite extraordinary that she thinks that she has any sort of a prayer going forward or any sort of a role for the country or in the Democratic Party. I'm taking a look at the plot against 2026, against the midterms. And we have Pablo Torre joining us to talk about sports scandals. There were a variety of indictments that came down. Pretty fascinating stuff.

And I'm really curious to get from him how widespread the run. rot is, I think is the big question. Absolutely. Pablo, been described as human missile. I love this guy. I totally respect him. He's one of the few people in sports journalism. Actually doing real journalism doesn't care about the access. So I'm very, very excited to talk to him. But before we get to that, thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show, breaking points.com. If you can support us, I did an event recently on Sunday with Hassan Piker. We're going to be dropping that soon. Maybe we'll drop it early for our premium subscribers. Yeah, it's a good idea. I came up with that right on the spot. Oh, it was great. Yeah, we really enjoyed it at the New Yorker Festival. Thank you to them for hosting us.

But there you go. That's a reason to subscribe, breaking points.com. If you are able, if not, no worries. Just please hit subscribe on our YouTube video. If you're listening to this on a podcast, send your favorite episode to a friend or rate us five stars if you're listening. With that, let's go ahead and get to Venezuela. Ryan and I revealed quite a bit behind the scenes about the regime change op currently being spearheaded by Marco Rubio. They now have their radio Rwanda in CBS News under Barry Weiss, where they broadcast a full-on, basically, commercial for regime change in Venezuela. They're saying it's going to be a cakewalk. They've got their leader. They have their Akhmat Chalabi. They have a 100-hour plan, how they can peacefully take power.

Let's take a listen. Their reports to the opposition says they have this 100-hour plan with the Trump administration for peaceful transition. Is there any guarantee that the transition will be peaceful? There's no guarantee at all. And in fact, one of the things that worries me most is that there's been no apparent negotiation with a key element in all of this story, which is the Venezuelan Armed Forces. If Venezuela and Armed Forces don't go along with this, and by the Armed Forces, I really mean the High Command, people who give the orders, then there's a possibility perhaps the Armed Forces might split. There's a possibility they might oppose a new government coming in. He says well-armed Colombian guerrilla groups that Maduro allows to operate in Venezuela

might also resist a change in power. Is there a scenario that the U.S. has to put boots on the ground to keep order? I can't see a scenario in which they wouldn't have to put boots on the ground. No scenario, it wouldn't have to put boots on the ground. Oh, the armed forces will just peacefully split apart and they'll just hand power over and they're 100-hour plan to this new lady who just happened to get the Nobel Peace Prize, just happens to be funded by the United States government. Also, just another, you know, a pump for Ryan and I's reporting.

Did you notice how they talked about the Colombian guerrillas in that story? And that what we discovered was USAID's type dollars flowing into Colombia, into Guyana. There are oil projects there. I mean, the whole ground is set, guys. Like, this is full on, and people need to be sounding the alarm. And unfortunately, CBS News is instead broadcasting a commercial. commercial for regime change. This is literally like a 2002-style report. Iraq will be a cakewalk. We will be greeted as liberators. Everybody will be happy. We have a great plan in place and what

could possibly go wrong here. And of course, you know, implicit in all of this is the assumption that Maduro is some great drug trafficker, which just is not true. I mean, that's one of those which drives me crazy. They're literally blaming there were like half a million Americans have died of fentanyl and that's on nicholas it's not it's it's literally not is some cocaine coming from there yes something like seven percent of cocaine 93 percent of cocaine columbia and mexico 100 percent of fentanyl mexico and china almost all of it in mexico precursors from china that's it i mean it's these are facts these are facts from the united states intelligence community classified intel assessment as of now as i can report and as publicly available from

the United Nations, from the United States, from the DEA, everywhere. You know, you don't need a functioning brain to know this is complete BS. Yeah, and it would have been nice to see that really, you know, dug into in the 60-Ns piece. But instead, what they do is they go and they talk about, you know, oh, the poverty and, oh, the human rights abuses and the oppression. And, you know, Americans are good people and they look at this. Oh, these people are really suffering. Maybe we do have to do something. So building the case.

And it's also, it is incredible to me. Like, in the buildup to Iraq, there was a lengthy process of propagandizing the American people. Like, they felt like they really had to make an elaborate case. Now, it's so slapped together. Everybody knows what the administration is selling is a complete and total lie. Yet it gets sort of taken seriously. You know, they routinely call these boats that are being blown up, drug boats, even though we have no idea that literally any of them are actually carrying drugs. They just sort of accept the premise, even if they'll put in there, well, probably not that much fentanyl comes from Venezuela.

But put that aside. Look at what a bad guy, Maduro ultimately is. So they interviewed this guy, Ambassador James Dory's, the last American diplomat at the now-closed U.S. Embassy in Venezuela. They interview him to talk about what a terrible guy Maduro is. And I'm not here to, like, defend Maduro. I'm just saying, like, why are we going to do another regime change war? Or have we, will we never learn our lesson on how disastrous these things are for our country, for their country, for the region, et cetera? In any case, let's take a listen to that.

This is a very bad actor sitting on top of the world's largest known reserves of oil, plus the critical minerals that will fuel the 21st century economy, and he's in bed with our strategic competitors. And how has he been able to cling to power for as long as he has? I mean, let's be very clear. This is a criminal organization masquerading as a government. This is an individual who is under indictment for narcotics trafficking, a commitment. it's human rights violations, someone who has used the apparatus of the state to throw people in jail, to torture them, to kill them. Let's just keep in mind, Zogger, we are literally backing a man who was a terrorist in Syria and doing deals with him and collaborating with him. Who sits atop the world's largest oil reserve in Saudi Arabia?

People who torture people who use an authority. I'm sorry. And this is what, look, I accept the premise. Yes, you know, he's bad and all that. I'll just say it. I don't care. Like at the end of the day, Venezuela's problems are Venezuela. It is not ours. I do not care who rules over the people of Venezuela. I do not care who rules over the people of Saudi Arabia. I wish the best for them. But at the end of the day, that's their problem. Many of them elected and chose that life. Yes, they stole the election or whatever. They stole an election in Turkey. They stole election in multiple U.S.-backed regimes around the world. I have a certain point. I have a level of empathy that extends to the border of the U.S. from that point forward, do what you want to do. Secondary. This is about some strategic problem about China. I'm sorry, it's total bullshit. Once again, I will report from what Ryan and I were able to say,

and none of this was disputed from the State Department, from the CIA, from the White House, all of which reached off the comment and since in 48 hours have not disputed a single word. Nicholas Maduro does not care about China or Russia. He cares about himself. He told America, have as much oil as you want. I won't even sell it to China anymore.

