It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 113

Episode Date: January 6, 2024

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Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. CallZone Media. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here. And I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. Call zone media. This week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. All right. This is the official It Could Happen Here predictions episode.

And to start off here, Gare has some of our wins and some of our losses from last year's. That's right. I took a peek back at our predictions of the past to see how correct we are. We got all of them right. Great job, folks. Let's continue on. to see how correct we are. We got all of them right. Great job, folks.

Let's continue on. No, I will say, obviously the big dub for the year goes to Sophie, who said that Kissinger would die. Yeah, you got that one, Sophie. Good work. God, I don't... Thank you for reminding me

that I'm a genius. Wow. We all said, no, there's no chance. He's too psychically powerful. But you maintained, and it turns out all we needed was a little hope that's all we needed wow i really should use these powers uh yeah i mean

i don't know who you're gonna take out next yeah we'll get there oh your prediction might death prediction for us just for funsies we once had a a, um, side note. We once had, back in the beginning times when we actually went to an office, God, at, at I, at I Heart,

we once had a prediction of when, uh, George H, HW Bush was gonna die and, uh, I was also right,

so. Oh, okay, well, Sophie, now you, you have to be very careful which ones you guess

and when. very careful. I've been watching, I've been watching the show You, which is primarily about how being a serial killer is a great idea. And I feel like you might be doing this. What is...

So that I can protect myself in case Sophie is secretly murdering people, which I just feel... Sophie would never watch You. Two in a row. two in a row, two in a row. That's all I'm going to say. If I was,

it would be in your honor. So, so let's talk about two things. Robert got wrong. Um, Robert, Robert said that there was a decent chance, which I think there was,

but it just didn't happen that, uh, Nick Fuentes and Kanye West would die together and under some mysterious circumstances okay i still feel like that do us all a favor sophie i think we i still think we got a shot i honestly i think so too but it didn't happen last year the other thing robert predicted is that there would be a ska total supremacy that obviously didn't happen that's that that happened i'm sorry that happened did you miss me informing cody johnston about the mighty mighty boss tones george floyd album this year because i did and it was amazing you unfortunately did and if you haven't listened

to that one of the worst things to say that happened to humankind yes garrison please continue mia predicted that there would be kind of a new sort of like desantis style republican challenger approaching i think uh the fact ramaswamy perfectly fits the sort of thing that mia was talking about this the kind of new figure that enters politics but he also kind of gives andrew yang in a way as well sure sure sure yeah yeah he's he's the fascist Andrew Yang. He's fascist Andrew Yang and he's insufferable.

He's fucking insufferable. Yeah, yeah. Massive. So fucking insufferable. Mia also predicted that Mike Pence would try to run for president. Hey! The rest of us disagreed

and Mia was proved incorrect. Look at her! Let's give her 50% on that. I don't know how much we'd say he really ran for president. He jogged at most. He jogged at most. And then he realized the only person that would vote for him was Mother. And then he was like, ooh.

I don't think she would. Yeah, I think she'll say she will. But she's going to pull the lever for Trump at the end of the day. Yeah, I think she'll say she will, but she's gonna pull the lever for Trump at the end of the day. Yeah, they are. Let's talk about some deaths. Mia said that Noam Chomsky would die. Shireen said Joe Biden would die.

I think, although they didn't physically die, the last vestige of their, like, respectability... Did Trump get canceled? That basically counts, right? Yeah, right. Basically, they torpedoed all the the last bit of like uh uh respect they had for for for people who would typically be aligned uh with them roughly biden has just been he's looked like he's on death death door for

forever it's ice i similarly thought that steven crowder was going to die and instead he just he just kind of metaphorically died because he made us some a series of horrible business decisions and now is ostracized from much of the online right so that's cool um now the one that sophie's upset about is that she she wanted crypto.com to lose the name of the arena instead instead the miami instead the miami heat arena is no longer called the ftx arena i mean i'm happy about that as well crypto.com is still holding strong so yeah so there we go and i think i take that very personally and it is staple center thank you so much now i will say that's i feel like i'm gonna roll that prediction into next year yeah let's give it a roll let's roll that i'm gonna roll my biden death prediction as well james james said that there would be more immigration bullshit which obviously happened

as james has been covering that most of this last year also james said that twitter would die which is true because it's no longer twitter it's no longer twitter it's just like it's just like how henry kissinger changed his name so true yeah no i will say the most impressive kind of niche prediction is the last one came from shireen oh shireen said that there would be the return of the flip phone. And searches for flip phones were up 15,000% last year among Jiangxi and millennials. And foldable phones sold 44% more compared to 2022. So 2023 really was the return of the flip phone. So there we go. I think it's going to continue because of what's happening in the Congo and all the tension that's going on over there. I think

we're going to continue seeing a switch away from iPhones. So that's proof of why we are all completely trustworthy and never wrong. And Garrison, what were you wrong about Garrison? Oh yeah, you really skipped over your bit. Oh, I

thought that Harry Styles would, there'd be some over your bed. Really? You skipped over your bed, Gary. Oh, I thought that Harry Styles would, there'd be some damning information that come out and he would just plummet. Unfortunately, that

didn't happen. The Styles is still hanging in there. Still styling. Here's to hoping. Hey. Sophie's favorite musician.

Not my favorite musician, but puts on a good show. All right. All right. Predictions for this next year oh wait hold on i i need to take one i need to take one other l which is that i i significantly overestimated my countrymen and i thought that we'd see another wave of revolts from people dying from covid in china and we didn't uh i don't know my countrymen suck ass like everyone else oh yeah that's because that's because covid's not real we don't know like countrymen suck ass like everyone else that's because that's because COVID's not real

we all agree on that well let's uh let's let's blaze past that one and when we get back when we get back from this uh this break we're gonna we're gonna start going through some predictions and we are back yeah so that's why i just don't really think the vaccines were so 2024 is an election year obviously so there'll be some election related predictions let's do i i don't want to immediately

just go to like who's gonna win let's do some vp picks yeah let's let's do some vp picks because this is this is gonna be a joe biden versus trump race right like unless one of them drops dead before november here's hoping this is not a chance of ideally murder suicide that's that's my hope for them for once i don't disagree with robert but do we think that kamala harris is gonna is gonna it's gonna stick in the the democrat vp

spot god i think so it's hard to imagine she wouldn't she's a dog shit candidate like yeah their best the best person i think they could run is whitmer like if i'm if i'm like war gaming the democratic party trying to give him the best shot it's throwing whitmer in but but joe biden would have at least his vp make a really fucked up joke it's good he's gonna stick he's gonna stick with kamala for sure yes yeah which is

unfortunate because there's definitely better there's like definitely i wouldn't say better there's definitely like more strategic people that but i mean if we were going by strategy we wouldn't uh the democrat i mean yeah it wouldn't be by biden trump again if we were going by what's best for the country sure um as for trump last year i said that i think herschel walker could be a potential a vp which i think is still true but there's not as not as much as it used to be um trump would become the third organization to become completely screwed by picking herschel walker like three consecutive organizations have bet everything on herschel Walker and lost. There's no way. That's the biggest thing is that Trump doesn't like losers and Herschel Walker is kind of only ever lost. Now, obviously, we've talked about this before.

Vivek Ramaswamy is maybe a potential, but he could be too loud for Trump. He could kind of steal too much of the spotlight. Trump doesn't want to of the spotlight. And he's not popular. Okay, does each person want to go around? Let's go around the horn. So Garrison, who is your pick? I mean, I was mostly tossing between Vivek and

Herschel Walker, but I'm not confident in either of those. But there's no other names that really come to mind because most of the other people on the debate stage either were too hostile to Trump or just didn't seem like people Trump would really get behind. Yeah. I think Bobby Kennedy. I think he could actually do it. I think, okay, admitted admittedly my biggest reason for thinking

this is not actual political analysis is that we live in the dumbest of all possible worlds and the dumbest of all possible worlds is Bobby Kennedy that is true this is the dumbest timeline maybe Nikki Haley if he can overcome his like

I was thinking Nikki Haley just purely on like yeah but Haley Haley's been kind of not like attacking Trump fully but she has not been super pro-Trump on this stage I think she may have alienated him too much I I I was also thinking like you know who's like a more like a docile woman that Trump would want to run beside. But, yeah. But Nikki Haley has the reach that I think she'd be helpful to him. And everyone is against every candidate until they're picked for fucking VP.

Yeah. I think that there's several different people that he could pick. He could pick Carrie Lake. He could pick Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He could pick, oh man, what is that governor's name? Kristi Noem?

Yes. Thank you, thank you. He could pick Kristi Noem. You're welcome. But if he's going to go woman, he's going to go, I think, one of those three because I think he's already bad mouth he's already bad mouth nikki haley enough but uh i think i think what's what people are forgetting

is he might just pick somebody that he knows won't turn on him he might just pick his fucking daughter like i was gonna i was gonna say actually his i mean he might he might he might pick jared kushner yeah the kush bomb yeah yeah let's get that in there that's the fucking election i want robert do you have a pick i mean i suspect he's that that biden and uh fucking harris are going to run although you know again if i'm talking about who I think actually would be the smart pick for the dims, it's Whitmer and, or Andy Bashir,

who's the democratic governor of, um, uh, Kentucky, super popular, like really good at talking to kind of working class voters. Um, is,

has been successful in a red state. We're in this weird situation where almost anyone kind of besides Kamala Harris, who were to run against Trump would win easily. And if Trump were to be replaced by like Nikki Haley, she would just absolutely pants Biden. This is what, this is what all of the data shows at the moment.

So we're in this really odd moment of like, we have, it's like, it's the opposite of the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. It's like the very mobile object meeting the very light force. They're both just sort of sliding around the room. Coughing baby versus coughing baby.

Yeah, it's two babies with tuberculosis in a steel cage while Joe Rogan narrates the fight, which I would watch. What a country. So I don't know. I don't know who the fuck Trump is going to pick. Yeah, probably his daughter, Jay Kush. He might, you know be i wouldn't be wildly

shocked if he were to go with um oh christ what's her name she ran as a democrat last time but tulsi gabard gabby tulsi gabard i did think about that too she's fucking mental now i would she's she's been out of her mind for a while i wouldn think she's too irrelevant. I wouldn't be shocked. I think she's too irrelevant. She's a regular Fox News contributor. Yeah, yeah. I don't think, he doesn't want someone who is like, I think he's- Yeah, but he hates Fox News now. The unpopularity- Until they need him.

He needs him. Unpopular enough that I think Trump might see him as a loser. Tulsi's not a loser. She's also not a threat to him being in the spotlight and he he might decide to roll those bones yeah i didn't think about that all right um do we do we want to switch over to another category gear sure um does anybody have a general prediction that they would like to share? Sure. I think a Daily Wire host is going to have something funny happen to them.

Anything related to... Based on how much... There's going to be probably a whole bunch of rallies happening in 2024 in the lead up to the election. I think there's going to be a lot more on the ground stuff than there was in 2023. Um, I think animosity has only really risen these past three years. And I think that we could see the return of pying as a,

as a, as a widespread tactic. God, God, from your mouth to God's ears. So you can, you can, you can put that one together. All right, I'll go. My prediction is a two-part, and it falls under the Kimye.

My first prediction is that Kanye, people are going to forget. People are going to forget people are going to forget he's going to uh put out a new album uh and people because he's already started to like do the thing that kanye does uh where he plays plays an album at a random club and or plays a listening party event and yeah people are going to forget he's gonna he's gonna do that um and then kim has been hanging out with ivanka a lot and she is almost done with law school and i think she is going to have some kind of a feeler into the field of politics this year oh my god what if she's vp i did i actually i actually that thought actually did go through my brain, but I don't think she's there yet. We are not ready for a Trump-Kardashian ticket.

I'm sorry. But he would win, unfortunately. I am moving back to Canada. That's simply not happening. A full reality TV ticket would be just so America of us. This is the worst country. It's the worst country, worst timeline. Then Trump would have to acknowledge the Armenian genocide and it would make relations with turkey very difficult that would she would just lead into her white presidency

would be very good for armenia it would for the kurds it'd be amazing but like but like kim kardashian visiting the ypj since since trump's been out of office ivanka kind of went underground and you know most people have not been seen with her and in the last couple months she has been photographed with kim kim has posted her they've been doing things together they've been coordinating outfits it's yeah and so i think we might see some kind of thing between the two of them there or Kim is going to start making her way into a political career of some kind. Yeah. Although I do think that not, you know, some of the work that she's done helping getting innocent folks out of prison has been pretty dope. I will say. Yeah. That is my prediction. The Kimye.

