DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Should Football Be Banned? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM Eastern time. Today we discuss:• At least one in four NFL players will probably get chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Should football be banned? At least 215 of 878 players who died from 2016 to 2021 — 24.5% — had CTE. The actual prevalence could be far higher. This does not consider the 643 brains that were not examined. Studies have shown that the rate of CTE in people who have not sustained repeated impacts to the head is nearly zero. Professional football’s rate of brain disease is an occupational safety hazard with little comparison in the American workplace: asbestos workers and coal miners. Symptoms include memory loss, confusion and uncharacteristic mood swings, decreases in executive function and increases in erratic and impulsive behavior, including addiction. Should we ban other sports with high rates of CTE, like boxing, ice hockey, rugby, soccer and wrestling?• Huge mudslides sweep through villages in Nepal and Tibet, and China’s Gyirong port. Hundreds are missing and feared dead. Nepal’s foreign minister said an earthquake triggered a large landslide, which in turn blocked a river, sending a torrent of water downstream. Could Central Asia’s “Sword of Damocles”—Lake Sarez—be next?• CIA Director John Ratcliffe quietly flew to Russia, where he met with his FSB intelligence counterparts. The topic of discussion, however, was probably not the Russo-Ukrainian War.SUBSCRIBE on YouTube/Rumble: $5/month$20/month on YouTube: Get a Closing Credit$50/month on YouTube: Exclusive Monthly Hangout with Ted and Jamarl (Rumblers: contact [e-mail] for details)MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomasLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

Good morning you are watching or listening to, as the case may be, D program with Chad Rall and Jamarle Thomas. It is Wednesday, August 26. I was going to say, 1963. That's my birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you, Jamarle. I appreciate it.

This is, so yeah, we are here Monday through Friday. We are here 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern time. TMI coming up at 10. Robbie West filling in for me because I won't be here for that and Q&A show Robbie will be filling in for me at 12 noon please feel free to

pipe in with your contributions donations, donations, etc. And also just we love to see your questions and your comments. So please go ahead and put those into the live chat and Robbie will go ahead and put those on. Okay, so we should just probably get to it. We've got like basically

this CTE story, the mudslides, and the John Ratcliffe trip to Russia. Where do you want to start? Let's start a CTE because I think we're going to argue, and I like arguing. Let's argue. All right, so let me set it up if that's okay. So a new, a very sweeping new study shows that one out of four NFL players will probably get chronic traumatic and so, and I can't pronounce that. Can you?

Encephalitis. Encephalitis. And so we'll just call it CTE. So they looked at the brains of, this can only be diagnosed, by the way, after a person is deceased and they examine your brain. They looked at the brains of 878 players who died between 2016 and 2021. About 25% of them did have CTE, but actual prevalence is probably far higher. This doesn't consider the 643 brains that they didn't look at. And basically, studies have shown that anybody who has sustained repeated impacts to the head,

which is to say all professional football players, have CTE. So basically, according to the OSHA people, that's the occupational safety and health administration, the rate of brain disease in football is an occupational safety hazard that basically, basically doesn't compare with anything else in the American workplace. Not even asbestos workers or coal miners have such a high rate of like black lung or asbestosis. So basically what do you get? If you if you have CTE, you can suffer memory loss, confusion, mood swings, decreases in

executive function and erratic and impulsive behavior, including addiction. We've already seen victims of CTE like that guy who went to park to the offices on Park Avenue in New York City with a gun, and that ended up, he went there to do a mass shooting. He was convinced he had CTE, and he did, as it turned out. So the sports in order that have the highest rates of CTE are American football, boxing, followed by ice hockey, rugby soccer, which is to say, what everybody else calls football, and wrestling. It occurred to, And basically for the regular soccer, regular football is that's from the head using, you know, using your head to hit the ball. If they eliminated that, CTE would probably become a minor issue in soccer.

So there you have it. I think we are going to argue, look, I'm just going to put it out there. I think when you have a sport that is this dangerous where at least your odds of getting a really, really bad disease for players. playing is one out of four or higher. I mean, you know, look, I know it's a big industry. I know people love it. I know it's, you know, America's national pastime. It's more popular than baseball.

I know all that. But just because we like something doesn't mean that we should have it. And I think it's time to ban, really. I mean, there's already going to be a problem with young people who are not, you know, going who are like not letting their their parents are not letting them join uh football in junior high school in high school so i imagine it's going to be harder to find professional football players in the future anyway in the united states because there's already widespread spread parental awareness ban it ban it ban it these people are warriors these people are warriors and you use the

term victim that guy might have been a victim but you're not a victim if you know what you're going into, we should, under that model, cigarettes, alcohol, fast food, I would wage to you that these things kill every bit as readily, especially over the course of a long period of time. And we don't get $10 million a year in order to eat that garbage or to drink the product or to smoke that cigarette. I'm saying at the point where the people know what they're going into, it's hard to say, ban it. It's not like they're being forced to play football or soccer or rugby or whatever.

this is what they want to do. They're making a choice to do it. You can make an argument 10 years ago. Okay, nobody knew about this. They're all victims. Fair enough. Not now. Meaning if you indeed know that study exists and you say,

I want to play football. I'm 300 pounds. I want to hit guys. That's what I want to do for a living. Who am I to say, hey, 300 pound guy? You can't do that. He knows what he's getting into. Meaning this is not a situation where the football league is hiding it anymore.

It's known. People are aware. And if in 10 years, people are still signing up to play football, who am I to tell them that they can't do it? I'm not going to, like, I don't believe in a nanny state stuff. I agree with you in workplace. If I'm working at a place that has his best, though, okay, well, obviously, I don't want to die from his black lung.

And I'm working that job because I need that job. I can't do anything else, right? And maybe I could go to another job that's being. Yeah, no little kids are growing up like dreaming of becoming an asbestos removal worker. Nobody is. Right? That one person is dreaming to do that. Just like there's nobody who's dreaming to do many of these jobs that pay crap.