You can have all of it if you want it. And you know what we said? No. So it's not about strategy. It's not about any of that. It's literally, this is a psychotic operation from these South Floridians. Our friend, Juan David Rojas, put this up, please, on the screen, A-Zero, wrote this fantastic article. I really, I really want people to take time out of their day to read it. Because if you have not been to Miami or South Florida, you do not understand the disposition of these Cuban and expatriate Venezuelan hawks who literally occupied. our government in the form of Marco Rubio. Like, these people are deeply ideological. Rubio posted a photo of Maduro next to Gaddafi in 2019, implying that the, you know, the nice outcome would be hit for him to be sodomized on national television.

That is the, that is the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor of this administration. Trump is surrounded by Floridians. If you're from Texas like me or California or whatever, you can't. even put yourself in the brain of how crazy these people are. And like, it's, it's religious. Think about the way Miriam Adelson thinks about Israel. Yeah, exactly.

I was about to apply that to the way they feel about Venezuela and Cuba and Nicaragua. It's really worth reading the article because he goes through the evolution of this, right? So you have these incredible ideological, incredibly ideological actors, Marco Ruby, a chief among them, but others in the administration as well. And they were trying to push this, the typical, like, he's a bad guy, human rights, rigged election, and we're kind of hitting their head against a brick wall with Trump on that stuff, wasn't really landing. And so it's when they turn to the O. He's a drug kingpin. Fentanyl. We got to do something about this. And especially because Trump had been frustrated in his desire to, you know, bomb cartels in Mexico, thankfully, thus far, even though there's still a lot of desire to go in that direction in this. administration. So he seized on this. And there's an added political benefit, which is, you know, a lot of the Miami Republicans are upset about, you know, they were, Marco Rubio was supportive of temporary protected status for people coming from Venezuela and from Cuba and Nicaragua. And so

now you have that temporary protected status being taken away. You have obviously, you know, insane dream of Venezuelans, including the like theatrical show of shipping a number of Venezuelans off to Seacot with no due process. And so you have a lot of Miami Republicans who are pretty upset about that and not happy with the treatment of, you know, people that they have this empathy for and that they actually are fleeing political persecution. In many cases, actually are fleeing political persecution. So this is a way to sort of like soothe both the politicians and the voters in South Florida who are upset about that. So it checks all the boxes, you know. Trump gets to do his insane drug war. Stephen Miller gets his authoritarianism and his cruel

see Marco Rubio gets his ideological ends. Maga is largely silent, few rumblings here or there, but that's about it. And so, you know, that's why this thing just seems to be marching forward with like a logic of its own, that if you poke at it at all, it all completely falls apart and is completely insane. If you ask the American people, there's polling out, of course, they're like, what are you talking about? No, I don't want another regime change war.

And yet here we are marching towards it. And, you know, just to pick up on the point Sagar was making about, like, you know, your view is like, well, I don't really care. It's up to them to rule themselves. I mean, number one, like the sanctions we've had in place on Venezuela are part of the emissoration of that population. Number two, if you do have empathy for the people of Venezuela, like ask yourself, how did it go for the people of Iraq? How did it go for the people of Afghanistan? How did it go for the people of Syria? How did it go for the people of Libya?

We made their lives. We murdered many of them. and we made their lives absolutely miserable. You know, it was not some humanitarian thing that we did there that turned out great and the women got to go to school. No, no, it was a disaster. It would have been better

if we never got involved whatsoever. And so even if you are looking at those pictures of people in poverty, you're worried about it. Number one, the thing we should be doing is making a deal with them and sanctions relief. That would be the best thing we could do. And number two, the absolute worst thing we could do

is some sort of a regime change mess that is very likely to result in a failed state in all of the catastrophic human consequences that that entails. Yeah, I mean, what you hear about Venezuela all the times, oh, it's been 25 years, it's collapsed their population, they used to be so rich and all of that. Yeah, it was 25 years ago. Like what you think you just undo 25 years of socialism and sanctions in like two decades or in two years?

It's not possible. It would literally probably take 50 years to undo the damage of the last 25 years. Like, no, I don't want to do with any of that. I'm with you. Make a deal. If they want prosperity, they can decide it. for themselves. They hate Maduro so much, rise up, and overthrow them. It's not my problem, you know, at the end of the day. And it's one of those, I feel the same way about Cuba,

which I know puts me at odds with a lot, again, of these South Floridians who think it's like on America to go and free the island of Cuba. Again, you know, it's been decades long. If they really cared so much, they would have done something about it. I truly believe that. And it's one of those where they, instead, they want to use the power of the United States government to go in and to smash everything apart because, oh, Maduro stole an election. Again, there are multiple U.S.-backed dictators all over the world who have stolen elections. We still buy oil from them. I'm not looking for logical consistency or some great ethics. We're looking for deals. And again, if you want to counter China, he's offering the oil right now. He said,

you can have all of it. I will even step aside sometime in the future or announce that I will as long as my regime apparatus gets to keep power. That's not enough for us. And instead, we're sending carrier strike groups, all kinds of messages to Venezuela. Here's the latest one, Senator Rick Scott. Again, Florida telling Maduro, I would head to Russia and China right now, basically telling him to pull an Assad because the regime is going to go. Let's take a listen. If I was Maduro, I'd head to Russia or China right now.

Because? His days are numbered. Something's going to happen. Whether it's internal or external, I think something's going to happen. The firepower that's off the coast, right? This is your armada. This is a lot of U.S. forces. Are we about to invade Venezuela?

I don't think so. I mean, if we do, I'd be successful. surprise. Earlier this month, President Trump announced he approved covert CIA operations inside Venezuela. There you go. I would head to Venezuela. I would head to Russia or China right now. And basically something's going to happen, whether it's internal or external. Well, even if it's internal, it's still fucking us. It's still external. By the way, we know that the CIA has greenlit operations. By the way, Maduro is saying they already captured some CIA operators. There's, you know, we don't have proof of that. But, you know, he's about as trustworthy as this.

