Chapo Trap House - 899 - Nut Up feat. Yasha Levine & Rowan Wernham (1/13/25)

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

We’re joined by journalist Yasha Levine & filmmaker Rowan Wernham of the new documentary “Pistachio Wars” join us to look at water in the state of California in light of last week’s L.A. wildfires. We discuss California’s water history, the network of real estate developers and agribusiness concerns that effectively control California’s water, the Resnick family and their Nut Empire, 21st century company towns, and how California water politics affect the Iran Nuclear deal. Watch The Pistachio Wars documentary now: https://www.pistachiowars.com/

Hello, everybody. It's Will here. And before we get into today's episode and guests, I would like to enlist your support. You are wonderful listeners for your participation in this upcoming Thursday's episode, in which we are once again doing a call in show. So please use this as my plea to if you'd like to submit a question for us to answer on Thursday's show, we would love to hear from you. Any queries that you'd like to pick our brains on? Politics, pop culture, personal questions, we'll give some advice, we'll answer your questions. But your instructions, should you wish to participate in our Thursday call-in show for episode 900 of Chappo Trap House, is to email a voice note or recording of yourself asking a question and please limit yourselves to 30 seconds or less. If it's over 30 seconds we will not consider your call, but please email a voice note or recording of your question to calls at ChappoTrapHouse.com. Once again, if you'd

like to submit a question for this upcoming Thursday's call in show, the the address email you're recording to is calls at choppo trap house.com. Without any further ado, let's get to Monday's episode. Hello everybody. It's Monday, January 13th and Chapo is coming at you. Obviously, since last week's show, very much the catastrophic wildfires that have devastated LA are very much at catastrophic wildfires that have devastated LA are very much at the forefront of our mind. So I figured for Monday's episode, I would have on a guy who has been covering the water

beat in California for many years. So and now also joining us with his co-director has a new documentary out about the pistachio wars in California. So very, very appropriate time pistachio wars in California. So very, very appropriate time to talk about water in California. So without any further ado, I'd like to welcome to the show, Yasha Levine and his co-director on the new documentary Pistachio Wars, Rowan Wernham. Rowan, Yasha, welcome to the show. Yo, hey.

Hey, hey. Thanks for having us on. Well, first of all, congratulations on finding the perfect news hook to your documentary. I know that a lot of people are assessing blame for these wildfires in California, but I have heard that mobs of Antifa are pouring gasoline into the sewers. And I'm wondering, Yasha, were you involved in that at all just to get people interested in this documentary? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I was definitely, I mean, well, I can't, I don't wanna say anything, but if you follow my Venmo history, I think you'd be able to connect the dots, you know?

It's gonna go down in history as one of the most destructive marketing campaigns in, you know? Yeah. But one of the most destructive, but hopefully then one of the most effective as well. Well, you have to destroy to create, you know? That's the main thing, you know. Yeah. All right. Well, if any of you were in Brett Easton Ellis' neighborhood, please stop pouring

gasoline into the sewers. But obviously, like so the wildfires that have, like I said, devastated Los Angeles. I mean, assessing blame for this or like trying to figure out why or how something like this could happen is a long story, but it obviously has to begin with water. So I'll start with I'll start here. Who owns the water in California and is like is the owner is water ownership in California is an outlier as far as like the rest of the states in the union or is California an extreme example or is it very is it unique in how water is managed and owned in the rest of the states in the union, or is California an extreme example, or is it unique in how water is managed and owned in the state of California? Yeah, I mean, I think California,

but I think just generally the Southwest, sort of the dry desert states, they do stand out from the rest of California, from the Midwest, from the East Coast, because usually like development is happening or takes place or farming takes place where there isn't any water. And so, you know, getting control of water, right? And moving water to where it's needed, you know, is like central.

So water ownership and control of water and control of water systems that deliver this water is unique to the west, to the southwest. It is unique to America. So there is a very particular thing that's going on in California that it doesn't take place in the rest of the country for the most part. Yeah. I mean, what's not unique to California is like a lot of things, it's supposedly public resource, but it's basically quasi-privatized.

There's numerous ways that industry has captured control of the water, even though technically they're not supposed to have. Yeah. So one of the words you used to describe Southern California that I really like is terraforming. The human settlement of the massive development of Southern California is a project of terraforming, similar to what you would do to, I don't know, Mars or something like that. And water is a crucial part of that. But the mechanism of terraforming Southern California is largely controlled by a cartel of real estate developers and industrial agriculture.

Could you describe that partnership and how it has led to things like what we're seeing in California now with these devastating wildfires? I mean, you know, I think probably the best thing what a lot of people could have a cultural reference, it could kind of a cultural understanding of it is the movie Chinatown, right? I mean, it's kind of it's about that process. Oh, that's all taken care of. See, Mr. Gitts, I mean, it's about that process. Oh, that's all taken care of. See, Mr. Gitts, either you bring the water to L.A.

or you bring L.A. to the water. How are you going to do that? By incorporating the valley into the city. Simple as that. It's about creating systems that move water around, right? And then essentially taking water and sort of sucking areas

basically sucking them dry and killing them in one place, taking that water and bringing it to another place. So sort of like artificial light can bloom, whether it's like a suburban sprawl or some kind of monocrop like pistachios or alfalfa or cotton like that. You have to move water around and it's a huge state. So you basically, the system works like this, you know, you have, most of the water in California is seasonal. It only falls in the winter for the most part. Also it's sort of concentrated in the mountains a lot of the water. So it falls also as snow in the mountains. So what the system is sort

of does is it there are these huge dams that are built in the mountains more to sort of north of Los Angeles. Some of them are kind of slightly north of Los Angeles, others are really like far north, like I'm talking about you know 600 miles north in Los Angeles. And these dams capture water you know behind in these giant reservoirs and these artificial lakes high up in the mountains. And then there is this whole system of concrete rivers and pumping stations and switches and gates and all these things. And it's all kind of computer controlled that basically moves this water, moves this water

for hundreds and hundreds of miles around the state. So I mean, essentially redirecting the natural flow of rivers and the natural flow of water throughout the state. And it has to, like I said before, this has to be done because where the cities are, kind of in these lowland valley areas, where the farms are, there isn't a constant supply of water. It just, there isn't enough water to sustain life on a

massive scale. So let's say if LA didn't have these massive systems feeding it, it'd still be like a little town. It'd be like a little Pueblo, essentially, like a shit kicker town, you know, like that you'd see in a Wild West movie or something like that, because there's not a lot of water there.