But Bob Cobb, who's making $10 million a year, who may has a 25% chance of getting a brain injury. Is it not up to Bob Cobb to make that? choice. And by the way, this is not, again, like a situation where the management has an authority over the people. Like, this is different. You can say the NFL has an authority, fair enough, but these guys are making a ton of money. They can work somewhere else. They don't have to do that job. They choose to. Well, except their brain is going to become cabbage after they leave the NFL. But they're choosing that. I guess that's what I'm saying. This is not a forced choice. They are choosing to go into football. They're choosing to play the sport. They're choosing.

to go into something that they know will have a 25% chance of them getting mushy brain. Should we not let them have that choice? Look, it's a valid question, right? I mean, like lots of people, you know, voluntarily do things that are very dangerous. I mean, I think in the future... I hear. We're talking to what? Well, like what?

So having kidney failure and deciding to travel the world. That's not normal. That's not. Put it in this way, any doctor that I met was shocked that I was even out of the country, let alone. You have to stay close for nine months. Yeah. And many of the things that I used to do,

making the choice to cover events. Okay, where you're going five, seven days without a treatment. Okay, but you're making that choice. You're taking that risk. And I've taken that risk for the last 20 years. I've gotten good at taking their risk. I got this shit down to a science. You try to mitigate what could go wrong, but you do it knowingly that you could die.

When I left the first time around to travel the world, I accepted you may die on this trip. Just otherwise you couldn't do the trip. Right? It's a real fear. I've traveled to war zones. You travel to war zones. Chris Hedges was a war correspondent. Should they have told Chris Hedges, yeah, we can't sing to them.

We don't want you to get killed and shot. Chris Hedges talks about the number of people that were killed and shot as he went about his profession. Okay, that's not brain mush. That's death. Yeah. Should we not allow that? Should you not have been allowed to go to the war zones? Should you not have been allowed to go to Afghanistan?

Because the nanny state says, Ted, Ted, this is not safe. We don't want you to do that. I mean, I guess what I would argue there is that war correspondency is a high-risk job, but it provides really important value to society. to know what's going on in, you know, in a place where lies flow fast and furious. And it's important for like the American people to know what's really happening on the ground. But that's not a lot of people that don't care about war zones. And you can make the argument that it's a job, just like football.

It's a job. It is a job. And it's a very dangerous job. And like, you know, there's that. I remember, you must remember this. I think it was in the aughts or the 90s when there was that Alaska that reality show about Alaska

King Crab fishermen. Yes, yes. And basically it was actually a good show. Yeah, it was a good show. And the reason that they chose that was because someone who was looking to develop a show in Hollywood looked up in the OSHA statistics, what's the most lethal job in the United States?

And that's what it was at the time. I don't think it's as dangerous anymore. Ironically, because of, the attention that that was focused on the profession from the show. But, you know, I mean, you're in very cold water. There's dangerous currents and storms and you can be swept overboard. And if you're in that water, even for a little bit, you can die. Right. So, you know, and they're usually like, you know, tied to the boat in some way. But, you know, not always. And then it's like, bye, bye. Well, you just get on the show. Like water is coming overboard, hitting the crew. There's

slashing back and forth on the decks. They're holding these heavy crates and whatnot. Yeah, it's, it's dangerous. Yeah. And so, I mean, you know, obviously, we just talked about, you know, Robbie's son enlisting in the Marines. I mean, obviously joining the military is is potentially, I mean, it's actually not that dangerous by percentage, right? I mean, you know, like 99.99% of people who are in the military don't get killed, right? I mean, but it's like, but the point is that it's there are, we all take risks. We drive. Driving is dangerous. I think in the future, people will look back and say, like, what? They were zooming around at 70 miles an hour in little tin cans, and like they were, and most of them weren't even watching the road. They were like texting at the same time.

It'll be like, what the fuck were they thinking, right? But, okay, again, and so I, yeah, life is full of risk. You did bring up smoking. I do think smoking should be banned, and primarily, and for me, what tips it over the line is it hurts other people. You know, like secondhand smoke kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. For that reason alone, it should be banned because your actions are directly impacting the people around you. And that was the primary reason why you can't smoke in restaurants, right? It's because people work in restaurants who may or may not smoke, and they were dropping like flies, right?

So it was an OSHA issue. But here, I feel like, okay. Cards on the table. I don't like American football. I think it's boring and stupid. Okay. It's my least favorite sport. These men are warriors.

To me, it's like watching paint dry. Okay. But, okay, so I do want to be clear on that because I don't want to be like, like, but I would, okay, I love wine. Love wine. I would give up wine. I would vote for prohibition because alcohol creates so many ills. in terms of domestic violence, you know, kidney disease, D DUI's. It's just, it's bad for society.

And so I would be willing to give up something I really love, even, and I think actually has some positive, you know, impact. I mean, like, personally, I can't really open up and talk about anything emotional if I'm not a little drunk, right? So, I mean, it's a social lubricant. I think, but this is like, okay, so, but I think that like, what value is, It's a sport, right? This is to me, like, would we have gladiatorial combat?

This is gladiatorial combat, is what it is. And I mean, I went to see Bushkashi, right? You know, the Central Asian dead goat polo. And it's one of the most dangerous sports in the world. There's no rules, basically. Wait, what do you call it? Dead goat polo? Is that the thing on Rambo?

Where they put the goat up on the... I don't know if we were still Rambo 3. I did see it. It was a long time. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's what it is. So, yeah, basically, it's played throughout the Central Asian Republics and other places, too, like the Koskis. And basically, you, they throw the, they soak up, they cut up the head of a goat, they soak the carcass in saltwater overnight.

Then when it's time for the game, you throw it out into a big, into a pitch, which is roughly a square, roughly 100 meters by 100 meters. and depends. Sometimes it's bigger, sometimes it's smaller. Anyway, men on horseback, basically whoever can grab it, they lean down and grab the goat and drag it across a finish line gets a prize. Now, okay, that doesn't sound so hard, but there's no rules. Okay, so you can use, you can try to knock other dudes off the horse so that they get trampled. You can use your whip and try to blind them with your whip. with your whip and i've seen people's like eyes explode um you know you can uh afghans have been

known to use guns and knives okay so there are no it's like something that's played on the clangon home world okay right and it's and i will not lie it's fucking awesome okay like it pushes down every y chromosome in my body right it's just like oh my god i mean even the audience can get killed because sometimes the horses run through the audience. And so it's like, it's on like Donkey Kong, right? Like, you know, like the, I've seen the international championships in Tajikistan. The year before, like 24 people had been killed. It's like the line of ambulances like stretches to the horizon, just waiting.

