It Could Happen Here - A Report from the Great American State Fair

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Robert talks to Laura Jedeed for her account of the July 4th festivities at the Great American State Fair which was totally all those things.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. Betrayal Weekly is back with brand-new stories. From threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town.

It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most sciencey episodes for your peer review with our new stuff you should know doing science playlist.

Out now. You want to know about Occam's Razor? Simplest explanation is usually the right one? We got you covered. Wondered what chaos theory is ever since the first time you saw Jurassic Park. Well, come on down. So distill a nice pot of tea, everybody. Turn down the gas on your Bunsen burner and slip into your most comfortable lab coat

and listen to the stuff you should know doing science playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is. getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down,

I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also Media. Welcome back to It. happen here, a podcast about it continuing to happen here. I'm Robert Evans, and today I've got a friend of the pod, Laura Jadid, in the studio, well, not literally in the studio. You know how things work

with the internet folks. And last weekend, Laura traveled to the Great American State Fair in our nation's beautiful capital of Washington, B.C., where she witnessed a lovely celebration of America's 250th anniversary with no inclement weather whatsoever. Is that right, Laura? No, it was charming and beautiful and very professionally done and everyone had a lovely time. Awesome stuff. Laura, yeah, let's start. Was this just kind of as soon as he said he was doing this, you were like, well, I have to be there. This is just simply not an option for me to miss. I mean, I definitely wanted to go. I actually was in town for a different, I was there for a religious extremist conference, which is a whole different ball of wax. But it ended early. And I was like, you know, I've got several hours before I need to return home. Why don't I go have a nice time at a fair? I've been to a fair in a while. I just. should go to a fair. Yeah. So how was it? Walk us through, like step by step, kind of your experiences at this wonderful event celebrating 250 years as technically a country.

Yes. Well, I would say the highlight, other than the weather, which we'll get into, was going into, there's these little rooms where they've got booths for states and territories and departments of the government and random sponsors. And my favorite booth, I think, was probably the Department of Justice because it was completely empty. And by empty, I don't mean there wasn't anybody there. I mean that there was a card table, three folding chairs, a battered backdrop, and nothing else. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. It was incredible. I'm perfect. It was so heavy-handed. That's great. You know, I know people who use subtext, and they're all cowards. And there are no cowards in this administration. Yeah.

Your photos of that were really funny. So I guess the layout is like, it almost sounds like a trade show or something. We've got like these booths for each of the states and a bunch of government agencies and then like what all is going on. Yeah, it's like if a rent fare and a trade show had a baby and the baby had the worst aspects of both. It was incredible. Like you enter it and I will say this. So, you know, people, you've probably seen pictures. Everyone's, I think, seen pictures of what this thing looks like.

Yeah. And the Fourth of July was different and that there were a lot of people there because that's the day people came from all over the country to celebrate the Fourth of July and D.C. So it was crowded. But everything else was somehow worse than it looked in the pictures. Because, like, you know, you can see the pictures of like the Timu arch and you see how bad it looks, but there's nothing like walking towards it. And from a distance, it's like, oh, that's an odd thing in the middle of a field, but it looks fine. And then the closer you get the worse it looks. And it's just this this kind of slow dawning horror of this like uncanny valley objects. There were the two long buildings that were just going by either side, basically for like the length of the Washington Mall, just little like tent slash trailer buildings with canvas staple to them. And the can't. had this illusion of columns and bar reliefs and stuff like that. And we've seen, you know, that's in pictures. But walking down the mall and seeing that optical illusion not shift with your perspective

is just, it's like being in a really badly rendered video game, but it's real and you're touching grass at the same time. And it's just the whole thing is so eerie and strange. Yeah. Yeah. So what can you tell me about like the audience? Like what's the vibe like on the ground when you when you show up, at least for the first portion of this before the weather starts to change. Yeah. So I've been to a lot of right-wing

event, it's kind of what I do. I've been, you know, I go to a lot of these. And this was less Maga forward. I'm not saying there were no Trump hats or Trump shirts, but they were, it was mostly just like America. Hell yeah. But everybody there was was very clearly a Republican. Everyone assumed everyone else was a Republican. The booth operators assumed everybody was a Republican. It was pretty safe assumption. It was Maga light, I'd say. I mean, it was almost more horrifying in that way because it felt like it was kind of realizing their fantasy of like all real Americans supporting Trump. You know, these were all the real Americans out here celebrating America who does regular folks who think Trump's doing a great job and aren't at all disgusted by this fair.

