Factually! with Adam Conover - Platner Drops Out, Trump Interferes in World Cup, with Amy Silverberg and Julia Wick

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

It’s been a week of twists and turns with Graham Platner dropping out of the Maine Senate race, and Trump interfering with the World Cup only for the USA to promptly lose. And for LA locals, all of this is in the warm, chemical-y afterglow of the Boyle Heights cold storage facility fire! Smell that? No, not the ash and carcinogens! It’s a fresh news roundup with writer and comedian Amy Silverberg and LA Material editorial director Julia Wick.--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Actually, it's Friday, so we're breaking down the news with two smart and funny people. We still do not have a name for this segment. And I will not come up with one because I am lazy, but with me are two wonderfully funny, funny and smart people. We have Amy Silverberg, writer-comedian. Thank you for having me. And we have the wonderful Julia Wick, journalist and editorial director at L.A. Material, the wonderful new L.A. journalism outfit.

Thank you. It's wonderful to have both of you. Let's just talk about the World Cup because as we're recording this, actually, Morocco and France are playing and the World Cup has been a horrible story of watching colonizers destroy former colonies like one by one

like just no historical justice at all just a little story I was watching so I was rooting for Mexico because we are in Los Angeles and as we all know Mexico is the Knicks of Los Angeles right and so I want for the city Mexico to win

but I was visiting my parents in Oregon and I was flying during the game I was taking an Uber to the airport I'm watching on my phone I get to the airport the moment before my bag goes through the scanner I put my phone in the bag and then I go through the metal detector

and I come out the other side take my phone out of the bag and England had scored twice while my phone went through an alternate dimension Do you feel responsible? A little bit I think that's what people said on Blue Sky. They blamed me.

Blue Sky. Don't say anything on Blue Sky. It is your fault if you've posted on Blue Sky. Crushing experience and just crushing game after crushing game. Amy, what was your experience? Well, not to out myself as a degenerate gambler. But I'm currently wearing a jersey for Las Vegas. Not for a team just for the act of going to Las Vegas. Not for the Aces or whatever.

I'm just pro going to Vegas. And I'm a poker player. I've gotten very serious about poker. Hell yeah. I cashed at the World Series of poker in my first big tournament. No way. Yes. Yes.

Wait, what event at the World Series of poker? Well, it was only a $200 buy-in, but I made it to like number 40. Come on. Yeah. And I'm not even going to tell you how much I won because I got. Bracelet winner. She got booted immediately. I just made it into the money.

So I like doubled my, I made like $400. But yes. No, that's totally such a huge win to like cash at the world. When I go with a friend, when I take a friend to a casino in L.A., the amount. The count of old men I know is so disturbing. Oh, and they love you. Oh, every Filipino old man is my uncle.

Everyone's like, Amy's here, like, clapping for me. So I was watching, I was playing in a small tournament at Lucky Lady Casino while watching the World Cup and had, I'd already made a bet on Mexico. And then I had to lose both the tournament and my bet. What do you use for your sports betting? I have friends who live in Las Vegas and who go to a lot. Las Vegas often, so I make them place a bet for me at the sportsbook. Also, this is like... I won't let myself do anything online.

This is like ethical gambling. This is like subscribing to the print newspaper. Exactly. I'm like, I'm like, I'm people talking about, I'm also bad at technology and I'm like, I can't let, I already have such a difficult time shutting off like phone games. You know, I'm addicted to a game called Bell Tower. I'm like, I can't go. I know the developer is Spell Tower.

Yeah. Can you tell them I love the game? I've been on the podcast before. Anyway, I can't get into online. That's a place I won. won't. I make myself go through the doors. You're like artisanal gambling. Yes, exactly.

Julie, do you have any World Cup? What was your? I'll be honest. I'm not a big sports person, but I love shared civic experiences. This is exactly right. So I have had so much joy in like the Mexico-Korean game. My husband and I brought our toddler, which she probably was a bad idea on our part. We tried to go in Korea Town to like watch in the park. Yeah, I heard it was insane to get a spot anywhere in Korea. It was not a place like you should bring a two-year-old.

It was so crowded and crazy. But like the joy of getting on the subway in LA because our office is rarely material right to buy the subway. And like everyone is going to the game. And then there's a half a mile from Wilshire Normandy to the park. And it's just a lot of people walking down Irolo, like in full jerseys for both Mexico and Korea, definitely more Mexico. But like the feeling of just a collective experience that you never get in L.A.