I hate this country. I think we probably will go back. We just did this episode. Spoiler, we're recording in 2023. I predict that by this time next year, we will probably go back to something approaching Title 42, which will be terrible, given that, like, as Robert said, kind of we're seeing increased conflict all over the world, people are coming here, they

won't be able to, that will have massively destabilizing influence on Mexico as it, as it did last time and impact on Mexico. Um, I'm also really what my like concern prediction this year is violence against migrants in places where they're extremely vulnerable as we go through the election cycle which would inevitably demonize them from both fucking parties uh so like that's become a really big especially with this stupid practice of busing people across the country and then dumping them onto the streets like that that's my big concern for 2024

mia country and then dumping them onto the streets like that that's my big concern for 2024 mia uh you know what fucking i can be wrong all right so my this is my this is my my a thing that i've been waiting for to happen that's going to be one of the just most one of the worst things that's going to happen eventually at some point this is going to happen we're going to get an attempt by the republicans to seriously come after interracial marriage and it is going to form the most insane political coalitions you have ever heard of in your entire life it is going to be like this nightmare word coalition of just like the open white supremacists the like asian mra people a bunch of like you're gonna see a bunch of these completely deranged like korea like nom like

nominally left-wing korean ethno-nationalist groups i you're gonna see like the the like andrew tate people i there's gonna be this it's gonna have this this just absolute nightmare coalition behind it it probably won't work but it is going to be one of the worst things and i don't know if i i hope it doesn't happen next year but i think i think the election year someone could actually decide that this is going to be the time they're going to try to do it that that is the sort of shit that when i when i think about like what could upset the election and Joe Biden's favor,

it would be the Republicans launching a crusade like that. I'm going like too hard, too fast. Yeah. And on something that like everyone up until the moment it happens would assume was just not up for debate, right? Like,

I don't know. It might happen if they let go after gay marriage, but everyone's kind of braced for that. If they were to launch a crusade against interracial marriage, yeah, that is the kind of thing that might just sink them. Everyone might just go, well, I guess we have to vote for Biden again because this is just out of its mind. republicans have been talking more about and i think it's maybe possible that there'll be one or two states that that actually moves on this um is is abolishing uh no fault divorce i think that is something that could happen in like one or two red states this year i don't know how much that would actually impact national elections but that is something i think the republicans are starting to focus more on yeah specifically like republican media influencers largely because they all have had their wives leave them yeah

shirini um well yeah i i do think that flip flip phones are going to continue being popular, especially now. It's doubling down. No, I mean, first of all, I was right. Second of all, I have a couple of ones that I hope aren't true, but I think they will be. I have a feeling that, and I think there's going to be something similar to the Muslim ban, but in specific like about palestine and israel i think that there's going to be something scary that targets an entire people that i don't want to be true but it just feels like we're we're going up that route so i feel like there's gonna be i have i have a thing about what that's gonna be i i think i think what's going to be and there's something we've

been seeing in florida there's going to be a giant push to ban chinese citizens from owning property because this is this is already happening in florida um there's there's been this whole and like like florida's right now in the process of doing this thing where they're trying to prevent people who spent like one year in uh in china from like being in universities i i think it's going to be this giant like they're they're going to do one of these like chinese people people can own property things. Yeah. I didn't know that. That's really unsettling.

They're closer than you would think to already doing a version of a Muslim band, not targeting Palestine, but well, and, and Trump has promised countries. That's what I mean. That's it.

It happened before. Like, why wouldn't it happen again? It just feels really unsettling that it's, that's a possibility of it happening again. Well, and trump has promised that if he wins again we're he's moving straight to deportation of muslims like yeah i think we will like that he's he said that that's what we're gonna do yeah i also think that there's going to be an uproar about a historical figure who was white being played by a black person.

Like another one of those. Yeah, I mean, that's like every week, Shireen. What if I just want to be right? It's already starting, Shireen. You are correct. Because next year, what, Denzel is going to be playing Hannibal Barca in a movie about the Second Punic War. Which any person who is not out of their mind is like, that's inspired.

Yeah. Have they, he's the best possible person playing that guy, but it's going to piss off a bunch of people, even though, even though that James, but you were the one who listened to that James Bond podcast, right?

Kill James Bond. That's the name of the podcast. Yeah. Okay. I just got to say this T girl, James Bond. It would set the world on fire. Yeah, okay. I just gotta say this. T-Girl James Bond. It would set the world on fire. It would be the funniest thing that's ever happened.

Yes. Do it. God. Yeah, yeah. At least the dogs of war. Yeah, the civil war will begin because of trans James Bond. You heard it here first. Yeah.

So true, so true. See, I take a different tact, which is that we should find the most cajun man alive and finally give the people what they want which is cajun james bond i mean that would also go hard like james bond making a like instead of instead of a martini shake and not stir it he likes a nice etouffee like come on let's do it let's let's be heroes i i i know we wanted to close with the with the with the death segment i think because of kissinger we already took so many dubs there

that i one thing that is on my mind is surely there it's possible there'll be more kind of protests popular mobilizations like this summer before the election but i'm more interested in what's going to happen after the election because no matter who wins which i either i really don't have a strong feeling one way or another there's potentials for obviously if trump wins i think there'll be massive uh another january 6th type event or well no no if pussy hats are gonna come back if trump wins that's my prediction there'll be like probably at least two strong weeks of intense rioting across the country yeah yeah i think we'll see more firm suppression than we did in 2020 in a lot of cases which will be interesting because at this point biden will still

be technically in in charge but everyone's going to treat it like it's a trump problem on the other hand if biden wins are we going to get stopped to steal two or will a second or will or will a second defeat in a row almost be more of like a death kneel for this sort of like mega mobilization i get that i think that that's also a possibility that two two losses in a row could just just like disillusion a whole bunch of people who otherwise kind of want to do a stop the still to, but it may just not happen. We literally can't, we can't, we can't let Trump pick more judges.

I'll tell you what'll happen is, because I am aware of the predictive programming that the Obamas have been putting out through their new movie, Leave the World Behind. We're going to have a military coup and they're going to use the Havana syndrome gun to knock us all out while they, while they re you know, fix, fix politics one way or the other. Yeah.

Don't know which side is going to do it, but somebody is going to drop the Havana syndrome gun. Yeah. Let's, let's take a quick break and come back with our death predictions. How does that sound? Everybody. Let's take a quick break and come back with our death predictions. How does that sound, everybody? And we're back.

Robert, who's going to die? Who's going to die, Robert? You know what? My pick this year is everybody. I think this is the year we all get it. I think somebody's going push the button and finally the world's atomic stockpile will bring us all sweet

release. Okay, my serious prediction, I think Putin will be assassinated. Oh, that'd be cool. Dude, I was going to say, I have a feeling that there's gonna be some type of assassination that will, like, rock the world. Yeah. De chance asad eats it still i think like especially god you know the only reason i wouldn't say that's like the guy i most

want to see die in the world and probably won't be until he does but like top set erdogan's up there but asad just nobody nobody else has that body count right now but no one can touch him that's the thing that really that's the thing bb's going for it but still he's got to kill i mean like asad's at six seven thousand something like that i uh i just don't know he's he's a survivor unfortunately like you have to you do kind of have to acknowledge that about him like he's just vigor he's pretty good at not getting killed so far um i just don't know whereas like putin hasn't really been tested this way yet and i i do kind of think yeah i think that there's there's a chance i don't know that I think it's a high chance. Sure.

Yeah. I mean, I think every day we get closer and closer to an Elon Musk overdose. Yeah. Well, we overdose on Elon Musk in all and our own lives. So true, James. Yeah. My prediction is that with the will of God, Morrissey will finally fucking die and rid us of his annoying bullshit. Oh, my God. Because God knows it's fucking bad. is that with the will of god morrissey will finally fucking die and rid us of his annoying bullshit oh my god because uh wow did not that that is not what i was expecting great sir yeah and chill out we will see the end of morrissey this year friends has everybody has everybody gone because is it my turn with my with my power uh-huh yeah yeah

sophie you're gonna off yeah say morrissey really i'm not saying morrissey he's a prick i really thought about this and um it's time it's time david miscavige it's fucking time okay wow yeah he said it you're first yeah maybe from the person who predicted kissinger yeah and someone else she picked someone else right who else did you get Sophie I don't know who else did I get I don't have anything else

you said something about when you were in the office oh George H.W. Bush oh yeah we could be two for two here but uh I think it's gonna be a Miscavige but uh but uh i think i didn't see that i think it's a it's gonna be a miscavige but you know the but you know he'll just jump into another body um oh you know what i wish this is a wish that i don't think will come true but uh mcconnell

well i think i mean that seems pretty that seems but i think he has a short circuit in front of a camera yeah He will die live on TV when he does. We have seen the android flip on and off multiple times. I think it's very clear that one day it just won't boot back up. Pelosi could die too.

I think McConnell's gonna die the way he lived. With fentanyl that got snuck into his heroin. You know? that's a, that's just, I think. And on that note, uh,

bye. The turtle, the turtle. Bye. Are we free? We're free. Bye. Hey,

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It is 2024. A lie. It's 2023. Robert has just pissed everybody off for the last three minutes and 14 seconds. Listener, Sophie is gaslighting you. It is still December. When they listen to this, it'll be 2024. You don't know that.

I do know that. I'm in charge. Okay, moving on. We're going to do some listener questions today, but I just wanted to give a shout out to each member of our team. We have Shireen Lonnie Eunice. We have James Stout. We have Mia Wong.

We have Garrison Davis, and we have Big Bobby E. That's right. That's right. And we're going to answer some listener questions you for those to those who have submitted um anybody else want to say anything before i start besides robert thank you to about half of those who submitted yeah the rest you need to have a chat with yourselves you you know who you are i don't think they do i don't think our our listeners are very self-actualized all right sophie take it away um to each of you any book recommendations for

introduction to anarchist history and or theory if i may there's a book called great anarchist by dog section press it's written uh by ruth kinner who's been on the podcast it's got very short bios of different great anarchists uh i think you will enjoy it i think you can get the pdf for free online i like to print them out and put them in as little libraries that rich people like to have in their neighborhoods uh and red pill them black pill them slowly that way so yeah great, Great Anarchists by Dog Section Press, from Dog Section Press by Ruth McKinnon. My one is kind of, it's slightly more specialized,

but Anarchism in Latin America is a great book. Also, the cover is just gorgeous, so you'll have that around all the time. But yeah, it's really good. It basically goes country by country through Latin America and talks about all the anarchist movements and it's great yeah I guess it's not it's sort of anarchist I suppose

but I've been doing a lot of union stuff recently so I've been thinking a lot about the concept of work so I've kind of returned to this really good book Crime Think put out titled Work very basic look into sort of like anarchist almost like anti-work theory it's just a nice book to interrogate how the concept of like work

and labor exists in your own head i've i've appreciated that one through the years shireen or robert either of you i second all those answers. Amazing answers, everybody. Wow. Yeah, and I cannot read, so I'm going to second those answers. Robert recommends the book, isn't it like the No Gods, No Masters, AK Press one with the chaos star? Oh, I mean, yeah,

that's got a lot of like old anarchist essays and shit starting in like the 1800s. So if you're interested in that kind of history you can read that all right next question um i think this will be different depending on the type of episode and like what show people are writing it for but i got several different people asking you know how long it takes to research right like an average episode so we're talking like not not talking like a a series such as garrison's stop cop city series but like an average episode where you're talking

about something and uh it's a scripted episode but you're talking about something sure yeah i mean some episodes take months uh if but an average episode usually if i'm putting it together it might take me like four days from start to completion like i'm thinking of my uh of my uh desantis fast wave episodes usually you'll have like maybe two days of more research and then uh two days of like well then like one day of like scripting and then editing that script on like the the fourth day and you record so yeah maybe maybe around that i mean some episodes come together faster some episodes come together longer it really really varies shushu yeah i would agree with that timeline i think three to four days sounds about right um i've been trying to take an extra day just to read through the script like multiple times just because, uh, I've been, it's just better for like my performance.

It's like weird as that sounds. Um, so yeah, I would say like, uh, when you write a script, the worst thing you can do is immediately read it after you finish writing it. And I've made that mistake before. I definitely have. So taking, uh taking time is important. Yeah. James, Mia, Robert, anything you want to add? I spent 35 years preparing for the sheet podcast.

Yeah. It really depends on the episode. If it's an interviewer, I'll spend maybe a couple of hours, you know, studying up on everything the person has said. If it's a scripted episode, a scripted half hour to 45 minutes of the show is generally five to seven pages. That's maybe an hour or two to write and then four to six hours of research. Although it kind of depends, you know, because a lot of it's based on just sort of like ongoing research right where whereas like something will happen in the news and we'll we'll do some studying up on that event but we're also keeping in touch with like like when we have

episodes on on terrorist attacks and whatnot like i don't know how to actually like lay out how much time goes into those episodes because a large part of it is just the process of like keeping up with the way terror is evolving in American politics. We all have beats right like we all have stuff that we just keep up with. Yeah like we're not counting all the time that we spend like in telegram just like watching right. But the gram but yeah yeah sure that's what kids are calling it. Second time this year, garrisons found themselves too old

to understand a youth reference. My next question, what conspiracy theory or unsolved mystery do each of you believe in? Dangerous question for us to answer on air. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to point out that garrison sent me this question to ask so there must be an answer in mind

yeah all right all right garrison danger davis okay well i i don't know what what even i'm not sure if i believe in anything that would be classified as a conspiracy theory. I would have to think on this, actually. I don't know. I don't believe in it, but I fucking love Bohemian Grove stuff. It's like one of the OGs, you know, from the beginnings of the internet.