So I get it. I get it. It's entertaining as shit for people. But it's like if the Taji government were to say, you know, we really shouldn't. we shouldn't do this. I'd be like, I see the point, right? I mean, it's, yeah, it's nanny state, but there should be some nanny state shit, right? I mean, guardrails on the side of a highway are nanny state.

Airbag regulations are nanny state. All good things. I mean, Pete, you know, I have a friend who's a volunteer firefighter. One of his jobs is pulling people out of wrecks. He's sad that, like, now with, you know, now with airbags, they will arrive. at the scene of a crash where it's like, oh my God, how could anyone have survived? The car is like nothing's left. And nevertheless, the airbags deployed, the person's in there, they get them out, and they're okay.

Like, that's revolutionary. I mean, you know, my high school girlfriend, you know, she died in a car accident, that accident, you know, going 25 miles an hour. That would not have happened today. So it's like, I don't know. Nanny state's not always bad is my point. And I feel like this might be a time for that. I mean, or we should have a conversation about it anyway.

We should have a plebiscite and have the American people vote on whether we want to have these sports continue or not. How about we deal with real issues before we go after ones that we've manufactured because it makes people feel good? I'm so sick of shitlubs. This is not the day for me to deal with these candy-ass pussy white people who just want to come out. I said, oh, I need to take care of you. I need to save this poor brown person. First, the brown person doesn't need you. You just save them.

Go to hell. Second, we can, we can, we can, we can. I mean, we can. I mean, we can 100% do what things are real issues. More people die every single year from alcohol-related diseases than some, that some meathead smashing a set against another meathead. That's a real issue. 70 to 80,000 people die every single year because of opioids, which, by the way, got flooded into our society by the senior family.

They never had to pay a price. So take your nanny state, shove it up your ass, and let's deal with the real issues. All right, Robbie. As always, let us know how you really deal. I just, I just, it reeks of people not having self-determination. It's not me having self-determination about an airbag. who is against airbags short of the car company that doesn't want to spend the extra fast.

How do you feel about it? And we should move on because we do have important stuff to talk about. But what do you? I mean, I think this is important actually. But I mean, what do you think about like helmets? Like, I'm a bicyclist, okay? I mean, I don't wear helmets.

I should. I just don't. I don't like it. I like the air. I like the wind in my hair. You know, I feel like if I fall, the odds that I'm going to bang my head are low. I know people do die that way.

It's my choice. So this is like me being a hypocrite, I guess. But there are laws in a lot of municipalities where you are supposed to wear a bike helmet. I don't like when I was on mopeds when I was a traveling. I don't like it. I like having my hat on. I like the wind going through my hair. I agree.

I feel like with mopeds when I traveled, you know, mopeds are the way to get around in the developing world. I don't feel like I'm good enough on a moped not to wear. helmet. You know, it's like I'm just not practiced. But I've been biking, you know, every day since I was like a little kid. So I'm really, really good at it. And that just feels good. I feel like that gives me the confidence. Yeah. Well, I don't think you're a hypocrite part. I mean, but well, hypocrisy is the human condition. Yeah. I mean, but there is something from my point of view for self-determination. I mean, this goes to the political test that we took. I think I was more on the libertarian, so I don't know, stuff like this.

Okay, here we go. Let's do some questions here. All right. Okay, manchild, getting brain damage from oversized man babies smashing into each other. Who would have thought? Happy birthday, Ted. Thanks for the dollar.

If you say so, you're telling me no food and no circus. Yeah, I guess no bread. Yeah, basically. I think entertainment has value. Ted likes alcohol and fucking women. even sounds like a massage. Oh, a masaginist, but dislikes football. Well, you don't drink alcohol, though.

I do drink alcohol. Oh, wine. You drink wine. Yeah, yeah. You don't smoke pot. That's what it was. Right, right, right, right. Okay.

I'm, yeah, I know my drug of choice. I tried pot. It just didn't agree with me. Yeah. You know, it didn't metabolize well through me. All right. So, okay, I've managed to piss everyone off on my birthday. That's awesome.

Oh, they disagree with you? I thought they would agree with you. No, I think everybody's against Team Ted here, but that's okay. Happy birthday, Ted. I still love you, even if you're right. I still love you too. And you're being gay. You need to just let this go.

Thank you. I'm your gay friend. Okay, so do we want to do mudslides or CIA director John Ratcliffe's trip on? Yeah, and director John Ratcliffe drops into Moscow. The CIA goes to Moscow. Everybody was watching this, by the way. And people were like, what the hell is this about? This is weird.

This is strange. Because the last time preceded the war in Ukraine. So this time around, people were like, what the hell is this? And I remember I was like, God, I hope Russia is not selling out Iran right now. And but do you want to preface it? Yeah, well, I mean, so that's, yeah. I mean, look, they're talking about, obviously they're talking. I mean, so basically, Ratcliffe went to me, not.

with he went to meet with his counterparts in the FSB, right? Right. The Russian intelligence services, maybe other agencies as well. And basically, this was a back, it's sort of a subtle back channel communication. Obviously, it was so sensitive that they didn't want to risk a signals intercept. They wanted to do it, you know, in real life. And the administrator, so obviously it's like, well, likely you're talking about either U.S.-Russian relations, probably not that.

you're talking about Brussels-Ukraine conflict or you're talking about the I don't even know if we can call it the Iran War now if there are 14 countries are involved I think we can call it the Middle East War but we'll just call it Iran for short and it doesn't seem like it's about Ukraine

it seems like this is about Iran and this is about the secondary because the timing is in conjunction with the secondary sanctions that the administration Scott Bessent announced yesterday and based Basically, Russia is a major trading partner with Iran, so is China.

