Doomed to Fail - Ep 124 - Dashed Dreams & Dictators - What's happening in Venezuela?

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

What happened this past weekend in Venezuela? Farz walks us through the history of abundance when they found oil, to the Oil Embargo of the 1970s that brought great inflation and poverty. This past weekend, the Venezuelan election happened and so far, Nicholas Maduro is being declared the winner. How did they get from a Socialist uprising to having a dictator essentially?Learn more about this breaking news with us!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Hey, Taylor. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm tired from traveling to Dallas and traveling, and I'm sure you are, too. But why don't you go ahead and introduce us, and then we can do some light banter about our weeks and weekend. Sounds good.

Sounds good. Welcome to doomed to fail. We are the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week, every week. And I'm Taylor, joined, as always, by farce. Always, always here. Never changed. Yeah, so you've had a travel week, too, or weekend. Yeah, I mean, we skipped recording last week.

We were all sick over here, and then we had to go to Maryland to visit family. and we were supposed to leave the day that all of the internet went down for airplanes you were traveling that day too you had to get on a bus I took a bus yeah it was basically trains is the only thing I missed but I took an Uber car

to an airport to catch a flight to another airport where everything was down actually I don't know if I told you this but if I had tried to wait for that flight that was six and a half hours after when I decided that I'm going to cancel the bus. They got canceled anyways. They got pushed to 5.15 in a.m. the next morning he got canceled.

So. The 515 got canceled? Yeah. So mine was wild. Like, I was a late flight anyway. It was like a 12.30 midnight flight direct to Baltimore from Las Vegas. We're three hours from Las Vegas. So we were like going to drive there.

But they kept pushing it back. And then finally they were like, okay, it's at 3.30 in the morning. And I'm like, I don't even know if we can do that. Like, should we go to Las Vegas and try to get an hotel? And then I saw that it was canceled, but I wasn't getting anything from the airline. I couldn't get in line. I couldn't get onto my account. And then they texted and said, oh, we got it back at the regular schedule time.

And I was like, but we're not there. You know, like we're three hours away. So we finally got and we bought another flight for the next day. So we just like delayed an entire day. And look, I'm glad that we stayed home that night. We weren't like stuck in Las Vegas and like whatever. So we stayed home and then we went the next day. on a different flight and it was a pain but we did it yeah you missed out on the insane amount

of anxiety and the backup of people because the airport that I was stuck at was super busy yeah and so even getting services like just a drink or someone to eat was was kind of a nightmare and also everybody around you were just super pissed off and you could feel it in the air oh no totally I was like and then I was so upset at the end of the day because I was like I tried so hard all day And, like, I thought it was canceled. Maybe I read the wrong thing. I know they told me it was 3 a.m. But then, like, I can't delay a flight three hours and then bring it back.

Yeah. You know? Like, that's not fair. So, anyway, we got a, a, oh, you know, like a credit for that flight, but we still have, we still paid more for the other one, but whatever. Yeah, same. Yeah, we did it. We went, we had a great time.

We went to the White House. Super cool. I put a bunch of stuff on on Instagram because I went into the National Gallery, which is I love and just like around every corner is a painting that we know about. There was Lenar da Vinci there, the famous Madame DuBerry that I have posted a lot is there. So that was cool. It was very fun. Nice.

Nice. I saw the pictures. It looked really, really fun. I've never been in the White House every time. But I've made it a point to kind of go there because most of the point to see what people are pissed off and screaming at the White House about. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, we were there at the day of the day that and Yahoo was there. But it wasn't I didn't see anything crazy.

You know, there were people obviously with signs and stuff when we were by like the National Mall, but it was like maybe 10% full of people. I didn't see anything bad and I wasn't like afraid at all. I was worried there was going to be like hard to get around and it was a little bit hard to get around. No street closures. But do you see it's hard to drive around on a good day. Yeah. Yeah. So you were in the front of the White House. Every time I've been there, I've gone around

to the back of it. You go in the east wing and then it's like a self-guided tour you kind of walk through and you're through all like the big reception rooms and you see all the famous paintings like the George Washington that Valley Madison saved during the War of 1812