And so in order to sustain massive development, like the kind that you see today, LA gets water from three sources. All the sources are hundreds of miles away. One is the Colorado River. Basically, there's a canal that goes across state lines into Arizona that grabs water from there. Another canal, another source of water is like 350 miles away and about 4,000 feet up

in the mountains. It grabs water from the Sierra Nevada mountains. Another source of water is sort of even further up north where this Mount Shasta area that's about I think 550 miles away. So LA is like this octopus that has all of these tentacles kind of spread around, you know, far, far away, almost like an imperial octopus that's sucking water from all around, right? Destroying those areas, you know, killing life there, and redirecting that life force

and that life energy to LA so that it can build suburbs without end. So it can build up in the mountains, in the hills, in these areas that are very fire prone that we've seen kind of burning in the last week. That's the terraforming system and it's vast and it's been slowly built out over the plus or minus last century. And it has all these different components. But it is the largest terraforming aqueduct canal

system in the world, in human history, way better than anything that the Romans had or anything like that. Rowan, you mentioned that water is, or at least theoretically, is a public resource in California. But what are some of the ways in which it is really not? How can so much water be privately owned in a supposedly public system? Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you look at the Wonderful Company, for example, when you get out into the Central Valley, which is where all the industrial farming is, you have localized water districts. They've got the Westlands water district and they're supposedly public utilities, but the control of them is based on land ownership. Because the wonderful company essentially owns half of the west side of the valley, they have complete effective control of the Westlands water district. Then the Westlands water district with negotiations by the Resnicks and some other big water owners out there, there's a few other big companies like the Boswells and other old families.

They pushed the state to give up this thing called a water bank, the Kern Water Bank, which is like this underground aquifer that can store enough water to supply LA. In the 90s when privatization was the ideology, but also whatever, no one really knows, backroom deal. The Resnick's didn't give up very much. They gave up some water rights to water they probably wouldn't have gotten. This crazy system in LA of water rights where it's based on an abundant year, but usually there's maybe twice as much, half

as much water as there is water rights for in any given year. They gave up some water that didn't really exist to get this water bank. I think when you think about America as a whole, it's always against centralized government, the idea that the government in Sacramento or whatever could make decisions. They've broken it up into these little water districts and the water districts in the center of California are very sympathetic to industry. So they tend to just be effectively run by the local industry and make all the decisions about water allocation based on those businesses.

I want to add one thought to this is that like you have to kind of to understand I think you know how water can be privately owned if it's like a public resource. I think you have to go back to the very beginning of the state and the way that like what the political forces were in play you know when California kind of became what it is today right after the gold rush. And essentially farmers and ranchers were like the original power base of California, right? So agriculture, that was like the, they ran California. And so successively, they kind of built these sort of government structures that are, you know, on a kind of a superficial level, publicly owned and controlled by public water agencies that are, you know, run by these people appointed by a democratically elected

governor and all these things, right? But these structures serve agricultural interests. And because agricultural interests are intertwined with a real estate interest, because it's all about land, you own, you know, a chunk of land can be a farm, it can be a suburb, it doesn't really matter. And in fact, a lot of farms in California became suburbs, like the entire Orange County essentially were, you know, orange groves, right? And so they were flipped and now they're like, you know,

it's just a continuous suburban sprawl. And so you have farmers that are at like the core political, are a core political power, and that hasn't really changed much, you know? And they're like local, so they're not like coming from New York City There is like obviously some Wall Street connections stuff like that brother like it's like it's homegrown It's local and they are really at the core of power in California

and so even if like the water that they get is Paid for by taxpayers or heavily subsidized by taxpayers The entire water system is controlled by the government, built out by the government, both the state government and the federal government. The farmers and they're sort of the real estate developers who are the ultimate beneficiaries of this water aren't in essence in full control of the system.

So it's a de facto privatized, right? Like because it's private control over a public resource, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, so when these wildfires happened and then they're still going on, a lot of the news headlines are about people's outrage about the fact that there wasn't enough water in the reserve reservoirs, there wasn't water coming out of the fire hydrants when the firefighters are trying to put out these fires. So obviously, to have a city of 20 million people

in the middle of a desert, takes you know, as you as you put it out takes moving astonishing amount of water over an astonishing distance to like make life possible in some places like Southern California, Los Angeles County. So like, is it a matter of like, there's just not enough water in California? Or is it a matter of how like the water resources are utilized? Like, where they go? Like like so what do you think accounts for the fact that like there were no water coming out of the fire hydrants in LA? Well I can

answer that because I kind of looked into it I mean I that that was it has nothing to do with like you know water allocation on it like this bigger scale because the reason I think you know what basically water pressure fell because there was so much water being used to put out these fires. And because essentially, you know, they have to pump water into these giant water tanks that sit in the hills. And that essentially provide kind of like water pressure. Like in New York, you'd have like water tanks on top of, on the roofs of buildings and stuff like that, right? So essentially, they drain, they use so much water that, you know, there's no

water pressure in the 500s lines. I mean there was another thing, there was a one reservoir that was kind of offline because they were fixing it. But Los Angeles is like, controls more water than any other entity in California. I mean LA has a huge amount of water right now. There isn't a lack of water that LA has, right? So it isn't about like of water that LA has, right? So it isn't about like that there isn't, I know that there's basically these sort of meat, there's like these kind of funny. We have like a thread going at the moment that somebody has watched our film and just

posted like a thread that's gone to like millions of people about how the Resnick's, you know, had a blame for the water. I mean, it's like, it's kind of like there's so many things that you can blame them for that they're getting away with. It's like you don't really want to do their public relations work and pour cold water on this one. Because, you know, like Yasha said, you know, it's probably a bit more indirect, you know, the causes are more indirect and systemic.

But yeah, like it's kind of like a local water problem with the fires. But it's connected in a way that I think, you know, I think, you know, to give these sort of influencers like who have kind of problems, I don't know, reading comprehension issues or whatever, you know, like to give them credit because I kind of, I sympathize because they're more right than wrong because the Resnick's are tied into this larger, like terraforming aqueduct system, right? And the way that water is allocated and who gets to control or decide how that water is allocated are basically people who are involved in real estate development and people who are farmers. Frequently, those two parties can overlap pretty heavily.