Yeah. And then it's so nice to not. Root for America. Yeah. Like that's also just, I'm also, I get very dedicated to a underdog that I know almost nothing about. I mean, I should know more about like the Ivory Coast. But this year, I was a big, I kept calling myself a coasty, an ivory coast fan.

And because they made it the farthest they've ever been. Yeah. And then they just got knocked out. And I'm like, fuck, my Ivory Coast. And I love about the World Cup that, so like, it's such a lopsided competition. Yeah. That it's the only competition where you can lose and still be a cheap. champion, like the Cabo Verde players, which is not a country I knew existed before I was watching

that game. Yeah. So archipelago off the coast of Africa, it's like one of those countries that's like five islands and they're like, it's a country. You know, they got to be part of some country. 500,000 people like never won a game but like battled Argentina to like barely a loss or whatever. Came back twice.

Those guys are going to drink and fuck for free for the rest of their lives. because they lost at the World Cup. And that is... Well, what a loss. What a loss. It was such a great loss. I love the thing of like any given Sunday. I know that's a football term.

But like any day someone could have such great luck, you know, and make it farther than they ever thought possible. Well, I wish we would see some luck so we don't have to see France versus Argentina again, which was fun four years ago. But I would like to see something different this time. But speaking of losses, I think it's really incredible how. Trump turned the World Cup into a loss for himself by trying to, I understand his thought process, right?

Because he's like, there's something happening in the country. It's not about me. How do I make it about me? And then they give him the most grace possible, which we don't need to do, but he wants to help America, you know? And so he sees, oh, people are mad about this red card.

And I have a relationship with the FIFA guy. He gave me a world, a world peace prize. A FIFA Peace Prize. And meanwhile, FIFA, like, couldn't be more corrupt every, like, documentary. I sports documentary I watch about FIFA. It's famously corrupt. It's the most corrupt thing.

It makes sense that Trump's like, and I know him. I can't do a Trump impression. So he calls he gets the red card overturned using his power of personal relationships, which is what he loves to do. And the entire soccer world is so aghast at this that basically watching the game, it was impossible to watch it and not feel like those. that controversy had an effect on the game. Like the Belgian players were so fired up.

Yeah. The American players look so lost. The player who had the red card rescinded was sort of like, why am I here? And like just after the game, like just the mainstream sports press was like, yeah, Belgium wanted it more because Trump like cheated. And so now all the fucking soccer fans, like the fucking barstool people are like, fuck you, Trump, you lost us the World Cup. Like, it's one of the biggest, like, own goals.

It's an own goal presidency, you know? Not to bring it back to the Knicks, but the one bet I made on the Knicks was when Trump went to the game and they lost. That was the only game that they lost. And there's like two other games. And it was the only game I bet on. I was like, fuck! There's like two other games that Trump has shown up at that the team has lost. There is a definite Trump game curse, Julia.

But if Mike Pence has the courage, couldn't America still win? Is it really too late for that? If he can, if he can, if he'll, if he has the courage to overturn or perhaps assassinate, uh, not set bladder, that's the old guy, the new guy. Gianni, uh, Gianni, uh, Infantino, right? Infantino. I mean, great name. It reminds you of when a parent, like, interferes with school children doing their own thing,

you know, and then someone's dad is like, I've come to fix it. And everyone's like, you're, that kid's going to get bullied now for the rest of his life because dad showed up. That's actually a really good. comparison of the president isn't really supposed to care about who wins the World Cup. He should want the World Cup to go well when the U.S. is hosting the

World Cup, but like, you know, the parent at the sports game shouldn't really care if their kid wins. They should just like that makes your kid a sociopath. Yeah. You meet a man who's screaming at intramural softball and you know his dad took him home every night after a game and said, you mother

you're turning the kids. It's also crazy after like the U.S. has been so criticized by the other teams for like they have had trouble entering the country. They've all had immigration problems. And I know on TikTok, I'm not like a tick. I'm not really on TikTok, but that people were finding it really moving all of these people from other countries like enjoying America because we're so used to everyone eating America. Yes. That was like a brief window.

Brief window. People being like, I love Costco. And this is so fun. I love my burger. Yes. Yeah. And we stomped on that. Yeah. We made we made ourselves the villain when clearly this is the time for Europe to be the villains. Like this is their traditional role is to be the asshole teams that stop on everyone else's dreams.

And we have lost and also made ourselves. Yeah. It's incredible. And I and. Very American to losing and make yourself the villain. Very Vietnam war. voted. Well, and also, like, you know, I've, I've, I've spent some time as a soccer fan. I have followed L.A.F.C., one of the teams here in L.A. on and off. And I've come into contact with fans of the U.S.