is there. A bunch of like great famous paintings are there. Got it, got it. Yeah, no. In that part that I usually go, there's almost always a group of people there are like protesting something and so it is a trip. I'm glad to guys got there had fun and we're able to get home safe and sound um as i'm glad i am too

so um that being still let's go ahead and dive in for today is i assume i'm going first today you are okay we can talk about something else first yes um did you watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics um not all the way through i saw bits and pieces of it i loved it a lot of people people were complaining, but they have to remember that it's always really fucking weird. That's the thing. It's a weird show. And I thought it was so cool. They went like all over Paris. I'd be pissed about a ticket to it because you probably only saw one little tiny thing

because it wasn't like in a stadium. But it was great. I cried. I laughed. It was wonderful. I loved the people that were comparing it to Henry Zabrowski, that one guy in the blue. Oh, the Bacchus. And then people were like, it was the last upper part. It's like, it's a great you idiots.

But you know. I don't, I don't because I don't watch it. But I saw the memes of everybody in the last podcast, Facebook group, of everybody comparing that guy to Henry. I saw that funny. Also, I messaged our old friend Johnny, who lives in Paris. And I was like, are you there? Are you watching?

He's like, no, even just like, even be able to see any part of it. You have to buy really expensive tickets. Yeah. So we're just like in our. place in Paris watching it on TV I was like right well so so be it can they see the flame the flames up in the air

in a hot air balloon is that what happened I missed all of it yeah it was really cool they like they like they like Serena Williams and Raphael and Carl Lewis run a boat and then holding the flame after the flame

went all the way around and then there was like this cool mechanical horse and this like rider of the Olympic thing and then they then like 10 famous French athlete kind of passed the torch to each other and they kind of jogs together there were some Paralympic athletes

there's a guy who's like the oldest living French Olympian just turned 100 years old like he's not in it now obviously but like he was before so he was there and then

I just wanted to make that clear and then they lit it it was on how to air balloon they lit it and it went up into the air and the Eiffel tower lit up and Celine Dion sang and that's wonderful

because she's so sick yeah she was dying yeah she's not doing well but she looked beautiful and sang beautifully and was wonderful. I saw, you know, where I cut it off was, I waited until the USA boat showed up, and then I cut off. Did everything happen after that, basically, or did I miss the beginning? I don't know. Did you see Lady Gaga?

No. She was dressed like a flamingo kind of. She sang in French, a bunch of like really weird dancing. Oh, I think it was happening at the same time. I think, okay, so I think the boat, the presentation of the athletes on the boat was happening at the same time as the actual event part of it and so the cameras just pan back and forth okay which is why if you bought a ticket people were pissed because they like it didn't matter like you only saw a little part of the show right you know like you saw all the boats but you didn't see like everything

which i thought was wonderful everyone looked really great everyone was so excited it was reading and just looked very pretty and great thought you got your money's worth it did i did i did I loved it. Is there anything else? You want to sound announced before? No, we just have some, well, there was a little bit of an arson attack on the railway before, but it seems like that nobody was hurt. So that was like the first thing.

And we have some, I think, wait, let me look at the metal account right now, just to announce something that will be old news. Yeah, should we just start having, like, for the next two weeks, Olympic news session section absolutely absolutely so we have 12 medals so far um wait what is this what is this one so seven medals we have 12 battles so far um three golds uh oh very fun in swimming um so anyway we got silver in women synchronized diving which was fun this morning in the we were We sat at a hotel last night, and we watched this morning archery. And the Korean women's archery team won gold for the 10th time in a row.

It was so cool. Sweet. Yeah, it was really fun. So, yeah. You were just living it up, aren't you? I love it. That's awesome. What can you do?

Yeah, so join us next week for our Olympic medal count ceremony. That will be outdated at the time you'll do it. Yes. Speaking of which, what I'm going to talk about is going to be outdated by the time. you'll listen to it. Great. And this is supposedly coming out in like 12 hours from now. So it's going to be outdated by then.