So the vibes were kind of cheerfully rancid, I'd say. Cheerfully rancid. Yeah, what a great term to describe the country as a whole right now. Do you have any kind of like top faves like of the things you saw like on the ground? They're like, what stuff really stuck out to you? Yeah. So initially, before the weather went to hell and by focus changed, I decided, because, you know, there's been a lot of articles about how absolutely got awful and dumb and silly the Sarah's. I decided to do something a little different. I was going to go to every single state and territory booth and rank them. And the variety in the state and territory booths, I found interesting. You know, you had Oregon. Actually, I gave out some like fake awards when I wrote about this on my substack. And Oregon won the most fuck you award. It was close. But it was just this very small booth, two of the walls, blank white canvas, kind of plasticy. And then there was just like a thing that's in Oregon, the Beaver State. And there was kind of a little banner of some of the things that are in Oregon and a Columbia sports like bag just kind of clip to it with like just a, you know, a kitchen clip.

And I was like, yeah, well, that wins this. Yeah, that sounds like Oregon, baby. It was great. It was great. And then you had like Puerto Rico, which was clearly sponsored by the businesses that want people to go to Puerto Rico for the tax breaks. And it was very lush. And there were a big screens and it was populated entirely by hot Puerto Rican guys who were teaching middle America how to salsa and everyone enjoyed that very much. Oh yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Georgia's was completely about poultry. AI generated entirely pictures of poultry sponsored by Purdue chicken. Uh-huh. That's what I think of when I think of Georgia. Of course, poultry, obviously. Yeah. The infamous Georgia poultry, yes. And so it was like some

states went all out. Some states kind of were like, you should visit our state. Some states were like, we sold this booth to a company. And then some states were like, this is a booth. We are here. Yeah. We're legally required. Yes. We have fulfilled our requirement to have an object at this fair. Yeah. And then there were these like little flashes of normalcy in this otherwise very abnormal event. Those were almost more disconcerting because it was like a glimpse of what might have been. Like the DC Metro had a full scale subway car, like three subway cars linked up, mock up railroad, and you go inside it, it was like a museum of the history of the Metro and how it's helped D.C. and how it was built and fun facts about the Metro.

And it's like kind of a boring exhibit. But it was an apolitical celebration of a real achievement. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right? And so, you know, naturally, Freedom 250 hid that behind one of the long, low buildings and also a 24-7 Christian revival tent, just to be sure nobody accidentally stumbled on anything that wasn't just weird as hell. Just to be sure there wasn't anything that, like, Americans broadly could have. enjoy. Exactly. We can't have that. It has to be here, but you don't have to put it out of the way

to worry about it. Everything's got to be culture war-oriented. Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of the most normal. If I had to pick a most abnormal, and it's, it's tough. That's a, that's a crowded field. Yeah. The Department of Education booth was completely 100% banners by far right organizations. Awesome. Great. I love to see that. Yeah. So yeah, just purely the most like racist homeschooling schooling forward, cut school funds, vouchers, yay. Like, teach kids Vietnam didn't happen. Gay people don't exist kind of bullshit. Great.

A lot of turning point. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very much America's a Christian nation. Yeah. Yeah. So weirdly, I was surprised if you say wasn't in there. One of the ones, Prager You, obviously, you know, the premier university of America,

Prager You was in there. Also, a thing called Patriot Academy, which I wrote an article about them in 2022, not realizing they would be part of our education system at the time. But I went to their constitutional self-defense course at the Whittington Center in New Mexico, where we learned how to shoot handguns and also about the biblical origins of our Constitution. That's good. Yeah. It seems like a good thing to teach kids. It seems like a really good program to implement maybe, you know, in our school systems.