And so it sounds like they want to put the screws to Russia, or they're kind of asking Russia to play nice and cooperate with the West. At the same time, the United States has passed a message to Zelensky in Ukraine to please not bomb Moscow, not hit Moscow with drones. And that seems to be kind of like a, like, oh, we can pull back our dog. our Ukrainian dog, but we would like you in return to, you know, to sell out the Iranians. I'm sure that's the message. I don't know how the Russians received it or whether they're amenable, but that seems to be the Trump administration request. It wouldn't be one that I would give a lot

of time to if I were the Russians, but. Well, wait, I thought they said we wouldn't, don't fire during the time, during this time space and the time space being when the ship, when, what is the C-130 or whatever they call it, was going to Moscow landing and I suppose leaving. Basically, don't blow our ship up there. Oh, oh, oh, I didn't even think about it that way. Right. I thought it was more, okay, you know, that's, that's another way to look at it. Yeah, maybe that's right. Don't put on our aircraft. It's Ratcliffe. Yeah, we would really appreciate it if you didn't blow up our CIA director. Right. Right. Don't.

like a last year and a director. And then it's wow, right? It's like it's in the back channel. It's in his shadows. And yet everybody can see it. Right? Like in the old days, nobody would know that he's making that.

These days, it's hard to kind of have that stuff. I have a question for y'all because you've both been to Europe. Why would he just go to Kaliningrad? No one's watching Kalinigrad. He could have went there, no one would have noticed. And he could have met his Russian counterpart there. Well, I go to Moscow. Yeah. Well, that's a good point.

That's a good point. I mean, my first, I had several thoughts on this one. The first one was, please don't sell out of Iran for whatever deal. The second thought was, as you pointed out, well, they didn't want it to be intercepted by signal. Because your first slide is like, well, wait, you could just pick up phone call and call. Well, why don't you just do that? They didn't do that. This is highly sensitive.

It's highly sensitive. Or they want to create doubt. out. Like, why not just pick up the phone? Yeah, in Iran, you're not happy. They want the Iranians to pick up the paper and think, huh, what the fuck are they talking about? Exactly. And if you're in person, the question becomes, okay, well, how do we know that Russia is exposing all the communications to us? Russia's the middle of a war. Will they sell us out for something in this sphere that they're effectively dealing with.

Who knows? The Russians, from my understanding, there was report that came up that Russians that declined. And I would argue, I mean, I would hope that that's obvious. There's nothing in it for the Russians, right? I mean, I mean, let's just,

I mean, unless it's something like, we will, we will surrender on behalf of Ukraine. We will cut off Ukraine completely. and we're going to drop all sanctions and we're going to make nice with you. Anything short of that? I'd be like, what are we talking about here? Even if they did that, the Russians would be fools to accept that. They would be idiots.

I agree. But at least that gives them something to think about. Right. It gives them something to talk about. Agreed. I don't think the guests can do that. They would say, try to render. But why do that, though?

But why do that, though? You've already won that on the battlefield. And the sanctions have made Russia stronger. So why would you go back to the battered spouse? Now, if you're feeling it, and punch in the face, so you keep going back to personally hit you, so I love you, I trust you this time. That's insane.

They've already won. Agreed. Rightly agree. Or you can go play high school football. But by the same token, Putin is chasing safety. I used to think that from the very beginning, that this war and everything else is about safety long term.

It's kind of the argument that Iran is making, right? It's like, dude, we're not making any kind of deals or agreements with you that's not necessarily going to settle all of the issues in the Middle East for you to come back in five years and hit us again. Right. Yeah, we've already, we've already done that. Yeah. Yeah. We played that game. We're not doing that game. We're not doing that again. And the Russians are probably thinking something very similar. We made deals with you. We made agreements with you. You've broken all of them. You have weaponized Europe. I mean, to the point of the level of racism that is coming out of Europe is just breathtaking.

So it's like, why will we make this deal? If anything, happens to Iran, opposition is weakened in the world. You would just come back at a later day to get us. So, yeah, hopefully they have to get enough sense to tell the U.S. and Ratcliffe to F off see your way out. I would even go further, said it should have bombed the ship on the way in, hand off something to tell Ukrainian terrorists, give them a bunch of money and say, hey, take that out of the air. And then Russia could turn around and be like, oh, my God, look at what happened. We kept telling you they were terrorists. That would be a brilliant move. Although you know, American media would never, no matter how solid it looked like the Ukrainians, they would blame the Russians.

They'd be like, oh, this was the Russians did this, whatever. Even if the Russians had nothing to do with it. If that plane didn't fall out of the sky, they would blame the Russians. It's like, well, they were using Ukrainian weapons because I'm pretty sure that Russia has Ukrainian weapons that they've taken. They have American weapons, hand them off to some terrorist group, give them a moment. want your money, have some kind of intermediaries so you don't necessarily know it's the Russians that's still in it, knock that shit up the sky. And point to them and said, we told you they were terrorists.

We told you they were not. As you said, Putin chases safety. That's not a safety move. No, that's a ballsy move. That's a war. That's an American move. That's me as an American, right? Well, so yeah, so, I mean, I guess we'll follow this.

I don't think, I do, I would predict that the Russians will probably not, I don't think anything will come on this, but, you know. I don't think they're going to bite. I mean, we didn't talk about Scott Vincent's D-Day speech. Right, let's talk about it. Which completely fell flat. Of course. I mean, that's a recurring theme.

And you've seen this in previous administrations, but never to this scale, right? Where everything is super hyped, Liberation Day. You know, we're getting total economic, operation economic theory. You know, like, no, it's going to see anything like it. Oh, my God. Crazy, like, speech coming up from the president. Big news. And then it's like, wha, wah, every single time, right?

Every time. This was just another of those. I mean, I don't know. I mean, you know, I don't know if he invented it or not, but, you know, Jeff Bezos used to always say when he was starting Amazon. Like, you know, the code here is under promise over deliver. So, like, for example, when people first start. started subscribing to Amazon, they would say, oh, your package is going to be there in four days. And they knew they'd get it there in two.