And I just can't get enough about people who have just never deviated from the Bohemian Grove. Like that dude who went there with the combination AR-15 shotgun and tried to like destroy bohemian grove legend i love reading about that stuff it's nonsense but it's fun i mean like i actually have oh sorry oh oh no go please okay okay we're doing we're doing we're doing this one okay if you if you were on the live show you've heard this if you were not on the live show, you've heard this. If you were not on the live show, you haven't heard this, which is that. Okay, from the late 1970s until the early 1980s

when it was busted by the Italian police, the Italian government was run by a rogue Masonic lodge called the Pici Organization. Oh, my God. And it was propaganda due a various elements. Okay, so there's this thing going on. Here she goes. There's various elements use the Red Brigades

as a way to assassinate Aldo Moro. They take him to a hotel that is like it's run by like one of the Red Cardinals. It's one of the sort of the Communist Cardinals. It's like in this building is like a NATO weapons is like someone, a NATO weapons dealer, an Italian general.

I think I see a red laser. I think I see a red laser hovering over this is all real this was over this one is insane look this was on the fritz 1983 it's the thing is the thing is okay so every conspiracy theory on earth is real but it was only real from about 1977 to 1983 in Italy. Like all of them are there at the same time, like during the Aldo Moro assassination, like the, the,

the two groups trying to free Aldo Moro are the Pope on the one hand. And then, well, I should ask you, there's, there's the Pope who's working through an Israeli guy in the Kessnet. And the other group trying to free him is the PFLP. She's got all of them.

The Pope, the Israelis, the Masons, feminists. Do you have like a cork board with like red string? We haven't even gotten, okay, like one of the guys who makes sure that the Alderboro dies is, he's like now an insane Alex Jones an insane alex jones conspiracy guy like he's on alex jones all the time he was like he's the hostage yeah yeah he's the guy yeah yeah he's he's a he's a regular fixture yeah so like he the people try to kill it like the both the us the soviets independently of each other are both trying to make sure this guy dies same with the east germans on the fucking uh what's it called the the beider meinhof group

the the the weird german they're also involved all right meanwhile i am i am a 9-11 truther uh and then my god i don't believe that when you call 9-1-1 it goes anywhere i think i think they're just hooking you up to an AI. It's a con, people. Oh, shit. Rudy Giuliani has to pay those Georgia election workers $150 million. That's so funny. I feel like he's got that. Yeah, I feel like he's got that hanging

around. It'll be good. No, but he literally defamed the shit out of those lovely people. I mean, defamation is like 80 percent of what he does okay new new favorite conspiracy theory um panera bread made the deadly lemonade on purpose as a whatever whatever who cares genocide that's why they see i i fully support the lemonade that kills you i think we need more lemonade that kills people we're gonna take a quick ad break. We'll be right back.

And we are back. What are you most excited to work on this year slash be a part of create? What are we most excited to work on this year slash be a part of create what are we most excited to work on next year and i've been stockpiling a lot of and um so i i i got some plans i got some plans i got some plans do we believe or not that's that's the real question i don't know that's that's someone else's job to decide. I can tell you from experience that the ATF will visit your employer if you include instructions on how to make in your work.

It's legal. Go ahead, Garrison. They'll still bully you. Go ahead, Garrison. I'm planning to attend a whole bunch of more kind of occult conferences or paranormal conventions and get get more

into the high strangeness world uh this year that's that's something i'm i'm excited about i'm really excited we're launching a weekly show uh with jimmy loftus um starting in the spring that i'm very excited to be producing. So look out for that. Okay, I've been working on this for a fucking year now, but it's coming next year, which is my episodes on the lab leak stuff. I have a corkboard that makes that entire Italy rant I made look normal. Nobody doubts that you have a corkboard, Mia. I have spent so many hours talking to epidemiologists.

I'm losing my mind, but it's coming. It will happen. I'm very excited about it. You have been talking about these episodes for quite a while. Literally a year. Yeah. Robert. Don't need me, a palooza.

I have agreed to do a podcast that is going to be a nightmare, but you'll all love it. You'll all love it as it ruins my life. And I don't know. Probably eventually the Robert E. Lee episodes. We'll get those out. You know what? I've been doing.

I've been working on a T.E. Lawrence series of episodes. That I'm very excited about. Amazing. Lawrence of Arabia. The guy who invented the concept of insurgency. So that'll be good. that'll be a good series i hope robert and i get to go back to myanmar and do maybe a visit to uh some different groups that would be cool i would like that i'm excited to do more migration stuff yeah spend more time

and on different parts of the migration journey because i think that's something i've wanted to do for a long time and like i see a lot of people do really shitty versions of it so i'm excited to give it a crack at not doing a cringe voyeuristic version of that anyone else have an answer to that did you answer shirini i didn't i feel like i have two answers like one i'm not excited at all because i feel like the most when i'm most motivated it's when i'm the most angry and so i'm not excited for things to make me angry and upset but i am looking forward to i think i like when i have people on that are like experts or they have knowledge that i don't and so I like the possibility of of having more conversations that

are enlightening I suppose and uh yeah I also would like to talk more about corn and food so maybe I should focus on that maybe I should focus on something could happen here yeah yeah that's that's something I look forward to something to be fun we definitely want to do more farm animal episodes yes and more And more food episodes. But no, Shireen, you bring up a good point about how this whole show works, is that all of the best stuff we make, in my opinion, is always

related to things that we're passionate about. And passion can come in a few forms. Anger is something that is a big driver of passion, but that's usually less fun. so it's always nice when we can be able to cover something that we are passionate about but it comes from not a place of anger but it comes from a place of like just like like genuine like intense interest yeah

like i genuinely love corn and i loved the conversation about sheep so i look forward to the possibility of making things not just when i'm like enraged and more when i'm like that's a good point that's a good point that passion can be can come from different things because i was just as passionate to talk about corn than i was to talk about an important thing that happened so yeah i have a i have a specific question that i vetted to james ahead of time um which is do you have any stories about meeting fans or listeners IRL? I do. I have not disturbing ones.

You all can air your trauma later. Please approach Robert when he's buying groceries. But don't. Yeah, no, do it. Don't do that shit. He's very ticklish. I am always armed

in the grocery store, so please don't do that. That's why you gotta tickle him. Don't tickle Robert, guys. It's weird. store, so please don't do that. That's why you've got to tickle him. Don't tickle Robert, guys. It's weird. Yeah, so loads of people, not loads, but a lot of people who have listened to our podcast have come to help in Okumba, and they're all very nice. And I've enjoyed building yurts and making sandwiches and ladling out beans with them immensely.

And it genuinely does make me really happy because it can like when we do the podcast we see like each other and in our little rooms and and then it just goes out into the ether and you never know who's listening and so it's really cool when people listen and then like show up and do something that meaningfully makes the world a better place and that makes me feel very hopeful uh and that's another like passion thing like i think especially the mutual aid stuff we've done at the border it makes me feel really hopeful that like we can do things just fine without the state and without the resources of masses of capital and without any major sort of orgs or like institutions behind us like we can just help each other and do amazing things so yeah when people show up for

that it's cool uh slightly weird when they show up listening to the podcast and i hear myself in their car it's not okay uh but other than that yeah i just try to catch up those people yeah yeah i i too would be trying to catch up if i had to listen to all the stuff we put out i think it's honestly really cool that people show up for that kind of stuff it makes it makes so much of the weird parts of being a podcast host worth it when stuff like this yeah that's been something that uh that mia's been pointing out recently how we seem to be one of in in terms of like you know podcasts that that that cover the sorts of things we do we're our fan base seems to be relatively

offline in a lot of ways and a lot of a lot of them actually a lot of the people actually do a lot of real world stuff which is great like that's that that's kind of the entire point is that most of the things we talk about there's there's there's ways that you have the power to change it in small ways you know it's no like large immediate effects like you have the power to change it in small ways. You know, it's no like large immediate effects. Like you solve the problem immediately. But there's always small things that can slowly change the tide of many of the problems that we discuss every day. Yeah.

We're going to throw an ad break here. Unless you have cooler zone media and Android listeners, that is coming soon. It's a little bit out of our control on that end, but we do ask about it constantly and it will be happening. If you have a cooler zone account, you cannot die. That's fun. That's a good, it's a true fact. So purchase it. Render yourself immune to the passage of time.

And we're back. I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask, what's everyone's favorite Christmas movie? Okay, so I have already talked about my annual Batman Returns watch party, which was a great success this year. It was a big hit. I made tons, I made about probably like four dozen latkes. It was a lot of fun.

We got to- That's a lot, cuz. Wow. Wow, Robert. You should do this for a job. You're in this off-the-cuff kind of humor. That's crazy. What a dub.

But no, we got a nice group of people to oogle at Danny DeVito vomiting black goo for approximately two hours. So that was a big win. It's by far the best Christmas movie, in my opinion. No, I big win i it's it's by far the the the best christmas movie in my in my opinion no i agree it's my favorite one by far and banger yes me and my family have watched it consistently since i was like a child like but like since i was like two years old as old we just were obsessed with it and i don't remember if you said this last year

and i already this is like a repeat of the conversation but i agree that's the best christmas movie uh i can think of yeah michael keaton total domination here we go best best batman by far by far miles he's just miles away from so when i was growing up my parents used to ditch my brother and i and go to the laker game on christmas and we this explains so much oh my god yeah real plot reveal so much sophie i'm sorry thank i love you i love you parents and i and i respect it but my brother and i used to watch like we would spend the entire day watching all the like hobbit and lord of the rings movies nice nice that just feels that feels like christmas to me sure i mean yeah especially

especially the animated ones definitely have that kind of like fantasy jolly kind of feel totally yeah i uh yeah anybody else i like to watch love actually but it's very pretty oh james it's so basic of you i know yeah i'm secretly a basic white lady. But every time I watch it, there's something else problematic that I hadn't previously thought before. And it's getting to the point where I should probably stop talking about it in public.

That's amazing. Yeah. Now the audience knows who the biggest wife guy on the team is. Definitely James. This is a question for Robert. Looking back on season one of It Could Happen Here, do you still see a second American Civil War

as a likely or plausible event in our near future? Yeah, I mean, I think it's possible we're going to look back on where we are right now as the earlier stages of it, right? Civil conflict is pretty widespread. i think one of the differences like for example one of the big differences with that the texas california alliance yeah the a24 civil war movie is it's clearly imagining like a large-scale military conflict i don't find that particularly likely but you do have one major political party stating that when we take power in 2024, our guy is going to act as a dictator. acts of violence and violent threats that are occurring as part of like a a uh as part of like the the political conflicts that have existed in this country for a while they they have all

transitioned to being kind of explicitly acts of of public violence or at least public threats of violence and you're seeing this around for example a lot of the discourse surrounding what's happening in gaza right you just had that case like, some fucking like grade school teacher threatened to cut a student's throat for criticizing Israel. technical term pieces of shit feel emboldened to use and threaten violence in the furtherance of their political agendas is is something we may wind up seeing is like yeah we we were in it by this point so again i i'm not a believer and a big part of it could happen here is like i don't i don't think any mass civil conflict in the united states is going to be armies fighting over states right yeah um because that's that's simply not realistic but i do think we are in what any reasonable person would say call a mass civil conflict and uh you know my big question is whether or not we're going to see it as a civil conflict or as an extension of a global conflict which

includes outright shooting wars but also mass information warfare in this kind of planetary struggle between the idea at least if never not the promise that like democracy is is the the kind of goal and the strongly held belief by large groups of people that we need an authoritarian system governed effectively by the people who are presently in power, right? Like you are seeing this kind of struggle between the idea that we should have a system in which people are allowed to pick their leaders and this idea that like the winners of the last 20 years of capitalism and politics should be able to solidify their hold forever. So my big question is whether or not we're going to come to see where we are right now as the early stages of a civil conflict that's going to get progressively more violent and have a progressively higher body count or are we going to see this as part of a global military and political struggle that is is going to kind of shake out the next hundred years

of uh kind of the political status quo on earth and in a similar way to like world war ii you know more or less laid out the next 80 or 90 years something like that i've got two more questions sounds good first um do you each of you have a favorite episode you've put out we're all trying not to say the cum episode at the same time I really have some really bad news I really some bad news that was the

most downloaded episode of 2023 everybody loves talking about cum you fucking sickos I'm with you I'm with you sorry Sophie you've been outvoted loves talking about cum. You fucking sickos. I'm with you, Sharini. I'm with you.

