Doomed to Fail - Ep 187: Ezra Klein inspired: Abundance prescribed for mental health

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

In our latest episode, we dissect the failures of the mental health system in America. With insights from experts and historical context, we explore how we got here and what can be done to make a change. Don't miss it! #MentalHealthReform #DoomedToFailToday we talk about the history of Mental Aslymns in the context of Ezra Klein's new book, Abundance.  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] 

In 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. And we are back, Taylor live several days of past. How are you feeling today? Good. I haven't moved. I'm doing this one laying on a bed. You are very stationary. I was wondering if there was something wrong with you, and then I realize that you're just not, don't have your camera on. And so that's why you're not moving, so.

Yeah, I'm in, I'm in vacation mode. Love it, love it. Why don't you go ahead and introduce us so I remember to ask you to introduce us? Great. Hello, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. And I am Taylor, as always, joined by Fars.

I'm Fars. And I have a topic today that I think Taylor's going to have feelings about. And I think a lot of people are going to have feelings about it because I'm approaching a subject anecdotally from the perspective of everybody calm down chill out like let's like cool it cool our jets a little bit and stop trying to identify enemies and start trying to identify solutions that's what that's my headspace is that today yeah I'm moved my hands a lot you won't be able to see it but my hands are moving a lot I can feel it I can feel the vibe so I mentioned in an earlier episode a book which I have not read but I will I'm going to get this book I will buy

it because I owe it to the authors to pay them for how much they've informed me. The perennial star of my episodes of this show is consistently Ezra Klein, who I think is probably the smartest person ever and his perspectives are amazing. Anyways, he recently released a book, I think like two weeks ago, with his co-author, a guy named Derek Thompson, and the book is called Abundance. He released a book every, like, his last one is why we're polarized. that was like in 2018 or something. So like he does not publish a lot when he does.

It's always a banger. And so my topic today kind of comes a little bit from the book abundance. And I'll just debrief what the book is essentially about. Basically in it, they talk about government inefficiencies and why things are the way they are and why people should stop making this like a left-right thing and think about like, hey, a government that works for people is actually a good thing. and he gives all these anecdotal examples he aims triple barrels at California

and New York specifically and I'm going to actually do the same as it relates to California in my episode and I haven't really got to the topic yet but that's where this is headed I also love this one YouTube channel it's really like it's like an adult's only channel

it's called the soft white underbelly have you ever seen that? So it's this guy seems Mark Leda he is like a retired something and he just like he started doing photography things around downtown LA around Skid Row and then he got an office there and he bring people in and put them in front of a camera and just like just tell me your story like why why is your life the way that it is so the thing about like prostitutes homeless people uh I mean you name it like whatever

like it is it is the parts of society that we never want to like actually look at um and he shines the glaring light on it and it's incredible incredibly, incredibly informative. It's really hard to listen to a lot of times. So, like, it's not like a, it's not like a feel good. I'm going to sit and listen to this. It's more like, okay, I should probably know why this person ended up the way they are. So that's what that is.

But one of the most recent interviews was with a psychiatrist named Dr. Tori SEPA, who is, she works for the L.A. County prison system. And in it, she talks about the state of mental health within the prison system, with the grossest examples that she literally. saw in real life was three prisoners ripping out their eyes and ingesting them. I just, there's just, you said, you said so much so far. I haven't even started. What?

Are you talking about? Keep going. I haven't even started. No, I know. I know. And, and it was, it was the, the, the way she came across in the video was just like, I don't want to say defeated because it was like honorable what she was doing for a living but it was just like guys nothing is working like this doesn't work what we're doing is not working and like and she brought

the fact that basically prisons are now basically just giant mental health facilities and their inability to provide mental health treatments and I kind of went back and was like batting around the Ezra Klein abundance concept and was like oh I want to figure out like why this happened and if it can be fixed or how it could be fixed and so I am going to talk about why we ended up this way. How did we end up with people having mental disabilities, roaming the streets, roaming prisons, and not getting the treatment that they deserve? Is it Ronald Reagan?

So this is the part where you're going to, like, not be happy about this. Because also, Ezra Klein said something amazing in his last episode with John Stewart, where he was like, the villain, we are quicker to ascribe blame when the, villain looks the way we think they look, as opposed to digging a layer deeper and figuring out what the root of it was. And so Reagan's going to start in this episode, but it's not going to be like a complete takedown of Reagan. Let me put it that way.