So the way that the Resnicks are tied into the the system that is kind of responsible for the fires because the system has allowed development in the Los Angeles area to just go unchecked. They're just built out homes in areas where they shouldn't be homes, largely because they have access to water that can be put anywhere, right? It's because of this terraforming system that creates a sort of artificial layer of society. And so- When you have like the water bank we talked about before as well, it's kind of owned by farmers. They're selling water to suburban developments. And often when you have like the lobbying, the Resnick's are going to be a big party lobbying to bring water, say from like the Delta, the river that feeds to San Francisco Bay South, and to build this infrastructure. But, you know, they're also going to be in partnership with the Metropolitan Water, the LA Water

District and real estate developers. So they're all working together to achieve the same things, even if it's suburban development versus agriculture that might be the real problem here in the fires. The main thing is this, I think the takeaway message for me is like, California is this very, like, artificial civilization, right? Everything is built in places where it shouldn't be. It's like building at the bottom of a river, you know, during a dry spell.

And the decisions are like, purely profit-driven as well. Just like opportunistic short-term profit. I mean, when I think about it, I want to get into the Resnick's and the wonderful company and just like the pistachios in general. Along the lines of what you're saying, as someone who didn't grow up in California, who is just merely a visitor to California, if you've never been or you visit there for the first time, chances are you're going to be in LA or San Francisco, the two major cities, but you're going to see the Pacific coast of California,

which if you're visiting it for the first time seems like paradise. It seems like heaven on earth. It's like one of the most beautiful parts of the country. You think, oh my god, like why doesn't everyone just live like this? But then I'll never forget the first time that I drove from LA to San Francisco through the Central Valley. And the first time you see the Central Valley, if you've never seen it before, it is one of the most disturbing things I've ever encountered. It really feels like the apocalypse. It's like six hours straight of just driving through what could be the surface of the moon, basically. But it's just like endless industrial- It used to be beautiful. It used to be a river valley. Like a river valley full of birds and wildlife and stuff. That's the crazy thing about it. It was like the California, like a river valley full of birds and wildlife and stuff.

That's the crazy thing about it. It was like the California, like the savannas of Africa. But there's no record of it. Because as before, we kind of got there with invented video cameras and things. Well, yeah. I mean, it's just like I... Doing that drive, I mean, I just... Remember the first time I did it, I was just struck by the feeling that like this is what the end of the world looks like.

It's scary, man. And it's one of the things that why I, this topic, you know, of water and the history of California and like the, and essentially sort of the, I guess the larger story is like how the West was colonized and developed and sort of exploited, you know, how it fascinated because like, when I came from the Soviet Union, we moved to Brooklyn and then to San Francisco. And so I grew up from the time that I was nine years old in San Francisco. And I went like I swam in all the fake reservoirs that in California they call lakes. You know, I drove through the Central Valley so many times. And also, I just wondered at how just bleak and miserable it seemed.

Then you just try not to think about it. You just try to get past it, you know? And I think you try to go as fast as possible. You know, I got once pulled over. I was like going like 150 miles an hour at night. And I didn't even know I was going that fast. Like I was like a cop. I saw a cop do a U-turn from the other side of the highway

to chase me. And I was like, man, who is he chasing? Like that's how much you want to just get past that shitty place. I mean, you can zone out because like there's was like, man, who is he chasing? Like, that's how much you want to just get past that shitty place. I mean, you can zone out because there's literally like, you don't have to turn the wheel at all. It is just straight. No, no. No brake.

And everything you see out of either side of your window looks the same for six hours. And the Resnicks, we can get to it a little bit later, but they own so much land that you could be driving for an hour and still essentially be like a budding one of their properties. Like it's a it's a bleak thing and and look and and that's kind of what um this is what California is. It's like this totally artificial place where water you know again like what Rowan was trying to say before

actually the Central Valley used to be a kind of a beautiful pleasant place to be because it would just be seasonally very lush in the winter when it would rain and all the rivers that weren't dammed would drain into the Central Valley and it would become this the largest freshwater lake in like you know in America right seasonally and then it would slowly dry out and there would be like there'd be bears there'd be elk there'd be like all these all these all these birds that would just be huge flocks of birds. So it was full of life. It was lush.

But what happened was all the rivers are dammed. Water no longer comes down into that valley. And all that land, because it's so fertile from the thousands and thousands of years of sediment runoff that's that's naturally nutrient rich land, it's been turned into a giant factory, an outdoor factory where it's monocrops, it's just industrial agriculture, it's just there are no people on these farms. Like you can go into- That was the thing that was so disturbing to me about it. It was like six hours and the only people I saw were in cars. You do not see human beings.

No. I mean, the only life, I mean, other than plant life that you see is like the stretch where you go through, Yasha, as you described it, Kaushwitz, the huge, where it just smells like death for an hour straight. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a bleak, it's a crazy bleak place. I mean, it's what I kind of imagine if Mars was ever terraformed, you know? And there was like some kind of semblance of atmosphere that was like put there.

I mean, that's what it would be like. It's a little warmer up there on Mars. Yeah. That's what it would be like. It's a totally engineered landscape in the desert, you know? And it's been plundered by successive extraction industries. Oil has been in there, farming now is basically an extraction industry, just taking the water and turning it into cash in a completely unsustainable way. Of course, real estate development, gold was the original, basically the reason everyone

came here to ruin the place. Yeah, gold, silver, then agriculture, then suburbs. You know, now it's I don't know what it is. It's like they're going to mind woke out there from the camera. They're mining. Well, all the water they need to create funny AI generated images. Everyone can try. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it's yeah, it's fucking brutal.

Yeah. All right. So like you brought them up. So like let's talk about the Resnick family and the wonderful company, which I think is an aptly named corporation that for them to be the to be in charge of the wonderful people, the wonderful company, the Resnicks who have Rowan, as you mentioned, has sort of been pegged as next to I suppose, Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom, the kind of the culprits of this latest disaster. Can you talk about who the Resnicks are, where they come from and like this pistachio empire that they are sitting at the top of?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it is funny that the Resnicks are getting pulled into this. I mean, it's great to see it because they kind of have flown under the radar, I think. They're these billionaires that you might have seen their name on. The museum in LA, LACMA, Hammer Museum, they're big donors to the arts. They've got this liberal image. They've got Colberas, they're mascot.

They live on Sunset Boulevard. They go on the biggest mansions there. They happen to be the biggest nut farmers in the world. They've built this Pistachio Empire, this wonderful company with all this crazy marketing. Linda and Stuart, they're an interesting couple. We go through it all in the film, so you should go and watch. Go to pistachiowars.com and watch the movie. I'm just plugging it in the middle of my speech here. Like Stewart came from New Jersey. He's had a pretty rough start to life.