Well, one of the, okay, again, if you care so much about the Venezuelan opposition, do you know what Iran did after all those Mossad killings? You know what they did? They said everyone whose opposition is Mossad and they killed all of them, just so everybody understands. If you were a dictator and you had an outward threat, which is openly saying they're going to use their intelligence community to topple your regime, what would you do? I would say everybody who opposes me is CIA, and then I would kill all of them because that's the logical thing that most oppositional, you know, anti-Western dictators, have done for, oh, I don't know, multiple decades. So it's only the best pretext in the world

to kill everybody that you want to. Just to back up your point, let's go and put A6, please, up on the screen. This is from Miami Herald. Venezuela just yesterday claimed to have captured, quote, a CIA group accused the CIA of plotting a false flag attack that they had captured mercenaries

who had come from Washington and Trinidad and Tobago, coordinating military exercises, and said that they were trying to thwart some sort of false flag operation that would come to generate a full-scale military confrontation against Venezuela. I mean, the United States would never have a false flag incident in the Caribbean to precipitate an invasion. Would they? Would they? Oh, right. USS Maine. Okay. Well, let's get to the next part here. A4. Senator Lindsey Graham says he can to invade the U.S. could easily invade Venezuela. By the way, he also mixes up the names of dictators overthrown by the U.S. If you're wondering about

Minor detail, if you're just wondering about the intellectual firepower that's backing this, let's take a listen. We didn't have a declaration to go into Panama. Bush 41 went into Panama to replace the leadership there because the Panama leadership, Panamanian leadership, were working with drug cartels to threaten our country. Reagan didn't have a declaration of war, congressional authorization, to deal with Cuban influence. So this idea of Rampal, I just fundamentally disagree with. To the other senators, you deserve more information, and you're going to get more information. But there is no requirement for Congress to declare war before the commander-in-chief can use force. Panama and Grenada are two examples in our backyard where Republican presidents chose to go after countries and leaders that were threatening our people. Preventative self-defense employed to counter non-imminent threats is illegal under international law.

So if we are not at war and these suspected criminals pose no threat of imminent violence, isn't this potentially a war crime to be killing the people on these boats and then to be taking out a leader? No, not at all. I don't know what manual you're referring to, but I know what President Bush 41 did. He took down Ortega, the leader of Panama, because he was involved in drug trafficking, threatening our country. So, yeah, the game is changing when it comes to drug traffickers and drug cartels. We're going to use military force like we have in the past to protect our country. That's the new game we're playing. I'm glad we're playing that game.

And if I were Maduro, I'd find a way to leave before he goes down. I would find a way to leave before it goes down, by the way, basically a member of the United States. States Congress saying Congress doesn't need to intervene in a declaration of war, defending a regime change, violent regime change, whatever you want to call it. I mean, it's just crazy. I don't know why Congress exists anymore. I mean, it's pathetic. Like, and this is not, this is far from the first time they've abdicated their duty, but they don't even, they don't want responsibility. They don't want to be involved in the workings of our country. Yeah, I mean, I've talked about this, but the legacy of Iraq was basically that nobody ever wants to take a vote like that again

because it all came back to bite them in the ass. It was politically convenient to take the vote, so they did. And then later on, Hillary loses the 2008 primary because of the vote. And arguably, John Kerry loses the 2004 election because he also voted for the war in Iraq of that whole flip-flop label that. So from that point on, they were like, yeah, we're just going to let this AUMF thing, and then everybody can float up to the president. They love it.

They love it this way. And that's why there's been permanent war for the last 25 years. They don't have to necessarily take any real responsibility. By the way, at the same time, let's go and put A5 here on the screen. And that's the man Trump is doing a fundraiser. Yeah, he's doing a fundraiser. Not just a fundraiser, the very first fundraiser of 26, just so you're all aware, while punishing Thomas Massey. Interesting.

Here we have Maduro, again, say that the U.S. is fabricating wars as it deplores the world's largest warship, the USS Gerald Ford, on its way to the Caribbean to support, quote, anti-drug operations or whatever it is. It can carry up to 90 aircraft. It is the biggest increase of U.S. firepower in the region. The United States, by the way, I just checked this, now has more firepower in the Latin American region and in the Caribbean than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. That is how extraordinary the current U.S. buildup is. So we have CIA operations gone on the ground. We've got regime change commercials on 60 minutes, one of the most respected, theoretically, one of the most respected names in news in the United States, watched by some 10 to 15. million people. We have press, which is basically silent about this entire thing. I have yet to

see a national democratic politician or anyone make a big deal out of this. You know, yet, listen, I'm here with you on the White House East Wing. Can somebody stand up about Venezuela? Please. I'm begging for opposition, for anything to say something. And no organized politician or movement inside of the right. Like, this is a full-on, full-on bipartisan up at this point, either from a tacit agreement or from just, you know, cheering it on outwardly. And I guess we'll all own the consequences, you know, vast numbers of, vast numbers of Venezuelans likely to, you know, spread throughout the region. It could cause a refugee crisis. It could, I mean, literally, it actually could go the Libya route since that's apparently what they want. And it could turn into an actual drug

capital, unironically in the next five years. Who knows what's going to happen? It could destabilize the region, too, right? You know, the fallout doesn't just stay continued. to Venezuela and then emissoration of the people there, you know, could destabilize that whole area. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's all bad. It's all bad. Here we go.

Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we

heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, Things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.

Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing.

I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person,

contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did. And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up everybody? This is Snacks from the Trabner's podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long. Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, Me and Tony bringing back by our team on Left for Dead, too. And we're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also, in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie and figure out why black people always got to die first. The Umbro Reliquary invites any and all fooling, brave enough, to peruse its many curiosities.

But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly. with a full episode read and a commentary special. And we will cap it off with horror movie battle royale. Jason versus Freddie. Michael Myers versus the 80 thing with the little tongue muster. October, we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the Travener's podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Let's go to the next part here. This is about, just, you know, by the way, if anybody's wondering about our capacity for regime change and how excellent our military is. now at the moment. We had two horrible crashes in the South China Sea with the president was asked about recently, which highlights our lack of military readiness. Let's take a lesson. Have you been saved on the incident on the nibits, both a fighter jet and a helicopter. I've heard about it. Do you know what happened there was that? They're going to let me know pretty soon. I think they should be able to find out. It could be bad fuel. I mean, it's possible. It's bad fuel. Very unusual that that would happen.

I mean, I don't think there was a foul way or anything. They think it might be bad fuel. We're going to find out. So the president said there it could be bad fuel. And there's a lot of questions here after this incident. Let's put this up here on the screen. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn.

And on my new podcast, Here We Go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies. But I'm also an author, a White House staffer. as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08?

Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.

Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not a cult leader. afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP.

She did. And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? This is Snacks from the Trapner's podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long. Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror. games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill.