And then you'd get it in two. And everyone was really under-promise. We got to hear in two days. This is awesome. Yeah, much better. Faster than I expected, right? No. I mean, but the administration does the exact opposite.

They always, you know, over-promise, under-deliver. I don't know how that works politically for their own people. I don't get it at all. Trump is the boy that cried woof constantly. But what's wild about it is it's because he's president, the media still gives it credibility, which is weird. Like think of the boy who cried wolf a thousand times and the wolf never comes. And yet people still gather around him as he's crying wolf. Right?

And for us, we're like, he has no credibility on anything. Like, I don't even listen to it. I've got to be honest, I've stopped watching Trump's tweets. I've even stopped watching his press conferences unless there's something. like, you know, like clips of it. Yeah, if people like you and me are tuned out, yeah, I don't stay up and watch his speeches anymore. I'll get up in the morning and I'll like, you know, I'll be like, oh, I'll just stream it and

then I'll fast forward through the boring parts and, you know. Yeah. He has no credibility. I used to stay up every, you know, anytime the president had a speech. Not anymore. Because they become so irrelevant. Yeah. I mean, when he gets up there and says like 40 times, Iran, we have a deal.

We have a deal. And they don't have a deal. And Iran is still blowing up ships. Okay, at a certain point, even the most hard core person has to be like, okay, this is absurd. It's ridiculous. Like they're beat to death. They don't have a military. They don't have a Navy. They have like 10% of their missiles left. They can't do this. They can't do that. And they're knocking ships out the water. And how come we haven't won and how come gas prices are 30% higher than they were, right? Yes. I mean, it's just ridiculous. I mean. By the way, did you see that report from NBC News that came up?

NBC News came out with a report showing that the damage to the U.S. in the Middle East was well beyond. Yeah, I saw that. Previous estimates that it went into billions of dollars. And you even have other reports. Our bases were destroyed. They were destroyed. Sensitive equipment, radar equipment, equipment that used to track missiles, like just sensitive military installations, intelligence installations, gone. Just gone.

Billions to replace. And they're wondering whether they're even going to replace them. They're like, well, if they were undefended now, well, obviously they will be undefended later. So what's the point of bringing them back? That is astonishing. And yet the president is acting like, they beat the death. Yeah.

We clearly win this. I mean, I wonder if this is like, I mean, look, I don't know if he can help himself. I think it's just maybe Trump's personality and therefore the personality of his administration. But, you know, John Shire, who wrote the rise of the president. to follow Third Reich. He wrote a lesser, he was a great documentary, yeah, essential book, right? And the, but he wrote, he wrote this book called Berlin Diary, which is basically his diaries from the war years.

He was stationed in Berlin in the 30s. And so he would listen to, you know, he was fluent in German, and he would listen to, like, the Nazis on the radio and stuff. And he said that after a while, people just, there was so much bullshit on the radio all the time, especially when the war began, that people just eventually just started tuning out and just not paying attention, even Nazi supporters.

They just were like, you know, it's a waste of my time. And I just wonder, is that an aspect of a far right or an authoritarian or a fascist state, where you basically want to create so much confusion in the information space that you have full spectrum dominance, because nobody else, because basically it's not even a question of you don't need anyone to believe what you say. You just don't want anyone to believe anything that anyone says. And then you're just in charge and that's it. And so therefore there's no place to turn to for truth. Maybe. I mean,

I think that works in the 30s. I don't know if they works now. Right. I mean, it's true that from the same point of like if you think of, let's say you had tunnels or tubes and in the tubes, you have, in these mythical tubes, you have information flowing as waves. Like new vacuum tubes. Yeah. Vacuum tubes for like of the thing. And you have a main tube that has the mainstream media that feeds to everybody's house. Okay, in the 30s, that was the radio, right?

And you could fill the radio with nonsense. Where people are like, okay, we don't know what's going on. And again, what the Germans did at one point, too, was they put 10 years on anybody who found news from other sources. So people who were, let's say, listening to the British radio, for example, and they found out, okay, my son was captured. Thank God he's safe.

He's not dead, et cetera. Okay, that person could go to jail. Right. That's true. And they had like vans, roving vans that would triangulate these illicit signals. And put them in prison for 10 years. I mean, it wasn't they wanted even longer.

Okay, you can get away with that in the 30s. How do you do it today? Yeah, because we don't have state media now. We don't have state media, not just that. TV has multiple channels. I would argue we do have state media. I think all of the channels. Sure, but it's not.

They don't have a monopoly. But they don't have a monopoly. And then you have Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, blah, blah, blah. And all of these people whittling away at their areas of interest. It is very hard.

Yeah, there's just too much stuff. Yeah, it's just very hard to dominate the media and that's in that particular way. Even with Trump, filling it with junk. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean. But I agree.

The tuning out thing is true. I agree. Thanks very much for these. generous birthday. We should have birthdays on this show every day. Like, well, I'm going to have one on the 31st. So we'll have one next day. Like keep you, keep your powder dry. Clovis's birthday is coming up in September. So happy birthday, Ted, you grumpy old man. Thank you, Ray, and thanks for the $5. And Marco, no, not Marco. Thanks very much for the $100. Oh my God. And thank you also for the $20 from

maybe blue the funk and the birthday. which is much appreciated. And let's see, John Doe, Ted, do you think Simone Wheel, I don't know how to spell her last name, was correct that the masses or proletariat will never rise up? Yes. No. Well, okay, I think the, no, I think the masses,

the masses have risen, so therefore they can rise again. I mean, they did in the Bolshevik, revolution. They did in the French revolution. And they did in the Chinese revolution. They did in the Cuban revolution. They did in the Nicaraguan revolution. It can happen. The Vietnamese

people, they rose up against the American oppressors, although that's more of an independent struggle, but still, they rose. I mean, I think they can. They can't. I mean, will they, I don't know, but I think it's not like they will never. I'm going to argue, will never.

Yeah, will never is hard. I suppose because Will never is very final. I guess in my mind, I look at it as there's a collapse and there's a reshape after the collapse. I look at it as a mechanical process. But you're right. Those weren't mechanical processes. Well, kind of, but not. Those were the people rising up and taking power at the barrel of a gun of freedom at the barrel of a gun.