He might have grown up around his dad, might have been adjacent to the mob or something like that, he says sometimes. He escaped that, came to California to make a bit of life and had a whole pile of businesses that just did really well. Like a janitorial business that was suddenly a $10 million business and then a whole pile of businesses that just did really well, like a janitorial business that was suddenly a $10 million business and then a security company, like a college student. And then he had a security company who's doing security at LAX with a chief of police running it.

And they got busted smuggling it, like large blocks of heroin through LAX. Basically they were running the TSA. At the time they said it was a mob connected company. Nothing's ever really come of that, but that was what happened at the time. He had a lot of money. He met Linda. So Linda was a child of a Hollywood producer who made the blob. She came from Pennsylvania to Hollywood with a dad.

And she was kind of like a marketing protege. So, you know, at the age of 19, she started a marketing agency, you know, she was kind of like around the radical counterculture. So she has this moment in history where, um, uh, she, uh, was dating one of the guys that leaked the Pentagon papers. And, uh, then she got pulled into the indictment, uh, and, you know, you know, whatever, I don't know, she didn't sell them out. I mean, the story is that she actually Xeroxed the Pentagon Papers.

Xeroxed them, yeah, at her marketing agency. In her office, yeah. And yeah, anyway, so they met when she was pitching this agency and they, I don't know what it's, some beautiful fireworks exploded and they got together and just started building a business empire, but buying up companies. They bought up the Franklin Mint and Talaflora, these kind of trinket companies and things they could market, maybe move drugs with, who knows? The speculation, don't quote me.

Is it harder to cultivate poppies or pistachios? I have no experience cultivating poppies. I actually do have some experience cultivating poppies for purely aesthetic purposes, you know, decorative purposes. I think it's a lot more labor capital intensive to plant pistachios, you know, just because ... They're stealing the pistachios from Iran, whereas the poppies, I guess, Afghanistan, so it's naturally next target.

California would be a fucking incredible place to grow some poppies, I'm just saying. You know, like, I don't know why they don't do it. Take back our drug industry. It would be more sustainable, you know, local and all that. I think it's great. Let's make that the takeaway, like, stop pistachios, grow poppies. Decorative purposes. I mean, like, well, I mean, like, like an aspect to pistachios in particular, but also almonds as well.

I mean, like over the last 20 years, there's been this huge explosion in almond milk and almond-based lotions and almond products. These nuts are incredibly... They take an incredible amount of water to produce even one nut. What is it? Like a thousand gallons of fresh water needed to create how many? What? One pistachio or?

One pound. It's like a thousand gallons of pounds. Yeah to create like how many, what, one pistachio or? One pound. It's like a thousand gallons a pound. Something like that. It's a lot of water. There's also this factor where they need constant water. Other things, if you're just growing vegetables and normal food that people need to eat, you can just not plant your crops if there's a bad year or drought. But the pistachios, they just constantly need the water. Otherwise, you've got to rip out the orchard. It takes about seven years before you can start basically harvesting. There's this huge political pressure that comes from the nuts because no one wants to rip out their orchards if they run out of water. They increase the lobbying and they increase their control and their grip on water infrastructure.

I mean, pistachios are particularly pronounced because the wonderful company kind of has a monopoly. They basically created the market with advertising. So they did these crazy Super Bowl ads and stuff and put them everywhere. Well, you said the wife comes out of a marketing background. So like how has like her skill in marketing been led led to like the Resnick sort of kind of supplanting a lot of these, like the older like oligarch families, like for instance, Nellie Bowles' family. Yeah, yeah. I like to call her Bowles, you know, I don't know.

It's Nellie Bowles. I don't know, it just somehow fits her better. But, you know, I'm an immigrant. I can't pronounce things, so I don't know. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, look, it's they're interesting. I mean, in a way, they are like, they represent a newer kind of like hungrier, I don't know if it's greedier, but just hungrier, you know, generation of people. Because, yeah, farming really goes back to this little clique of families that had

essentially intermarried and like created this aristocracy. You know, going back to, again, like around the Gold Rushes when all these families established themselves, people, you know, and these clans intermarried from like San Francisco to LA. I mean, you have like the owners of the Los Angeles Times kind of intermarrying with, you know, the farming families more from up north. And yeah, and they fractured. And so you have these older families that have, I guess they like also like kind of divvied up their inheritances. And so they're like their fortunes have gotten kind of smaller, you know? And they're just like sitting on passive income for the most part.

Whereas Linda and Stuart Resnick, you know, they came in hungry. I mean, they are basically like East Coast Jews and they were hungry for money, man. They wanted to make a name for themselves. And so they were like trying to exploit anything that they could, you know? And so... Let's not have any anti-Semitic attacks here, Yash. As a Jewish person, I can talk about it. Well, no, no, but they were just like-

The rulers have encountered. Well, they are like they represent a kind of a newer generation. There is actually kind of an interesting ethnic difference here because I think a lot of the old farming families are like Anglos. They're Anglos, you know. They're like, they're very uptight, very white. They keep their head down. They keep their head down.

They don't make waves. They like to stay behind the scenes. And, you know, so they're hungry. And so, yeah, she used her marketing skills to essentially create a market for pistachios. I mean, her whole innovation, I guess, is she looked at some of these crops like, and so, wait a minute, people are selling, like, I don't know, these things, but they're not branded. Like, we can create our own brand of pistachios.

We can create our own brand of mandarins. You know, we can create our own brand of a juice that's branded to our company and that we then push. And so, it's not like you're, you know, buying just a random orange or a random, you know, pistachio or random almond. It's like, it's like their brand, you know? And so she created a market. We have the sort of color coded packaging.

You know, if you've been in an airport anywhere in this country, you get a little, little tube of pistachios. Yeah. They'll take you over for the flight. And they, and so she just used it to create like a market and, you know, I think one of the other things about statue is that why it's, they're kind of a problem, I mean, environmentally, I think, is because half or even more than half of the entire crop that's grown in California is exported, right?