Me and Tony bringing back by our team on Left for Dead 2. And we're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie and figure out why black people always got to die first. The umbral reliquary invites any and all

fooling, brave enough to peruse its many curiosities. But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quest written and narrated lie yours truly with a full episode read and a commentary special and we will cap it off with horror movie battle royale jason versus freddie michael myers versus the aided thing with the little

tongue muster October we're doing it Halloween style listen to the trapners podcast from the black effect podcast network on the iha radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your broadcast u.s navy helicopter and a u.s fighter jet both crashed in separate incidents in the south china sea So both happened on October 26, two days ago. A Seahawk helicopter went down at 2.45 p.m., quote, while conducting routine operations from the USS Nimitz. The helicopter was assigned to a helicopter maritime strike squadron. Search and rescue said that they rescued all three crew members, so thank God that that happened. But following the incident, an F.A.18 Super Hornet assigned to a different strike fighter squadron also crashed in the waters of the South China Sea.

both of the crew members successfully ejected, and they were safely recovered. Now, the Nimitz, as one of literally the largest aircraft carriers in the world and is supposed to be one of the pride in joys of the U.S. Navy. And it's supposed to be decommissioned, by the way, I think, next year. But the point remains is that this is supposed to be like a forward deployment of a great, you know, projecting power of the United States military, and you have two separate crashes. And now they're saying bad fuel. How does that happen?

The reason I'm sticking with this is that there have been a number of incidents that I always try to highlight whenever we're trying to pour trillions dollars more into our defense budget is at the basic level, like the actual functional level, we're falling apart at the seams. So we have awesome technology, the B2 bomber, Operation Midnight Hammer, but from what I know, we barely had the fuel infrastructure to refuel the bombers. Like the stuff that actually makes them all tick and all the logistics in the background is highly inefficient rolled up destroyed by private equity, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, all of these monopolies. There's been no competition in the sector. It's highly inefficient. It costs, I mean, unbelievable amounts of money. It's like hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight hour to keep these things up there. By the way, we've also been circling Venezuela for some reason more recently. So I just wanted to highlight the story just to show you all, there's no cakewalk in the United States military.

In fact, despite the trillion dollars that we spend now per year, it's probably never been less efficient at the actual, like, functional level of all of this high-priced technology. And what did we all notice in with the Houthis is that a very small force with no real organization, no nation state or anything, effectively was able to conduct all of these operations without being stopped despite almost. a billion dollars or more worth of missiles that were fired at them. So everyone just keep that in mind, the asymmetric threat that we have witnessed now from China, from Russia, from Ukraine and others just shows you how, I mean, Ukraine is a perfect example, is you have this massive Russian military supposedly all technologically advanced and the Ukrainians just come in with these drones and are able to screw them up. It's not hard, right? And we've seen that happen against us. China, apparently, there's all kinds of experiments going on on the battlefield. So just the

flag for anyone. You know, there's a lot of people out there, like, We have the world's best military. We certainly have a great military, but it is not all that it is sometimes cracked up to be. And these are always what I point to as an example. I mean, there's two pieces here. There's like, okay, well, what the hell actually happened? Right. Number one.

And number two, Seth Harp, who wrote Fort Bragg Cartel and who's an incredible journalist, tracks military readiness. This is kind of his beat. He said, 17 Army helicopter crashes in 2024. The midair collision over the Potomac this January, three fighter jets that simply fell into the Red Sea in April and May. that was with regard to the Houthis. Another whole helicopter crew lost last month, and now this, unmitigated chaos and incompetence

in U.S. military aviation. Yeah, he's right. He pretty much sums it up. He's absolutely right. And there's been numbers of these safety incidents all the time. In the Persian Gulf, there was an incident recently, which actually, you know, a couple of guys were killed. Just to highlight that Yemen thing,

this is just from a couple months ago. Put A-10, please up on the screen. Second U.S. fighter jet falls overboard from the Truman Air Force. aircraft carrier. Just the second time in eight days, a U.S. fighter jet was lost to the Red Sea. Let's see. Here, I can look at it. So, my ballpark is like 60, 70 million. What is it? What's it say? Yeah, I'm going to guess like 70 million. All right, there you go. Between 60 and 70 million. Between 60 and 70 million. There you go. I swear I didn't have it in front of me. Yeah, that's, and by the way, that's a cheap one. Just so you're all aware. That's a cheap one. 60 to 70 million dollars. So that's 140 million that just slid into the sea.

What do they say? They was like rough seas or something. I'm like, something tells me that in World War II, whenever we were fighting the Japanese with limited radar, and it was one of the great sea forces that the world had ever seen, that they also had rough seas, and it didn't happen all that often. Just my personal thought. So it's one of those where when I look at this, I just see, and it's not on the service members. It's really not.

It's on the higher ups, and it's on the design. It's on the structural design of all of these. monopolies of focusing on the wrong thing, of being excited by flashy technology and not on the guns and the bullets and the ability to just function at a very basic level. And to the extent Russia has found success on the battlefield in Ukraine, it's because they operate more like a World War I military than any modern military. They need men, they need ammunition, and they need shit at home that produces ammunition. That's all you need. And he can actually be quite successful so yeah and oil by the way to sell to other people and that's it you know we don't need

AI or data centers or any of that stuff it's nice it's definitely nice to have but it's not going to win in the long run and so you can see all the signs here for catastrophic failure if something ever popped off who knows i mean we've outsourced all of our capacity of course military industrial complex it's a bunch of monopolies i mean knowing people who work in the the space um you know on the government side they talk about how if you want to get like, you know, Lockheed or Boeing on the phone or what, like, you can't. You can't. Like, they think they're so far above the, you know, the government and the people they're supposed to be interfacing with. They're completely unaccountable. And the cost overruns are insane. This is a big part of the reason why the Pentagon fails every audit and it's like not even close. So all of this money that we're spending in defense and, you know, and. have pathetic instances like this and, uh, you know, all sorts of problems rife around the entire complex. It's bad. Yeah. And that's why, you know, they want to overthrow Venezuela. Like maybe, maybe. Uh, it also could be a total disaster. You know, it really could be. And that's one of the

of course where right back to our whole democracy building. Democracy building. We're going to collapse the regime. We're not going to put any boots on the ground. It's going to be so easy. Mission accomplished. 100 hour plan. USAID will magically just install this leader and it all work out for the best. right? That's what always happens in this story. We learn nothing. We learn nothing. We deserve what we get, I guess. All right. So you guys recall back in 2022, Palestinian American prominent journalist Shereen Abu Akle was murdered by IDF soldiers. Now, in the wake of this, of course, the IDF said, oh, we had nothing to do with it. And there were other, you know, Palestinian fighters in the area. But don't worry, we're going to conduct our own investigation. And the Palestinians also conducted their own investigation and found. And by the way, New York Times and journalistic outlets also conducted their investigations. Came to the conclusion pretty clear that, you know, Shereen, who was wearing a press vest and her photographer is also wearing a press vest, that they were directly targeted by the IDF.