Yeah. I'm not optimistic about the fact that that's the Department of Education's booth. Yeah. It's not optimal. Not great. Yeah. Any other like weird kind of culture war signifiers at the booths that are particularly noteworthy? I mean, so this has been discussed elsewhere, but it clearly can't be mentioned enough.

It feels like very emblematic of the time we're in. There was like a, I think it was the American, I don't think it was the Innovators Hall. It was America made an America hall. It was like a much larger building with a lot more exhibits. And right in the center of it, taking up the majority of the real estate, like the largest by far. Just portraits after portrait, large oil pink portraits of the American. flag, including a cross draped in the American flag, because why not? And the artist, whose name, I guess, is Scott Labido. There's a quote by him above his beautiful works of exactly one subject,

which says, and I quote, I have flirted eye to eye with Mona Lisa in Paris. I have touched the thick, painful brushstrokes of Van Gogh, and I gasped in awe at Michelangelo Sistine Chapel. Yet still, to this day, my favorite work of art is dot, dot, dot, dot. the star-spangled banner. Oh, my God. I'm on this guy's website right now, and the first thing on the Scott Lobito website is sign my petition to install a giant permanent flag

at Ground Zero New York City. He's got 116,000 signatures. Yeah, that really matters. Yeah, yeah, no. If there's one thing Ground Zero needs, it's more American flag in the 9-11 Museum. It's not very American. You would never know going down there about patriotism at all.

He also has a doubt. documentary about him that I think it's just an ad streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV called the Relentless Patriots. Oh, God. Relentless is a fair adjective. Yeah. I found the paintings very relentless personally. Yeah, his art is incredible stuff here. There's some very, for over 30 years, America's artist Scott Lobido, and America's

artist Scott Lobito, every first letter in that is capitalized, has respectfully painted thousands of renditions of old glory on schools, homes, firehouses, police stations, cars, and canvases. Scott's past is rather colorful. Okay, so he's some sort of criminals. Yeah, amazing shit. I really want to know about his colorful life prior to this point. Oh, my God. I like to imagine it was some kind of

petty theft and he's like, you know what? It would make me way more money. It's just changing the flag forever. A crude American flag drawings with Donald Trump in them or a fist in one of his works of art. Oh, wow. Like a BLM fist or just a fist? No, it's like a fist in a flag. And the fist is covered in like paint that's like flag.

colored. That makes sense. I'm on Facebook here. He's got a video of it. Let's wait for this fucking thing to start. But it looks like, yeah, he's unveiling a piece of art. I'm trying to click through to the unveiling because I don't care what this fucker has to say. But it looks like it's just a middle finger.

Yeah, it's just a middle finger. Wow. And I think it's a four-fingered hand. No, there's a fifth. There's a fifth. But it's just not a very well, it's not like a good, like the proportions are really bad on this. Anyway, I'm sorry. We're spending way too much time on Scott Levitow.

I mean, I will say, if America had to have an artist right now, a poorly drawn middle finger, you can do worse. You can have a words representation. A poorly sculpted middle finger, yes. Oh, my God. Speaking of poorly sculpted middle fingers, maybe our advertisers sell that. I don't know. That's not my job. Listen.

And you're there for heart-wrenching knockouts. The world's biggest stage. And breathtaking triumph. In 2026, FIFA World Cup, the knockout. Outstage. Every match, every moment. Listen on TSN Radio. Join the globe.

On the road to the July 19th final. 2026 FIFA World Cup. Stream it all live on TSN Radio. Available on IHeard Radio. Hi, my love. Starting your day can be tough. You wake up, maybe hit snooze, and then scroll on your phone for a while,

checking your emails, all before even giving yourself the chance to really open your eyes and breathe. And I want to help you break that cycle. My name is Ryan Weiss, and for the past 15 years, I've been an emotional intelligence coach and spiritual guide, and I'm here to share with you my new podcast, Waking Up with Ryan. Waking Up with Ryan is a daily audio video podcast

to interrupt the inertia of your fear, your ego, and judgment. Here to help you connect with yourself before the noise of the day takes over. So let's start our days together with a moment of calm, a moment of reflection and meditation, a moment that's just for you. Listen to Waking Up with Ryan on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert.