Okay. So I'm going to start the story in the 1940s and the end of World War II. So prior to that time, these things, these institutions were referred to as lunatic as lunatic asylums and they are not what you would think of today as a psychiatric ward in like a mental health hospital this was where you would take children with mental disabilities um alcoholics would end up here obviously people with like mental illness actual mental illness will also end up here but it was like it was essentially the seventh circle of hell like it would that's that's what it was but after world war two

many GIs returning home suffered the trauma of war and the mental impact that they suffered also timeline-wise dovetailed into medical advancements and pharmaceutical drugs. And the 1940s was also when the conditions within lunatic asylums, that's what they're called. I'm not being obtuse about it. That's when those places were actually being reported about people.

What is actually going on behind those walls? We haven't seen Johnny playing in the yard for like 20 years like where do you go what's happening right they just dropped him off in like a yeah rosemary kennedy that's exactly what the kennedy's done so the prevailing theory on mental health back in the day and i'm using mental health like broadly here like i said this also applies to people who actually have like disabilities right like it's not just that but their perspective of it was that mental health quote unquote was immutable and pretty much like untreatable it was it was the idea um so mental institutions developed into human warehouses where the worst conditions

were starting to get exposed by journalists specifically a guy named albert deutch um wrote the shame of the states in 1948 and right before that life magazine um had a photo essay that they published called bedlam and when you see pictures it's like it's horrible like it it's you can't imagine people were treated the way they were being treated um So these things, along with a number of other reports about conditions of these places, along with the advancement of drugs to treat psychosis, they started shifting public perception away from housing people and mental asylums to more community-oriented approaches. That was supposed to be the answer to what this was. Asylums during this time were still around as this approach kind of sort of gaining speed. So the idea was that if you create these localized community health centers, and now we have pharmaceuticals, things like Thorazine that people can go in and take, they can get a mental health evaluation, they can get a psychologist or psychiatrist, and then come back and repeat the cycle, then that would probably lead to better outcomes than just housing someone and mental asylum away from their family, their friends, their life, and everything else, right?

and things kind of stayed that way dual track where in some cases where someone's just like unmanageable and there's no hope whatsoever you just dropped them off at a mental institution you involuntarily committed them um and the idea was just out of sight out of mind and the other side of it was you know you would treat them through these community health approaches um the one point there that's really important to say is involuntary commitment piece like that was real like that was where women with postpartum depression their husband just dropped them off at a mental health asylum and say just keep her i don't give a shit like i mean like you you have no rights at that point um which dovetails into other

parts of american culture that we're going to happen here in a little bit we'll discuss so think about what type of person is the one that ends up in a mental asylum versus the one that has the resources in the community and the household environment that would nurture them going into a clinic with arguably dramatically better healthcare outcomes, right? It's very clearly you're dealing with like, I don't want to be rude about, but you're dealing with the dredges of society getting dropped off and shipped off and nobody cares about them versus like it's your kid and you love them and you want to take care of them. So you're going to make sure that they get the treatment they deserve and they want and all that

stuff. So that's the kind of the two-track approach that the U.S. had. I wrote down that Rosemary Kennedy was an anomaly here because she did come from a really big resource intensive family and they still were like just dropped her off. I mean, they lobotomized her also. They lobotomized her too. Yeah. There was a lot going on with that family at that time. She did. She did live a long time, but she didn't live a long time. Lord knows. Yeah. So we're talking like the 1940s and now we're heading into the 1960s. And this is when a wave of reforms start coming down the pike as well.

So conditions within state run of silence were regularly being reported on. Haraldo Rivera famously did this. Tiddycott Follies and notoriously did this. It's a documentary Tiddycott Follies if anybody wants to check it out. It's terrifying. It's really, really scary. It's very, very, like, you don't want to

be there. And California had an especially bad rap with these kinds of asylums. You had Napa State Hospital, which was one of the largest and oldest, but it was overcrowded, super chaotic. And it was reports, the reports of the mid-20th century

you're describing it as a dumping ground for people with mental illness, developmental disabilities, and the elderly. You have Camarillo State Hospital known for housing both mentally ill and developmentally disabled patients. This was kind of the emblematic out of sight, out of mind

