It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 57

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by

an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. So look, I ain't going to hold you. I was not going to cover this because I feel like it's something that needs to be discussed at the domino table at the cookout, you know, and I

just don't want to feed the machine. But at some point we got to decide whose man is this. And somebody got to come get they boy, Yee. We got to decide, okay, when did he cross the line, y'all? And has he crossed the line? Because, you know, the important nuance of this is how we've survived as collective. You know, slaves, like, we needed each other to survive. So when somebody got out of line, we looked out for each other. You know, I don't know if you know this, but cornrows, like the braids inside of people's hair were maps. You know, the Negro spirituals, you sang songs as code for when it was time to go. Harriet Tubman, when she got free, you know, she escaped herself

and then decided I'm gonna go back and get as many people as I can. Like, this is this is our story. We take care of each other. So that's why it's hard for us to just write people off, to just cancel, especially if they black. It's hard for us because it's like we need to take care of each other. We can't let these white people like tell us what to do with our folks. But that being said, at some point, we like, all right, nigga, you are on your own.

You have hurt us too much. And I never so I didn't want to cover you because I still don't know how I feel. There are some statements that he said are obviously inexcusable. But I just didn't want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of that conversation. The Kanye stands and I'm done with these people. I just don't want to be a part of that conversation. The Kanye stans and I'm done with Yeast. I just don't want to be a part of the conversation. But Sophie hit me and the good folks at It Can Happen Here hit and was like, yo, we got to talk about this.

And I was like, all right. I was on the fence. We need to talk about it. Yo, whose mans is this, y'all? Somebody come get they boy. So it's a crossover with the homie Garrison, Robert, and the It Could Happen Here team, Shereen, and we discuss this stuff.

So dropping into our feed and they feed, It Could Happen Here for politics. Let's rock. I'm just waiting for Kanye's Gnostic phase That'll probably be a good I mean As soon as it starts being It starts talking about Sophia And

I'm excited for when he runs for president And then declares His opponent to be The Demiurge That's right We were on the same track there We know what's coming his opponent to be a demiurge. That's right. That's where we're headed towards. We were on the same track there. We know what's coming.

We know. It's going to be a good day. Welcome to It Can Happen Here, the podcast where we talk about Kanye West's inevitable war against the demiurge. Oh my gosh. We're joined again by Shereen and Prop prop so we just talked about kind of kanye us history up towards his most recent white lives matter t-shirt stunt and his anti-semitic

posts on instagram and twitter.com and my main interest in the aftermath of these statements is kind of mostly how right-wing media reacted to what was going on and to one of their darlings kind of saying some questionable things and what that might tell us about how they'll handle overt anti-Semitism and fascistic kind of consumerism in the future. I'm going to do a quote from New Republic again about what happened in the direct aftermath of Kanye West's posts. Quote, Fox News, meanwhile, posted an article that West merely had been locked out of his

account due to an unspecific violation of the company's policies. After spending such a fulsome number of hours providing him with a platform for his White Lives Matter stunt, the network eschewed coverage of his anti-Semitism other than to point to it as the product of mental illness. The effort to sweep the second round of nasty bigotry under the rug after celebrating the initial outpouring is breathtakingly cynical, but not particularly surprising. The fact that West was, at least for now, deplatformed from social media accounts that he was using to traffic hate speech is in itself catnip for far-right figures. And unquote. So many a far-right grifter has tried to turn this into a free speech issue. However, Kanye associate and fashion week White Lives Matter buddy Candace Owens tried to deny the anti-semitism altogether

within days of his twitter rant candace owens on her daily wire podcast was defending kanye saying quote death con 3 should be interpreted as a move to protect the jewish people after all because because because defcon is a defensive military category not an offensive military category see these are the words of a deeply unserious person exactly i'll be a very a very dangerous one but deeply unserious this is that's this is it's those things okay be conservative think however you want but it's that stuff that is so infuriating to me where i'm like you know you do not sit across the table from me she She knows. You know, you know, and it's like, okay, just, I just like, like break character once, you know, just, just like. No. What is you, like, there's no way I can't take you.