Right. Well, freedom-ish. Revolutions are complicated. There's a lot of bloodletting. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I'll defer to you on that one. That's a tough one.

Well, I mean, look, I wish I knew the answer. It's just a quick bit of housekeeping while we have a basically maximum audience size, which sort of happens around this point in the show. Please go to Rumble, West Glacier Gaming, go to that channel. That's Robbie's channel. He's not going to be able to stream. He's got kind of some family crises going on, a cluster fuck of kind of epic proportions to deal with. So he's not going to be able to stream his show.

Sorry, on YouTube. I apologize. So on YouTube, not Rumble, YouTube, go to West Glacier Gaming, and this is his gaming channel, and just stream it. You don't have to, just stream the playlists because those are long. You don't have to watch or anything. Just put it on your computer, you know, maybe when you go to sleep at night, just let it play overnight or whatever.

But, you know, if you have an extra laptop sitting around, you'd be doing the show and you'd be doing Robbie a big solid. So thank you very much. That's my birthday wish here. I'll leave that up here for a while. Some people don't know how to spell the word glacier. I've seen that misspelled before. L-G-C-I-E-R.

Yeah, don't forget the I and the E. So, all right, we've got to talk about, okay, so I think the Radcliffe thing will follow. I really want to talk about the mudslides. So this is really an interesting. interesting story. And it's relevant to me, and I'll explain why, because there's a situation that will be even worse than this, that the entire world is ignoring. But basically what happened was right on the border between Nepal and the Tibetan region of China, there were huge mud

slides overnight, and hundreds of people, no doubt, have been buried alive. The Nepalese foreign minister basically announced that an earthquake, not a very big one, 4.4, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, triggered this landslide, which basically, so you have to imagine you're up in the Himalayas, right, and it's very mountainous, and you're at high altitude. There's an earthquake. The landslide goes down into a valley in where there's a river. The river backs up, is blocked, and that creates a natural dam. The river is backed up, creates a small lake, and then the dam bursts all at once, and all the water comes like a giant mudslide, swoosh.

In this case, it happened in both countries, both in Tibet and in Nepal. This is, you know, it's going to be really rough. The search and rescue operations are going to be really hard because at high altitudes, most standard helicopters have a lot of trouble flying. They don't get enough lift. They need the water's too deep in many cases for them to land. And in the mountains, there's like crazy air currents. So, you know, it's very dangerous to fly choppers, even military choppers.

That said, so we'll know more about this, but I would be shocked from the photos if we don't have thousands of dead. and a river port also. So the reason this was spoke really to me is back in 2007, I went to Lake Sares, which is in eastern Tajikistan, which is the former Soviet Union, Central Asian Republic. And so basically back in 1911, something similar, but at a much bigger scale happened. There was an earthquake in a town called Usoi, Usoi. the earthquake was is estimated to have been a 7.4. The, there was a river at the bottom of the, called the Mergob River,

that basically suddenly found itself blocked by a giant landslide. And the river started to back up. And today, it's still there, right? So it's been over 100 years. So you have to basically look at it like this. You have this natural dam that holds back, you know, hundred like hunt well i would say um is it hundreds well dozens of cubic miles of water right it's half a mile deep half a mile wide and last last time i checked it was something like 65

miles long this is a big lake and it's at high altitude it's at like 11 or 14000 feet or something right there's a whole lot of water that wants to come down right so basically um back in the 70s and 60s, Soviet scientists went to study it, and they became deeply concerned. They noticed signs of due to climate change and rising waters. There's a possibility that due to, you know, the glaciers are melting and filling the lake at a fast rate, that it'll crest over. And at that point, when the water starts to go over the top, it will cause the entire dam to buckle all at once. Or there's also, there's giant stone overcroppings over the lake. If there were another earthquake that shook that loose, it could cause a giant wave that would have that same effect.

The point is there are a lot of reasons, or it could just be another earthquake that shakes the whole thing loose. Some of the water seeps out through the bottom, but they're at a relatively slow rate, right? So the Mergaab River continues, but the water keeps building. And so the projections are kind of terrifying. So when this bursts, and it will happen, it could be happening as we talk. right now. You're going to have a wall of water about 800 feet high that's going to start cascading down a series of river valleys, the Mergab to the Bartang, ultimately out to the peyangh, out to the Amudaria. The water will travel about 800 to a thousand miles and ultimately

it'll travel through Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and make its way all the way to the, you know, benighted Aral Sea, which is between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and Peter out into the desert. So it is estimated that about between one and five million people, depending on how quickly they could get an evacuation warning, would be killed in the initial disaster. And that's only the beginning, because 90% of the arable land in Central Asia would then be silted. and it would be impossible to grow anything. So mass famine would then directly impact about 60 million people. This would be the biggest natural disaster in the history of the world.

And the thing is, there's been nothing done about it. I mean, the Soviets warned about it. The Soviets went out of business. Now, you know, Tajikistan is not Russia's responsibility anymore. So it's up to the world to figure it out, right? The Japanese have contributed a monitoring station, which I've been to up there, were four dudes basically go up every six months, and they bring chess and and and and and and and uh vodka and they hope it up there and they sit

there and their job is I used to I called them the Omega Man and the piece that I wrote about it from the journal literally they're in this little house and if the dam bursts, assuming they're not washed away with the with the bursting of the dam, they're just, it was to call Dushanbe and say, it's coming. And there's nothing anyone can do. There's hardly any, I mean, I met people when I was traveling up to this lake. It's very arduous. I stayed with local families.

And families literally were telling me things like, oh, yeah, we don't send our children to school. I mean, there's no point. We're all going to die. We know that. You know, we're just from living here. We know we're going to. And I mean, it's so there's something to die.

That's not an excuse. They're going to die soon. That's still not an excuse not to do anything. I agree. What's the point? I mean, like, meaning if I think I'm going to drop dead in two years, that doesn't change what I do. True.