approach to care. And in fact, the Eagle Song, Hotel California, was apparently based on this mental institution. Oh, that is not what I thought that song was about. Yeah. Well, it stands, I mean, I mean, that's, this is the involuntary commitment part you can never leave it now yeah it makes it so much darker when i read that i was like

that is so much worse than i thought that was yeah i was like a beach resort you kind of get to see it like hey i kind of want to see my family but i kind of want to have margaritas and have a siesta you know like but then they put in this context then you have agnew state hospital in san jose which was originally named this is all capitalized as a proper noun here proper name the great asylum for the insane. And that was obviously well known for neglect and warehousing. Over 100 patients died to the 1960s when an earthquake struck nearby and was also well known for its poor safety standards in construction. You had Patton State Hospital, which it was historically a high security psychiatric treatment center that was known for inhumane treatments. And it was usually used for

people who were deemed criminally insane or unfit to stand trial, one of which I'm going to get to hearing a little bit later in the story. And this is where everything goes to hell in a handbasket with why the state of mental health and in our communities is the way that it currently is. And it all starts in California. In 1966, the Democratic governor of California was Pat Brown. The name sounds familiar? No, no, but I feel like you're going to tell me we're going to be like, duh. Because his son was our governor when we were living in California, Jerry. Oh, all right.

Yeah. So he, uh, so yeah, in 1966, so he was governor of California and he decided to run for a, this just blew my mind when I read this. He explicitly said that he was a two-term governor. He just wanted to get in, fix stuff, and bounce. Then it comes up to his election in 66. He's like, you know what? I'm going to go for a third term.

Oh, that's unprecedented. I know. Later on, I wrote down for anyone wondering why I'm negative on things changing with the Democratic Party, you can draw your own inferences here. But we'll leave it at that for the time being. But during his second term in office, towards the end of his second term in office, he worked with a Republican assemblyman named Frank Latterman and Democratic senators Nicholas Petrus and Alan Short to draft the Latterman Petrus Short Act, LPS for short, which would change how California managed. the mentally ill population by forcing judicial reviews of individual commitments and critically here ending indefinite and involuntary commitments for all but the most extreme cases and the idea was to um his intention around this was naturally this would defund these institutions but the bill itself wasn't a funding bill it was just a procedural bill of like from now on like these things can't be run amok you can't just drop off your kid or your

wife or whatever these things and leave them there forever indefinitely it was actually done with well intentions and the reason was that starting in the 40s the world had kind of seen that hey these localized mental health facilities and clinics within communities is a probably better way to be doing this and in addition of this this was all done in like the late 60s this was done during the civil rights era so this is also like a civil rights protection bill and that's kind of how pat brown saw it and he also thought that from a funding perspective the fed that it's not being like funded directly through the state wasn't a huge deal because jfk had just signed into law the community health mental sorry the community

mental health centers act and we're going to talk a lot more about that the monkey and the wrench that happened here was that again nobody was happy that brown after saying he was going to run two terms ran for a third and he got completely whipped in the 66 election by Ronald Reagan, who won the governorship of California and was sworn to office in 1967. Reagan signs the LPS into into law that was developed under Pat Brown. And then several factors converged that prevented the intent of the law from taking place. So first things first, without involuntary commitments, mental assigned patients dropped. Like there's less patience. You have less costs. The asylum's huge and he needs people to operate to get funding and the funding dried up.

Next, Reagan wanted to cut the state budget anyways. In addition, the plan was always that, like I said, JFK's Mental Health Center Act would provide federal funding for these community health centers. The part of this that he did not want to get involved in, the part that Reagan did not want to get involved in, was direct government oversight into these development. of these community health centers. So budget was going to come from the JFK bill and it was going to come from the states. But the state was like under Reagan was like, hey, we, why don't you all run it? Like, why don't you, the communities actually run your own programs? So they issued block grants to counties and had them be in charge of developing their own community

centers being like, hey, part of the funding will come for these block grants. Part of it will come from the federal government. It's so interesting that JFK signed that and like never visited Rosemary. He did visit Rosemary. Did he? he visited Rosemary right before he's going to, like, before he's going to announce for office. And then he was like, he's like, wait, I'm running for office. And like, you are now telling me my sister's been lobotomized.