But we'll go ahead and go ahead and hop right in. I was all of the map with my content for this week. Taylor, just like a little bit of like behind the scenes for you. I started researching these like horrible, horrible murder content. And I was just so sick. I was like, I can't do another like murder thing. and um i'm just like thinking like just pretty fun and thinking of like what what can i think about and i was making coffee this morning and like coffee i had people have tired of over coffee

like what has happened that's been horrible for coffee and i started googling it's like yes there's been like civil wars and revolutions caused by control of coffee and coffee routes and al salmador all these other countries and so i started researching okay i bet there's a lot of downstream impact these coffee wars in a place like el salvador columbia and it sort of research searching immigration. And I realized that El Salvador is, like, not even like the top ten in terms of immigration people coming

over from the border. And so I started looking like, who was in the top 10? What does it consist of? So obviously everybody is aware that like immigration is like a huge topic in the U.S. at this point. And I didn't really, I don't follow it very much. I mean, you know, me, I don't follow anything very much. And so I don't

actually know what the big dealers or what people are talking so much about. But I started pulling some numbers on it. And basically trying to gauge why it's a big deal. So I pulled out that in 2023, there was 2.4 million people that were trying to cross illegally across the border. And that was pretty much what it was in 2022. By comparison in 2021, it was like 1.6 million.

And that was the highest ever. So from 2021 until now, it's like been the highest ever been over the course about 20 some odd years. and I started researching into this. It was like, what is, like, where are the countries that folks are coming from? Obviously, no surprise. Mexico is number one, Guatemala is number two, Cuba's number three, Honduras, number four. And Venezuela is number five. And that's- Are you going to talk about Venezuela?

That, yes. Okay, so I, well, okay, I just told you this. And I think I told you before we started recording it. My brother and his wife just got into a car accident. And I'm waiting to hear from them. They're fine. they're in an ambulance they're going to be okay but his wife lauri is from venezuela and she was texting us about this election that's happening no way that's so random yeah well i want you know more because

i googled a little bit of it when she texted a couple hours ago okay so so first off we're hoping everything's fine and if you have to go like i said just go but um but in the meantime uh so actually so this this episode's going to be um out of date by the time you all listen to it but now that you told me that, Taylor, it's actually out of date now. So part of the outline, I'm going to have just tweak in the moment that we're talking. So, yes, I got to number five most populous, most, highest volume of people who have been kind of caught trying to cross into the southern border of the United States and Venezuela is an interesting one because, like I said, it kind of dovetails with a lot of things that are kind of going on in the U.S. at the moment. I also found this really interesting because even though Venezuela is number five, that's in total count of people that are coming into the country.

In terms of percentage of the country that is coming into the U.S., it is number one. Because over the past 10 years, about a quarter, one out of every four Venezuelans has tried to cross into the U.S. border. And there's something like you just pointed out that's going on literally right now that if it happens, the predictions are that about one in three Venezuelans that are currently still there will be trying to make that crossing. Wow. Taylor, do you know what I might be talking about that is also salient to our current situation where we have a fresh-faced female political leader promising a new future compared to a old broken down yesteryear's politico? Yeah, no.

Okay, so here's what I know. I know there's an election going on right now, and I looked up the person that my sister-in-law told me about it, and I saw that he was 74. That's what I know so far. Okay. There's so much to say about that. So let's get into it.

I know there's a lot more, but I was like, cool. No, no, no. So it is super confusing, but we're going to, I'm going to get into it because basically right now, the election in reality is between a woman named Maria Carina Machado and a guy named Nicholas Maduro. But if you look at a ballot right now, it's actually between a guy named Edmundo Gonzalez-Rutia

versus Maduro. So let me get into it. Okay, tell me all about it. We're going to get into it. And this is like super interesting. I probably learn more researching this than I have any other. Well, I probably learn more about like the world than any other episode of research.

So let's step into it. So basically, everything in Venezuela really, really truly started going to shit around 1999. And it never really picked up from there. And up to today, we're kind of contending with the decisions that were made that far ago. So in 1999, and some years before, some years after, it's like around 1990s when this all happened, Venezuela underwent what is known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which was a political movement, which a man named Hugo Chavez was a leader of, whose name. we might be familiar with in context that we can understand is essentially a political party that's what the revolution really was it was bringing up to prominence this political party and it would be something to the effect of for example if the green party and joel

sign would like take over today like it would be like a massive swing in politics that would just be like unheard of in our country for example so going a little further back in Venezuelan history, the high notes really were around the discovery of oil reserves within Venezuela. So around the 1900s, early 1900s, was when the full depth of the vastness of Venezuelan oil reserves was understood and was discovered and able to be exploited. So for context, Venezuela outranked Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and the U.S. in literally every other country in the world in terms of having the largest oil reserves in the world. Crazy, right?