Soccer team, like people who are committed U.S. soccer team fans. And they are already so upset all the time. Like, whenever the World Cup isn't happening, they're just like, oh, we suck. Like, why can't we ever be any good? Like, oh, I hate U.S. soccer. I hate the players. I hate the coach. and like it just the amount of rage that it's piling on top of the for the president himself to get involved is is I don't know it becomes funny to me. Joe, do you have anything else on this? My favorite detail is that he didn't know what red card meant. Yes.

That's true. Which I can relate to. But even I actually did know what red card like barely, but I did know that. It truly is an example of him literally saying people are saying the red card that I don't know the red card they say it's bad i don't know it could be like he's i have such a stupid question please which is there it's not the answer is going to be in the question i guess but how was he able to do that what do you mean to get it overturned yes he just calls that possible you're the leader of the free world of course it feels yes it feels like it shouldn't be allowed i mean he sees

he's been norm-shattering precedent i'm just why am i still surprised that he does things that shouldn't be allowed i'm like wait a second i mean he sees politics as like a game of like personal, uh, personal allegiance and loyalty and like, um, transactions, you know? And like, yeah, it is to a certain extent. All of human life is, you know, like whenever, if I have a friend who has a problem and I know somebody at the office where they're having the problem, it's fun to go, hey, you know, let me call my friends see if they know somebody or whatever. That is how you get shit done, right? If you got a problem somewhere, hey, do you know a person? Yeah. But to him, that's all.

that exists. I guess I will forever be surprised at the way he can break what seems like rules that were all agreed upon by the world. I mean, the fact that... I'm such a fucking naive goody two shoes that I'm still like, what? The fact that they gave him the peace prize

a couple years ago, or I guess a year ago, is like proof that they needed him, right? Like, if the U.S. president is against you on kind of anything international, you have a problem, so they need to keep him happy. And so they give him the prize. And so when he is calls and says,

I'm mad about such and such, you know, they have to kind of listen to him because he's, he's the fucking president of the United States. Like he controls it. He controls the military. Yeah.

Like, how do you get them to do it? He controls the military. He's like, I'll be bombed. I know. It's just still, it's still so unbelievable. Can I ask a really dumb question to you?

Of course. I might not know the answer. I do know now what a red card is, but what is? but what is a FIFA Peace Prize? Oh, they invented it. But has anyone, like, looked it up? Like, what, I'm embarrassed that I didn't look it up

when I was reading every story about this. Like, what is it? Is there, like, an actual prize? Is there money? They gave him a trophy that I believe did not exist before they handed the, I think the moment they handed him the trophy was the moment that people found out that there was a... He was the inaugural recipient.

Yes. Well, that also makes me think what other peace prizes can there be. Like, Costco Peace Prize. Why not? The Costco Peace Prize is definitely... I can give a Peace Prize. Amy Solberg Peace Prize. Not to you, but someone else.

Which of your casinos do you think you would award it at? Oh, I gotta say the bicycle in Bellflower. I like their fried rights. Hey, have you ever noticed the second you search for something on the internet? Suddenly every ad on every website you see is about that thing. Or you try to watch a show while you're traveling. and it's been blocked. You can't even get to it. Yeah, the internet isn't as open as you'd like to think it is. And that is why I started using ProtonVPN. ProponVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security.

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a little bit more specifically. There's a class action lawsuit against Stubhub. We, by the way, have two, as we all know, two ticketing retailers in America. We have Ticketmaster, which is where you buy the ticket if you want the first sale, and Stubbhub, that's the only place to buy it

if you want to buy it from somebody else. Stubbub is being sued because, like... Wait, is that a joke or is that true? That's more or less true. Ticketmaster has their own ticket resale. There's also AXS, which has like something like 10% of the ticketing market. Are most of what Stubbub does is buying up tickets and then reselling them? So Stubbubb is a ticket reseller marketplace.

It's like eBay. Like, if I have a ticket, I can log on. And a lot of... like venues have actual relationships with Stubhub, where it's like the official place. And it's like cooked into their system, right? So I don't know, but let's say they're contracted with the Lakers. I'm not sure they are.

But like if you get one from them, you know, you almost instantaneously get the resold ticket. But for other events, it's more of an eBay situation where it's like, I have a ticket, I log in. And then Stubhubhub arranges the transfer, but then it's on me the seller to like once the purchase has gone through to like actually email the ticket. To get it there.

Yeah. To the person who's purchasing. Like analogous to like mailing the envelope with the actual ticket in it, right? If you were going to buy it from somebody. And so the problem is they have been selling tickets on Stubhub. FIFA is a monopoly in selling World Cup tickets. They control all the ticket sales. They set all the prices.