There's no way you believe that. No. There's no way. Candace Owens has been playing the long game for a while. And that kind of reaches, that reaches a culmination towards the end of this episode which we'll talk about um but let's uh let's let's let's play the clip there because she also does some pretty gross anti-semitic kind of defensive stuff as well talking about how you can't say the word jewish without people getting upset if you are an honest person you did not think this tweet was anti-Semitic. You did not think that he wrote

this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This does not represent the beginning of the Holocaust. That's if you're an honest person, you'll meet that. You will admit that, right? If you're an honest person, when you read this tweet, you had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I had, I had no idea when I read this tweet, what the hell he was talking about. I had no idea when I read this tweet what the hell he was talking about. This tweet inspired questions, not answers. First and foremost, what is DEFCON 3? Did he mean DEFCON 3, which would be a military defense position, not an offense for those of you that are offended, a military defense position? Is he tweeting this because he's reading the Newsweek headline, calling him an anti-Semitic? Is he angry because he can't believe that he's not free to

talk about people in his life who happen to be Jewish, right, without being accused of anti-Semitism? Is he saying, I'm not going to shut up and I'm going to keep tweeting and I'm going to keep calling these people out, referring to his friends that he feels slighted by? Is he talking about Jerry Kushner and Josh Kushner? If you're a liar, you'll say, I know I was scared, Candace. I actually thought that Kanye West was going to launch a military strike in Israel because that's the reaction. Like when I woke up and I looked at the headlines, the reaction was like Kanye West had gotten together a military strike and it was going to go forward in the morning time in Israel. That was, that was the reaction that was met with this tweet. Now, once again, I want to make this very clear. This is not a defensiveness tweet.

This is an open question, which never seems to happen anymore. It's like you cannot even say the word Jewish without people getting upset in the same way that you're not allowed to say black anymore so there is definitely a lot in in that clip um i i guess first off we can talk about talking about the tweet as simply asking questions about jewish people it's like you're just like directly doing the Jewish question. Like what? That's the thing. You can't frame this.

Just ask like, you're just asking questions about Jewish people. Really? And then, and then Owens tries to link this to like a Zionist position, implying that attacks on Jewish people and antisemitism are only legitimate if they're in the form of a military action against the nation of israel which is not how anti-semitism operates that's like that's just that's just that's just not what that is like that's man it's it's it's pretty gross again just it's it's the same daily wire racism denying shtick by you know it's's, it's the same thing they do by saying racism doesn't exist anymore because there are not racist laws in America, which

first of all, isn't even true. But second of all, that's not what racism is. Like even if there weren't racist laws, that doesn't mean there's no racism. Um, she like the, man, it's like, like I'm like i'm trying to put my words together because there's a certain type of like sinisterness yeah no it's a type of yeah it's a absolutely they're both deeply unserious but it's also like explicitly complicit in the in the like the rise of far-right Christian fascism. It's so absurd, but in a very dark way. Yeah.

I heard Kanye this morning. What day is this? October 20th. A clip from Piers Morgan, no less. Trying to call him on his anti-Semitism. And yeah, I know we're talking about candace but it's like it's in the same vein of like ain't no way you believe this is in in that he was like listen i apologize i was talking about my experience in the music industry which is a verifiable fact ran by jews and i was like bruh you ain't no way ain't no way and just break character like alex jones broke character

before like uh uh uh was tucker carlson boat character tucker carlson in court was like this is entertainment don't take me serious you know just, let me have that moment where I'm like, okay, at least be honest with what I'm dealing with here. Just break character. Like this, just give me that. At least I know what I'm dealing with. No. Yeah. Like saying this is an open question.