No, I hear you. I look at the same way, but, and I, you know, obviously I could argue. Besides which, I was like, you don't know that, right? But the world, the world could fix this. It would cost a couple billion dollars basically to build. This was the Soviet idea. Nobody's come up with a better one to basically build a bypass tunnel on both sides of the dam, just to reduce the pressure of the water and just allow it all the time.

It's in the end of China built. Oh, yeah, three gorges. Yeah. They had to do the same thing. They had to like divert part of the water so they can build the dam, let the water back in, turn into a hydropower plant. I mean, scale of that project was just breathtaking. Oh, it's monumental, yeah.

So this would not be nearly as big a project as three gorges, except it's in a more remote place. So it's expensive because you have to bring a lot of heavy equipment up to high altitudes and stuff in the middle of nowhere, and there's no roads. So you have to helicopter everything in. But the point is you're also, it is going to happen. And, you know, it's something that the world just hasn't cared about up until now.

You know, the Japanese, you know, they pay like something like a million dollars a year to as a gift to monitor it. But, you know, and to set up a warning siren system. But that's it. Nobody, you know, just nobody cares about it. And it's like, so this story reminded me of that, like, this is on a smaller scale, albeit tragically, exactly what, you know, this is what it's going to look like. except this is nothing. You know, I've been to that region that you're talking about. This, when I did the bungee jumping thing,

Kaptmundo do his tours, taking people basically near Tibet in order to go bungee jumping in the mountains, the Himalayans or that area. It's, you're right. It's like just way up, right? Like that the idea of trying to get equal. Quipment and those type of things. Our mountains don't compare here.

Like if you're like, oh, we have the Rocky Mountains. It's like, they're cute. They ain't no Himalayas. Yeah, the Himalayas are a different animal. We all went up to the site. We all jumped. And yeah, it's just mountains, right? Yeah, it's not going to compare.

I guess I feel the world can do a lot of things that it just doesn't do in general. And many of those things would be to the betterment of people in a particular place. in a particular location, et cetera. I mean, Donald Trump has earned more money than it would cost to fix that issue. True. And I'm being serious. Like, that's not me being hyperbolic.

Trump has earned billions in the presidency and like crypto scams and all this other stuff that his kids and everything else we're doing. That alone, that one man has grifted off the presidency is enough to fix that issue. And then it becomes, okay, well, like, what am I to think of this when this is the way the world is organized with things that need to be fixed

or not and yet people can griff and get billions. I don't even understand honestly as like why can't someone come up with a grift for. Yeah. I mean, it's look, I mean, obviously if this were this project were greenlit, it would mean jobs. It would mean profits for private contracting firms. You know, there would be, you know, there would be it would open up other opportunities. right. I mean, like, for example, I'm not even kidding. The water from the lake is considered some of the best on the cleanest and best and clearest on earth. I drank it right out of the

lake and it was amazing. And they're literally like, oh, we could bottle this water. It's better than Fiji water. So you literally have shit tons of free drinking water, right? I mean, in Central Asia, you're going to need that fucking drinking water because you've got major droughts due to climate change. I mean, there's money to be made here, is my point. So why doesn't some, you know, enterprising, corrupt, greedy asshole at the UN, like, basically conspire with some other rich assholes to like make some money and at the same time fix a dam?

You know? Well, I think they're either going to make the money or they're going to fix the dam. They're not going to do both and fix the damn costs. Whereas making the money from the drink. The dam, you could, you know, you could make money doing that. right you could you know yeah I mean like if you just had a proper you know if you have a little bit of propaganda on CNN and you just explain the problem and it's like you know we need this money to save all these people you know how can America get you know 50 million new Muslim best

friends you know like if how you know you could then get the money greenlit like by a consortium of rich countries and it would be not it would be nothing it's just I mean it's literally a It's like a week of war. It's nothing. I understand it, but I think you're overstating the capacity of these countries to give a shit about other people. I know Europe says it a lot. I know the U.S. says it a lot. Everybody talks in that language.

Nobody means it. Nobody cares. God, I think. Maybe I'm cynical. I don't think anybody cares in general about what happens to other people. I mean, I think individuals do. Like, you obviously care. I don't want all of these people to die or get injured or killed or anything else.

For my point of view. Yeah, from my point of view. Like, it's a round of year and the amount of money that the United States spends to fix homelessness. We don't do it. We don't even give a shit on our own people. Which, by the way, also is leaving capitalist money on the table, right? I mean, when you have people who are sleeping in the streets and rotting away and dying, that's lost productivity from whatever work they could do.

do. It's lost, it's a consumer market that you're not exploiting. You are fucking your economy with these people. Agreed. But at the point where Elon Musk is for $3 trillion, I don't think he cares. And again, from their point of view, from the capitalist point of view, their job is not to hire people. If they can get away without hiring people, they would do so. If Jeff Bezos could run Amazon without hiring a single individual, Jeff Bezos would do because Jeff Bezos wants the profit. He doesn't give a shit about products. They could restore slavery. They would. It's slavery is the ultimate form of capitalist employment. Yeah, but the problem with that is slaves can't buy stuff.

That's the issue, right? And by the way, that's the problem with the idea of. The slavery was expensive, yeah. Yeah, and that's also the issue of not being able to hire people. Like, if people are not working at your factories, they can't buy your stuff. Right. Well, and yeah. The crux of the issue. They have a, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it is, I mean, I guess also they're really obsessed with control. right? They're like, you know, if labor is two-thirds of the expense of a typical corporation, and you're like, well, you need unemployment and poverty and homelessness in order to terrorize people into not forming unions and agitating for higher pay and better benefits. Yeah, and that's important from protesting. Right. The jackals of the case. I can't get a job if you think, like there's social pressures appointed to people all across the board to prevents or that verily inhibits people from doing what's in the best interest.

Yeah, and that's more important than CTE for the record. I mean, no, no, CTE is part of the grift because I think all the medical industrial complex needs to need to work on all these like cabbage brain former footballers. There's a lot fewer, there's a lot fewer of them than there are poor people in Dayton or Appalachia who live off of Mountain Dew and McDonald's because it's all they can afford. So if that's not a really, that's a shinier, I guess, a model, but it's definitely not the ones going to pay the bills. I mean, look, the CTE thing bothers me because it's for nothing, right?