Sorry, Sophie. You've been outvoted. I'm never outvoted. I have ultimate veto power. That's what you're seeing, guys. The struggle between democracy and despotism. This is the exact problem Robert was talking about right here. Sophie's on the Musk side. Disgusting. I mean mean it's

certainly hard to even pick one episode just from this year I mean but it's the cum episode yeah I will say the cum episode was fun to put together we really delved into the trenches there

that few other people are brave enough would you say it would you say it really came together um i'm gonna i'm gonna answer these questions for each of you with each of your work thank you thank you because i'm a fucking professional garrison's cop cop city work has been just that i really i tell I tell this to girl all the time they're the most amazing storyteller you really feel like you are you're able to visualize everything going on with the words that they say um and I think it's an important story that they've been on top of since the beginning um I don't think anybody covers labor issues in the way that mia does and i think mia has um really

done that in 2023 and will continue to do that in 2024 in a way that's not being covered in mainstream media and i think that those stories are extremely important and have made a significant impact on uh labor and union culture and strikes and fighting for what's right james man it's like i want i want to say i want to say the work you do at the border but i really love when you talk about things that are silly um and i think they're equally as important but james talk james talking about sheep and the joy that james had when he talked about sheep is really special. But also the work that you've done talking about the war in Myanmar and helping people at the border has been extremely impactful to our listeners. Shushu is a historical almanac to all things the Middle East and has, I think, educated not just the audience,

but also all of us on things that really everyone should know. And I think that she's brilliant, and I love you, Shereen. Robert. Hey. Sophie. It's the come episode, right? It's definitely not the come episode right it's definitely not the come episode but it's really hard to pick my favorite

Robert episode because I record with him like most days but I think that what Robert has done specifically within Bastards in 2023 was really get on top of the Bastards we're all surviving right now which I think he did a really great

job talking about andrew tate i think he did an incredible job getting an episode out immediately about stockton rush uh the guy who killed those people under this reversal really really the hero of the year right the guy responsible for the great feel good story of 2023. So much better over time. We need we need I feel like we could solve most of the world's problems with another 11 or so of those subs. group on board them you're definitely not not wrong there i'd just like to say you know if you're wondering why the new york times and the washington post are too big a cowards to do a come episode like we did you know there's an old quote if you want to know who rules you ask who you can't criticize that's all i'm saying that's all's all I'm saying, Garrison. I see you. I see you doubting me, but you know it's true. You know it's true.

Anyways. It's r slash nofap. All right, that's it. We're done. I said I was going to ask another question, but really, what's the point? What's the point? We've climaxed, guys. Oh, my God. Thank you, James. Thank you, James. We'll answer more of these questions. really what's the point what's the point yeah we've climaxed guys we it's oh my god thank you

james thank you james i appreciate the teamwork james someone had to anyways nobody robert but my my apologies to ian for this nightmare of an edit but um yeah anybody have any final thoughts anything anything uh j, do you have anything you want to plug in terms of donations or anything? Yeah, I do actually. So we have a fundraiser for what we're doing at the border. It would be really lovely

if you could give us some of your money because I have spent all of the money that I have and some money that I don't have. It's gofundme.com slash hokumba hyphen migrant hyphen camps or tinyurl.com slash border aid GFM. How do they spell hakumba? That's a good question.

J-A-C-U-M-B-A. So, like it's Spanish. But yeah, you can also tinyurl slash border aid GFM. tinyurl.com. That's an easy one to remember. Great. And we'll be back tomorrow because this is a daily show. Bye.

Hey, I'm Gianna Prandti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. Mm-hmm.

But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every

single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little

bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head,

search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas,

and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life.

Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast returning from our holiday break to discuss the exciting topic of infectious diseases in Gaza. And for that, we're joined by an all-star cast of experts. We have joining us today Saskia Popescu, who's an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Maryland. Welcome, Saskia. Thank you for joining us today Saskia Popescu who's an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Maryland. Welcome Saskia, thank you for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me. Yeah of course, yeah you're welcome. It's not just you, we've also got Kaveh. Kaveh's back. I'm back. I'm back baby. This is actually my first time, this is Shireen also I'm here. This is my first time meeting Kaveh. So this is a real treat for me. I've done you wrong, Shireen. I'm sorry I didn't introduce you. That's okay. It's probably in the description or something that I'm here.

No one's surprised. Yeah, you'll make a valuable contribution. People will know you're here. But yeah, it's all of us. And yeah, we're talking today because like, I think the origin story of this particular episode is that like a few weeks ago, there was a very funny thing on the internet about people in the IDF getting diarrhea. Yeah. Which is funny.

That's what the D in IDF stands for, actually. Yeah. That's what all the kids are saying. Sorry. I'm sorry. No, it's funny. Don't you ever apologize for poop apologize yeah you do not apologize for that no any opportunity just to shit on them you're good yeah yeah this is expect many it's

half an hour at least of this don't be driving because you might laugh too much and crash uh but no it's very funny it's the name of our group chat. It's the Israeli Diarrhea Forces. But aside from that, this raises a more important question, right? Which is that people in Gaza don't have access to very many medical supplies to begin with. Weird things are embargoed,

like tourniquets, which we've spoken about in this podcast before. They also have, obviously, a very resource constrained environment to begin with and then a number of their hospitals have been bombed since then which obviously further reduces their access to medical care also they have less access to things like running water now because they're being bombed to an incredible degree and so saskia has joined us today to like explain the risk of the spread of

infectious disease maybe give us an update on like what's already happening and the risks of what could happen so I guess maybe we should start off with really basic stuff and explain what infectious diseases are and like how they're different from non-communicable diseases I guess people aren't familiar would one of you like to do that yeah I. So infectious diseases, you know, we have when we talk about diseases in general, as you mentioned, there are chronic diseases, things like diabetes, cancer, when we talk about infectious diseases, meaning they're communicable, for the most part, that means that they are spread through various sources, human to human, like influenza, there's things like anthrax that you can, E. coli, campylobacter that you can get from soil,

from food, and the zoonotic diseases that they are also spread through animals. So things like Ebola, MERS, which is Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus. So infectious diseases are viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, and they really love to take advantage of high stress environments for spread. And unfortunately, this is one of them. So this is a very, what we see with infectious diseases a lot is that conflict and environments where people are stressed, resources are stressed, and the environment is under continuous bombardment. There's densely populated spaces, no access to health, clean food and water, etc. I mean, I could probably go on for five minutes about what makes an infectious disease spread. I was going to amplify it. So these are diseases that take advantage of these

environments. I'll add that the situation is just a perfect setup for infectious disease to run rampant. There's over 1.9 million people that have been displaced. Of that, 1.4 million are living in overcrowded shelters at this point. And in the best scenario from what I've seen, there's one toilet for every 220 people. Now, if you ever lived in like a house of like five people and there's one toilet for every 220 people. Now, if you ever lived in a house of five people and there's one case of diarrhea, you'll realize how terrible that is. Now, you amplify that to 220 at the minimum,

and that's a best-case scenario. I've heard as high as one per 700 people in some places. And then, you know, people have to go in the streets. They have to go where there's water supplies, and you're going to be infecting those areas. There's one shower for every like 4,500 people, again, best case scenario. So it's a huge number of people getting concentrated into smaller and smaller areas and without the infrastructure there to handle that in any way. And when that happens, I mean, we are going to see, I am really worried about seeing in the end of this

more deaths from infectious disease than from the bombardments yeah well that's that's like a it almost feels like a double because another weapon that they're that they're that they've used because they're not letting them have a chance to recuperate or have a sanitary place to do surgeries or anything because if they're doing surgery with unsanitary conditions they can get in fact like the wounds can get infected and that's a whole nother thing or even just like having waste in the street like making it like having it fester it just it's it's really i think people forget that it's not just like a building was destroyed or people were killed. There's lasting effects that linger for probably generations.

You know, it's just, I don't know, it really is infuriating. I think the crazy part is the World Health Organization, so the WHO, recently released some data as to what is being reported to them in terms of disease. And they said so far, now keep in mind, these are just reported numbers. And that means it's just the tip of the iceberg in most cases, 100,000 cases of diarrhea. And those are in young children. So half of those are in young children under the age of five, which means it can be deadly. And this number is just 25% higher than what we have seen reported pre-conflict. And in terms of respiratory infections, so things like COVID, influenza, pneumonia, 150,000 cases. And that's just the numbers that we know about. But we're also seeing cases and outbreaks of things like meningitis,

skin rashes, scabies, lice, chicken pox, which is highly infectious. And we worry in those cases about when people are in these close quarters and their bodies are already strained. Because one thing we do know is that when your body is physiologically under stress, meaning no sleep, malnutrition, not access to clean water to wash your hands, you're dehydrated, etc., you're at an increased risk for disease and severe disease. So that means that people are at higher risk to get it and then to spread it in these environments. And that's what's really scary because it becomes a hotspot for transmission. And you mentioned that

this feels like a secondary effect in many ways. It's almost like a secondary conflict, if you will, and one that will leave lasting implications. Because what we do know is that disease and conflict go hand in hand. And when I think about it a lot, it's, and we've seen this, unfortunately, throughout time is that conflict can bring disease, and it can amplify disease. When I say bring disease, we know that people in these spaces, soldiers can bring in diseases that are being spread around. But we've also seen sexually transmitted diseases in the past being spread through sexual assault and sexual violence. And that's one thing I definitely worry about. And unfortunately, we know that's happening, and it's not something we're going to see reported for a while, but things like that

can and do occur. And it's a very scary situation. If I can tack on a little bit to the diarrhea subject here, because I am a GI and liver doc, I mean, in a typical month in Gaza, there's about 2,000 cases of diarrhea in kids under five. And in the last month, there was over 40,000 cases. And for kids that aren't getting water, they're not getting the recommended amount of daily water. It's like seven to eight liters in refugee situations is what's recommended. These Like it's like seven to eight liters in refugee situations is what's recommended. These people are getting like one to two liters per whole families. So they're not staying hydrated. And these are kids that are most vulnerable. That's the part that is really hard for me. And I've actually seen people sort of downplay it, like just like,

well, it's diarrhea, you know, that's what you get. But in these situations, it's going to be very serious for these kids. And the other thing we're seeing is cases of jaundice they're noting that people are becoming which to me suggests that there's hepatitis a and hepatitis e which is you know you get through fecal oral contamination and hepatitis e in particular is what concerns me because there is pregnant women and when pregnant women get hepatitis E, it's worse for them. There is that, that that's a really bad situation. And when that happens,

I mean, these are, these are women who are already not getting support. They're already undernourished. They're not able to produce breast milk. They're going to be sick. They're not going to be able to feed their kids. It's,

um, I mean, I, I can't, I can't imagine, honestly. I, I mean, I know it's, it's funny. We can say i can't i can't imagine honestly i i mean i know it's it's funny we can say these things we can talk about the numbers but it is like to actually wrap my brain around it breaks my brain i cannot like imagine the numbers of people that that are sick and are

in these hospitals not just being treated but like the nasser hospital which is one of the two hospitals in in gaza you know they there are like a 350 bed hospital there are already over like a thousand patients and not to mention the many thousands over 70 000 people just staying there you know for for refuge it's absolutely a nightmare i can. I can't wrap my brain around it. Yeah, like often I know when I speak to colleagues who are there or other journalists they'll go to hospitals, A, in the hope that they'll be safe, which hasn't proven to be true sadly, which is pretty messed up, but B,

you know, they have maybe generators, right, so they can charge and tell the world what's happening or try to. Seems like some of the world isn't listening. But yeah, hospitals are incredibly overcrowded i wonder like if we could go back to diarrhea yeah i know it's not like a fun topic to talk about yeah it's my time to shine yeah it's this life's work so like i think it was diarrhea that i read kills more people than conflict annually oh yeah worldwide sure yeah yeah well i mean saskia probably has better numbers on it than i do actually but worldwide yeah it's uh probably the number one um number one killer

so like let's just break that because i most of like by the very nature of this being a podcast right most of our people listening are in in the in the kind of the in the neoliberal core or the global north whatever you want to call it right like they have a smartphone and they've downloaded this and it might be difficult to understand how you die from diarrhea which is like an inconvenience in in a lot of places so can you just explain that for people so they can they can understand and how the conditions that we're seeing in gaza would compound that saskia do you want me to go first oh all you i'll talk about how it spreads you can talk okay so i mean the the there's a couple of

issues that can happen there's a lot but i mean dehydration is going to be a major one and loss of electrolytes. And these people can get so badly dehydrated that their circulatory system isn't working properly, or they can lose the amount of electrolytes that they need and they're not replacing. And that can cause cardiovascular issues as well. So it's a terrible way to die. I mean, you know, cholera and these terrible like diarrheal epidemics that, you know, we think of mostly in the past, they're terrible, they're terrible ways to go. And especially if you don't have the, I mean, get electrolyte management it's it's pretty manageable in the right situation but if you don't have that um it's it's gonna it's gonna be a devastating thing to the body over time and for young kids sooner rather than later yeah so maybe we should get explain how it spreads yeah i i I mean, the scary part, so there's multiple pathogens that can cause diarrheal illness. And for the most part, we see bacteria and viruses. If you've had norovirus,

which is the cruise ship bug that is highly transmissible, meaning it just goes through households and environments very, very quickly. During outbreaks, you can't just use hand sanitizer and a simple disinfectant, you need bleach. And if we're thinking about the best case scenario, and I've seen, you know, diarrheal illnesses go through schools, hospitals, you name it, we still struggle to contain those. Now put yourself in an environment with this level of stress. And you know, of the 36 hospitals in Gaza, 26 have been damaged, 21 are not functional at all, 13 are partially functioning, and two are barely functioning. So we know that access to care is a challenge. Resources, I can't even imagine. So that means the capacity to treat patients with

antibiotics, with fluids, everything, and now contain it, which is the disinfection, you know, all the infection prevention, essentially. And I don't even want to think about contact tracing and public health interventions, because it doesn't exist. It's entirely collapsed system, you know, this is a humanitarian crisis. So when you know, when you have people in close quarters, and there's a lot of high touch items, because a lot of diarrheal illness is spread through touch, it's, you know, contaminated hands and objects. And then you touch your mouth, you eat with your hands, etc. That's how these things are spread.