I did not know that. Yeah, I didn't know that either. So Venezuela has, so Venezuela got into oil production and was a leader in many ways in oil production. For example, it was actually them who suggested and moved towards the formation of OPEC with the Persian Gulf states. Like, they were big, big players in all this.

So during this time, as they exploited oil, and oil became a bigger part of everybody's life, their economy obviously grew and the standard of living improved. So people were basically living that dream if I want my kids had better than I had. That was basically the reality. Everything was growing, everything was looking very rosy at the time.

So it's also interesting as I was researching this because it is, when you look at things like over the span of like 100 years, you can see logically why a decision was made, but then you zoom out over the course of that 100 years I'm like, oh, my God, how could you not see this was coming? And I kept thinking that as I was reading this. Like, every paragraph I went further into this.

It's like, how can you not see this coming? But, like, anyways. So I'm going to start dropping hints on where things start not to be rosy, and you kind of pick this up yourself. So then as well as economy grew steadily in the 1900s through the 1960s, but in 1973, the world crisis hit. So basically, all Persian Gulf countries are part of OPEC decided they're going to refuse to sell to countries that support Israel.

So that's a problem for the U.S., obviously. And so the price of crude skyrocketed and the only source of crude that the U.S. had at that time in the middle of late, the Cold War and everything else, was Venezuela. And so this resulted in a tremendous growth explosion in Venezuela. Apparently, their economy during this period was four X before this period. It grew an astonishingly high rate. and here's where part of the hints come in the other sectors of the business within Venezuela kind of ceased to operate and the entire country was entirely working in some capacity

on oil production transportation or whatever else essence of this vary I saw estimates as high as 96% of the GDP was entirely dependent in some way to oil Others were placing it at a more conservative 60%, but really no number goes below 60. And that is still a shit ton of your economy to be entirely dependent on one industry, especially in industry where the price is fluctuates so dramatically based on world events. So in this context, if you think about it, your economy is so dependent on this one commodity, what would happen, for example, if Saudi Arabia decided to dramatically increase oil production and flood the market. it would drop your prices, and your economy would drop as a result of it. So a sign effect of this is also the fact that because your economy had grown so dependent on one particular thing, that there is nothing secondarily for it to kind of back up to as a short-term way to bridge the gap between that primary thing and everything else.

This is actually known as Dutch disease. So this was due to the fact that in 1959, in the Netherlands, they discovered natural oil and natural gas fields. And they basically stop all other manufacturing sectors and just work to support this. And as a result, their economy tanked, like literally the exact same situation happened to them. And so that's why now this is a thing called Dutch disease. So starting the late 1970s, Venezuela economy started contracting dramatically for the first time. So I'm just going to throw some numbers at you and feel free to stop me. Maybe like far as this makes sense or it doesn't make sense, whatever else.

So it had gone from 5.65% growth the previous decades, so the 60s, to 1.9% growth. So about 4% contraction. That's really, really bad. But it gets worse because from that point on, every decade going forward, the economy went into the negatives. Meaning growth wasn't slowing down. It stopped and started going backwards, which kind of makes sense when you think about the fact that I mentioned that most of the people are trying to leave the country or a ton of them are. But that's the situation that

they found themselves in. So it was with this being kind of the backdrop that Hugo Chavez rose to prominence and power. And the first thing he did was nationalizing the oil companies industry and their income to citizens. So basically this is like traditional socialism.

The state controls the means of production. The biggest means of production the country had was oil. We're going to control it as a country. So So that was his way of kind of moving the country forward. In addition of that, he also reformed the Constitution and included removing presidential term limits. So he could basically keep running for office despite the fact that originally the Constitution did have term limits.