And they have their own reselling market on which they, take a 30% commission, and on which the cheapest tickets are like $1,500. So Stubhub has been offering tickets for resale for the World Cup, but because they are not contracted with FIFA and FIFA is like, we are the only reseller. FIFA has like basically prevented them in some way, like either maliciously or through just having shitty technology or probably some combination of both, prevented those sales from going through. The result is tons of people could be like thousands have gone to have bought, spent thousands of dollars in a World Cup ticket flown to Mexico. Like, or whatever place,

whatever place have arrived there, a hotel plane ticket, realize they have not had a ticket. And then many of them have not even been able to get that purchase refunded by Stubhub. Because they would show up in the end, Subbo would be like, oh, oh, sorry, didn't, didn't go through. It's bad. Amy, anything else? Yeah, I mean, a lot of what I was so surprised about, maybe this is true of every World Cup before, and I've just been paying more attention to this one because I've become a degenerate sports gambler. But I think there are people all over the country who are religious about the World Cup.

Like, it's almost like a pilgrimage to go. So they have spent so much money. And this was their kind of family dream. to go to a country and watch their team play, only to then find out hours before that they don't have a ticket. It's not even hours. Some at the gate, I think. Some at the gate.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, like they scan it and it just doesn't work. Yes. And no one told them. Right. That they're, that I'm just like, oh, you know, you kind of think it's not that big of a deal.

And then you realize the amount of trouble and time and how significant this was. I think that's such a good point because there's been so much coverage of how expensive the tickets are. And, you know, So the perception is, well, it's only the wealthiest that can go. But you forget that for so many people, sports is like the most important thing in their lives. And as well, it should be. Like it's a hobby. It's wonderful.

It's fine. And particularly soccer for non-Americans. Like, I think in America we think of as soccer as being like the sport you play when you're a kid. And a lot of people like, you know, a lot of middle class people, they got their one hobby. That's the one thing that they will overpay for. So like, yeah, sure. That's where I'll blow my three grand. I'm not going to buy a fancy car.

I'm not going to send my kids to college or whatever. Or whatever it is. Like, I'm going to go. This is my one treat for like my lifetime. Yeah. Is that I'm a fan of my national team. And so it's like, imagine how crushing this. And the idea, too, of not, of being so misled that the, you'd think if they were

told that there was a champ that these tickets wouldn't go through, they would make a different decision, like that they were just so misled. Yeah. I mean, I also think it's a story. about monopolies, the monopoly over ticket sales. Because sort of the promise of, so again, we have a ticketing monopoly in the United States, which has not been broken up. The Trump Justice Department, speaking of Trump again, drop the case and just like find them like $5 for their 20 years.

Yeah, you love his monopolies. He's like the monopoly man. Yeah, because when there's a monopoly, you can call the guy who owns the monopoly and be like this, you know, do what I want, right? So we have a ticketing monopoly for Ticketmaster normally, which is why Taylor Swift tickets will end up being so expensive. Then we have a resell, basically a reselling monopoly or a duopoly between Steupup and Ticketmaster. And then FIFA is itself a quote unquote nonprofit monopoly.

And sort of the promise of these like ticketing monopolies was like at least they made the ticketing process seamless, you know, like, okay, there isn't really scalping. Like whenever you, if you want to go to something, want to go to an event, you go one ticket master, there's always some seats available, and there's only one site to go to, and it's simple, except that this shit keeps happening. The fact that there is only one place to go means they can fuck everybody, and there's no

recourse. And everybody knows that these, everybody knows it's a monopoly, everyone knows FIFA is corrupt, and there's no choice but to deal with it. They're allowed to behave so badly. Is there any, like, is this anyone's crusade to fix this? Mine, personally. No, I mean...

You're going to show up to court during this lawsuit. It's so funny, like, the problems, I'm antitrust advocates in the U.S., yeah, are trying to break up the ticketing monopolies, but the fact that it's also an international, like, cartel monopoly in this case, like, I don't know that much about the efforts to, like, make FIFA not corrupt. It's clearly, like, the Olympics are bad enough, and they're, like, 100 years old as an organization. FIFA is like so much more of like a heavily profiting like cartel,

but it's also like a nation unto itself because it's made up of so many different international bodies that like, yeah, I don't even know what what body is there that would that would take it on. Is it interesting to you that a dub hub hub being sued and not also FIFA? It is interesting. Like where would you even sue in like the international criminal courts or something? I'm just like, it seems like, yes, stuff up taking the fall. I guess why not?