There were no, you know, Palestinian resistance fighters in the area whatsoever. The only people that were firing was this, you know, they were able to pinpoint a specific IDF soldier who ultimately killed her. It was horrific. I mean, just absolutely horrific story. And our government felt some pressure to do an investigation because of her American citizenship and because of how incredibly prominent this was. Emily has talked a lot about how covering the story and realizing how blatantly the Israelis were lying was a big part of her evolution and changing the way that she was thinking about our relationship to Israel. So, you know, and I know Emily is not the only one. So that's part of why this was an incredibly important story, not to mention just an American journalist being targeted and murdered by the ID.

So in any case, Zateo was able to speak to a whistleblower, a while back, who at the time remained anonymous, who said, I was the guy who led the investigation on the American side to this. We concluded with a high level of certainty that it was IDF, that she was directly targeted, that they did know that she was pressed. And yet, my superior said, nope, we're going to take that conclusion out of our report, and we're going to say, couldn't say, couldn't say. say, don't know. Let's go ahead and take a listen to METI interviewing Colonel Gabavix. He's the whistleblower, was initially anonymous, now coming forward publicly to talk about his experience and this cover-up of the murder of an American journalist. What was the assessment you submit to General Michael Fenzell, the U.S. Security Coordinator when you come back from Janine? And what does he say in response?

So our initial assessment, what are you given the assessment probably about on the 19th or 20th after looking through everything in detail, and I passed this to both Ambassador Nyes and Lieutenant General Fenzel, that my findings were beyond reasonable doubt that this was an intentional killing of Shrina Bacla. This is on the 19th or 20th of May, 2022. This is within 10 days of her killing.

Yes. You, on behalf of the United States government, are saying that beyond reasonable doubt, that's a legal standard in a criminal court. Yes, it is. She was intentionally killed. Correct. Not accidentally, not crossfire, not collateral damage.

Correct. What does he say? So he said at that point in time that he had heard from General Fuchs the day that the incident happened. This is an Israeli General. In the General General General General, he was a central command commander, that General Fuchs came and told them that it was very possibly that an Israeli shoulder had killed her, sorry, but that it was an accident, that it was a matter of tragic circumstances. But that was the story that he stuck to. He said, General Fuchs told me this, so I believe it was not intentional. So the U.S. General takes the word of a foreign general over his own.

officer who he's sent to investigate? That is correct. How did you feel about that? I felt very disappointed and upset about that, and I continued to try to convince him throughout for the next two years, honestly, as we continue to work on the investigation for it. Wild stuff.

So American investigator comes up, you know, evaluates the evidence, says, beyond a reasonable doubt, they murdered her, it was intentional, they knew she was press, and his superior says, but I talked to this is really general. He says it's an accident.

So that's what we're going with. That's what we're going with. We're putting that over your investigation, what you have to say. And keep in mind, this is supposed to be an independent investigation separate and apart from the Israelis. Yes. But it is not. At the end of the day, they just, instead of looking at their own evidence that our government compiled, they go with the word of this Israeli general.

We can put the New York Times tear sheet up on the screen. They wrote up this story too. They said U.S. assessment of Israeli shooting of journalists divided America. officials. I love how it's a nameless journalist. Yeah, a nameless journalist. Very lame headline. In any case, if you read this report, they lay out the reasons why Colonel Gabavix thought that this shooting was deliberate. Number one, records of Israeli military radio traffic that morning before the shooting showed that the soldiers were aware of journalists in the area, and there had been no gunfire coming from the journalist's direction that might make the Israeli

soldiers likely to shoot toward them in self-defense. There was an Israeli military vehicle down the road from Ms. Abu Ackle that morning, a sniper watching the road from inside the vehicle would have been able to see the journalist clearly. When he visited the scene of the shooting, hours after it occurred, he said his colleagues wearing blue vest, similar to Ms. Abu Akle's Navy blue protective vest, Mark Press, positioned themselves where she had fallen. They were visible to him from where the shooter's vehicle had been. He said the precision of the shots, hitting Ms. Abu Akle's head and a carib tree near her.

did not suggest an uncontrolled spray of gunfire. That, together with the fact the shooter fired first at Ms. Abu Aklai's producer, then at her, then at a passerby who tried to help, indicated to him the shooting was deliberate. Quote, for the shooting to be accidental, the most absurd thing in the world would have had to happen, he said.

The individual popped out of the truck just was randomly shooting and happened to have really well-aimed shots and never look down the scope, which would not have happened. So that was the actual evidence on the scene. Again, New York Times and other outlets did investigations at the time came to very similar conclusions, backed up what the Palestinian said about the incident. And yet,

Soger, they, and this was under the Biden administration, they heard from this Israeli general. They don't want to screw up their relationship with the Israelis. They were afraid of the Israelis pulling their cooperation and support for whatever intelligence sharing and gathering operations that they were conducting together. So they just went with the lie instead. What I think is so important about the story is that, number one, it happened under the Biden administration, and two, this happened before October 7th, just to show everybody how, you know, dominating the relationship and the influence was even in that environment and to the level to which the Biden administration abandoned a citizen of the United States

of America on Word of Israel. And by the way, these are United States colonels and generals, you know, generally not the most liberal folks, right? These are people who are probably just wanting to do their jobs. Their Office of Security coordination, they're given the task, investigate the shooting. They take this job. seriously. They conduct their examination. They say that the shooting, AF was intentional based upon their findings. And then they are outwardly shunned inside of the administration, shunt it aside, and the report itself comes out and parrots the Israeli line. I mean, even by the way, what's so crazy is that the FBI declined to investigate because according to the colonel, it had been

requested not to do so by Israel. So they said, even though current protocol apparently would have been that the FBI had to open its own investigation, that the Israelis had not been requested to do so because they didn't want real law enforcement people to come in and they wanted to leave it as ambiguous as possible. They say it eventually did open up its investigation, but three years later has, quote, not released any findings nor said when it might do so. In the immediate aftermath, they assign this team, which again is not even a real investigative agency to, you know, to trajectory of, but this is not what they do generally. And even these guys. You know, overcome all those obstacles.

They take the job seriously. And they're like, yeah, Israel, they did it. And not only they did it, it was intentional. It was intentional. And then so it was, it's basically, it's like in a movie. When you want something to remain covered up, you don't give it to the proper investigating agency. You give it to somebody who's incompetent, but then the incompetent agency, you know, has people, or not incompetent, but it's not their specialty. And then they take the job seriously and they uncover the truth.

And they're like, oh, my God, now what do we do? That's quite literally what happened. Like, it's one of the most. classic tales of government corruption. It's shocking. It is shocking. And it's also, I mean, it's also worth saying, you know, now after two plus years of a genocide, how many, how many members of the press have been murdered by Israel?