And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays. and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually, bullshit. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can tell you what's worth trying out

and what you can safely ignore. Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic, like... What's the deal with peptide? What's the deal with GLP-1s? What's the deal with creatine? What's the deal with cupping? What's the deal with sleep?

So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. It might actually be. just with the doctor or the economist ordered. Listen to Wellness Actually on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain,

included with Prime. And I'm back with Lord Beat. Laura, let's continue. What next do you want to tell us about the great American state, Also, it's not a state fair. It's like the federal. It's like the national fair. Yeah, like the states were there, but kind of as guest stars.

Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, the fair was just, it was pretty boring. There was the fairest wheel. The merry ground from the World Fair was probably the funnest thing there. That was from a time when America did things well. But, you know, it was just kind of a lot of what I've just said. That is until the rain started.

And I think that might be a decent place to go because. Yeah. It seemed that despite this having been forecast for about a week, they had made no plans whatsoever if what would happen if it actually did rain at all. Sure. That sounds like the Trump administration. Yeah. Yeah. God wouldn't let that happen. No, God loves America.

Why would he let it rain? Absolutely not. So at a certain point in the affair, my phone was dying. I had forgotten my charging brick at home. And I decided to charge it at the Department of Justice booth since no one was using it. So I stuck in there and I, you know, plugged in my... You pay for the Department of Justice. You know, our tax dollars paid for that back.

God damn it. This is my tax dollars, yes. And no one, you know, so I occupied the Department of Justice plugged in my phone. And about five minutes after that, this announcement starts going out over the speakers on loop for like, you know, at least an hour and a half. Just, you know, due to inclement weather, the fair has been, quote, temporarily postponed. Please make your way to the exits and then we'll let you back in when the storm blows over. And, you know, I'd wait at an hour to get in like most people. And it was very hot and they'd take in my nice pen away.

And I was kind of salty about that. I didn't want to wait in line again. And I'm like, I have electricity here. I have my backup pen they didn't find. I have Sourapatch kids, and I'm just going to hang out. So I did that for a while until the fair people found me and kicked me out. And then when I went outside, I found that I was not alone in this logic, that a lot of fairgoers were like, we'll just get wet here instead of getting wet out there.

Right. Because they were telling us, you know, well, go shelter in your cars or in the surrounding buildings. And, you know, we were encouraged not to bring cars because it's Washington, D.C., and there were a lot of people, and there's only so much parking, so people didn't have cars. And this is, you know, 7 p.m. on a national holiday in the middle of D.C. So the buildings mostly weren't open either. So, you know, rather than go be wet outside, people decided to be wet inside. And this went on for about an hour until the cops showed up. And in a scene that I think would be recognizable to you as well, a line of cops just kind of trundling down the fair in motorcycles. The big difference between this and any other protest was that the cops were nice and not screaming or deploying tear gas and just kind of herded everyone out, you know, past the throngs of thousands already trying to get back in. Because there was nowhere else for people to go except for to block traffic for blocks and blocks and blocks, which is what

they did in the rain. It was, yeah. And so you've got a crowd of people who are both soaking wet and dehydrated, which is a great combination. And people start dropping as people are want to do. And so ambulances are coming through the crowd constantly. And, you know, this line that we always hear about protests how they're blocking traffic and what if an emergency vehicle needed to come in, well, that was very much in play, but for some reason that was okay in this case. They just put on their sirens and went two miles per hour and got through. For what I want to say about an hour, this was just everyone standing around waiting to get back in, getting out of the way for ambulances. Everybody getting more and more tightly packed until the crowd tried to do those little like

freaky lurches and shoves that, you know, it's like we're on the verge of a stampede here because they've planned this so well that, I mean, what else was going to happen? They weren't going to go home. It was temporarily postponed. Right. Right. You want to come back. Yeah. They said temporary. Yeah. Terrible idea. Right. Yes. Like, don't go home. Hang out here. Wait outside the gates and get soaking wet because this is safer than being inside the fair where you could like do things instead of just standing around and being angry. Yeah. It's both saying like, we want you to stay out where you will be in danger, but also we want to put you into a situation where a lot of you have to move at once. Yes. And it'll be upset and the security will be overwhelmed.