As a result of all this, the economy kept slowing down. And obviously all the things that come along with that ended up happening, right? murder rates spike, crime rate, spike, everything that we would assume happened happened. He would lay the groundwork for what was going to come next, which is kind of the situation we're finding ourselves in today. And that is in 2013. His vice president, Nicholas Maduro, announced that Hugo Chavez had died from a massive heart attack and also his body was apparently riddled with cancer and that he was going to take over and basically double down all of Chavez's policies. He would go on to socializing more parts of the economy, which introduced a ton

more waste at a time when the economy was basically contracting anyways. And one story I read was that, well, it's complicated. But one story I read was that there was a border patrol, Venezuelan border patrol that had seized a shipment of contraband from Colombia into Venezuela. And so I was like, okay, cocaine. It's going to be cocaine. It's going to be like something horrible. No, it was food and gas. It was literally food and gas. Like that's what was where they were trying to ship into the country. So pretty much every year since 2013 to 22, Venezuela has led the world on the global misery index. The only time it was really replaced was in 23 when Argentina took its place due to very similar circumstances, but that's a different

story for a different day. During the mid-2010s, Venezuela experienced hyperinflation due to the devaluing of its dollar. Some of these percentages actually don't really understand. So Bloomberg, for example, reported that in 2018, annual inflation was 448,000%. What does it mean? I don't even know what that means. I mean, I feel like it's like in Germany, like before World War II, it was things where like red was five dork marks. On the next day, it was a million Deutsche marks. you know so you're like my nothing matters anymore because this is so this is just like beyond comprehension for how much things cost well so there's there is an equivalency here I'm going to get to that here in a second so around this time kind of to your point there about the Deutsche

mark fees stores stop carrying price tags on things because it didn't matter because minute by minute hour by hour day by day the price would fluctuate so dramatically um you just have to ask them in the moment what the price of something was. One podcast I listened to one of the topics said that if you had any currency in Venezuela during this time, your best bet was to get rid of it as fast as possible. Get rid of any, buy anything that has some value like screws or nuts or a hammer. Like get stuff like that because that will at least retain its value more than the dollar will. Part of this problem was also the fact that Maduro kept mandating minimum wage increases to keep up with increasing inflation, but that basically just create a death spiral.

So you can sort of keep up with inflation in the short term until everyone else is also able to keep up with it, which further devalues the dollar and increases the demand for the supply side. So at this point, it was stated that a school teacher, like somebody who is a school teacher having a school teacher salary in Venezuela, the most they can afford to purchase on one month's salary was two pounds of cheese and a dozen eggs in a month. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, one thing, one thing I noticed, if you research, like, anything related to, like,

the monetary policies of Venezuela or, like, Maduro's reign, there's so many videos of just hordes of people in the streets eating out of garbage cans. Oh, terrible. It's crazy. So, luckily, um, the people of Venezuela had a chance. to speak and let the voices be heard because in 2018 was the year of a presidential election

and Maduro was on the ballot. He was basically running against a slate of like it doesn't matter who the candidates are because it was all going to be corrected anyways so the outcome was almost a foregone conclusion. Also one thing I learned researching this

is when the government, when the living situation gets so bad, the people stop caring about civics. and stopped doing things like voting. So, for example, in this election in 2018, only 32% of the country turned out for it, despite the fact that everybody wanted to get rid of this guy. Right, but they had no hope that it was going to work.

Yeah, they had no hope it was going to work, exactly. And a lot of people were getting killed in protests and being thrown in jail. So, like, there was that piece of it, too. So the international community basically said that once Maduro was elected, quote unquote, they all called it a sham election saying, No way. This was like real. The U.S. and the European allies declared that this guy named Juan Guaido was the actual acting president that they would deal with. And that was because he was in the lineup succession as the National Assembly Speaker. It wasn't actually on any ballots. So he just kind of got picked up in place in that spot. That obviously resulted in Guido going into exile. And he eventually would settle in Miami with his wife and kids after trying a coup in 2019 to seize power. which failed miserably. That brings us to today where ballots are, again, currently being cast,

and the hope is that it will be a free and fair election. It will not be a free and fair election. So there's already talks about how Maduro is telling the poor people that whatever districts vote for him are going to get more food ration because, again, the government controls food. They don't, and so the people, he's trying to, anyways, it's not going to be a free and fair election. kind of knows that already.