Right. Like, and it's so many and so frequent that you don't, you can't have this level of public pressure and public scrutiny. You know, this time when they murdered Shereen, they were still, you know, trying to uphold this view in the world. Oh, we would never do that. I mean, you remember in the beginning phases of their assault on Gaza, oh, we would never attack a hospital.

We would never attack a mosque. We would never attack the press. Now they just do whatever the hell they want because they've gotten away with it. And so, you know, I think what's important about digging into this is, number one, it's an American and it's a member of the press. So understanding what happened in our government's own complicity is extremely vital in the public interest. But it's also such a roadmap of how Israel was able to get to this. this place where they operate with just total and complete impunity because you did have a

situation here where there was enough pressure that the government fell out, okay, well, at least we have to do something. And that was important because if that didn't happen, then we would never have this moment now where we've got a whistleblower coming forward who's exposing these inner workings of how this all goes down. But if you want to know how they got away with, you know, mass starvation and turning all of Gaza into complete and total rubble and targeting innocent civilians, you know, killing tens of thousands of children at the very least.

and largest population of child amputees if you want to know how we got to the point where they could get away with it, it's step by step by step through all of these actions where there's complete impunity, where we just take their word, where we follow their lead, where we do their dirty work, where they cover up for their murder of our own citizen. That's how you get to a place where they can act with such total and complete impunity and absolutely no accountability. Yeah, absolutely. Let's, by the way, not forget how the Biden administration played this at the time.

initial response? We have been very clear and consistent about first condemning the tragic killing of Shireen, but also when both the U.S.'s report as well as the IDFs report last summer went public, we have spoken consistently about the need and the call for accountability in this case, and we continue to do so. However, as is consistent from the IDF's finding as well as the finding of the U.S. security coordinator is that this was not intentional. It was a tragic due to very tragic circumstances. So yes, we continue to seek accountability for Shereen. Let me finish. And that is one of the ways in which we are doing so in ensuring that when it comes to rules of engagement, we're working on

those issues in in concert and in partnership with our Israeli counterparts to ensure that civilians and journalists and members of the media are not put in harm's way. So, well, how did that hold up, right? How that ability goes. By the way, that dude, Vedant Patel, who for the record does not look like me, is currently employed at a public affairs firm here in Washington and is doing quite well, which also does work for the Israelis. Yeah, SKDK, which is probably the best known.

Democratic, yeah, a PR shop. And yeah, it works for the Israelis. So I guess he ended up exactly where he is meant to end up. We'd have a few other updates wanted to bring you guys with regard to what's going on in Gaza right now. I can put B4 up on the screen. This is a good piece of reporting. Sky News, revealing that Israel's backing four different anti-Hamas militias operating behind the quote-unquote yellow line. That's the ceasefire boundary for IDF troops. So, you know, they talk about how these groups operate within less than 700 meters from Israeli positions. They coordinate logistics, supply deliveries with the IDF through the Karam-Shalom crossing. Sky found similar coordination in northern Gaza militias receiving aid in vehicles via Israeli and Palestinian Authority channels and possible Gulf backing, including ties to UAE-linked forces in Yemen.

So, you know, at least one of these gangs was linked to actual terrorists. we can put the B5 up on the screen. This is kind of crazy Washington Post publishing this propaganda from one of those gangs about how, you know, the life on the Israeli side of the yellow line is so great and how, you know, speaking for all Palestinians that, oh, they all just, you know, want to reject Hamas, but they're kept on under Hamas's brutal thumb. So just, you know, publishing this like total propaganda from a gang leader, something the Wall Street Journal had also done, by the way.

and then you've got the White House amplifying it as well. So major sci-up going on here. And then one other thing I wanted to note, this is on the positive side. It could put B6 up on the screen, Glamour magazine naming Miss Rachel as their women of the year very much deserved. Shout out to Ms. Rachel.

Yeah, shout on to Ms. Rachel. Yeah, I mean, I've been, I don't know. The whole thing between Venezuela, between this, I just don't know if the press is cut out for this. Because at every turn, what we see is they, I think I described it like as a chess board and that they report each individual move without reporting whether it's going to checkmate or not, like the overall scenario. Yeah. What's happened before? What is what's what is this building toward? Is there a plan? Is it building towards anything? Exactly. So like on Venezuela, right? You can only, a reasonable person watches that commercial and is like, oh my God, like this is happening. And it's happening for this, this and this. this reason. Even in the New York Times headline, they were, like, journalists. It's like, what kind? An American one? Palestinian one? Not that you particularly care, right? You know,

what does that mean? What does that demonstrate? You know, they just write it up as straight fact. They don't even give any personal context. And of course, it's not like anybody really cares, like in the broader environment. Same with this whole ceasefire created two gaza's and my Gaza is ready for peace. I'm like, who are you? Do you give any context of who that person is? It's like, I mean, people think I'm joking. Like, this is literally how Iraq and all of that played out. Chalaby and those people were literally publishing op-eds in the Washington Post. The entire surge strategy was all dictated in the opinion pages of Washington.

I'm not joking. Like, this is all part of the apparatus where things are meant to be sent to one another. And maybe it's forgivable the first time it happens, but it's happened over and over. I mean, first of all, it's happened throughout modern history. But in particular in this moment, like if you live through Iraq, like you have to be alter Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, you know, Libya, Afghanistan. If you live through those, how can you possibly just disregard the blinders? It's like I just don't understand how it all works. What do you think was with Israel, what do you think was the turning point that led people like Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker, you know, Charlie Kirk was starting to ask questions?