You cannot say the word Jewish without people getting upset. Like, you know what you're doing. You know exactly what you're doing you know exactly what and with the with the after the like death con three tweet his follow-up implying that jewish people invented cancel culture like robert said directly reference that that's that is just directly ripped from like nazi theory um like it's it's it's so blatant like even even candace owens's boss ben shapiro had to acknowledge that kanye's tweets were anti-semitic he he he made a tweet saying back from the jewish holiday now which don't

ben like ben shapiro i i know what you're doing i i know what you're calling it the jewish holiday fuck you yeah back from the jewish holiday now as usual two things can be true at once kanye's moves towards pro-life faith and family conservatism are encouraging his death con three posts and black hebrew israelite language are clearly anti-semitic and disturbing it's like ben shapiro like the more this is this is this is this is basically ben shapiro saying the more he agrees with me the more he becomes a nazi but, the more this is basically Ben Shapiro saying the more he agrees with me, the more he becomes a Nazi. But I'm sure this is just a coincidence.

Which I did steal that from someone on Twitter. Both things can be true. That's my Ben Shapiro impression. Both things can be true. Look, look, both things can be true. Let's say that you all right um i'm gonna do i'm gonna do a brief tangent on this guy named jason widlock so widlock is a sports

journalist and podcaster who hosts the show fearless soldiers on glenn beck's blaze media where he quote protects the realm of common sense and challenges the groupthink mandated by elites. And he has like over half a million followers on Twitter.com. Of course he does. He made a series of not great statements that are still up and went extremely viral with a lot of likes, saying, quote, Kanye West and Dave Chappelle. Is there a pattern?

The industry wants both of them canceled. Black rappers and comedians are free to denigrate black people and white men a million different ways. But there's a line they better not cross, and everyone knows it. I wonder what he's saying. I wonder what he's implying there. The conflation of this is actually also as a person, a member of the black community, card carrying, that is frustrating.

In that we do need to talk about, you know, among ourselves, like, what is acceptable in terms of how we speak about our own women, how we speak about our fellow brothers and sisters in the world. That is something that needs to be discussed, but you don't get to call that. So Jason is black, but he similarly works for a far-right media company. Here's the thing. I'm going to give you a phrase, and you can use this later.

Okay. I'm pretty sure Shireen knows it too. It's all skin folk and kin folk. So just go ahead, continue on. And what he's talking about here, saying that you're free to talk about bad things that black people and white people have done. The line that you better not cross, he's obviously talking about Jewish people. Someone asked him, hey's what is this line and then jason posted you can't question black entertainers unhealthy relationship with non-religious jewish power brokers in hollywood

okay yeah uh he this this was obviously called out as being extremely anti-semitic um which then he replied you think i have a problem with people who speak a semitic language not true i have a problem with the secular culture particularly hollywood's promotion of it and black celebrities embrace of it i believe those celebs have an unhealthy partnership with non-religious jewish people oh he chose them words that was a dance again this is this is just exactly you're just doing anti-semitism like you can't yeah you can't like it's not about speaking a semitic language and you know that like you you know this that you're you're you're just doing a bit like here's and here's what's crazy like you know in in my early days of like

moving into more like activist kind of justice circles and and for real like even in some of the like church spaces i was in because again i grew up in like a very different church tradition than the rest of these foods is that the jewish community was in a lot of ways upheld as an example for us in that like look they don't let nobody talk about nobody they don't let they don't they don't let it ride you're not allowed to talk and they were like we need to be like that they were like the way that the way that like look they come in they set up their community they they they keep their money within their community like their dollars circulate around that and when you look at like statistics they were saying among the black community it's

like a dollar you know a dollar only circulates once through our community you know i'm saying like i don't have the numbers right but they were saying like within the jewish community that dollar goes around like 50 60 70, 70, 80 times because they support each other, you know, and they were like, that's something that as black people, we need to start learning how to do like, yo, stop being crabs in a bucket, like support each other. You know what I'm saying? Man, learn from their community, you know, learn from the fact that like, you know, they keep their narrative alive. They don't allow oppression to happen to them. They've, they stuck together how they've accrued wealth. You know what I'm saying? I don't know how healthy this understanding is, but I'm saying that's what we was taught. Like stuck together how they've accrued wealth you know i'm saying i don't know how healthy this understanding is but i'm saying that's what we