That's where they bought the tickets from. I guess the last, I've gone on about this a little bit, but I guess it does connect to one of the things I find so interesting about the World Cup is that we have this perception that like we shouldn't have politics in our sports is something people say a lot. But like FIFA is so big that it is nothing but politics. Like it's geopolitics on like the grandest scale. And so you're just sort of. of forced to deal with this corrupt horrible organization for the same reason you have to deal with like the United States being corrupt because it's like what are you going to fucking do on some level there's no hall monitor like keeping track of it I don't know it's it's wild

interesting that when my tickets get resold when I'm in North Dakota they're almost free you know but for the World Cup they really uh anyway come see me in North Dakota Oh, that was a plug. I thought you meant your sports tickets. No, no, I mean when I go to stand-up, yeah. Because I'm going to some of the most interesting places in the world. No, Amy Silverberg has a monopoly on it. So I have Amy Silverberg tickets and let me tell you, she's gouging you. You can get them for 50 cents.

Hi, I'm Beck Bennett. I thought I was Beck Bennett. No, no, no, no. I'm Kyle Mooney. Sorry about that. Exactly. No, all good. All good. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, and we host the show What's Our Podcasts here on HeadGum.

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Plattner? I hate everything about this story. Everyone looks horrible. It's very depressing. But yeah, any thoughts on him? Him dropping out of the main Senate race because he is a rapist. Right. Alleged.

Thank you to the journalist in the room. Thank you to the jury. Yes. Alleged. Alleged one of the, and what an allegation it was. A very credible allegation, to be clear, I'm not in any way saying. It's not a very credible. I mean, for your rape victim to come out and say, you know, I really like his politics. And I would love for him to be the senator with one little problem is that he did rape me.

That's, that's brutal. This is like the other great American pastime beside baseball is like finding out a politician as a rapist. You know, it's just so. Yeah. Yeah. Typical. To me, one of the kind of most interesting things about the story has been like the dribb, drab of how these various things about this guy he was having this meteoric rise

have sort of come out and like what lodges in the public consciousness. And then to the point of this particular woman saying she supports his politics, the main reason I think people were really unwilling to listen to the last woman who, to be clear, also did not allege rape. I don't remember her exact allegations, but it was the previous person, the previous woman who was some kind of, she was definitely a Republican and possibly a place. operative and, you know, people were much more likely to... It seems to have a kind of sinister double-edged reasoning behind it. Whereas this woman, it's like, oh, well, she would have liked him in office minus...

Yeah, she said I was reluctant to come out because I like his politics and I agree with them. And I, but I just wanted people to know who they were voting for and have them to have all the information. But yeah, the, the, there's so many people pointing. fingers about like, oh, when this thing came out, people should have known. When this thing came out, they should have stopped supporting it. I mean, I was doing this stuff all year being like, I live in California. Like, you guys figure it out, you know? And there was a, like, I don't need to have an opinion. What a great feeling, by the way. I think more people should adopt that feeling.

A hundred percent. Like, it's, you know what the best thing is say, team no one. Team, I don't, you know what? Wow. Sounds like a big mess. But it's like, I don't know, I've been sort of watching the dumpster fire on X and other shows media where you have people being like, actually I turned on him two weeks ago. I'm a much better person. I have much more moral clarity than the person who was defending him a week ago.

There's just a funny kind of like people really trying to own. Every time I think X is dead, it rises back from that. It's sort of like in a zombie movie where you've like cut off several of the limbs. It's such a graveyard of. It's just kind of. It's just.

Bad takes. Yeah, yeah. Shit still happens there. It's still like unfortunately for all of us, we got to go wallow in. on occasion. But yeah, I mean, it cut across so many people's like pre-existing political commitments, right?

It's like if you're a progressive Democrat and you want to see that and you don't like Chuck Schumer picking who the candidate is, well, Chuck Schumer did in fact pick like a shitty candidate who didn't, by all accounts, didn't want to run for Senate at all, who the people of Maine did not like and Janet Mills and who like pulled out of the election

because she was doing so poorly. And so, like, Grand Platner was their choice. And so, like, there's, you know, there's plenty of progressives, populist progressives saying, like, this is the way we want politics to work more. But then that led them to, you know, not all of them,

but it led many people to disregard perhaps what they should have taken as proper information. And, but that also does not excuse, like Chuck Schumer's, political meddling, right? Yeah. Did you guys see there was a poll where people were pulling kind of like random

Mainers that included Patrick Dempsey, who I didn't even know lived in Maine? As like that, maybe he was going to run? Maybe he's like who should be the replacement. So like there was like Heather Cox Richardson. Like there were a bunch of people who were like actual Maine people who were like Maine politicians. Unfortunately, the thing most of them have going for them is if they, you know, got third place in recent other elections.