But he didn't know until then. He didn't know until then. He didn't know. Yeah. It's like, because it wasn't like, they knew it was like. It's an Irish secret. Yeah, it's an Irish secret. Like, it's like, it's like if your kid, if your kid gets pregnant at like 16, nobody

asked questions when she's not seen for like a year. Like it's just she's gone. Like, yeah. Um, so the way Block Grants works is that this is, funding um usually it's the way it's kind of talked about these days you hear it mostly for the federal government but it's like any government can do this in this case it's a state government issuing a grant saying here's a batch of funds that can be used for this purpose use it for this purpose essentially but shockingly to no one even back then government could barely function so

what hope did counties have with their limited resources to in staff and expertise to develop these community centers that are like super detail oriented and intricate and their resource intensive and mental health is it's still confusing how confusing was it back then third jfk's act was supposed to provide funding for 2,000 community health clinics across the country and then something else happened that kind of blew this into the background can you guess what could have happened around this time is that when he died no well you would think that'll be more important than it was but that actually wasn't the thing. The thing was the Vietnam War.

So the Vietnam War grew to become huge, like a huge albatross around the government's neck when it came to social pressures and budgetary issues. Basically, domestic spending across the board was reduced to fund the war. I guess like back then we didn't go into like massive debt for everything and we actually like self-funded stuff, which is like a crazy concept.

And all political capital that anybody in the federal government had was being used to focus on keeping Americans from mass revolt, their kids being drafted to be shot in the forest. I mean, I've been thinking about that a lot, like giving some credit to my parents and other people of their age group because, like, yeah, when they were in college, a bunch of their friends were, everyone, my dad was drafted, but he couldn't, he had a knee injury and couldn't go.

But like, yeah, that's, that's a lot. Yeah, you know, if you want to draft me right now, I shoot myself in the neck just to get out going. Like, you're too old. You're not going, but. Hey, I'm not that old. I'm still spry, okay? You're too old to be drafted.

This isn't like the end of a siege. If it's like the last couple days of a siege, when they're like all men over 40 and eight-year-olds are going to be the ones who are fighting at the gates, but I think you're fine. I'll be the shoe buff boy. So because of the state of things in the U.S. this time, mental health reform was like an orphan.

Like nobody gave a shit. Like it was the last item on the list that anybody cared about. so that funding never came from the federal government mental asylum's lost funding which like probably they should have because they were run horribly and they verbally horribly misabuse right but then what do you do with the people yeah and then kind of governments like I said they were ill-equipped to provide the community focus alternatives themselves so by 1981 well after Kennedy signed the act and was shot in the head the U.S. went through LBJ Nixon Ford Carter in total across all these presidents Less than half of the community centers that they had said they were going to build were built. About 780 of these centers were built and they were all poorly built because all the funding was kind of dried up anyways. The term used for transitioning away from mental institutions to these community centers is called deinstitutionalization. And it's been said that Reagan, when he took office in 1981, he didn't start deinstitutionalization.

He just inherited it and ensured that it would fail by cutting further federal funding back that had already been. declining for 15, 20 years at this point. So the outcome of this has been jails and prisons taking over the mantle of managing the severely mentally ill by society. By some accounts, 20% of inmates suffer from severe mental illness, including things like schizophrenia and psychopathic disorders. By comparison, the general populace is at 6%. So, like, 3.5% difference in terms of the population impact.

And the doctor I mentioned earlier, Dr. Tori SEPA, said that literally everyone on earth is susceptible to severe mental illness. It's just a factor of conditions which science doesn't actually totally understand right now for sure as to how they can converge within a single person and eventually find themselves having a psychotic break. One thing she mentioned that was fascinating was if you were chronic marijuana user, you are five times more susceptible to a psychological disorder than if you aren't. And that doesn't mean that that triggers the psychosis. It means that if you have this like innate inherited genetic precondition to it, then you are 5x more likely to have that actually manifest in your mind than if you weren't a habitual user. She also talked about dealing with people who like start doing meth about how sometimes you can bring them back. And sometimes once you push the brain too far, it's just gone.

There's no getting. Yeah. Yikes. so going from having a severe mental episode in prison to being transferred to a treatment facility is like the only hope that folks currently have that are kind of in these positions and in these conditions but even that is just lined with bureaucratic like red tape to get them across the finish line I'll give you an example go ahead sorry oh I was going to say like remember how Ed Gein loved prison yeah because he was well because he was finally in meds and he was like no he wasn't in a prison

He was mentally insane. He went to an asylum back when an asylum. Right, right. He loved it. Yeah, he loved it. Yeah, he was like, these are my peers. Yeah, this is great. I finally don't feel alone and weird.