So what you're doing is actually exporting water by another means. So it's not even being consumed by Americans or in America. So it's like being exported as like a very, very expensive snack that has, in a lot of cultures around the world, pistachios are seen as having all these health benefits and stuff like that. So they're exporting water by other means in a state that's essentially, you know, chronically just overtapped to the point where all the rivers in California, it's like no one really knows this, but all the rivers in California are essentially lifeless. Like there is no, there are no fish

there and the entire ecosystems that these rivers support have collapsed. So there's this like massive ongoing extinction event that's been taking place in California and it's largely because of all the water that's being extracted for agriculture and agriculture that isn't even necessary for, you know, to sustain life, you know, for people in California and people in America. It's like, it's just frivolous garbage. You don't even need to like, you don't even need to end it, you know, you just need to, you could cut it back by 10 or 20% and a lot of the stresses would come off, you know, maybe I'd go for more than that. But it's one of these things, it's just a growth driven mentality and that's all it knows how to do. And they're really killing everything to make these snacks. But they're not the only ones. I mean, they're,

in a way, they've made it kind of a problem. They've, because they're so upfront, because they want to be recognized for their business success, they want to be recognized for their business success, they want to be recognized for everything, they put their names in all the museums, all these cultural institutions in LA, they really want to be recognized, right? But the other farmers that are doing just as, basically doing similar things to them, aren't upfront. They're not like, their face isn't plastered everywhere. Their names aren't plastered everywhere.

And so, in a way, the residents have set themselves up in a massive way. You know, like, so when these fires are happening, they're the name that's sort of out there because they're recognizable. Right. And so they're almost making themselves like the face of everything that's wrong with California agriculture, everything that's wrong with like water politics in California. You know? They are also probably the biggest, you know, so let's not let them off the hook. They are like, I think the biggest. I mean, they're literally the biggest.

Yeah, they are the biggest, but they're not the only players. They're the most politically powerful. Yeah, they're not the only ones. Well, you mentioned their political power. And now an interesting thing, Yashin, you mentioned it before, sorry, Rowan, you mentioned it. Pistachios here before form mostly usually come from Iran. And now I recently realized that every pistachio I've ever eaten in my life

is an inferior bastardized version of what should be a proper pistachio, which is what was produced in Iran or much of elsewhere in the world. How does how do the Resnick's use their political influence in ways that are unexpected as it relates to US foreign policy? You think, you know, they'd use their political influence to, you know unexpected as it relates to US foreign policy. You think they'd use their political influence to just seize water rights in California, but no, they're heavily invested in a lot of lobbying efforts that are directed against the nation of Iran.

Could you explain that? I've never actually tried a real proper Iranian pistachio. I don't think so. They died red. That's how you can tell. They have a different process over there. But yeah, this is one of the things about the pistachio industry that I don't know, kind of inspired us to make this movie, which is that like America didn't used to have a

pistachio industry. It used to be dominated by Iran. They were the biggest exporter. And then in the end of the 70s, start of the 80s, of course, it was the revolution. They threw out the US-backed dictator, the Shah, and took some Americans hostage and relations went rapidly downhill between America and Iran. They put an embargo on all the products coming into the United States, which included pistachios. Now the pistachio industry is very conscious that part of their

success, definitely their market and price point is dependent on keeping Iranian pistachios out, which would probably be cheaper and flood the market. Whereas at the moment, American pistachios probably could do wonderful coming here as a monopoly, they sell them only in snack packs for a ridiculously high price per pound. It's almost distorted the market. Pistachios are so profitable that, fuck everything else. We don't need vegetables. We don't need fish in California. Just pistachios. I'm a nut selling nuts. Hot nuts.

I've got nuts for sale. Selling one for five, two for ten. If you buy them once, you'll buy them again. Selling nuts. Hot nuts. Flying from the peanut man. Nuts. I mean, like, I mean, this is all sort of like apocalyptic because I mean like nuts are fun they're good to snack on but like and yes you put out like this

is essentially such a frivolous food product like nobody really needs pistachios unlike for instance other forms of produce or protein yeah I mean exactly it's like it's a it's a and it's interesting because because they created this market like Rowan was saying every time I every time I go back to California and drive through the Central Valley it's like I see more and more and more like land that used to be dedicated to growing something else basically popping up with trees because it is like I think you know because the amount of because they're so valuable it's such a high-value crop you can get you know a really nice return on your

investment as a farmer so they've essentially set like the the pace of the market and they've convinced everybody to grow these things so it's like the entire fucking California is like planted with pistachio nuts man and it's and it is wild because and one of the things that they do because they are you know they are you are part of the America and so America kind of defends their market share. So the American trade missions will like go to India and they'd be like, no, no, no, we want you to put high tariffs on Iranian pistachios.

We want you to because they said they're so by like, and that works for the Resnick's, right? And it works for America because America wants to cripple Iran in any way it can. And pistachios are a big export crop for Iran, right? That's how it makes sort of brings in foreign currency and things like that for Iran. So the Resnick's by trying to like increase their market share and by battle their main competitor Iran are also helping achieve, helping America achieve its foreign policy aims in basically, yeah. achieve, helping America achieve its foreign policy aims. Yeah. We went down to this pistachio grows convention in Palm Springs at the peak of the drought

and it's just pretty dry little affair. But they're talking about water, but number two on the agenda is the Iran nuclear deal and how they can lobby against the sun setting of some tariffs. And they were like basically doing a sales pitch there to these pistachio farmers, how how they can lobby against the sun setting of some tariffs. They were basically doing a sales pitch there to these pistachio farmers, how much they could spend on lobbying. In terms of the Resnick's, there's articles where they'll talk about how they don't mind stealing market share from Iran, their company representatives and stuff.

We don't really know what they're doing, but obviously the Resnick, they have a double prong thing there. They do give a lot of money to pro-Israel organizations, like Friends of the IDF and that whole massive blob of slash funds that feed both anti-Iran and pro-Israel propaganda. They're also maybe more surprisingly on the board of some think tanks. So they've been on the board of this think tank called the Washington Institute for Neary's Policy for over a decade.

And like the WNIP, Washington Institute is kind of like an APEC spin-off, but it was kind of like APEC needed to have kind of a neutral seeming information arm. So I don't know what these like LA liberals, the board of Winemp for, but it's a hardcore neoconservative think tank. It's got all of the Iraq war architects go through there. Dick Cheney is pulling people out of there for his administration during the Bush years. For some reason, for maybe multiple reasons there, they have up to their elbows in American foreign policy.

With organizations that are incredibly hostile towards Iran, basically to the point of just like, workshopping, spit-palling ideas to start a war with Iran. How can we get this going? Yeah. No, I think for them, it is an interesting synergy because their personal politics and their business politics I think are really worked together very well and strengthen each other. They're American Jews and from their even family foundation just on a personal level, they do give a huge amount of money to Israel.