was taught like look at how they accrued wealth like learn from them you know so so when it when when you hear it coming out of a black entertainer's mouth something anti-semitic it just it grates even more because you just like man what like i think one other aspect of that which we're actually going to get to in a bit is some of that kind of admiration can be a double-edged sword though it is that's what i'm saying like i don't know how healthy it is but that's what we were taught yeah yeah but like like like what you said about like there you know how a dollar circulates way more you see kanye later starting to use some of that rhetoric in terms of promoting jewish people as like controllers of financial engineering like you see that type of you see

that bridge we're gonna talk about that like in in a sec also quick piece of history about jewish jewish people in banking which it's ill like they as a people got into that they were basically forced into they were forced to because they weren't allowed farmland. Like, you wasn't allowed to farm. So they're like, well, we got to find a job somehow. Oh, let's do banking. You mad that they good at it? Like, you know, I mean, I mean, like, this is this part that's like really can.

I'm like, you know why? Do you know why jazz exists? Segregation. Niggas. Racism. That's why blues, why is there hip hop? Because,

like, we did something with the trash you gave us. Like, so I think that, yeah, anyway, segregation made that happen.

Yeah. I'm going to read a quote from Yauer Rosenberg. Quote, Kanye's tweets exemplify why anti-Semitism is so hard to uproot. It's a self-affirming conspiracy theory.

The antisemite claims that Jews control everything. Then, if they're penalized for their bigotry, they point to that as proof. Heads they win, tails Jews lose. Kanye posted his second tweet before the first one was taken down, perfectly demonstrating how the Jews control everything is a preemptive antisemitic defense against consequences for expressing anti-Semitism. It's a common misconception that anti-Semitism is just a personal prejudice against Jewish people. It's not. It's also a conspiracy theory about how the entire world works, which is why it ropes in conspiracy theorists

from all ideologies and all backgrounds. It creates this antagonizing catch 22 for Jews when confronted with antisemitism. If we say nothing, the hatred spreads unchecked. If we say something and it results in any consequences for the antisemite, the bigot just uses that as proof of their antisemitic worldview. So that's a good kind of 101 explainer on how this kind of whole thing operates, you know, talking about Jewish power brokers in Hollywood and people called out on that. They're like, oh, see, this is an example of them trying to silence the truth and, you know, all of this type of shit. Um, the one super interesting thing that has happened

since all of these tweets and the aftermath and stuff has has has happened is that we got some leaked video from the tucker carlson and con gay video so this is this this is this is fascinating um so vice uh vice's uh motherboard uh obtained footage of kanye making bigoted statements about jewish people and bizarre claims about fake children as well as describing visions of kinetic of kinetic energy cities sent to him by god and i we're not sure how vice got these yeah uh un unaired clips but we have them and they're extremely fascinating both on for like what kanye is doing and how he made these statements before his tweets um also it's

interesting on like what tucker is doing like you're explicitly obfuscating direct anti-semitism but still allowing the dog whistles to be to to be present. So inside their interview that, that did air Carlson and Kanye together outlined some of Fox's favorite boogeymen from the Clintons, COVID restrictions, cancel culture and liberal elites. But what Fox left on the cutting room floor is just as revealing. The Tucker Carlson tonight's team decided to edit out a clip of Kanye saying

that he's vaccinated against COVID-19, which is, you know, okay, yeah. In a segment talking about black genocide and Planned Parenthood, they edited out Kanye's statements about the lost 12 tribes of Judah. Planned Parenthood was made by Margaret Sanger, a known eugenics with the KKK to control the Jew population. When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the race, the people known as the race black really are. This is who our people are, the blood of Christ. This, as a Christian, is my belief. So, inside the television broadcast, it has those parts about Planned Parenthood and the KKK. But then, after he mentions the KKK, it cuts 30 seconds ahead.