can't. Because previously they were, you know, pro-Israel, most of these people, certainly Marjorie Taylor-Green was Tucker and just sort of like, you know, standard issue conserved a line. What do you think caused the flip? Two things. Number one, they're just like sheer barbarity. Two is the level of control because I think there's something deeply American about we control our own destiny. And so to see politicians so overtly subsume themselves to a foreign political cause is just disgusting. You know, to me personally, I think as to a lot of them. That latter part is a huge, you know, huge reason why a lot of people are willing to speak out of against it. But I mean, you can't really underestimate the sheer barbarity of it as well. I mean, I'm not going to say that the U.S. has not been complicit in a lot of barbaric acts throughout the world. But it's really one thing to, like, fund it, to go to extraordinary lengths here at home, to quash descent over. It's just too much, right? It's one of those where the level of propaganda for a war, which at the end of the day did not really matter. matter to America. And if anything, it would have been better for us if it had ended a long,

long time ago. That was just, it was a jump point for a lot of people. And then the traditional talking points just all become BS, right? Like beacon of Western civilization. You're like, really? Like, you know, you're always talking about how great you are compared to your Middle Eastern neighbors. I'm like, you look the same to me. Sorry. You know, if you want to look at barbarism, if anything, you know, at this point. You know what I mean? Right. That's what I'm saying. It's like, oh, the Saudis are such backward folks. They cut people's heads off. I'm like, wow, that would be crazy, wouldn't it? Or they're like, oh, the Middle Eastern cultures, you know, fetishize rape. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's something you definitely never would do in a prison and then

your own civilization would bust you out of the jail for it. Right. So it's like when those things start to fall apart, it's too much for us. Yeah. That's just me. By the way, one of the rabbis who was prominent in spreading the mass rape hoax arrested for pedophilia in Texas. Allegedly. But actually arrested. Yeah. You know, I think as far as I can tell, wasn't able to flee the country. Well, for now, as far as we can tell, if it gets out on bail, we'll see. We'll keep an eye on that. Yeah, everybody monitor those flights to Tel Aviv and tell me if you see him. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as

the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash, like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space,

things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult.

Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did, and now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time.

So, do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? This is Snacks from the Trap Nerds podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October alone.

Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you. you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, me and Tony Bringing Back Fire Team on Left for Dead 2, and we're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie and figure out why black people always got to die first. The umbral reliquary invites any and all fooling, brave enough, to peruse its many curiosities.

But take heed, all sales are final. weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly. With a full episode read and a commentary special. And we will cap it off with horror movie battle royale. Jason versus Freddie. Michael Myers versus the 80th thing with the little tongue muster. October, we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the Travener's podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Turning now to the economy, the AI revolution in the job force continues. Let's going to put this up here on the screen. This is a tweet from Senator Bernie Sanders. Quote, stop hiring humans, a new billboard says. The era of AI employees is here. Billboards across the country promoting the replacement of millions of jobs with AI and robotics. Great idea.

One simple question. How will those displaced workers survive when there are no jobs or income for them? This is increasingly the question that many companies and young people are going to have to answer. Let's put this up here on the screen. it backs up much of what I have been saying now, is that, quote, more big companies bet they can still grow without hiring. Quote, it is the corporate gamble of the moment. Can you run a company, increase sales, and juice profits without adding people? American employers are increasingly making the calculation that can keep the size teams flat or shrink them through layoffs without harming their business. Part of that thinking is that AI will be used to pick up the slack and automate more processes.

companies are hesitant to make any moves in an economy that is still uncertain. J.B. Morgan's chief financial officer told investors recently the bank house now, quote, a very strong bias against having the reflective response to hire more people for any given need. Multiple other companies last week had sales rose even without adding employees. Financial services companies like Goldman Sachs said that the firm will constrain headcount growth through the end of the year and reduce roles that will be more efficient with AI. Walmart, the nation's private employer, said it would be. keep headcount roughly flat over the next three years, even as sales grow.

Multiple other companies that they list now say that they will be reducing their headcount because of AI and the ROI of AI is increasing, apparently on the conference call mentions of Chief Financial Service Officers. By the way, just this morning, huge news out of a couple of major companies. I believe we have one of them on Amazon. Do we have that? No, we don't. Okay, so this morning, Amazon is announcing 30,000 corporate employees.

will be cut from the company. 14,000 immediately 10% of the entire white-collar workforce will be asked from the company. By the way, another huge piece of news, arguably, in my opinion, more important. UPS will now cut 48,000 jobs in management and operations. That is some disclosed. It would cut 20,000 positions previously. Shares, by the way, are up 12% in pre-market trading. So the fact that... The fact that UPS is going to fire... 48,000 management and operations people shows that, and by the way, that the stock goes up, that actually might be the most AI firing of all time because now is the time when you don't fire people because we're going into Christmas season, November and December. That's usually when they

surge temporary hiring. They may actually still do that just for the average packers, shippers, delivery people, et cetera. But the management and operations, they're probably just trying to automate all of those procedures. I mean, it's a grim out here. You're a couple of Cut 10% of people at Amazon, again, November, December, the busiest months at the whole company, some 14% or 10% of your entire workforce before Christmas. Now you have UPS here being 40,000 people. You have the open acknowledgement. I've talked here about how AI is just like more Excel corporate sludge, 90% of the time, is you no longer have to have a guy who takes minutes for a meeting. It summarizes your stuff.

It can help you put PowerPoints together. It can check your commas, your periods, and your footnotes, and automate them. That's usually the grunt work that most 22-year-olds get hired in the white-collar workforce. And now all of those are slowly starting to erode. So if you're a new hire out there and you took some $50,000, $60,000 in debt, you're screwed. You're screwed. It's really, it's dark. It's dark.

It is. And it's here, right? This is not coming. It's here. You're going to see it through two different modes. One is these, you know, big layoffs like we're seeing with Amazon and UPS. Both of them are, you know, important industry leaders, both within their space and also nationally.

Other countries are going, I mean, other companies are going to see that and follow suit. Amazon also, we covered last week. New York Times got their hands on internal documents showing that they're planning to get rid of 600,000 blue-collar workers over the coming years. With those, because Amazon has such extraordinary churn, they're just planning as people, leave, because they can no longer take the physical stress and burden of, you know, working in an Amazon warehouse or as an Amazon delivery driver, as those people leave, they're just not going to be replaced. And I think we're going to see a lot of that, too. And that's what these

companies who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. That's what they're indicating is, oh, you know, Susie left. Normally we'd hire to replace Susie. Now we're just not going to. We're just going to allow that sort of churn to lower our overall headcount and sub in AI to make our existing workforce, you know, pick up all the slack for the workers that no longer are here. And yes, of course, all the incentives, all of the Wall Street incentives are to move in that direction. So, I mean, I really appreciate Bernie. God bless him. Like, he must have the most incredible genetics because men has not slowed down, still extremely sharp, still absolutely with it in terms of the threats that is facing the American workforce, really the global workforce at

this point. And here's the other thing. Let's put C4 up on the screen. then we can get Saugers pull out from this. But Wall Street Journal also had a piece about the economy that's great for parents, lousy for their grown-up kids. So, you know, if you're someone who was able to get your college education was relatively inexpensive and you, you know, at that point in time, you could just get a job out of college, stable career, climb your way up the ladder, housing was a lot less expensive, healthcare was a lot less expensive. Now you have assets. You know, now you're in the stock market, your 401K, all those sorts of things are doing good. And, Meanwhile, your kids who did, you know, trying to follow the same track, go to college, take on the debt, come out of college, and there's nothing for them.