I mean, asbestos removal workers are doing a necessary function, right? the removing asbestos that needs to be removed. You know, coal miners are performing a necessary function. You know, we need to power things. We don't need football. I mean, no, talk about warriors, JTI. You're talking about warriors. You know, when Chernobyl happened, when the Russian coal minister went and he started recruiting

coal miners because those ones have the expertise to actually go and seal up the core. those people were warriors because they knew they were never coming back well they were told they're done you just you will die but you're going to save californ you know they they piped in a you know a broadcast from gorbachev right who who said like you are going to die and you're going to and we need you to die for the motherland and you know you'll be remembered as great patriots you know football players are not warriors they're not heroes they are part of the propaganda apparatus so with that I agree with Ted.

I make the Warriors thing as a joke I'm being hyperbolic when I say that. No, I think it was a movie where people were arguing about the brain injury thing. No, well, the things, I mean, a lot of people, though, I mean, a lot of people don't think that their sports icons are heroes or warriors because our society is so dumb down. Like, they think these people are legitimately, yeah, of course, you're getting paid millions of dollars to catch a ball. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing courageous about that. And no, I don't. Just to be very clear.

And you're talking about the Warriors thing, right? Obviously, I know these people are just doing a job. They're paid to do a job. That's the way I say it. In fact, even when I was arguing, I was like, it's a job. That's all it is. Whether it's necessary or not, it's secondary to the point that in this particular system, people want to see it.

They enjoy it. And the people are making a choice. It is an independent choice. Like, again, 10 years ago, you could make this case. And I would even agree with you 10 years ago. I was like, okay, well, obviously, you know, this is problematic. This is happening. The NFL knows it that if NFL is hiding it. This is an issue. This is every bit as bad as cigarettes where they were acting as if having doctors on TV saying smoking is great for you. Okay, well, they obviously were lying. They knew they were lying. And they did so because they wanted the profits because they thought they were going to be regulated. I guess what I'm saying, though, is now that argument can't be made about cigarettes, nor can that argument be made about brain injuries. If you decide, I want to get $10 billion or $10 million a year. to get hit by a fat man,

then that's your choice. And you can get hit by a fat man over and over and over and over again and thank you $10 million and enjoy the next 20 years of your life before that last 10 years is hellish. People like to do all sorts of fucking things that are stupid though, right?

I mean, people do, people like literally succumb to being strangled so that their orgasms are better during sex and shit. But I mean, you know, it's also kind of like, Like, I think that should be illegal too. People have the right to be stupid in a free society, Ted.

Otherwise, I don't want to be like, I don't want them to be like. Literally there should be a law. Like if you, like if you and I are having sex and I strangle you to death and you wanted it, like I should go to prison because I'm a dumb ass because I strangled you to death. Nonsense. It looked. I mean, for one, is it murder? Like, meaning did this person intend to strangle? Probably, and it's manslaughter, right?

It's not murder. And the person's like, I want to be strangled. And the person is getting their jollies off. Right. And it happens every day. It happens all the time, right? I guess my thing is, I don't know, I'm conflicting. Michael Hutchins did it to himself, the guy from in excess, right?

Right. I'm conflicted about sending us invited to jail for strangulation during sex, especially if they wanted. It's like harder, harder. Or even if it's a guy, some guys could get into. I think there should be, but there should be some sort of like, it's sort of like we have laws against child pornography. And even, like, I have to explain this to my son, like, even if you have a girlfriend and you're both 15 and you take one of you sends pictures of your junk to the other,

that's child pornography. And you can go to prison. And I think personally it's insane. But who can go to prison for that? The person who received it or the sender or the center. Well, or actually, or the person who received it and then keeps it. Right. But like, yeah.

Okay. That makes no sense, by the way. but okay. I agree with you. But the point is we have all sorts of laws where it's like we're so opposed to child pornography that this is how far we're willing to go to ban it. That's all. So I don't know if y'all saw this or not. Thank you, Sean Ward for becoming a new channel member over on YouTube. We appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. And a couple people, that's what we need to make the show go. And a few people have asked why I won't be streaming. I just got some stuff going on here with the family. So I'm just not going to be able to stream for the next few days. And YouTube, honestly, pays better with ad revenue what Rumble does. So if I'll just go over there, drop a follow, and just give a playlist, let that puppy run, drop the occasional comment or a like.

So why YouTube knows that you're a real human and not a bot. I'd appreciate it. It'll help out a lot. Okay. So, yeah, West Glacier Gaming. One bird. Yeah, I hadn't changed the name because Putin bot kept getting, I actually just got an email from YouTube after Pandagate, saying if I did not, that I had to change the name because it violated

community standards, supported genesis. in Ukraine. That would accept. They said to you that. Yeah. It's like there's no genocide in Ukraine. There's one going on in Gaza.

Yeah. That's total. Yeah. One military is fighting. One military is getting its ass kicked. Those are different things. Oh, very much.

It's not a genocide. But that's why I had to change the channel name from Putin bot over to West Glacieryaman. Plus, people are probably able to hear me say it better than Putin bought with my accent. So that might be a good move. Yeah. me people might be all right well he said women are into some wild things in the sheets some men are into that too by the way men are into the

yeah oh yeah it's like strangle me and grab my balls no i had i i've had at least on one occasion a woman say like oh you know i want you to choke me and i'm like i ain't doing that like you know like you're going to have to find some other dude you know like like no i don't know i mean it depends sorry you're doing I mean, like, I'm the bad. I'm the wrong person for that. Like, if we're playing around, fair enough. Okay.

We got to do TMI now. We got to go. I'll see you guys. I'm sorry. It's not a clock. Oh, God. We're late. We're late.

I will see you dudes tomorrow. Have a good Q&A without me. Yeah, I'll have to be like. Q&A, 12 noon. TMI coming up right now. Stay tuned for that. It'll be Manila and Robbie. And I'll see, I'll be back here tomorrow for my regular stuff,

starting at 9 a.m. Bye, guys. Where is it? Here we go.