Yeah. Yeah. It was brilliant, really, really brilliant stuff. And, you know, the storm continued to get worse. It did not improve. It just got more and more rainy. And people were more and more determined to stay. I mean, there was a little bit of attrition, but mostly, you know, and I fell in with a group that was more determined than most. They were, you know, following the ambulances in because the ambulances were making space. It was a good way to move up to just be completely antisocial in this way. eventually this group got far enough down the street that it seemed like we were going to make it in. And we kept moving a little bit. And there were the chance of USA. I believe God bless America was sung at one point.

But the progress slowed and then it stopped. And then music began to play just beyond us inside the fence. And the crowd became a bit more agitated. And God bless the USA started playing. And that was a huge catastrophe because, you know, that means the speech is about to start. And we were going to miss Trump speaking, which was a problem. And then, Trump started speaking. And this was the moment that I think that the crowd just completely broke. Their will and spirits broke because the reverberation from the poorly placed speakers were such that you could not understand him. It was kind of a nightmare world for me in a different way, because you can hear Trump's cadence and voice, but not his words. It was just this psychotic babble of nothing, just watching over us. Yeah. Reading transcripts of it even. It was just like,

honestly, it's like, it's like ASMR. Yeah. Right? Like it's just, he's, he's, he's creating at this point like a soundscape for them to kind of exist inside for a little while. Yeah, yeah. And then amplified by the fact that it was coming at us, you know, from several directions out of sync. So truly incomprehensible. Just this weird Trumpian gibberish washing over this crowd and the boo that erupted when they realized they couldn't hear their leader speak. Oh, man. Rimal. That's funny. It was great. I was having the, I mean, I was soaking wet, having the best time. Yeah, they're all in withdrawal. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, no.

And so, you know, he speaks for a while and midnight passes, and there have been no fireworks. So the 4th of July, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, has now passed in D.C. with zero fireworks whatsoever. But, you know, everyone was excited for 850,000 fireworks to go off, which they eventually started to do at around, you know, 1215, completely obscured by the trees, completely obscured. Yeah. Could not see them at all. After all that waiting. Yeah, I saw your...

And the textures and stuff from it is like, in like the top corner above a tree, you can see little bits of an explosion peeking out. Just the worst fireworks show. So it was so bad. Oh, my God. So I'm walking out and they're playing Journey, you know, so don't stop believing. Like, I have stopped believing. Yeah. Then Bon Jovi's living on a prayer.

I'm not really living on anything at this point. The smoke is so thick, even if we could have seen, it was just an orange glow on the horizon. It was just brackling of bombs. It was just like. Awesome. Well, we will conclude this story and your experience at the Great American State Fair. But first, here's one last ad break. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers. all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hi, my love. Starting your day can be tough. You wake up, maybe hit snooze, and then scroll on your phone for a while,

checking your emails, all before even giving yourself the chance to really open your eyes and breathe. And I want to help you break that cycle. My name is Ryan Weiss, and for the past 15 years, I've been an emotional intelligence coach and spiritual guide. And I'm here to share with you my new podcast, Waking Up with Ryan. Waking Up with Ryan is a daily audio video podcast to interrupt the inertia of your fear, your ego and judgment. Here to help you connect with yourself before the noise of the day takes over. So let's start our days together with a moment of calm, a moment of reflection, and meditation, a moment that's just for you.

Listen to Waking Up with Ryan on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays, and some of it is awesome.

And some of it is, well, actually bullshit. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic, like... What's the deal with peptide? What's the deal with GLP once? What's the deal with creatine? What's the deal with cupping? What's the deal with sleep?

So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. It might actually be just what the doctor... Or the economist. Ordered. Listen to Wellness Actually on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. Okay, so how many times I'm curious would you estimate you heard Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA during your time there?