Yeah, yeah. I'll give you an example of like what this kind of currently looks like. And it's not a sympathetic example. Like, it's not something like you're like, oh, poor guy. Let's like help. Like he's a horrible, whatever. There's a guy named Andre Lee Thomas. And at the age of 18 years old, he went into the home of his ex-wife in March of 2004.

kicked in the door, stabbed her in the chest, and then stabbed their four and one-year-old kids to death. But he was 18 and had a four-year-old child and an ex-wife? Yes. Jesus Christ. He removed their hearts, put their organs in his pocket, and then walked home and then called his former mother-in-law saying he did a bad thing.

Wow. So five days later, while he's under arrest, this is, I think this was in Dallas. It was definitely in Texas. I don't know if it was in Dallas, but I'm pretty sure it was. five days later while he's under arrest he ripped out his right eye with his bare hands still he went to trial

and was sentenced to death and while on death row he removed the other eye and ate it and he did this he said to prevent the government from reading his mind he's still on death row that's fair the government would definitely have read his mind

I mean that's this is unique across the board I looked up example after example of people who are in solitary confinement on death rows across every state across the board who like are obviously severely mentally ill but like we put this process in place in the system in place we're like just just we don't want to know about them and like frankly I don't want to know this guy right I'm not saying like this guy we should like yeah I don't have anywhere else I'd rather

put him but like yes exactly I've no where else I'd rather put him but also from like a humanity perspective the key thing is that there's no voting block for this like who's the like who is a candidate going to like lobby for money for this like like Right. There's nobody that should, I mean, they should, but there's nobody that's going to care about this. And the outcome of that is going to be the people that you see living on the streets screaming of themselves. It's going to be the people that are locked them in jail. Like if you get arrested for something trivial, like a DUI, which is like usually trivial, you might be in a cell with some guy who just ripped his eyes out five minutes ago. Like, you know, like it actually does impact even us selfishly in different ways. And so, yeah, I'm going to go back to Ezra Klein's suggestion. on finding ways to make things work and yeah that's that's kind of my ethos go by abundance I haven't read it yet but and he does not talk about any of this it was just like a segue from his conversations about some other things but that's that's my story for today what is like what what what are we supposed to do I mean it requires somebody to say we're going to address this

at a state or federal level and you don't want to go back to mental asylums like that was fucking horrible no absolutely yeah it's like there needs to be some other model like i forgot what it's called the it's i want to say kirkland and that i'm wondering something about costco too much i think it's called kirkley mcbride but there's there's a model of mental asylums that was developed in like the 18 like 17 1800s and that's what all mental asylums across the world have been and it never shifted from that and so right it needs like an update yeah it needs like a refresh you need somebody to go in yeah we got to find a different way to deal with these people and so like but then you got to commit the resources doing it and again you have a voting block of

people that like don't vote can't vote and they're nuts yeah exactly like they're not going to advocate for themselves and everybody else is like fucking terrified of not being able to eat dude i see it all the time i'll walk down i'll walk down downtown austin you'll see someone screaming to themselves. Yeah. My inclination is not to go over there and hold their hand and say, hey, how can we help?

My inclination should get the fuck out of there. Like, no, it's, I don't blame us for being the way we are, but also it's like, it's not good. No.

No, it sounds really bad. Yeah. Yeah. So. I know, it's interesting. Like,

I feel like in the Thilidemide episode, we talked about how like the kids who had it and were like disfigured, you hadn't seen disfigured people. for so long because they had hid them all away. Yeah. You know, which is so wild that there's like, let's take this entire population of people and hide them from you so you can like pretend

that everything is fine. So like your wife is being a little hysterical. Just send her away and you can pretend that everything's fine. Get a new one. You know. Dude, it's crazy. Yeah. I mean, I like I was saying earlier with the mental sound like if you had like a kid with like Down syndrome, you just drop them off and like nobody would know there were people in society that had that. And now

Right. You know, those people, like, live, I'm a huge fan of Shane Gillis who, like, he's a comedian and he has a family members who have Down syndrome. And pretty much any time he's on a podcast, he's talking about how happy they are and how much they love their lives and what a joy they are to be around. It's like, yeah, like, society is kind of depriving itself when we do things the way we do things. Yeah. Totally. That's lovely that he has that in his family. Also, he does, he does make a lot of jokes about people with Down syndrome.