We're talking about just to the IDF, up to $500,000 a year just to the IDF. They like funding various cultural institutions in Israel. So that's sort of their family foundation and then like sort of more on the more of the business side. But then the line between business and personal kind of starts to get erased. Yeah, they are on the board of these really, really hawkish think tanks and they're giving money to these Republicans because, you know, the Central Valley in California, the sort of the heart of California is basically dominated still by Republicans. California might be a blue state, but all the congressmen in these agricultural regions

are Republicans. And they are some of the most kind of looniest, weirdest, dumbest fucking Republicans you can possibly imagine. And of course, they're all extremely, you know, I don't know, hawkish on Iran and, you know, and they fund them while, you know, also funding Obama who was like negotiating the, you know, the nuclear deal with Iran. So, they're like working both sides of the issue, you know. But clearly, they are like, you don't expect, you know expect a little pistachio nut to be so heavily involved

in the intrigues of the American empire. And yet it's right there, along with Lockheed Martin, along with oil industry, just like basically lobbying and pushing for the most dangerous and horrible foreign policy initiatives America's involved in. Yeah. Well, in the wonderful company, sort of marketing and sloganeering, their tagline is, we can do well by doing good. So that they seem to be doing quite well. But another aspect to the Resnick's that I thought was interesting is that like,

you know, they are harkening back to like an earlier era of American oligarchy. Because one of the things you explore in the film is there's sort of weird company town called, what is it? Lost Hills. Lost Hills. Yes. Lost Hills. Can you talk about your journey to Lost Hills and what you encountered there? I don't know, Ro, you want to take that? Because I know you've, you know, we've spent quite a lot of time in Lost Hills, man. It's, I really feel for the people who live there. It's a really a tragic environment, I think. But yeah, go ahead, man. I really feel for the people who live there, it's really a tragic environment, I think. But yeah, go ahead, man. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. So, Lost Hills, I don't know how you describe it. It's a little town at the intersection of two highways on the west side of the valley. It's a long way from anywhere. It's a long way from Bakersfield or Fresno. And it probably started out there because there was an oil refinery. This land out there, it's not the best land, but the Resnick's got it cheap when they were buying up farmland from the oil companies. Now you basically have this pretty barren little town where

half of the people work for the wonderful company and it's sort of surrounded by an overlapping grid of orchards and oil fields. And refinery, yeah. And that sounds like a kind of a toxic combination. You're right, because the oil industry and the agriculture out there intersect in ways you probably wouldn't expect. Yeah. I would love to eat an orange grown 10 feet away from a petroleum refinery. Exactly. With oil waste water in the irrigation. But yeah, so I mean, like a lot of towns in central California, there's terrible water problems locally.

So they draw their water out of... Whereas the orchards get this water that's drawn from the mountains and pumped across the whole state, the towns are stuck with local aquifers. So they'll take whatever water they can pump out of the ground. And because there's so much water pumped out of the aquifers, naturally occurring, like toxins, like arsenic concentrate in that water. So there's, you know, bad things in the water and then they dump a whole pile of chemicals in it to treat that.

So the people in these towns are like dealing with this pretty nasty water and nasty chemical treatments, they're dealing with this pretty nasty water and nasty chemical treatments. They're dealing with fumes from the oil refinery. They're dealing with agricultural chemicals. The company says it doesn't drop from planes, but it does. It sprays all around the place. So you're in this pretty barren little town where a lot of the older workers have already

got thyroids removed. They've had cancers. They've got all sorts of problems, health problems. Uh, but then of course, the wonderful company, uh, got some bad public relations. I don't know. Back in the nineties, I think some of their first bad PR. And so they decided to drop a whole pile of corporate philanthropy on the, on the town.

So they went in and built this, you know, wonderful park, uh, like a, like a water park, you know, ironically, like a fucking water park in the middle of town for kids and a community center. They did some basic things that you would do if you had a tax base in there, because I assume the wonderful company doesn't pay a lot of taxes in Kern County. They built streetlights and just pulled the town out of the desert, basically from being a dirt street kind of town into a town with one boulevard and some street lights and a park. But you know, of course they didn't fix any of the problems about with the water. Yeah, it's a pretty bleak environment, man. I mean, because it's like, you just yeah, you have essentially a corporate run town, like like the stuff that you'd, you know, you'd hear about like a mining town or something that, you know, basically, all the workers live in this town that's owned by the mining company they're paid in script you know

they have to shop at the company store. Paid in pistachios. Well it's true because everyone has pistachios in their houses and stuff you know like and it's like and it's very bleak man because you have essentially these sort of kind of several generations of immigrants, usually from Mexico or from Central America. And they live in this world where they're just being slowly poisoned to death. Again, like what Rowan was saying, by the fact that the oil industry is right there. So you have like orchards, and you'll have pistachio orch know, these pumps that are actively pumping oil out of the ground. I mean, they're like, they actually are like integrated completely.

You'll have sort of produce, right? Things that you eat like right next to, being grown in an oil field to put it simply. And so you have these people who live in this world and they're being, yeah, poisoned to death and like the, the Resnicks, you know, just like basically threw some millions of dollars down to create like a little playground for the kids and like created a little community center and they bring in all like. They've got health programs, you know, so they try to feed their workers healthy food, kind of like LA fad food and the cafeterias and do exercise programs. But then they'll go on like a video and they'll talk about how it makes their workforce more productive.

They're pretty naked in there. It's a funny dynamic in these towns because it's basically a split between the people that get on the company track. Because I think still for a fair number of the workers, they come there and they're like, well, you make slightly more than minimum wage as a pistachio harvest guy. And you can get your kid a scholarship in the charter school, you know, run by the wonderful company, the corporate branded charter school. So if you've got good

English and you're like looking for like a middle management career at the wonderful company, you know, you think they're great. But I don't know, the reality is that company's just sucking that area and the people completely dry. And the kids, man, I mean, I don't know, the reality is that company is just sucking that area and the people completely dry. And the kids, man, I mean, I don't know, we haven't done a systemic study, but like, you know, some of the kids clearly have developmental problems because they've spent their entire lives and were, you know, basically carried to term in an extremely toxic environment, you know? And so like you have this kind of pathway to success, I guess, for people, you know, like you get into the charter school, if your kid does really well, they might get like a corporate scholarship to like one of the local universities.