Yeah. but are totally credible people in there, I think, like, the kind of leading contenders. And then the other names being, like, I don't know who paid for the poll that had Patrick Dempsey. But like, does he actually live in Maine? I don't know. I don't know a whole lot about Maine other than, um, I am chowder. Is that even? Lobster rolls?

Yeah. Okay, guys, you are going to get such emails from the eight people that live in Maine. I love Maine. No, Maine. Listen, I read, I read Elizabeth Strout novel. I would love, I would love, if the summer is still several months left. And yeah, if you're listening to this and you have a main house, I'd love to come. Everything I know about Maine, I've learned from Elizabeth Strout.

Stephen King? No. He was also floated. Oh, yes. Yes. Even King is Maine, right? I did stand up in Maine in Portland, Maine, and it was late January. The tickets cost.

How much? The tickets cost. It was a couple years ago, but I have never been anywhere with icy or sidewalks is my main memory. It was so cold. It was like, you know when the Northeast gets so cold. Yeah. beautifully. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you just, everything is crystalline. It was one of those days. And your lungs hurt when you breathe. I saw this, our, I saw the thing about

Patrick Dempsey, too, that it was like, um, I was like, um, I was like, uh, in the New York. Yeah. Patrick Dempsey has said he is not interested in the candidacy. I was like, oh, I didn't. Oh, he's, he's already been asked and I didn't even, uh, didn't even occur to me. Yeah. Everybody else is like, who's, who there is like, like, putting their hat in the ring is like a state senator who recently lost a race for house rep or something. And they're like, I could be the senator. Apparently there's some. You want to be like you're already a loser.

Like opt out, you know? I feel for the people of Maine because it like, I mean, the country went through this with Kamala Harris where it's like, hey, we had a primary. People did in fact vote for somebody and not everybody was happy about it, but we had a process. And now someone's going to be inserted last minute. And hopefully they're able to find. someone who like the Democrats of Maine feel is somehow representative,

but it's such a fucked up situation. I don't know, anything else on this? Okay, moving on. We'll talk about this next week when we find out who is the candidate because they have, I think, I think, I'd love to be in that room and the way there. It's a few weeks, I think. He has like six days to drop out, which he did yesterday. And then it's the, I think it's a few weeks.

So not a long run way. You picture everybody in that room. with like guess who boards, you know, being like, guy with mustache, guy without mustache, like this person, oh wait, maybe they actually, who is this on the guess who board? And you know what's great about that is I'm pretty sure there is a guy on the guest who board who's wearing like one of those like big yellow raincoats, which is also what I imagine people in Maine wear. I thought I was going to say that molesters wear, but yes, yes, yes. I have some, I will say, and at the show I did in Portland, I have friends who live in Maine and they're so

happy. Yeah. It seems like a really wonderful place to go and be forgotten by the rest of the world. Sorry to plug a book, but I just finished the newest Elizabeth Strout called The Things We Never Say. Are you guys Elizabeth Stroud's fans? No, but this is why I love you because you know books. She won the Pulitzer.

Yeah. And it takes place in Maine. All her books take. It's like if you were to consider the Marvel universe, the Elizabeth Stroud, literary fiction universe, everything takes place in Maine. Oh, no. I love literature. And Maine seems lovely in the way that she represents it on the page.

I would love to go back. I'm queen of being like, I read the book. I didn't watch the show. I read the book. I want to kick my own ass when I do that. Queen's Gambit, I read the book. Let's move to a story that is, this is like the craziest local story that I think the rest of the country hasn't heard about yet. And it's happened right here in Los Angeles.

There was a fire that burned for weeks, I believe, at a cold storage for eight days. at a cold storage facility in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East L.A. This warehouse stored 85 million pounds of frozen food. And I'm doing the broadstarchs because, Julia, you know this story intimately. But it was, and the food, I believe, was stored in like ammonia and foam, and all of it caught fire, creating a toxic plume that's sickened many people. And now the neighborhood smells like, hey, imagine, you guys ever leave town for the weekend and then the power goes out and you come home and you're like, oh my God, 85, my 85 million pounds

of ground beef has thawed. And now my house smells like 85 million. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, was the day, rough. Um, and that if so if you live in L.A., this was a pretty massive story in L.A. while it was going on because you could see this plume of smoke across the city. And for a lot of Angelinos, it felt like a real kind of trigger to the palisades and Eden fires last year, where you're sort of like, what is in the smoke, what toxic thing am I being exposed to? And, you know, that feeling was tenfold in this neighborhood Boyle Heights, which is part of the city of L.A., really, it's a really Latino neighborhood, working class.