And then he also prefaces that with, like, also like, I love them. they're my family so like yeah but that's humanizing them yeah yeah so yeah we'll we'll see what happens it was interesting because all this kind of dovetails with like doge and everything else like Ezra when he was on the john stewart episode he was talking about how like he's getting beaten up being like you're taking their side he's like i'm not taking that side there's a difference between a party that wants government to fail and a party that doesn't care if it works and there's something in the middle there which is like we should all wanted to work.

Exactly. That shouldn't be a left, right issue, and people are making it such, and it's like, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. You know, it's, I find it, it's frustrating because I feel like the money, it's like, it's all, it's all money related, right? But like, is it, I mean, I read headlines, and is it true that if the billionaires just paid their owed taxes, we could fix a lot of these problems?

He doesn't address that. What he actually does is he does this through a democratic lens. And that's why he focuses on California and New York because his whole point was if I pointed to why things don't work in like Texas, for example, or whatever else, then the people that I'm trying to address this book to are going to look at it and say, well, Republicans are running that state and they're staying in the way. So he points of those states. And he's like, or he actually went, he did one about, I think it was the Chips Act. where he was like it was under Biden under his administration and he was like if you want a bid to to start running getting funding for chip manufacturing in the US you have to prove that your minority owned that you have daycare facilities for women that are children you have to prove this you have to prove this yet and he said that it like started with I think like it was like in the hundreds of companies that submitted applications and then by the end it was like five and none of them got funding. yet because it's still kind of in the pending phase and it's been like four years now it was all done on their own volition like nobody forced them to put all these provisions

that made it absolutely impossible for any one organization to be able to take advantage of this and achieve the outcomes so I thought that was a really interesting he has so many of those examples that he talks about um that are just absolutely fascinating but like again it can all be addressed if people would just stop being like yeah I don't know I don't know what they're being but they need to stop it yeah i think it's like it's if you don't if you do nothing then it's just going to be the same with things over and over again you know but it has to be incremental change it just has to be because people are not going to handle it and and they're going to end up like to your question like if billionaires pay their fair share or whatever like

it's like i think what you end up with is more money going into a government that has more interests that are projecting onto those things that prevent stuff like what we're talking about here from happening like i don't think it's a more money thing i think it's a less process thing well i think everyone could always use more money like you could use more money like i wouldn't say no to money you wouldn't no but do you think that the process is a disaster yeah yeah I don't know how to ever make it not a disaster. It just seems like it's always a disaster, you know? Yeah.

I mean, I think that's kind of, he refers to it as an everything bagel, which is like if you want to do anything in certain states, then you have to check this box, this box, this box. And then by the time you're done checking the box, like, site doesn't care about that thing anymore. And it's already overrun in budget. And that's all kinds of regulations too, you know. That's what, yeah, that's what he's saying. he's saying that Democrats need to like stop running from the word deregulation because they think it only applies to corporations but it can also apply to governments like deregulate the government so it can actually become efficient and do things um like i was doing

the math like how many california specific data privacy restrictions would there be for somebody to try to try to reform mental health care in the state it would take trillions of dollars in like decades to do it under current conditions like it's just not even like who has the political capital and appetite to even try right no one yeah so she's going to get worse yeah until there's an embrace which i think i think 2028's the year of that embrace there somebody asked what um the democrats 2025 project 2025 book would book like um 2029 and i forgot what congressman or center it was but they just like retweeted the abundance book i was like yeah that's that is it like that is a strong approach to things that i think most people would get behind so

yeah i want to read it i put it on my list i can read it in 17 weeks is when the library will give it to me if you if you want to do that the easiest way possible literally like it's like maybe like three days old this point just go on your favorite podcast app and find the John Stewart Ezra Klein interview. No, I know. And it was, it was amazing.

Because John Stewart's involved in this stuff, right? Like he's involved in like veteran affairs and veteran, um, 9-11 funding and all that kind of stuff. Of course. God, when he talks about 9-11 funding, you're like, yeah, he really is in it.

And like, he talks about attending all these community boards and he's like, no, I see it. Dude, I see. I, I've been to these boards. And we want to do a thing. And then this person raised their hand and says, but we got to make sure we look out for this.