So between the bathroom, not having access to restrooms, we mentioned the toilet situation. There's also one shower for every 4,500 people. So we know that people are not able to clean themselves effectively. every 4,500 people. So we know that people are not able to clean themselves effectively. And this is a ripe condition for diarrheal illness to spread. And it spreads very quickly, very efficiently, and it is exceedingly hard to get rid of. And it worries me because a lot of these diseases, it's not just like you get it one time and you have immunity to it. It can keep going around. And if you have a situation like that, where you cannot clean

effectively, you can't treat effectively, then we're just going to see it continuously compound. And that's absolutely terrifying. Because, you know, we were talking about pregnant women earlier, there's 50,000 pregnant women right now in Gaza, and they are malnourished. That's just at the tip of the iceberg. And we see that so many children there are malnourished. And these are very dangerous infections for vulnerable people. And on the best of days, we struggle to contain diarrheal illness. So my big concern is this and respiratory viruses, to be honest with you, because when you have this many people in close quarters, and ignore the fact that they're extremely, you know, physically drained and stressed right now,

which is when your immune system struggles, it's going to spread and it's going to be exceedingly hard to contain it. So this is an environment where we're going to see diarrheal illness spread, and it's going to unfortunately kill a lot more people than we will even realize it's going to take years to understand the implications of this. You know, if we even consider that access to clean water and food, you know, we've been talking a lot about malnourishment, which is huge, but I'm also concerned with the quality of food that they're getting too, and the water, all of it, everything about the situation is going to spread disease. It's, you know, I know that sounds quite dramatic, but it's entirely true. No, I mean, I'm glad you're emphasizing that because I don't think people realize the gravity I know that sounds quite dramatic, but it's entirely true.

No, I mean, I'm glad you're emphasizing that because I don't think people realize the gravity of a second wave of death that happens not with weapons. But no, I'm glad you emphasize that. Let's take our first break. We'll be right back. And it reminds me, too, of when we saw UN peacekeepers in Haiti and they introduced cholera. And, you know, and that's it's an unfortunate reality when you are bringing in groups of people to and this you know for in haiti they were trying to help the situation um in this case it's not surprising i mean there's there's a really good book um called contagions and chaos that actually talks about how infectious diseases can amplify conflict or create it. And ultimately, I think we're just going to see this

as a rolling health issue until there's a ceasefire and until there's really substantial work in there to resource and to take care of people. I mean, it's scary. Kaveh, you mentioned that you had a question for Saskia. I do. You've written and you talked a lot about the intersections of science and policy, particularly in terms of COVID-19. We've seen that global threats elsewhere can affect Americans. And I'm wondering, is there a way to try and appeal to Westerners who aren't that interested yet in why they should care about infectious diseases that are rising or becoming rampant in other places. Is there an argument you can make to these people who may not care that much about the Palestinian people per se? Oh, there's the political answer I should give you, and then there's the real answer, which is, you know, political answer saying that, you know, people do care, and, you know, we're just having to constantly remind them. But the real answer is, look, we just came out of

three and a half years of a pandemic. And at this point, if people don't give a shit, they're not going to. And I know that's crude for me to say, but it's, I've been working in this, and we've seen it from Ebola to MERS to MPOCs. And in now coming out of covid i i think we can safely say that you know it's not a matter of if but when but people really like the saying that is um infectious disease knows no borders and to a certain extent that is true infectious diseases they don't know that but it ignores the fact that some countries are more equipped to handle them and that borders are a porous concept. So in this case,

I, I think from an American perspective where it is a very complicated relationship Americans have, and I'm not getting into that when it comes to Israel, the reality is that it shouldn't matter if it's a conflict. If you see an outbreak somewhere, you should be worried for those people and it shouldn't matter if it's a conflict. If you see an outbreak somewhere, you should be worried for those people. And it shouldn't matter if it's going to impact you. But now that we have

lived through a pandemic, a historical event, I would like to think people would see this and realize any one of these diseases can come to the states. It can strain global resources. And I'm hopeful that with the amount of attention that's coming to this and that the work that the WHO and the UN have been drawing attention to it, that will change. But I get a little nervous every time we talk about infectious diseases and conflict areas, because I find that Americans, and it's not just us, but people in high-income countries, disassociate because that is a conflict- related issue. But it's not. Conflict can mean many different things. And it's essentially saying this is an issue that's going to bubble out of control. And if we were in a

situation where there was no clean food and water, we had no access to health services and medicine, fuel was an issue in power, no communication. And I just, you know, read that three Palestinian internet providers went down. So they have no way to contact the outside world, safe housing, safe passes, etc. Any one of those impacted us, we would be experiencing it. And I, I will leave that question with one comment to say, we are a very well resourced country, the US invests so many resources into health, global health security, biopreparedness, all of the above. And we were one of the worst performers when it came to COVID response. And I say that having worked in healthcare during that and doing epidemiology. And I think this should be a continuous wake up call that we're one disease away from an international

crisis. And when we see this it should really speak to the fact that it is global health it's not national health not local health it is global health that's my ted talk the good tech dog i i guess like if i could piggyback on that like there is not a single war that i have covered either remotely or in person where i have not then seen those people arrive. Our border where I live like I was in Syrian Kurdistan in October

I am seeing people leaving Turkey, more Turkish Kurdistan but also Syrian Kurdistan or people who went to Syria went back to Turkey. At our southern border right now I am seeing people from conflicts all over the world at our southern border right now i am seeing people from conflicts all over the world at our southern border right now and every single conflict because we tend to stick our nose into

every single conflict uh it ends up here right because we tell people we support them and then we abandon them and they come here thinking that we were going to support them i'll also add that every time there is an infectious disease outbreak going forward, it will be used in the same way that COVID was to prevent asylum. So the Title 42 that was used to, like, quote-unquote, catch and release migrants at the southern border allowed Border Patrol to reject people without processing their asylum claim. That's a public health law. It's not a migration law. Biden's already indicated that he would love to do the same thing again and like you don't even need an excuse with this infectious disease stuff right

the law is already there and it was already in place for several years and so it's kind of stood the test of the courts and this will impact even if you don't give a shit about people in palestine and maybe you should examine what's up with your morality if you do like this will impact you because people will come here and it will impact you because people who should come here won't be able to and that will mean that people who have done nothing wrong who trusted us when we lied to them you know people americans seem to care about afghans more than other people like i've spoken to hundreds of Afghan women at our border and they were stuck under Title 42 in very dangerous situations in places like Mexico. So even if you only care about those people, you should still care about this, I guess. Can I add something too?

Please. To avoid fueling isolationism, because I think that happens all the time when we talk about these global health issues, every resource that has to be put to helping this health crisis that is bubbling out of a humanitarian crisis is a resource that's not back where it's supposed to be addressing global health issues. Meaning, so for example, when we saw the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, saw the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. After there were, you know, we started to actually realize the implications in malaria control, tuberculosis, HIV. So when we have to throw a bunch of emergency resources at a crisis, those are coming out of somewhere else. And I worry too that people don't realize that we're, you know, as the WHO, the UN, everywhere, MSF is having to help this situation because there's no access to care. And it, again, is a health crisis. That means we're going to start to see other things pop up elsewhere. And that really worries me because we are already very strained when it comes to global health resources. strained when it comes to global health resources. We just, again, came out of a pandemic. So everyone's tired, everyone's burnt out. We've got health systems and a lot of, and we're seeing it

in the US where a lot of funding for like the CDC is being pulled and NIH. So now that we're out of kind of coming back into this panic neglect cycle, I worry that a lot of the resources that we're having to pull to address this crisis are going to then ultimately leave a lot of other places at risk for infectious diseases for long term health implications. So it is a lot bigger than one area or people, you know, having to flee to the US, it's all of these things. And too often, we approach this with a very short sightedness. And we have we don't you know we have finite resources when it comes to global health response and when we have to use them because you know we're not you know approaching this effectively or appropriately then we're

going to see larger implications yeah even like uh we can just keep building off each other's stuff and just not hear from the other two even uh recently i was trying to buy some humanitarian daily rations for the border which are people aren't familiar they're like mres for refugees yeah and made sure we need one on a live show once yeah it's very salty yeah very salty that's good for the electrolytes but um they're like as the state department is is buying back off surplus retailers at the minute, which means that there's obviously a critical lack of supply of these things. Same with UNHCR shelters. And that means that someone else doesn't get to eat, right?

Because we've just massively increased the burden of people who desperately need to eat. It's not like these things were chilling before like there were you know hunger is still a massive problem in the world despite us having so much food here and so like the same yeah the same is true of medical supplies like you said right that means that somebody else doesn't get them that money doesn't go to something else very important that it could be going to can i ask about something i just learned about the past couple of days so on december 25th the jerusalem post reported that an idf soldier died of a fungal infection

and apparently uh he was hospitalized and eventually he he died and at least 10 other soldiers have been diagnosed with infections of some sort i think what kind of made me annoyed is that there is a headline from the times of israel that said as a soldier with fungal infection dies fears grow of gaza diseases spreading into israel and apparently they're examining whether the infections originated from the hamas tunnels and all this stuff. I think while I... That's right, it's a plague tunnel. It really bothered me because I looked at all these articles. I mean, most of them are obviously Israeli sourced,

but it still was the same rhetoric of there's diseases in Gaza and our soldiers are getting them. And honestly, the takeaway in all of these was we have to worry about Israeli public health and the Israeli citizens. It wasn't about anything about the Gazans or anything like that. And I was just I guess I wanted to ask, is there any truth at all to the idea that there can be certain infections localized to that degree, even though it's like a very small country in general. And I guess it's, it's, it's really,

I feel like it's a fear mongering tactic using health as a weapon, but I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Even the fungus has gone woke. I can't believe it. They've weaponized fungus. Saskia, I'll, I'll let you address it, i would say this i mean i i think the fear i just did an episode um of my podcast uh on funguses and talking about the last of us and seeing like the truth if there's really a concern especially with

global climate change and it is it i mean the the thought of a fungus affecting humans in that way who are not in some way under their body under stress or immunosuppressed it's it's not that likely and i definitely agree from what i'm hearing that like this is just another way to be like look at these dirty people we should bomb them to the really to get rid of the fungus yeah everything related to palestinians is oh, oh, it's all the plague. Like they're scary, they're barbaric, and also they're going to make you sick. It's really infuriating. They're just going at every angle.

I found the quote that made me mad. Can I read it? Okay, I'm going to read it. Basically, it says, The war between Israel and Hamas has led to the destruction of large swaths of Gaza and internal displacement of the vast majority of its population, resulting in what is called a humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians. I just called that because it is that. These conditions have led to the outbreaks of various diseases, which can potentially threaten the well-being of hundreds of thousands of IDF troops fighting in Gaza.