You know, believe it or not, just before Trump came out, just the one, which was refreshing. Oh, just one. That's good. That's good. That's not bad. I was surprised as well. I assumed it would be playing nonstop. But I guess that's like Trump's theme saw. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I feel like this was a small rebellion because there was music playing inside of the state fair. But what you had was like Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville as I'm like staring at the arch. Just, I mean, they play. I mean, they play. fortunate son, which I guess isn't surprising. Not surprising. Not really proper. But not really proper. Katie Perry's firework played several times because, I mean, you know, of course, Firework Fourth of July. So it wasn't really like a big patriotic music fest. It was just kind of like pop music that was barely related and or a little sad. It was, yeah, yeah, odd. Odd. Well, anything else about the event at all that you feel like is really worth getting into here at the end of our tale? I mean, the fact that there isn't, I feel like isn't itself something.

Like, it was so empty. It was such an empty thing. Yeah. Everything was so sad and small and lazy and lazy and trashy and cheek. The feeling I kept having was that it all felt AI generated. Yes. Even the stuff that, like, couldn't have been. Like, the arch looked like an AI generated image just stuck in the real world.

And, like, a lot of the booths, I mean, there was a lot of AI art there, but it just Just everything, all of your pictures, I kept thinking, it's like my friend is trapped in like an AI generated version of reality. That's really lazy. It's exactly. That is such a good way to put it. It really did. It was just like the ethos of AI infuse this place. Like, yeah.

It's kind of like if you described, I mean, I feel like I'm comparing everything to the backrooms right now because I just watched it and I'm a little obsessed. But like. What a backrooms vibe. This person who just watched the backrooms. And yet, I mean, it really was like, if. somebody described what a building was, and then someone who'd never seen one before, was like, oh, like this, right? Like, yeah, sure, like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, just, no, it was so soulless. I mean, you know, whether or not you care for America, I personally, you know, like, countries got a lot of problems. I would like a lot of them to be better. But, you know, I live here. I'd like it to be nice. And it was just kind of embarrassing. It was sad that this is really what we are right now.

We are just, yeah, this like soulless, AIS, phoned in, sad, part is, like, that part is not even the right word, like, radically far right bullshit. Yeah. It's gross. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Gross. Yeah. It's like funny in a cosmic sense, but mostly depressing, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed my time there because I enjoy depressing horrible things, but I can't, I can't say that, like, if I was giving a Yelp review. It feels right in this era of America to be, like, depressed and disappointed.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like the people, and I caught myself doing this too, like, you know, this is an representation of who we are. Like, yes, it is. No, this is a pretty good rep. Yeah. This is exactly who we are. What am I talking about?

They got the vibe more or less. Yeah, 4.5 stars, nailed it. Yeah, I say that a lot. Like, whenever someone's like, this isn't who we are, like, isn't it? Have you been us? I have. And this feels like us to me. Yeah.

Yeah. Periodically, during like the riots in 2020, I'd post some footage and one of the commos would be like, this isn't the America I grew up in. It's like, I don't know. It's the one I grew up in. I'm like, I mean, it wasn't the one I grew up in, but that's because I lived in areas where the police weren't. So yeah, yeah, it was always there. I just wasn't visiting it, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Well, Laura, anything else? Plugables to plug at the end here. Yeah, well, you can check out. I've got a newsletter at firewalledmedia.com. I am Laura Jede on basically every social media platform, mostly active on Blue Sky right now, but theoretically on all the other ones as well. And yeah, come come check me out.

I am the only Laura Jdeed in the world, so I'm very easy to find. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you, Laura. And thank you all for listening. We'll be back at some point in the future. Well, actually, tomorrow.

You know how this works. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iPhone. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. Betrayal Weekly is back with brand-new stories. From threatening text messages disturbing a small, Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages?

Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most sciencey episodes for your peer review with our new stuff

you should know doing science playlist. Out now. You want to know about Occam's Razor? Simplest explanation is usually the right one? We got you covered. Wondered what chaos theory is ever since the first time you saw Jurassic Park. Well, come on down. So distill a nice pot of tea, everybody.

Turn down the gas on your Bunsen burner and slip into your most comfortable lab coat and listen to the stuff you should know doing science playlist on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things.

As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city, in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.