But that's all predicated on the fact that if the parents have to remain workers at the company and workers are good standing, so they shouldn't be agitating for any kind of union and all this stuff. So like like it's all very tight in. It's very it's very bleak, man. And because they are, you know, because they're so supported by like the liberal establishment in Los Angeles, I mean, they're, you know, they'll bring out like an L.A. Times reporter or New York Times reporter and like show them the park that they that they put there, you know, and they'll like be presented as these

almost like liberal saviors, like these that they're actually, you know, and they'll like be presented as these almost like liberal saviors, like these that they're actually helping these people, right, live a better life rather than like sucking the life out of them and poisoning them. And it's a really bleak because it gives you this insight into, I don't know, the liberal flank of American capitalism and it doesn't really differ much from the rightist flank of American capitalism. You can treat the cancers that your job has given you with coupons for Erawan smoothies which are quite good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Well, you know, it's like you got to be like, you know, doing, I don't know, meeting quotas for like 10 years or something to get an Erawan smoothie. You can get one smoothie. I mean, come on, man. That's expensive, you know? Yeah. So it's bleak to just be there I don't know it just puts you like all the liberal like facades that is all the facades that are slapped on this liberal capitalism I mean

really fall apart fall away when you're out there you know because you just see it at like the savage core of it is just like they just really nothing's really changed in America, you know, since the Robert Barron days. Yeah. So like, Yasha, like I said, like, you've been you've been covering water and use in California and like the Central Valley in California for a while. I mean, that's how I first started reading your stuff. But in the process of doing this documentary Pistachio Wars for you and Roan, was there anything that you found while you were making this movie that surprised you or that changed your perception

of how power works in California? Huh, that's a good question. Hmm, Rowan, do you have a deal? I mean, Yasha was already jaded, but I come from New Zealand, so I'm definitely ripe for some shocking. I mean, I think the oil thing was pretty surprising. I mean, just how captured central California is by the oil industry.

Uh, you know, you think of California as this environmental, you know, bastion, the progress, uh, but you know, the reality is they've got these oil companies just dumping waste into open pits that are like leaching into the water system out there and even being recycled into agricultural water and the state basically enables it, you know, like even the you know, the Democratic governors so that that shocked me a little bit I mean I'd already read about the Resnick's from from Yasha's reporting. So I knew a little bit about that I'd say for me I'd say for me, you know, probably

a little bit about that? I'd say for me, I'd say for me, you know, probably it didn't really open up any new vistas of how horrible America is or how horrible California is. I enjoyed doing documentary because it gave me a lot more time to hang out and like talk to people, you know, because when I was doing a lot of reporting on my own, like kind of going in solo and I just didn't have the resources when I was doing my reporting to really talk to people and hang out in these little towns. We hung out in this one town called Porterville and we just got into this weird drama at the center of this town between the guy who owned a concrete plant and some orchards. He didn't steal this other guy's wife, but like, it's all tied to like this feud over water.

How are wife rights appropriated in California? Well, the wife goes where the money is. Winner takes all. It's like, it's in pistachios, I think. It's like, they put them on a big scale and the guy with the biggest nuts, you know, wins. But yeah, it's like, I think that was the most kind of bleak, kind of, but also interesting because they're real people and like, and I know, and then connected to that, I think, is like a more of a kind of a

political realization that like, even, you know, like the people in Lost Hills who are essentially being worked to death and poisoned by the Resnicks, still like hold the Resnick's in like good regard, you know, because they see them as like compared to what how bad other like employers can be or their experience, you know, and other and with other employers like they're like decent, they're okay, you know, they're not like the worst, you know, there's some I think that's there's some perks that they give and so, I think that's sort of like really floored me, you know, and it kind of goes to this idea of like, what's your political consciousness, you know.

So these workers, you know, who are being worked to death by this oligarch, poisoned on every level from the water they drink to the air they breathe, you know. Yet like they still like say, oh, they're all right. They're not too bad. You know? And that's really, I think, did fuck me up a little bit because I don't really know what to say, you know, about that. So I mean, like, in trying to like, sort of think about this entire issue, like, obviously,

water next to, you know, breathing is probably, you know, just about one of the most foundational things for maintaining human life anywhere. California, you know, what we sketched out what you guys have sketched out here is that like the way it's used in California seems to be almost like designed to destroy human life rather than sustain it. So like using California as but one example, like, and I'm not asking like to fix the problems of the world, but going forward in the next century or so, if American society wanted to utilize its water resources in a way that would sustain human life for another hundred years or so, rather than doom it, what would that look like? What would a state that was interested in marshaling its natural resources for the benefit

of the people who live in that state and like and their health, either whether it's mitigating disasters caused by fire or drinking, preparing food, washing, like what would how would water use be different in a in a better more sane society? I could take a crack at this question and then maybe you can add something Rowan. mean, look, the way that decisions are made right now in America about the way that water is distributed and the way that anything happens in California is just through profit. Like it's just straight up, you know, it's like, how can you make money off something? That's it. There's just like the profit motive.

That's the only thing that's in operation, right? And so you have to basically take that out of considerations. If you want to have a society that is about human thriving, that is about retaining some semblance of natural life on this planet and having people enjoy natural life, and not living on a totally denuded, destroyed, like fucking nub of a planet, you know, you have to think about like maximizing the use of resources for the public benefit, right? So that means that you're probably not going to be building homes, pumping water hundreds of miles and building suburbs without end, or homes in mountains,

and the hills that are naturally fire prone, like in Los Angeles that routinely go up in flames and then cause all sorts of destruction and human suffering. You're probably gonna have to decide as a society how to maximize water use, because water needs to be used to farm, right? So what are the things that should be farmed?

What are the crops that should be grown? Who should they profit? What kind of crops should they be? Who can extract value out of it, right? It should be a kind of a holistic conversation and discussion about it, right? And we're so far away from that, that it's, you know,

people aren't even aware that the problem exists at this point. You know, we're not even at a point of like discussing what to do. Most people aren't even aware that there is a problem. And just to put a number out there that I think is important. 80% of water that's used in California goes to agriculture. Right? So if you get rid of all you know human life in California like you zap LA, you zap San Francisco, you zap all the suburbs and there are no more people there. You only like will achieve like a 15, 20% reduction in water use, right? So like all the low-flesh toilets and things like that, like that's like a percentage of a percentage of a percentage point. So 80% of the water goes to agriculture and a lot of that stuff, it goes to like low-value crops like alfalfa that is then grown to feed cows

that produce, you know, dairy, you know, milk or to, you know, to that that produce dairy, milk, or to produce meat. So you want to, or a lot of that water goes to grow pistachios and things like that. So as a society, you're going to have to figure out, okay, what are the things that we're going to grow? In what amount are we going to grow it? What are we going to use this precious resource for and how are we going to use it? So that's like allocation of resources and is like key. And it's just and right now it just happens in a very monopolistic, profit driven way that people have no control over.