They can also ultimately spell trouble for public health in israel i just can't believe that's the takeaway i'll let saskia do you want to uh address the the spread of fungal infection in a situation like this yeah i i mean look again this is a situation where disease is going to be spread and and that includes IDF soldiers. They are at risk because guess what? They all have to go back to their bunks and sleep at night in close quarters. Do we see diseases spread easily in militaries? Of course. you know, source it in Palestinians and Gaza is slightly ridiculous because there's no epidemiological evidence of that. But it's also kind of weird to me that they're saying a fungal infection. That's a very specific thing. Fungal infections aren't fast infections. For the most part, you know, when we do see them, I think from a regional perspective, if you live in the Southwest, like I do, valley fever is a fungal infection. It's in

the dirt, though. It's a spore in the dirt. And it's not spread between people. So that's the key part. It is you inhale it, and you get it. And it takes months in a lot of cases. But, you know, can you see fungal infections? Yeah, that could be contaminated water, you know, inhalation, through showers, things like that. I mean, there's ways for that to happen. But we really just, for the most part, see those infections spread from an individual source, not an individual person. They tend to really not be, they're environmentally spread, you know, and I'm not a fungal expert, I can just speak to the ones that I've seen. And really, we don't see them spread between people and so I think

that it's it's a weird choice to say and I I worry a little bit that they're just again to your point trying to say like oh look our our soldiers are getting sick you know the sacrifice they're making right yeah is so much and here's the thing conflict is where we're going to see disease spread no matter what and I if you're so worried about soldiers getting fungal infections from Gaza, then maybe keep the people in Gaza safe. And then either way you paint this, if you're trying to blame it on them, then keep them safe and they won't be able to spread disease. Very simple.

Yeah. They did cite contaminated soil. Okay. That's a contamination thing like environmental yeah this one epidemiologist said that these soldiers have come back with serious antimicrobial resistant infections that they've picked up through contact with contaminated soil among other factors like one i feel like it's like a very uh direct statement there's a lot there's a lot to unpack there yeah yeah again though if it's in the soil it's an environmental exposure right that is like that's not anyone's fault from an

antimicrobial perspective that i i'm having a hard time believing that valley fever as i mentioned is really hard to treat so sometimes it's not responsive to some of the medications you give but you know you're going to get antimicrobial infections more so from people and contaminated objects because that means that it has to have been exposed to antibiotics and become resistant to the infections. But that feels like very messy reporting on their part or communications because not a lot of that makes sense to me. And either way, if they're saying it's from the environment congratulations you've just proven you're not getting it from people yeah thank you for getting into that i just the the hamas tunnels uh the hamas terror tunnel sorry in their words they're terror tunnels they're going to investigate whether um infections have originated from there it just it's also uh just that doesn't make any sense so i'm glad to have two doctors

here agree and that's all i wanted i mean i will say this coccidia mycosis is valley fever and we like you know she just mentioned it's we see it here in california it's the reason why we used to say if you're driving down central valley california down the i-5 you should roll up your window and and not breathe in the air because there's a possibility of getting it from that so they say that well they i don't think they do so much anymore i need to do there's a whole number of reasons why you don't want to be breathing in yeah there's a lot of cow farms out there too it gets a little bit nasty out there in the i-5 but but i mean it's what is an endemic thing it's like if they don't want to be exposed to it stay out of that area yeah yeah but you're not going

to get it from other people that's the kicker it's not spread from people yeah it is very common to attribute infectious diseases that come from conflict to your enemy like Right. Like, if you look at, like, the 1918 pandemic flu, right, and all the different things that people called that flu, and the people to whom they attributed it, like, you can see that we've been doing that

for more than 100 years. It's part of the process of dehumanizing people who you're trying to kill. It happened with COVID, too. You know, it's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah.

That was a whole different situation. I mean, I guess humans just don't learn i suppose so i wonder saskia like we obviously this is a terrible situation and it's one that's like super easy to feel very disempowered with because uh you know as as much as you march around and do things it doesn't seem to be stopping is there is there anything that like people can do advocate for uh like take action on that could make this slightly less bad i I mean, a ceasefire. I encourage people to donate to UNICEF and obviously, you know, MSF, a lot of the wonderful organizations doing work

there. And probably my biggest one right now, especially since we're around the holidays and people are spending a lot of time with family and likely getting into some heavy conversations around the dinner tables, make sure you're well informed, and you're not spreading misinformation and disinformation online, because that's been a huge aspect of this. You know, we saw with the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, you know, Russia took direct action to spread misinformation and disinformation. And we're struggling with that in the United States right now with this. So I encourage people to stay informed of this, to really utilize good resources and not pull things from social media.

If you're going to share something, do so from an accurate source. I really, the WHO, UN have been really good at doing continuous updates and sharing that information, Human Rights Watch and all of the above. And on top of, again, donating and really being an advocate for ceasefire to me is the biggest thing.

And also reminding people, hey, this is currently a localized crisis, but infectious diseases and humanitarian crises, excuse me, rarely stay that way. I would also plug the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, the PMRS. They're the on-the-ground people. They've been there since 1979. They were founded by Palestinian doctors. It's mostly Palestinian-run, and they're doing, I think, really good work down there as best they can and they're where actually the who gets most of their information or a lot of it at least it's coming from their updates from the pmrs people um on the ground so that's a another local source to look at if people are interested

in getting involved perfect you got thank you shereen i'm not gonna wrap it up yet i was just thinking how unfortunate it is that people don't care enough so you have to be like it's not only going to stay localized it's not just that I hate that we have to go there because especially after going through a pandemic yourself if that is still

not enough for you to have any kind of empathy that's just insane to me the one consistent thing i've seen is a lot of people say oh this conflict is is you know very there's a lot of history and i don't really want to get involved and yeah and you know to us i i do understand that there is a long complicated history that not a lot of people are well informed of, but inform yourself. And that doesn't mean you can't have empathy. You can, you know, denounce Hamas and also denounce anti-Semitism. These things are not mutually exclusive. And it's, it's impressive to me that

we're still after, you know, it's not even been three months and we've lost 20,000 people that we know of in this. Um, we're seeing journalists killed left and right as well. It's impressive to me that people are still saying, oh, I don't really want to comment on that. It's very messy. It is and it's not though. In the medical world, I've seen doctors complain more about the word provider and how it's used than the fact that 300 medical professionals have been killed some of them while doing their duty in the hospital like that's a part that kind of surprised me from a medical perspective um and i you know i i think i mentioned it to you before i'm grateful for coming on your show because i think a lot of the

there's an overlap between doctors who listen to our show and they listen to yours and they're very vocal and they're online and they are the ones who are really giving me hope in these situations because and there's a lot of people in medicine this is a medical issue I mean I'm not even talking about any of the history that's nothing that's not what I'm that's not what it's important to me right now. It's about this healthcare crisis that is worsening and progressively worsening. And it is a bit of a bummer that I'm not seeing a little bit more interest in addressing it. Yeah. I would hope also that most people inside or outside the medical community could maybe agree that the correct number of hospitals to bomb is zero hospitals.

And that, yeah yeah there isn't a reason why you bomb hospitals you just shouldn't mean anthony blinken said like a year or what about ukraine and russia russia bombed hospitals and schools there's no way that's normal and like there's a video where it's like cross-sectioning into like right now how he's like we're always going to support israel so it's like no it's not normal bombing hospitals and schools is never normal or okay it's crazy that israel went from being like we would never bomb a hospital to bombing dozens of them and nothing happening yeah but like yeah i guess just for like like completion it's not okay when turkey bombs hospitals in northeast syria either like i was there when they bombed one they bombed another one since it's not okay

when the hunter in myanmar bombs hospitals i know there's one hospital left standing in the whole of korea any state right now and like this is happening there too when we're not like not caring about those people because this is a topic of the day or whatever like it's also not okay to use white phosphorus on on armed civilians no like at all across the board we're yeah like in general it's horrific and i just i think it's it's you know and there was there were a couple of reports and i think that there's still data coming out about it, that bodies had organs stolen from them. Yeah. Which is just horrific.

Jesus. And, yeah. That's been a practice that Israel has done for a while, though. They said they stopped it, and then they're continuing to do it. But it's like, they're notorious for returning bodies that have been, like like autopsied or having all their organs removed. And I want to just point out that for Muslim burials, the body is like, it's very important that the body is whole and the same for Jewish burials,

but it's just a really disgusting, just point blank. And then also really disrespectful, but yeah, sorry, interrupted. No, I mean,

it's, and again, you know know i think there's still a lot of information coming out about that and how many that occurred etc because i like i mentioned before i think information right now is really challenging accurate information of course is exceedingly difficult so i i'm always very careful you know what what we say and but to me you know the the washington Post just released a really good article and in-depth analysis of the attacks on the al-shifa hospital because that's the biggest hospital in Gaza and for a while you know IDF was saying well this is where Hamas has been operating

they have tunnel networks and there was there's a good breakdown of why this is inaccurate and at the end of the day no no, there's no acceptable reason to bomb a hospital and drawing attention to the fact that this was occurring and misinformation is being shared is huge. So I'm hopeful that, you know, and very grateful to be on this podcast and talk with you all because the more information we can communicate about this situation, but also about the fact that there are much larger consequences of this from just even an infectious disease perspective is so critical, because I don't think people realize that. And again, they disassociate when they hear it's a conflict, it's a result of conflict. It's it is

so much larger than that it will, you know, we will see it in the States, we will see the ramifications of this. And if nothing else, again, coming out out of covid i'd like to think that we realize that we are part of a much larger interconnected world and infectious diseases are simply a plane flight away yeah yeah very true thank you both so much for your brains and your knowledge and for coming on the show it's uh thanks for having us yeah thank you so much for your brains and your knowledge and for coming on the show it's uh yeah thanks for having us yeah thank you so much for having us of course and before we go i'd like to ask you guys if you have anything you'd like to uh plug like where people can find you good you've mentioned a couple of good resources but other information resources uh that kind of thing that you'd like to share so in terms of the resources i i am

following a couple members of the pmrs um they have a twitter feed but it's not very active but the who gets a lot of the same information and they do a good job of updating in terms of where you could learn more i just did an episode episode on the healthcare crisis in Gaza on my podcast, The House of Pod, which James has been on. And Shreen, I'm trying to get you to come on. I'm down. We're going to keep working on you. And Saskia, too. I mean, you're all invited.

I'm recording this. I'm just going to release it on my podcast as well. And yeah, so listen to us there. I'll be doing more episodes on my podcast as well and uh yeah so listen to us there i'll be doing more episodes on this uh topic as well in the in the coming months cool perfect let's ask you how about marrying all of those resources i really um been looking to of course i'm a public health parent so who you know staff human rights watch for my big go-tos as you know again as all the sources we've already mentioned um and And I really, I want to give a shout out to a colleague of mine, Jessica Malte-Rivera, who is really, really wonderful in this space and has been doing a lot of science communication on

her Instagram. I tend to be a little bit more on the cesspool that is formerly Twitter. But, you know, I think there's some really wonderful people out there, this entire group included, that are actively working to share information, but also how people can get engaged and involved. So shout out to her and just all the hard work that a lot of key journalists are doing in this space. Because, again, if you have no communication out, it's really hard to get accurate information. Yeah. Well, thanks, thanks guys for listening. Why are you laughing, James?

Can I wrap this out? Or is this too monotone? You are crushing it, Shireen. Send it. No, that's the show. Thanks again for both of you being so outspoken. I think especially reminding everyone that it's actually not complicated because it's also like a medical issue. It's not exactly, when you just look at the numbers, look at body count, look at families, that's I think what our main focus should be.

And I appreciate you both because I know it's tricky out there to be outspoken. So thank you. Thank you guys. Thanks so much. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year,

but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot.

Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails

and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the show about the slow end of the world and all the small little things that are kind of pushing us that way. Isn't that exciting? New year, new me. Not really, I'm kind of doing the same stuff. Mostly staring into the abyss and seeing what stares back.

Staring at the abyss with me today is Mia Wong. Hello, thank you for joining me. Oh boy, the abyss is looking it's looking real choppy today real abyssal you could say the waves coming out of it are staring back at you real hard yeah yeah so we're going to talk today about antisemitism so uh i guess content warning in case you don't want to hear a whole bunch of anti-Semitic stuff. I'm not just going to be repeating anti-Semitic things. It's just, this is just the topic for the whole episode. So yeah, the past few months, there has been a pretty dramatic rise in anti-Semitism, ranging from physical attacks, vandalism, and lots of rhetoric.