You know, the unemployment rate for new college grads is going up and up and up. Now, partly it's because people are worried about a recession and all the tariff and sanity and everything that's going on. And partly, it is because of AI. And put C3 up on the screen. This was the piece that Sager highlighted in particular. this chart is, this is really, really dire stuff, you know, in terms of the fulfillment of the population, in terms of the stability of the society as well, you only have 11% of 18 to 29-year-olds who have confidence that they will be able to buy a home. But all of these numbers are

actually really bad. So you only have, you know, just over 25% who say they can keep up with expenses. By the way, numbers are not all that much better. For those who are 30 and older, they're under 35%. Maybe that's like 33% who are confident. They can just keep up with their expenses. For 18 to 29, you have under 20% who think they can buy a car. Also under 20%, maybe that's around 16% who say they could pay an unexpected medical expense. You have under 25% who are confident they could find a good job. 15% say that they're confident they could have enough savings for retirement. And I've been reading this book by Peter Churchen about when societies, like, collapsed.

And his analysis is that the two major factors that lead to sort of like societal breakdown and revolution are decline in material living standards. And in the U.S. context, he looks at the decline in life expectancy, which is, you know, undeniable. And there's this mass disparity, too, between the wealthy and the poor, et cetera, but that we're going backwards in terms of life expectancy. expectancy. And the other thing is what he calls overproduction of elites. So if you have a large cohort that are going to college, doing the thing, getting their law degrees or getting their

MBAs, thinking that they're going to be able to ascend, not into like the top echelon, but into some level of like I'm going to have a house and have a basic stable life. And the society is failing to deliver that. Those are actually, we think about like the, you know, the working class revolution. Those are the people who traditionally become the radicals in the revolutionaries, actually. I'm really glad you said that. The frustrated would-be elites. Oh, man, I wish we had more time. I could go on forever about this. But you are absolutely correct. Something I've always said. And some of my arguments with a lot of Marxists and socialists, one of the things that annoys me is they're always like, the working class will rise up.

I'm like, what do you tell me about the Russian revolution? And they're like, oh, well, it was a people's revolution. I'm like, no, it actually was a revolution of the elites. If you read any true biography or history of the Russian revolution of Bolshevism and specifically of Marxist-Leninism, you will discover that the peasant population of Russia was the most supportive of the Tsar. The reason that the Tsar fell was because he lost the entire support of the political echelon from everyone from the royals to the middle tier to the, you know, the bourgeoisie. Those were the people that rose up against the Tsar and toppled him. The way that the Bolsheviks were able to take power is basically have a bunch of highly educated,

you know, former members of the echelon or the gentry class who come in. And that's part of the reason that they target the so-called Kulai. at the very beginning in order to subjugate the peasant population. But the point remains not just in the Russian context, even in the French Revolution. If you look at any true violent overthrow, it's these people specifically. This is why I look at Zoron as a, you know, very, as a consequence of all of this. Republicans are always dunking on. They're like, oh, you have white middle class people.

I go, yeah, but you got to understand. If you're 25 years old or 27 and you move to New York, you know, the prototypical profile is somebody who has like $50,000 to $70,000 or whatever, maybe some more in student debt, was promised a job in X, Y, and Z and White Collar Workforce, and when the cost of living is to have a basic life from health insurance to cost of living, to rent, etc. It is so untenable that it leads you to believe that the absolute basics of your needs will ever be met. So what do you do?

You know, you're going to cause, you're going to back some radical shit. I think that this is a lot of the case for a lot of Trump people as well. So the point remains that if you do not serve and solve a point for where everyone still believes in upward mobility, and specifically for these older people, if you have no faith that your children will have a better life than you, which, by the way, you know, in that article, that's what it's all about, you shouldn't have any faith that they're going to have a better life than you. And I do feel for a lot of them because there's a term called Henry where it's like high income, not rich yet, which is basically what a lot of these. people are. They did everything the right way. You know, they have a good job or whatever. They have a house, et cetera. And their belief was that their children will do better. So they don't have enough money to like bail their kids out entirely. Right. They can help them. But so they can help them. But there's a big difference being able to buy your kid a house and then let's say like put your kid through college, right? That's like literally a multimillion dollar difference in assets. So the point is

is that they don't have enough money to do too much about it, but they have just enough to float them for a couple of years. That level of precarity is also going to lead you down a very radical, radical path. So yes, all of the ingredients are here if we want them. And I mean, look, I always say I think something's going to break, but at the same time, I just, I don't know. You know, the S&P 500 is an all-time-eyed today. So what do I know? Yeah. Well, and I don't even think people are looking for their kids to do better than them at this point. It's just like, can they achieve the same level of just basics to build, get a house, raise a family, have health insurance. And that's increasingly what is feeling impossible in, you know, those

numbers of how young people feel about their own economic situation. And that's the only thing. Can you really tell them they're wrong? No. Of course not. Of course not. I mean, the competition, you know, just to get into college and then you come out of college and AI's taking all the jobs, then you, I think you already, even before AI had this issue and declining material circumstances and parents feeling like their kids aren't going to be able to achieve what they're, and all this stress. I mean, that's what leads to like the varsity blues situation where people are so desperate, oh my God, I've got to do whatever I can, make sure my kid gets some sort of an elite slot. And, you know, so you already had that. And now you have AI coming in and decimating the

type of jobs that typically would go to new college grads or new law school grads even. And yeah, it's a big problem. Last thing, you know, everyone says, oh, well, it's better because it was inefficient. There's a lot of social benefits. When I was a very, very young journalist, Was I truly adding so much to the conversation? No, even though I definitely thought that I was. But what was I learning? I was learning the craft. I was around other people who taught me the basic building blocks that allow you to progress into a career. So let me defend grunt work. Somebody, first of all, grunt work is good for you because it teaches you discipline, attention to detail, and gives you the basics so that you can accomplish your tasks and sit around and kind of absorb information and institutional knowledge. from other people around you to build a network, which allows you to rise up either through the company or through your industry or figure out that that's not what you want to do so you can go and do something else. If you don't even get that opportunity, then you get nothing. And that's what's so deeply frustrating, I think, for a lot of people. I really,

if you're 22 years old or you're just graduating from college, I truly, truly feel for you because you were just old enough where the old system existed, so you were able to take out the debt, you probably still believed in the dream at that time, and now you're just smashing into reality. And, you know, it's going to be a tough, a tough climb out. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless. Bill Billy Heist from Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players. It's a wild tell about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.

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I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week. on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day

and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual?

No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Cal Penn. And on my new podcast, here we go again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself?

Each week, I'm calling up my friends, like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg, to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.