And that person raised their hand. And all of a sudden, by the end of you're like, what are we talking about? Yeah. Why are we all coming here today? And they can't agree in anything, which is a huge problem of the left. What I feel comfortable saying? I mean, it will only be fixed when the calls coming from inside the house.

That's it. Yeah. Anyways, we want a little side tangent, but that tangent is directly tied to this. And it's like this as recline abundance concept is exactly what informed this episode. So we're still on point. I'm not going to hear otherwise. what should I what should I write in my image for this episode I don't know if you if you really I mean if you want the episode to blow up you could put like

abundance like right then right asra Klein's way let's write that I'm actually the Airbnb and we have several surfboards so I think that's fine that makes sense yeah yeah yeah yeah anywho that's all you got for you Taylor thank you that was super interesting yeah to think about you know I'm like I just like yesterday I did not read the news and I was like ah and I was like oh right to read the news today one one thing I wanted real quick to like the reason I framed it the way also framed it factually I might add is that you said to me the star was like it's all Reagan's fault right it's like it's so much more complicated no of course it is of course it is it's never the

it's so much easier to look at the boogeyman and say the boogeyman did it versus like the nuances of what happened that resulted in it, which I think people should also keep in mind. Yeah, absolutely. But then in the meantime, people's lives are like affected, you know? Yeah, yeah, of course. And they could be affected for

good if people would stop trying to argue for dumb things that prevent good things from happening. Okay, last Roy. The one that he did on the toilet, so Ezra Klein's been on this mission for like years. He's from

he's from Berkeley, I think, but he's living in San Francisco. Anyways, he's about this mission for forever. This is like a four-year-old podcast I listened to where he talks about a $1.7 million toilet at a park in San Francisco. And he went through everything that had to be accomplished before they could build it. And then

the media picked up, the national media made this up and goes to tax the assemblyman or congressman, whoever allocated this budget for this one toilet and this one park it's like it has to be 1.7 million it might be more than that you gotta do like six years of environmental reviews it has to be every union has to get like it's like this insane process and anyways it's uh there's so many of those nuanced stories that are really fun but again that goes back to like if you try to appease and try to create the best possible outcome

then you'll achieve no outcome and that doesn't help anybody I agree Anyhow, I'm done, done, rant. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Super interesting. Do we have anything to sign folks off with? Not today, but please follow us on social media. We're also on YouTube.

We got a mean comment the other day. And then I also keep getting all these things that are like, YouTube is the biggest space for podcasters. And I'm like, I don't see that. Do you have to videotape ourselves? Then we're just videotaping our conversation. And I guess that's what people want. I don't even know why I said videotape. I'm like 100 years old.

Yeah, you're definitely not getting drafted. Dude, that was never going to. I'm a lady. Me and my lady things are not going to get drafted. But I do remember being in college at 9-11 and some lady was like, they're going to start the draft. And I was like, all my friends are going to go to war, you know? I mean, that was when I, yeah, like right around 9-11 is when I had to,

every boy has to, when they turn 18, has to do the selective service thing. and so yeah we all had to do that at school yeah that's crazy but i believe in equality so i think that you should be in the trench next to me i don't i believe in equality unless it's women and children first when i say yes we should do that and also no i'm not going to work so um other than that though quality yes i appreciate those other than those two things fine i'll take the bullet what was it what was it you're like women and children first is bullshit i was like women and children first is bullshit. I was like, excuse me. It's not. You, you were like, you actually like let go of that for a second. You're like, you know what? You're right. That's not equal. And also I still want it.

Yeah. No. Don't like no. Children at least first. And then women and then men. Yes. And then people we don't like. Fair. Fair. Yeah. And then mimes. Mimes. We love you minds. Please keep listening. Maybe they should go first. Then they can guide everybody. very calmly yeah the world needs more art um we saved the mime from this disaster so that they could mine you what happened it's all come together uh anyway i'm happy to be on vacation i hope you have an okay week yeah thanks and um yeah anything to read out before we sign off nope please follow us on social media at doom to fail pod um all of the places and we have a patreon if you want to help us word you can sign up right now and then in the future you will always have ad free episodes if we

ever get ads you know yeah please that'll be great um awesome we'll go in and cut that off then thanks taylor cool thanks