And then the kind of areas immediately around it were really affected as well. So East L.A. is actually, this is like a very quick civic nerd thing, is an unincorporated part of the county. And so that actually created a lot of confusion for people living there because people in Boyle Heights could go to like the council office and potentially get an air purifier. There were a lot of questions people in East L.A. of like, who should I even be asking for help? Because they like don't have, it's not technically a city. They don't have a mayor. They're just like underneath the council supervisor. No, so the fire to be clear was in Boyle Heights. It was in the city. The reason it took, you want me to explain why it took so long, it's kind of confusing. Yeah, please.

So the reason it took so. long to get it out is if you think of this giant, it's a basically the warehouse is like a giant cooler. There's these two halves of it and the fire started on the roof, which was with, where they believe it started on the roof, like solar panels on the roof. Then, like, you know, when you're going through Costco and there's like the giant metal, you know, like every, what do we call those? Just like the giant. Costco mentioned again. A giant metal like cool freezer thing? Or what do you mean? Like, no, like, when you're like, there's the aisles. Like, there's like, this is a real technical.

Yiles, yeah. Giving some real technical. And it's tall. Yeah. So it's like the inside of that is like that with these giant racks. And so they roof, basically once the roof was unstable, firefighters could not go inside of the building because the roof could collapse. And so it was like you couldn't get, the fire was burning deep inside this building.

you had these giant metal racks and kind of like all the infrastructure of many rows of refrigeration. And so what they actually have to do was pull off the side of the building with an excavator. And then they were like firing their hoses at it. And this just went on for days and days. And that I think I've like descriptively described it. I don't know that that was like the most technical description. But I feel you can follow what I mean. I was under the impression that it went on for so long due to bureaucratic. No, no, they were throwing every possible resource. There's like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of fires.

And it actually, this same company had a fire in Washington State that burned for weeks and week. The same company. Yes, in a similar kind of, it was in a super rural area. So eight days in that sense was better than the very dark alternative. So this was this real catastrophe in the immediate area because people really don't are really unsure of like what needs to be remediated in their homes, for instance, like what kind of smoke damage they might have, what toxins are in the air. But now the response is also that this food is rotting in this giant warehouse. I think what to do with the food. So at last count, I think

120 truckloads have been trucked out according to the city. The building, the company itself is responsible for this clearing and remediation. But it's just a massive effort to get all the stuff out. And in the meantime, we're in the middle of a real heat wave and out. right now. Yeah. So this stench is unbearable for residents. Jesus Christ. There's rats.

There's vermin. And they're just trying to get it. You know, I'm going to, there's going to be the, there was a community meeting earlier this week. There's going to be another one tonight at town hall that I'm going to go to. So I think we'll have some more insight after that. But there's, no, it's a really rough situation. I mean, I think what it speaks to is, is a, like the amount of massive infrastructure that

we're surrounded by that we don't think about that things can go, horribly wrong with. I mean, we've been talking on the show about data centers as being a thing that people don't want cited in their neighborhoods. But like, this is worse than a data set. This is worse than anything that might happen at a data center, I would think, right? But then on top of that, these things are almost always cited in like poorer neighborhoods and in minority neighborhoods, right? Yeah, these ain't rotten in Beverly Hills. Yeah, I can't speak to this specifics of a data center fire, I probably wouldn't be good. Hopefully, you know, true.

I'm sure we'll see one soon. But no, to your broader point, this is, I think this situation has put Clegg lights on something that has been a problem in Boyle Heights, this neighborhood of L.A., just east of downtown for decades and really southeast L.A. County more broadly. These are predominantly working class Latino neighborhoods where there's tons of heavy industry. Yeah. And these residents have, they've really borne the brunt of the brunt of the, environmental impacts of these things. And like, none of this is new, obviously. But I think it's,

it's worth thinking about. Yeah, to me, this is, this is like the kind of thing that there was a point in my life where I thought that this sort of thing happened in America in the past, you know? Yeah. Like, I lived in Greenpoint Brooklyn for 10 years. And that was a super fun site. Like the whole, the literally, I believe the whole neighborhood was, or maybe it was just Newton Creek, whatever. There's many parts of like working class Brooklyn that are EPA super fun sites because there were chemical spills, oil spills, stuff like that. And it's like, oh, yeah, that happened in the 70s. And we've been cleaning it up ever since.