Now, there is a few factors that I think make this a little bit tricky to talk about, which is why it's taken me a while to put this together. Firstly, I want to avoid getting into like oppression Olympics here, right? Talking about one bad thing does not negate many other bad things that are happening concurrently. Having a discussion about a very troubling rise in anti-Semitism and a state-backed ethnic cleansing do not need to be mutually exclusive topics of discussion, right? We can say both of these things are actually pretty bad. And today, we're going to be talking specifically about anti-Semitism. And I think, you know, this show has had a history of reporting on anti-fascist movements and

attempts to stop fascist entryism and promoting of antisemitism. So this topic is well within our regular wheelhouse, and there is a decent bit to talk about. Now, the second thing that makes this topic a little bit tricky is that some of the big extremism research groups that typically do the most accessible cataloging of anti-Semitic incidents have proven themselves to be slightly unreliable on this topic for the past four months. And that's not just my opinion. That's also the opinion of current and former ADL employees who have been coming out against Director Jonathan Greenblatt's leadership choices, particularly since the October 7th Hamas attack. Now, due to

the nature of their job versus my job, ADL analysts have a lot more dedicated time and resources to cataloging alleged anti-Semitic incidents. But under Greenblatt's direction, the whole of their data from the past four months is heavily skewed to include anything expressing anti-zionism as being included in their data about anti-semitism and even anything deemed too sympathetic to palestinians as being a driver of anti-semitism so that's the kind of situation we have here with you know there's many issues the adL has had in the past, which we may talk about in the future. But typically, they've done an okay job the past few years, specifically cataloging antisemitism during the rise of the alt-right. Their data is often relatively reliable

on this topic. Some of their other data and other practices are very open to criticism. But this is kind of one other factor that's going to make this a little bit tricky. Now, as like an example, right, this is this is we can we can talk about these things in abstract. I'm going to talk about something from Atlanta, because this is something I have some experience in. So on the ADL's big map of anti-Semitic incidents from October 7th to the present, if you zoom intolanta there's two incidents that are right next to each other one is a banner drop done by the goyim defense league which is a group of neo-nazis oh god basically they they made some banners expressing pro-hitler statements alongside slogans like free palestine and they put them up above a really big road in atlanta

right so this is pretty standard neo-nazi anti-semitism using kind of anti-zionism as this sort of mask but i mean i mean if you're hitler stuff like masks very thin um yes exactly that's not really it's not really masked because you also have a Hitler banner. But like, you know, if someone only sees one banner, be like, oh, it's a Palestine banner. But no, it's actually a Nazi banner. So we have this incident logged. We also have another incident logged right beside it from a protest a few days later, which was an interfaith rally in support of Palestine against the ongoing ethnic cleansing that's happening in Gaza with thousands and thousands of people being killed. So we have this banner drop and we have this rally

and both of these things are labeled as an anti-Semitic incident. They're both like equal in the eyes of this data, which just isn't true. I was at this rally. I did not hear anything anti-Semitic coming from the speakers. Many of the speakers, if not the majority of the speakers, were Jewish. There were a group of Jewish counter-protesters who showed up, who started many fights, fights which were very quickly de-escalated by the people who were putting on the rally. There was this one woman who was carrying an Israeli flag on this flagpole who kept hitting people with it. So there was a lot of things going on at this rally, but this was not an anti-Semitic rally. And in fact, the Jewish counter-protesters were extremely vitriolic. They were expressing explicit desire for genocide of Palestinians,

They were expressing explicit desire for genocide of Palestinians. Like, very, very gross stuff. It was really disgusting. So both of these incidents, though, are seen as equal, which just show, that's just an easy example to kind of show how this data isn't really reliable that the ADL is putting together here. Now, I really don't feel like it's my place to go through the ADL's database and decide what is and is not anti-Semitism, right? Like that's, I don't have the time, nor the money, nor really the authority to be like the arbiter of what is and isn't anti-Semitic. Yeah, Garrison turning into the anti-Semitism commissar. Yeah, that's not me. I have a background in anti-fascist research. I have a background in neo-Nazi-driven anti-Semitism. These are the things I usually specialize in. But still, this is a massive field. Anti-Semitism is a complicated topic. Rhetoric can be complicated, and having not attended or reviewed every single rally or incident in question, I'm simply not equipped to make informed judgments. So for that reason, this episode, I will focus mostly on physical attacks, threats, and vandalism,

as opposed to the much more murky waters of rhetoric, online rhetoric, and, you know, just these, there's been probably thousands of rallies across the United States. I've not been to every one. I've not watched every single speech. I've not watched every single speech. I've not heard every single offhand comment. So I'm not going to deal with those. Instead, I'm going to be focusing on physical, like in like IRL and things that have a very, a very clear result of the action. So this mostly attacks, threats, vandalism. Anyway, moving on, though, I guess actually the one other thing

about stats is that when talking about this rise in antisemitism, because there's been a lot of articles from mainstream news outlets being like, here's the rise in antisemitism and here's the stats. Another thing pointing towards why these stats are unreliable and the reason why I'm not going to be using them largely is because many of the stats included in these articles are crime stats, and these crime stats are also proving to be heavily unreliable. For example, the Metropolitan Police claimed that there was a 1,350% increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes in London during the first two and a half weeks of October, in London during the first two and a half weeks of October, with 218 anti-Semitic offenses in London during that time period compared to only 15 in 2022. But included in these stats are

incidents like the police in London arresting a man for tearing down some of those hostage posters. That's one of the hate crimes that they include in this. And also, the Met said that, that's one of the hate crimes that they include in this um and uh also the met said that that's the metropolitan police said that chanting from the river to the sea near jewish people or near jewish buildings during a protest would be deemed unlawful and i think there is a debate to be had whether if you're if you're just protesting outside of a random Jewish building, that's probably not great. And it could be an indicator of anti-Semitism. But having that chant be deemed unlawful for just being near other Jewish people, like I said, at the rally in Atlanta, there was a whole bunch of Jewish counter-protesters who came to start fights. So like, you're going to be around Jewish people. If you're a march, you're marching around, or if you're outside an Israeli embassy,

that's, in my opinion, a very valid target for protest that would be considered a jewish building so all of these stats are heavily heavily skewed by these by by these sorts of reasons for how how uh how the met is including things as being anti-semitic hate crimes yeah i mean like this like if you just think about what the rationale is there for a second like is is a group of anti-sionist jews chanting from the river to the sea around themselves a hate crime exactly right like this is nonsense like so and also you know what i mean and also like this is the british police like those are the most antisemitic motherfuckers this side of like the ukrainian neo-nazis or something and like i i do not doubt there was an actual increase of anti-semitic attacks vandalism hate speech that that that is what we're talking about in this

episode we will be getting into many incidents but it is difficult to pin down some of what these really big stats actually represent because if tearing down one of those silly Hamas wanted posters is being labeled a hate crime on the same level as drawing a swastika on a synagogue, that data is basically useless. And now I think it's also worth mentioning, just very briefly, the Metropolitan Police also recorded a 140% increase

in Islamophobic incidents during those first two and a half weeks of October. That's 42 incidents in 2022 compared to 103 incidents in 2023. And while that percentage is lower than the antisemitic stat, it also indicates how much more common Islamophobia in London is because the regular amount of reported incidents from last year is so much higher than the regular reported amount of antis-semitic incidents like having having 42 incidents per like two and a half weeks be the normal stat is uh not great and yeah maybe maybe someone should look into why british people are so uh islamophobic um i mean that that there's that that's a whole episode in

and of itself islamophobia in the UK is a massive, massive problem. But just as a comparison, I thought I might as well say that. We will get to Hanukkah next, but it has already been 13 minutes of me talking about stats and giving disclaimers, so that means it's time for an ad break i'm not going to do a silly ad transition just listen to the ads all right we are we are back since we just finally escaped the holiday season uh let's begin by talking about Hanukkah. Public menorahs, often without any extra iconography tying them to the state of Israel, were a frequent target of vandalism and anti-Semitic messaging during the month of December.

A far-right member of parliament in Poland used a fire extinguisher to blow out the candles on a menorah in the lobby of parliament. A menorah in london had its light bulbs smashed with a free palestine sticker placed onto the front and then days later it was found toppled over and left in pieces there's many of these incidents uh i'm just gonna name a few more just because at a certain point it kind of becomes redundant but i think these things are worth talking about um an 11 foot 350 pound menorah next to lake mary in oakland was cut up and destroyed in mid mid december with pieces being thrown into the nearby lake a message was graffitied that led we're gonna find you you're on alert it was also reported that there was graffiti left nearby that read

free palestine in arabic but i can't confirm that the the picture they have online does not match It was also reported that there was graffiti left nearby that read free Palestine in Arabic, but I can't confirm that. The picture they have online does not match what free Palestine in Arabic looks like, but I'm not an expert on Arabic, so I just can't confirm that, but that is being reported in local Jewish newspapers. A menorah sand sculpture commissioned in Palm Beach was destroyed and left defaced with a swastika. Outside a synagogue in a suburb of Washington, D.C., a menorah was toppled over on the eve of Hanukkah, and two menorahs were

vandalized and damaged in Brooklyn in early December by masked individuals. So one other similar incident I will talk about, which is kind of interesting, is that there was this pro-Palestine protest at Yale where one of the protesters climbed up onto this massive, I don't know how tall it was, but it was huge. They had to climb up pretty high on this big public menorah and placed a Palestinian flag kind of around one of the little arms on the menorah. But very quickly, like within seconds of this happening, other pro-Palestine protesters, noticing this is kind of disrespectful uh asked this person to take it down like like almost almost immediately this is a very

a very quick exchange and this kind of sparked some people talking about you know is it okay to put palestinian flags on menorahs is it okay to vandalize menorahs which the answer is no the answer is you shouldn't vandalize a menorah that's generally not great but you know people were were saying uh and specifically pointing towards like pictures of idf soldiers who've been taking territory in gaza who've been putting up menorahs in gaza or like the israel Israeli military doing these photo ops with big menorahs in different parts of Gaza being like, hey, when there's this active ethnic cleansing going on and soldiers are using this religious iconography and it's being associated directly with this ongoing ethnic genocide, how can you blame people who are going to be treating this symbol with

hostility? And I think there's a few problems with this idea. I'm going to quote from this Jewish artist who goes by underscore a nunnery, who I think phrased this really well, quote, Jewish symbols shouldn't be associated with Zionism or ceded to them just because Zionists abuse them. If the menorah were put up by Zionists as some explicitly Zionist display, then putting up a Palestinian flag would be an act of resistance. If it's not, then it's just And this gets at a point which I think is really important when you're talking about anti-Zionist activism. important when you're talking about anti-Zionist activism. Attacking symbols of Jewish culture in the name of anti-Zionism only strengthens the cause of Zionism by affirming the conflation of Judaism and Zionism, or Judaism and the State of Israel. This conflation helps Zionists shield their actions by abusing the Jewish identity and making these two things be more like intersectional so i

think that is one a strategic reason for why this is a bad idea and two it's maybe slightly anti-semitic so that is my little holiday section just because i saw a whole bunch of stuff around these menorahs and i didn't feel good about it yeah like this sucks like please don't do this and i i've seen some people like also using the comparison of like would you would you also criticize um indigenous people in america for for graffitiing or taking down images of like christian iconography and like no because the oppression faced by no, because the oppression faced by Christians and the oppression faced by Jewish people are two different things. Like these are, these are actually historically, these are very different things. So no, these things actually cannot be

compared in my opinion. But now I'm going to talk about some international incidents because I think we have a tendency to over-focus on America when there's a whole bunch of other stuff happening in, you know, the rest of the world. Back in October, a historic synagogue in Tunisia was burned down by a mob of hundreds of people in response to reports that an Israeli airstrike hit a hospital in Gaza. This sucks. I shouldn't have to explain why burning down a historical synagogue is anti-semitic because you don't like something the state of israel did that's just that that just isn't that that just isn't like that's just nazi shit like come on yeah so a month later in november someone posted a video online of themselves pouring fuel and setting fire to the only

synagogue in Armenia. The entrance was damaged in the arson attack, but no one was hurt. The only synagogue in Wrocław, Poland. Sorry, I probably butchered that, but it is a hard word. But the only synagogue in this town of Poland to survive the Holocaust was defaced with graffiti that read, quote, Israel criminals and murderers, unquote. And then, I guess earlier that week, a group of teenagers also destroyed a menorah in this same town.