And I, you know, I ideally like the state would be the one deciding in some sort of democratic process, like like how you allocate those precious resources. But yes, yes. Like we have a state that's fully captured just by profit. So decisions can't be made in terms of what will maximize human potential in life. It's what will maximize the bank accounts of the Resnick family. Basically, yeah. We have like, we use the blob as a metaphor in the film because it's kind of like the

market momentum, you know, just around greed and overdevelopment is the only thing driving anything in California. I mean, I'd like to think that a democratic process could allocate things more effectively. You know, that's an optimistic view of society. Maybe they would just keep plundering it because it's out of sight, you know, like people don't need fish, they can just have fish on their screensaver or something. You know but I mean yeah I don't know. I don't know what it takes. We live in a really kind of an incredible moment man. I mean like you have you know like access to you know the most amount of information

you know possible in human history right and then all that sort of gets boiled down to is like people screaming at each other about you know woke, woke fucking this, lesbian firefighters you know like and it's like that's the level of conversation we're at and it's like or just even understanding or even like level of interaction that people have with their lived reality or and so yeah I don't think that like the systems that are in place now, the media systems, the political systems are capable of having that kind of, you know, are capable of actually having, I don't know, it's, what is it, like the discussion, the debate, the process by which these things get hashed out, because I don't think we even agree on what it means. What does human thriving mean? What does it mean? It means different things to a lot of different people, you know, And so I think even though these terms are contested, they're not even clear. And so I don't know.

I think a good place to start with what does human thriving mean would be the most amount of drinkable water for the number of people that currently exist. I think that would be a good place to start. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

I put a caveat. What a privatization is, because we grappled with this a lot. People think of like, I think a very like a binary idea of water privatization. It's like, well, when the water is privatized, it's going to be some robot out of like a Blomkamp film. It will go down to get you a cup of water to keep you alive for the day and it'll shoot you in the knee or something if you don't stand in line. If you don't have a dollar, you're going to die.

Anything less than that is not real water privatization. The reality in California is this behind the scenes privatization where they're probably a long way away from stopping you to have anything to drink. We have seen it already in little towns like Porterville where there was a crisis and suddenly there was a shortage and people realized or maybe didn't even really realize, but the local industry took all the water. And I think California could have a moment like that. I don't know if the fires are that. I think people are kind of thinking it's that in the fires. California could have a moment where they're like, fuck, we need some water or LA is short of water for drinking. And suddenly, wonderful companies are like, well, we own that.

And of course, they believe in capitalism. They own it fair and square. They're not giving it up. Yeah. I mean, just to add, I want to say something because like, look, the thing about water is that water is at the root of all life in California. I'm in upstate New York and water is also... I'm in upstate New York right now. But water is also at the root of all life in California. I'm in upstate New York and it's water is also I'm in upstate New York right now and but water is also the root of all life but there's like water everywhere you can't like you try to get rid of water

it's like it flows up from the freaking base. You can't say many good things about New York State but one of the good things you can say about New York State is that they're very careful about development near their watersheds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is why New York City has as good tap water. Exactly and there's a lot of water abundant water around but in California near their watersheds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is why New York City has as good tap water. Exactly. And there's a lot of water, abundant water around. But in California, it's the same is true, but water is not around. And so if you are like the Resnick's

and you are able to put yourself as a middleman in this water pipe, which is essentially what they are, they control this water bank and water that goes in there. They can do with it what they are. They control this like water bank and water that goes in there, they can do with it as they like, they can use it for their farms, they can use it sort of to crush their competitors, basically to give, to undercut their competitors by giving people, you know,

subsidized water who are like on their side, which they have done. Or you can, if like, let's say farming is no longer valuable, you can just turn around and sell that water to Los Angeles or sell that water to some other city. And so they are like, they've, they're these water barons in a way, because right now they're farming because that's what brings in the most amount of money for them. But if for instance, the price of water grows to the point where it's just easier for them

to just sell it, right? And just to be a middleman, they can do that too. And they're in that position. the price of water grows to the point where it's just easier for them to just sell it, right? And just to be a middleman, they can do that too. And they're in that position. The hard thing is when they start selling the water back to the state for environmental uses, so they made millions of dollars selling water back to the rivers in Northern California. So when there's not enough water to keep the fish alive in the states, like, well, the flows are low, they'll go and buy some water off the Resnick's.

It's not even clear if they actually move the water. It's just kind of like this paper deal. But now they're paying the Resnick's not to kill the fish, basically. Boy, selling water to a river, that sums up. That's a great summation of capitalism in the 21st century. You can make money doing anything. No, California is a really, you know, it's an innovative place like that.

You know, it's a, It's the thing about all these, the big systems that were developed in the new deal and everybody tends to have a pretty rosy idea of the new deal because it was, you know, like maybe a rosy period in American history, but it was that kind of techno utopian idea of development and this idea of humans basically conquering nature.

And I think a lot of people are starting to look at these big dams that we built in California and realize the problems around them. There's like one dam reclamation project that's happened where they're trying to bring a river back to life, but it's like- Yeah, but that whole thing is great. They've taken down a dam, but the only reason it was taken down is because the company that owned it, it cost more for them to maintain it. Yeah.

So it's like no one's really... I actually kind of disagree. No one's really in a serious way talking about like, oh, what should we do? Do we need to like dam every single fucking river in California so we can grow pistachios? It's not a conversation, it's not even on people's minds. Yeah, yeah.

And like going back to New Deal, it wasn't just this benevolent idea, it really was driven by industry and it came at a time when the farmers basically had a huge pressure to bail themselves out because they had already drained all the groundwater. So the New Deal side of things with industry shouldn't be forgotten. Yeah, we kind of poo-poo the New Deal a little bit in our documentary, because there are aspects to the New Deal that are actually, in hindsight, very destructive, and kind of driven by corporate lobbying and sort of the corporate sort of behind the scenes corporate needs to plunder California for its water supplies.

Yeah, it's kind of an interesting part of the story that you and I didn't really know until we really got into the history of it all. All right. Well, I think we should leave it there for today, but the film is Pistachio Wars. That's available now at pistachiowars.com, correct? That's right. You can go there. You'll click through to the VOD thing Get it special advanced release. All right, we will have the link in the episode description Rowan Yasha

Thanks for your time and thanks for coming on talking about water in California. No, it's a pleasure. Thank you Cheers guys that does it for us today. Until next time everybody, bye bye. Throats burn dry and souls that cry for water Cool, clean water Dan, can you see that big green tree Where the water's running free And it's waiting every you and me?