Right. You're like, I watched Aaron Brockovich. Like, they got that stuff figured out. And that's what the EPA was like for, like Richard Nixon signed the EPA into law because of this shit, I believe. And like, here we are 50 years later. And like, we're still sending plumes of beef smoke into the air. And it seems to me that as the tech.

That as the technology gets more sophisticated, the ease with which to put out these disasters gets more difficult to. That's an interesting. Just like this idea that it's like on the roof and then you have to disembowl the building and... Yeah, I mean, you would think that there'd be some rule about a sprinkler system or whatever. I'm sure they have their reasons of that we can get the meat for this amount of time by refrigerating these aisles and yada. And then of course it makes the disaster. harder to get out of. I mean, I think the other thing it's worth mentioning to is, if you're not in Southern California, you probably don't know this, but a massive local story a few weeks before was at an

aerospace manufacturing facility in Garden Grove, which is an Orange County, you know, half an hour away, depending on traffic. There was a very narrowly averted, real potential disaster where there was a tank that was in danger of exploding or potentially leaking toxic chemicals. A residential neighborhood was, I think, more than 10,000 people were evacuated. Wow. Double-checked me on that, on that number. A garden Grove, Anaheim, that's like all close to Disneyland and so many residential areas that I grew up around.

But there's just, there's so much heavy industry in Southern California. Yeah. And it is, you know, it's not, you're right, it's not Beverly Hills. More heavy industry in Southern California than in other parts of the country. You know, I'm going to give you the very provincial answer that I am a local reporter. Right. I actually, I should know that. but in fact I see the world through my very Baroqueal Southern California lens.

Well, and I like that. But like, I just think for someone like me who is privileged enough to not live next to a gigantic warehouse, right? And I think that probably goes for many people who listen to this podcast. You know, we're used to ordering shit on Amazon. It goes a bigger house. And then you go to the grocery store.

Like, that's where I buy the things. And we don't think about like all of the, the matter, just the idea of 85 million pounds of frozen food, right? It has to be collected in one place before it goes to the grocery store. That stuff is cited somewhere. Part of our privilege is that we don't have to think about it, but it shows up. And there are people who live next to the thing. And like, the thing does catch on fire.

And it, it hurts people. Do you ever check your proximity to an oil well? That is an interesting L.A. County thing where they're in a lot of the neighborhoods they are, they're. Oh, not my neighbor. Of course, concentrated. It's a gated community in, you know, the same with all, like, concentrated in poor neighborhoods. But they're on the edge of a lot of other neighborhoods.

Yeah. In a way that most people are unaware of because in a great detail, they're often made to look to, like, match the existing architecture, including one on Pico that sort of looks like a synagogue. Whoa. And I, of course, didn't really know that they're oil wells everywhere. Everywhere. what? And you know what happened me once? I saw a pine tree recently. And I was like, you know what? I would like a pine cone to bring home for my son, Tabitha. And I went up to that tree and I reached up for a pinecone. It was a cell phone tower. Can you believe it? That they made to

look like a tree. That they made to look like a tree. It was. Meanwhile, you're having this communal experience with this cell phone tower tree. This, that, that joke that I tried to come up with on the spot really landed. But the, the, the reason. I say that is because you can look at this story and say, hey, if you don't live by stuff like this, think about people who do. Your point is, you probably do live next to some infrastructure like this that you might not know about. I thought you were just telling us a true story. I was like, that's fascinating. I'm like hanging on every word. This is why I still don't understand how Trump was able to do the red card thing because I'm naive. I really like to muddle the podcast right at the

end. Anything else on this one, guys? I just think that's so disturbing. Yeah. It's a year. I mean, our thoughts are with the people who are a bit of affected by this right now, which includes all of us to an extent because we're breathing it. Luckily, the wind's been going the other way most of the week, but, you know, well, thank you guys so much for being here. That's our show for this week. Flew by. What was they? I said it flew by. It flew by. We try to keep it a brisk 45 minutes here on the show.

Julie, where can people find your work or your wonderful local reporting? Thank you. Check out LAMaterial.com. Free to sign up for our daily newsletter. We are a new local news outlet in Los Angeles. One of the shining spots of journalism in our fair city. And Amy, where can people find?

You have a new book out, right? Thank you, number one, for the work you do. Number two, yeah. My debut novel came out this year. Grand Central, Hachet is the publisher. It's called First Time Long Time. You can find it at every bookstore. Thank you guys so much for being here.

Shop local. Shop at your local bookstores. Of course, if you want to support the show, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover, and we'll see you next time on Factually. Thanks for being here, everybody. That was a Hidgum podcast. Welcome to a magical place where dice are rolled

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