In mid-October, Molotov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue in Berlin. After Hanukkah in Belgium, a Jewish cemetery was vandalized with swastikas on gravestones. In late November, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Jewish community center in Montreal. Earlier that month, shots were fired at two different Jewish schools in Montreal in three different incidents. And four Holocaust memorials in Germany were vandalized with a mix of anti-semitic and anti-zionist messages so again like when i was looking at these ones ones in germany the actual content of about half of these messages were not anti-semitic but the act of doing this at a at a at a holocaust memorial just isn't like it it it gives me the ick and there's arguments could be made that this does

actually play into antisemitic tropes. Like you're what you're blaming dead Jewish people for the actions of the current state of Israel. Like that's, it's, it just, and also half, half of these messages left at these,

at, at these Holocaust memorial sites were also just blatantly antisemitic, like very, very clearly like nazi style stuff i i don't have time to go over all of the incidents across europe there is a great deal many there's many many many that i've not mentioned these are just a few like i said i'm focusing on like vandalism very very clear-cut stuff people doing arson attacks right it's just very very basic stuff this stuff in montreal

not great montreal canada get your shit together although unfortunately not surprising but still upsetting uh is jews being barred from shops across turkey and oh there's a whole a whole bunch of very gross government government sponsored anti-semitism across turkey uh campaigns to prohibit the sale of land to jewish people a lot of a lot of bad stuff in turkey but that's not incredibly surprising yeah i mean it's erdogan like yeah he fucking sucks ass and yes oh yeah erdogan is a man who has personally ordered children to be burned alive with firebombs so you know this is not out of character for him yeah and i guess uh finally

this this one other thing about hanukkah is that uh so last month right after the end of hanukkah bomb threats were sent out en masse to more than 400 jewish centers and synagogues across the united states this was most likely orchestrated by the same kind of small number of individuals. All of the messages were very similar. None of these were incredibly credible, but it still sparked a whole bunch of bomb sweeps and concern because when Jewish synagogues get bomb threats, that's not an empty threat either. Like this is like, there is historical precedent. Yeah. Well, and, and I also like, I think, I think the other thing that's important about this too, is like this,

this is, you know, this is like one of the things is the culmination of everything that rights been doing for the last like eight years has been the development of like this cadre of people who do bomb threats, calling in bomb threats as a tactic. Yes. No,

there's the concerted effort for bomb threats at hospitals that provide transgender care, abortion clinics. There was a string of weirdly organized bomb threats against schools about a year or two ago that I think Robert did an episode on. Yeah, and now we're here. We're at bomb threats against synagogues, which is terrifying. According to the Secure network and nonprofit security organization that tracks threats made against Jewish communities, bomb threats and swatting incidents, basically trying to get a SWAT team to show up somewhere because you lied

about there being like an ongoing crime or something, but bomb threats and swatting incidents targeted against Jewish centers saw over a 500% increase in 2023 compared to the previous year which i have no reason to believe is incorrect so on that note i know i don't really think we could have a bomb threat segue to to ads i i really don't really don't know don't do bombs don't do bomb threats typically this is what i got typically anyway uh do you know what else is da bomb these ads okay fine all right we are back maybe the worst ad transition we've ever done

that's not true that is definitely not true yeah okay okay you're right okay so during this last section i'm gonna talk a little bit more about data aggregation so like i said previously in this episode uh due to the nature of what my job is and the nature of what an ADL analyst's job is, they just have a lot more time to dedicate towards specifically logging anti-Semitic incidents. So I did look through their data set, and I've made some extrapolations based on some of the findings and some of the open source data that they have regarding specific incidents. So on that note, the ADL has logged around 1,100 anti-Semitic incidents since October 7th not related to protest rallies. So this is specifically all the incidents that are not related to these big pro-Palestinian interfaith,

many Jewish-led rallies. Now, I'm not saying that nothing anti-Semitic has not happened at any of those rallies, but these rallies were logged simply as, quote, anti-Israel rallies, which featured overt anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and or expressions of support for terror. So, crammed in the middle of that explanation is just anti-Zionism. So, that is one thing they are just counting as being enough to be logged as an anti-Semitic incident. So, again, I'm not going through the over 1,000 rallies that they have logged here just because I don't have the time and I don't feel like it. But yes, just for full transparency, that is the information I'm not going to be looking at. Instead, I'm looking at these 1,100 other incidents not related to these protests. So these 1,100 harassment and vandalism incidents

include things from anti-Zionist slash anti-Israel stickers and graffiti being left at universities and synagogues, the latter latter which I believe is in poor taste, but also, you know, swastikas being painted on synagogues, extremely anti-Semitic messages being left at Jewish centers, and street harassment targeting visibly Jewish people, as well as just overt neo-Nazi activity under the banner of Free Palestine. Now, of these over 1,100 incidents, I'd say that a very small minority of them are principled anti-Zionist activism which has been mislabeled. Most of the

data in these 1,000 incidents is just blatant anti-Semitism, specifically directed towards just regular Jewish people people people writing kill jews in bathroom stalls threats being sent to jewish people mentioning hitler or hamas a lot of just extremely gross stuff like there's there's too many there's too many just like threats that mention the word jews that i i just can't even read them all nor do i want to because it's just gross like there's there is a upsetting number, which is why I wanted to make this episode in the first place. It's because I've been seeing this pretty big rise in anti-Semitism. Other people have as well.

And I felt like this wasn't probably being as talked about as much as it should be among the anti-fascist left. Because everyone's focusing on this ethnic cleansing that's happening, because that is very bad. But meanwhile, there's this other massive problem that if you care about fascist entryism, if you care about anti-Semitic behavior and actions being either allowed to happen in leftist spaces or just happening in general, like a lot of this stuff is being done by fascists who are not, you know, going to a pro-Palestine rally because they believe in anti-imperialism. But there's just a lot of this stuff happening, which is why I think it is needing to be talked about. Now, there are a number of instances that are logged in these

1,100 incidents here, such as, you know, I'm just going to, I'm going to pull from actual examples, but also this is kind of generalizing because this was also reflecting a small trend. Things like pro-Palestine phrases being yelled at random Jewish people on the street, having, having, having like anti-Zionist stickers being poorly placed in different locations, like at a Jewish cemetery, uh, vandalizing non-political Jewish owned businesses with anti-Zionist phrases, even breaking the windows of random Jewish-owned businesses with no ties to Israel or the IDF and leaving anti-Zionist phrases or pro-Palestine phrases graffitied next to these broken windows. Now, while the content of what's being actually said in these incidents may not be anti anti-semitic in nature by itself right like just

just having very basic anti-scientist phrases being graffitied that may not be anti-semitic itself like that that combination of words this this sort of activity though plays into a classic anti-semitic kind of trope as if every like random jewish person is somehow in part responsible for the actions of israel and it also conflates jewish identity with zionism which is the problem that we were talking about before when we started this episode right uh when i was talking about the stuff with hanukkah just a a few hours ago, as of time of recording, the Corvallis anti-fascist branch, I guess, yeah, yeah, I think they're a member of Torch, put out this thread about how the GDL, the Goem Defense League, we talked about them previously in this episode,

they're a big group of organized neo-Nazis that spread a lot of anti-Semitic stuff, how they hijacked a city council meeting to spread anti-Semitic stuff during a discussion about a ceasefire resolution. And I think they kind of ended their thread by talking about how it is extremely important to call out the conflation of the Jewish people with the genocidal actions of the State of Israel and assertions that the media is controlled by Jews or that regular Jews have some kind of say in everything that's happening, right? It gets at this kind of like cabal-ish notion. Now, back to kind of the data that I was talking about, these sorts of incidents are vastly, vastly outweighed by the number of just overt Jew hatred, invoking of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, calling for the death of Jews and people and businesses itself, that is a form of antisemitism. And this activity helps to reinforce the abuse of the Jewish identity by inextricably linking it to Zionism, which only strengthens the Zionist ideology. So that's my little mini rant about the way we've been seeing some of these things play out. Now, many of these over a thousand incidents logged use anti-Zionism as a

sort of cover for just spreading anti-Semitism, particularly from known white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. The GDL is a good example. There's also groups like White Lives Matter and a number of others that I could name that when you're looking through the ADL's data on these a thousand or so incidents, a large, large amount of them are done by the Goyim Defense League, the GDL. And this is a strategic thing for them, right? They're seeing the kind of moment that people are in culturally, the way people are talking about Israel. And if they can find a way to squeeze in

their neo-Nazi talking points kind of under this very, very thin Palestine kind of veneer, that's great for them. If they can get people to start almost mindlessly repeating their style of talking points, that's great for them, right? It makes sense why they're putting so much time and dedication to this, because they're trying to use this moment and abuse the thousands of people who might be more susceptible to this right now to spread their ideology and to do entryism. This is a part of what their tactic is. So while it's true that many of these incidents do come from explicitly Nazi groups, there's also just a really upsettingly and shockingly large number of them that come from students. Students from middle school to college who are ostensibly anti-Israel, but are going about it via targeting random Jewish people and spreading antisemitism, whether that's intended

or not. But a lot of the talking points are just antisemitic talking points. Now, I can't, I'm not in the heads of anybody. I'm not talking to the 12 year old in some middle school in Colorado who's leaving antisemitic messages in a bathroom stall. But the effect is kind of the same. And just the sheer number of specifically like middle school, junior high, high school incidents that are logged among this thousand was just incredibly distressing.

Yeah, and I think a lot of what's going on here is that like the u.s is a culturally christian society right like it has like of the developed countries the u.s is like one of the most christian and american christianity and this is true of like in different ways of like just basically all of the major christian denominations are enormously anti-semitic like and they're anti-semitic in very different in different and weird ways like i mean i spent some time recently for something else like reading about like this argument between like the evangelicals who are like we need to we need to have uh all the jews go back to israel so that we can uh bring about the second coming and they were going to have all the Jews go back to Israel so that we can bring about the Second Coming. And they were going to fight with the hardline, like, right-wing Lutherans.

And the hardline right-wing Lutherans are like, what the fuck do you mean? Like, no, like, the Holy Land belongs to us, not the Jews. What the fuck are you guys doing? Right? It's like, this is the baseline of American society, right? american society right it's unbelievably anti-semitic in ways that you know are are just sort of passed down through like like culture are culturally received and absorbed in ways that people don't like see or understand or think about because it's just it's it's the wall it's the water that america that you know you swim in in american culture in this sort of like like this hegemonic christian

society and that means that like even people with like at least in their heads good intentions get caught up in this shit and it it's fucking bad and there's also at the same time a very concerted effort to slide in the anti-jewish extremism anti-semitic rhetoric to to slide that in sometimes covertly sometimes not uh into into lots of mainstream discourse and exchanges and social media specifically tiktok has been really has been really bad at this which is where a lot of young people spend probably the majority of their day if they're going to be looking at their phone and it's it's i i said i didn't want to get into like social media rhetoric, but also just like, as someone who spent a lot of time on 4chan and 8chan,

looking specifically at Nazis, the way Twitter currently works is like, it is just 4chan, 8chan level stuff pretty commonly. Like if, if I look at the quote tweets of any, of almost any tweet made by a Jewish person, there is,

there is just some of the most atrocious unmoderated anti-semitism that i've seen on a platform like like twitter like this is this is really like 8chan level stuff i think uh and this this is intentional to slide this stuff in to make it look normalized the adl uh reported a nearly 1000% increase in the daily average of violent messages mentioning Jews and Israel in white supremacist and right-wing extremist channels on Telegram in the days following the October 7th massacre. So this is something that is specifically being done in far-right spaces. I'm going to quote again from this Corvallis Against Fascism, the struggle for the liberation of Palestine is one of the most pressing

of our time. It's imperative that we shut down anti-Semitic attempts to co-opt that struggle immediately, which if you care about the liberation of Palestine and Palestinian people, this is something you also need to be concerned about because these two things are linked there was there's uh 27 assaults have been reported around eight of these assaults are stemming from fights which broke out at protest rallies i i'm not going to get into those ones as much because that can be tricky because i've seen seen Zionists start fights like right next to me before and then claim a victimhood. Like, no, you're the one that started that. You swung a flagpole at these people and then they de-escalated very quickly.

And I'm sure there's incidents of the reverse happening. But a majority of these assaults that have been reported are very clear-cut anti-semitic attacks targeted against jewish people some of which are quite frightening to read about there's been a large number of vehicle attacks there was this one one incident of someone breaking into a jewish family's home and assaulting people inside their own home then also there's been a number of incidents of just assaulting people as they leave synagogues. I've seen Zionists start fights with people right next to me before. That is kind of what I had to say about this rise in anti-Semitism, because I saw this being a major problem that was being not talked about as much as it should be, because it is higher than what we've seen in years.

Not to even mention the rise in Islamophobia, which is also a massive rise in Islamophobia has been happening the past four months, including resulting in murders, right? Just in the four weeks after October 7th, the Council on American Islamic Relations logged an unprecedented number of Islamophobic incidents. The research and advocacy director, Corey Saylor, said in a statement, quote,

both Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism are out of control in ways we have not seen in almost 10 years. The 1,283 complaints we have received over the past month represent a 216% increase

in requests for help and reports of bias. The Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric that have been used to justify both violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silent supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America have contributed to this unprecedented surge in bigotry. It's just been bad the past four months. Yeah.

It's just things have been bad. There's been murders. There's been assaults. It's just things have been bad. There's been murders. There's been assaults. It's horrible. And I think both of these things are things that need to be interrogated more, the Islamophobic incidents as well as anti-Semitic incidents. So that's what I wanted to talk about as I have been slowly slowly logging more synagogue attacks more death threats all of these sorts of stuff so yeah that's kind of all i have to say uh today yeah it's it's real bad i don't know i mean it's bad out there i i mean if you care about the struggle of the

liberation of palestine and the people in palestine you need to if you see if you care about the struggle of the liberation of Palestine and the people in Palestine, you need to, if you see anything that plays into these sorts of anti-Semitic tropes that we've talked about, blaming just random Jewish people for what's going on, attacking random Jewish-owned businesses without any ties to the IDF, without any ties to the State of Israel. Just all of this stuff, it needs to be called out because this sort of thing only strengthens the ideology of Zionism. So if you call yourself an anti-Zionist, it is your imperative duty to be on the watch for this sort of thing and stop it if you see it. duty to be on the watch for this sort of thing and stop it if you see it that's that's kind of the uh the thesis at the end of this all right well um without further ado i think we will uh end this episode stay safe out there everybody hopefully this new year won't be complete chaos for all of us. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

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