But because of the sanctions that all these other countries are putting on Maduro, he's like, I have to hold a selection. Otherwise, I won't get away from these sanctions and these four, like, are going to kill me. Let's see. It will be, wait, where does I leave this? Where do I leave this? Yeah, so on this ballot for today, going into tomorrow, it's going to be Maduro versus a guy named Louise Martinez and Edmundo Gonzalez Euretia we don't actually care about Louise

because the real story here is the unitary platform which should be the party platform on which Maria Carina Machado runs on but instead the platform for her stand-in is sorry the the stand-in for her platform is this guy at Mundo the reason she's out on the ballot was because basically she was a pain in the ass to the government so she found that a group called Sarnate, which I would just describe it as a voter turnout in electoral reform nonprofit. She actually led a recall referendum against Hugo Chavez in 2004, and that was like as the economy was kind of collapsing. She was one of the first ones to Google out and saw it and started protesting against it. Chavez would declare anybody a part of this organization,

especially its founders, traders, and they face prison time and substantial fines. And, yeah, this is funny. So Shab has really hated George B. Bush, who was the president of the time. And so anybody he didn't like who, like, he didn't like this woman. And he, like, said that she was like a Bush lackey in doing his bidding. He was so petty. One time he went to the U.N. And he said that the devil spoke to you yesterday.

And I can still smell the sulfur. You remember that? Mm-mm. You really hated Bush. It was funny. So in, in late 2023, she won her parties down. to run for president, but in the intervening period between her political activity against Chavez and this time period, she was also a huge supporter of Guido, which the Maduro government saw as a traitor. So because of this, she, because of the actions she took to support Guido in a peaceful transition of power, she was banned by the government of Maduro to run for official office for 15 years.

This is in 20, 23. Wow. Yeah. So what she said was, okay, look, I'm in charge of my party. party's on the ballot. I'm going to pick this other woman named Karenna Joris as my alternate. That was actually blocked for reasons I don't totally understand procedurally because her name wasn't, she wasn't able to add her name to the ballot. But this other guy was apparently already on the ballot named Edmundo Gonzalez. And that's the person that is running against

Maduro really right now. And so they basically just place him as the alternate. So in theory, if he were to win, he would be the formal president while Machado would really be running the show behind the scenes. So that's kind of where we are right now and really like a question like what's going to end up happening. Polls are estimating that this Edmundo guy is going to win by a huge, huge landslide. Apparently as of early July, then Biden and now presumably Harris's team as well as Trump's team have both for all three, I don't know who would say, all have been in touch with Maduro saying,

hey like we can give you a soft landing like you don't have to destroy your country basically because the outcome of that is that if if if we don't help him find a way to like make this peaceful then the quiet immigration situation gets even even worse and so it's all it's all kind of interconnected but the one thing that did make me think of Taylor was something you said before which is that you can be so liberal that you become conservative or so conservative you can become liberal because Richardo is considered like a right wing extremist

because she doesn't believe in like the first thing she said she's going to do if she takes over is she's going to privatize the oil industry again and privatize all these other industries which like is considered kind of like a right wing talking point she's like no like I'm not right wing this has this what we're doing is killing

all of our people and so it's like a it's like a I thought I was thinking about that as a good example of what you said of um yeah and I think that's So I hear a lot of like Latin Americans are afraid of socialism in America because they have seen things go so poorly, you know? Yeah, yeah. When I was living in Miami, the Cubans, man, you never wanted to, like, tell them you were supporting Democrats. They were so hard, right.

Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I get it. Like, you came here for a reason to escape that. So. But anyways, that's what's going on. That's why you're seeing that old. old dude against Maduro. It's because legally she was barred

from being on the ballot, but her party wasn't. And so as the party leader, the same way, Kamala Harris is the party head now of the Democratic Party. So is she. And so she gets to choose who gets to replace for on the ballot. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. But realistically, hopefully she wins. It's like a really, really bad situation. Like reading some of the stories about what's going on, I think being in America, we're kind of insulated from a lot of things that you wouldn't even think about. But listen to some podcasts around this. They were talking about how there's just nonstop blackouts all over Venezuela.

The government that has no tax revenue to build infrastructure, much less maintain the infrastructure it has, which means when horrible events happen, the crackdowns on protest happen or whatever happens. those people go into the hospital that has no power. And apparently, hospitals there are guarded by the military because they don't want you to know how they're taking care of people. One doctor they interviewed who was like, his voice was like hidden or whatever. He was saying like, yeah, you know the other thing that happens when you don't have good access to like the equipment you need in a functioning hospital? People will die, but then the more doesn't have power. And so all these bodies are just blowing up and the mord and it's just horrible. It's a nightmare story.

Where's all the oil? So the oil is still, so the oil is still there. It's not that they don't have oil. It's the price of oil. Well, it's twofold. One is the price of oil is fluctuated back and forth to not allow for any stability in their per barrel market share there was another point I was going to make there

totally letting go of them forgetting oh the other thing was they have this concept called bullionaires which is it's like a derogatory term for the government officials who are basically getting enriched off of the oil and natural resources

and none of that kind of flowing down. And so it's just equal parts corruption and the devaluing of a barrel of crude. But, yeah, it was called the Boulevard Revolution. And so the people who are in power who are now exceedingly rich like Maduro are called that Boulevard, Bolivar errors. Wow. So, yeah, nightmare situation. Yeah, it's the way your brother's. wife is that what you said or girlfriend uh wife so she was she raised there yeah she's from

venezuela they met in um online he wanted to learn to speak spanish and they met online in like a place where you get like paired up with someone um and then she came here on a scholarship to go to a school in oregon and she only had that for like a semester but then um like he went up there and then she came down to Vegas and they lived um Vegas they've been buried for like 10 years she's been 10 years. But she's in surgery right now. Is she really? Yes, for internal bleeding is what my brother says. So, oh my God. I'll keep everyone posted. I don't know anything else. I'm just like hearing this from them. It's just wild that like she texted me that today about being excited about the election. Oh my God. How's he? Is he in surgery or? No, he did a CT scan and I said he's okay.

He just is like in pain. He's going to probably just be a shit in a pain, you know? geez jeez well um two things obviously hope she's gonna be okay and the second is man that'll be so interesting to get her perspective on all this i know we'll ask her another day like yeah i know i know obviously like you interview her and get her perspective especially after the results come back yeah we should ask you can ask my brother too um yeah i'm sure he knows a lot about it his spanish is excellent it's always her english so it worked Well, I mean, that kind of has to one or the other. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. Well, cool. Super interesting.

And interesting that's happening like right now. Yeah, Dutch disease. I've never heard of it. It's like, when I first saw that, I was like, is this some, like, it's such like dengue or something? Like, I don't know. I know. I was kind of, I think I would think maybe like a tree would be involved, you know, but like, I just like have a Dutch thumb. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks for taking. hearing this through, and especially in the middle of everything you're going through right now. Do you have anything that you want to read out? I do. I have such an exciting email to share with you.

So in November, I was in the middle of my series on volcanoes, and I read a book called Eruption, The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens. And I involved the author, Steve Olson. And I just said, hey, I did a podcast and your, and your, book was the main source. He wrote back this week. And he said, Taylor, I lost this email for months and then suddenly found it. And my wife and I listened to the podcast in the car yesterday. Great job. We left all the way down the I-5. Quote 100% dead as you described Harry Truman post-erruption has entered our permanent lexicon. Aw. That's so cool. I know. I'm very excited about it. Thank you for listening. Yeah. Yeah, super fun. That's a second time. I've emailed an author and been like, I read your book and did a podcast. Also the woman who wrote the book on the Marling Incident. She was like, it was great.

I was like, yay. Well, no, you also did an interview with. Oh, yeah, I interviewed the other guy too. Yeah. Yeah, so you're like three, three and oh. Yeah, pretty fun. That's awesome. Yeah, you mentioned, Kayla mentioned to me that we got a letter and I was like, what is it?

What is it? You never replied. I was like, I know, because I wanted to tell you, I wanted to tell you live. Very exciting. And we've got a new fan out of it. This is our guerrilla marketing tactic. Taylor's. You just have to email authors.

At a fucking time. Yeah, but if you want to email us, we're at Doom to FailPod at Gmail.com on all the socials at DoomToFailPod. So please let us know. Please let us know. Yeah. Sweet. Okay. Well, I'll go ahead and cut things off.

There's other than else. So are you good? I'm good. Thank you. Sweet. Thanks all. Bye. You know what I'm going to do.