So, it skips over all that stuff around Jewss and the the lost 12 tribes of judah which kind of get that that is that is some of the type of black hebrew israelite stuff that robert and prop were talking about in the previous episode how they're they're one of like the lost tribes who who went south um so that that is that but it's interesting so like he's directly talking about that way before his tweets that tucker just edited out. Now on the, on the Planned Parenthood point. So Sanger was indeed a racist and eugenicist, a stance that the Planned Parenthood organization has since like,

obviously denounced. But, you know, claims about Planned Parenthood specifically operating to kill unborn black babies are just common rhetoric in the pro-life like circles and conspiracy spaces it's not that that part is not really true but it is a very common talking point yeah that margaret sanger point is is something that like yeah you know even i like in my sort of you know evolution of the way i think and feel and believe, you know, I'm

the child of a Black Panther, you know what I'm saying? So like, when you hear things about eugenics and Margaret Sanger and her connection to Planned Parenthood, and you're like, oh, well, yeah, nah, that stuff's evil, you know what I mean? Yeah. And, you know, obviously, I'm a cisgendered male, you know, so there's definitely holes in the story of understanding the complications of what it means, what abortion and reproductive rights mean, because I just, I didn't know, you know grow mature travel for me like the the the the biggest the biggest change in my thinking has been travel and relationships and just you know what i used to say reading off the naughty list you know uh and you start understanding those complications but yeah that was like

that that margaret sanger note is a note that's hit often you know and it becomes very difficult until you're like until you until you until you in the situation you don't mean and like you are like look this is this is this is affordable health care and it's right down the street you know and when you're in that situation it's like the again like all the boogeyman's and all the stories and all the warnings all of it falls apart you know once you actually see this stuff in practice so yeah that but that that margaret sanger one that was that's a tough pill to swallow yeah and the planned parenthood organization has spent a long time like trying to amend for their for their like an initial inclination and some of the like eugenicist starting points that they had and making sure that they're not

they're not you know yeah continuing in that clearly that's not their stance in that history oh well yeah and like and like actually addressing like hey is is is is locations of our clinics specifically geared towards like being in more targeted communities where it's like lower class and people of color as opposed opposed to white affluent communities. And they have, they have taken steps to actually like make sure that their planning of clinics and locations is not, is not oversaturated in places. Yeah. And that being said, I'm like affluent white communities, they got healthcare. So it's like, who has a different story?

You know what I'm saying? It's like, you go, go where it's needed. I'm like, I ain't got no healthcare over here. That's why they're here you know i mean this isn't obviously this isn't a planned parenthood stand video or a podcast but at the same time i'm like well of course they got their problems like every other organization got their problems but like the idea that there's this like sinister plot you know is clearly the rantings of someone who is not well you know it does it's it is parroting just conspiracy talking points at this point the way the way he does it the way he's doing um and in one of the more blatantly anti-semitic sections that was that was edited out kanye complains about kwanzaa being taught to his kids in school and says that he would prefer his kids learn Hanukkah

because it comes with financial engineering. I was biting my tongue on my political opinion because I thought it would be better for my children. And now you look up and my kids are going to a school that teaches black kids a complicated Kwanzaa. I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering. I'm sorry, what?

Wait, wait. I mean, this is this type of thing. Like you should learn from the Jews because they're good at controlling money. Like it's- Yeah, it makes me feel like he purposely tweeted that stuff because it was cut out. Because maybe that was

furthering his idea of being controlled. I think he tweeted that stuff out. He tweeted stuff on Twitter in response to him getting banned on Instagram. And the stuff on Instagram was directly against a rapper who was calling him out on his shit. I don't know if Kanye

watched the Tucker Carlson interview. I don't know if Kanye watched the Tucker Carlson interview. I don't know. And then in one of the more bizarre things that he said, Kanye West talked about a so-called fake child that had been planted in his home, including he went into explicit detail talking about the child's name and the parent's name and this this video clip was not posted to protect the family's privacy yes um yeah but he went into

great detail we have some we have some like transcripts saying i uh actors professional actors placed into my house to sexualize my kids uh he he he he uh he uh he referred to the so-called son of an associate seemingly implying that the child was fake saying that we we we did not believe that the person uh was her son because he was way smarter than her um and he it's it's the this is like the most clear example of the ramblings of someone who like isn't okay like it's so like someone having a mental health episode yeah like kanye has spoken frequently about living with bipolar disorder and experiencing manic episodes in 2019 he discussed how he experiences these with david letterman saying quote when you're in this state you're hyper paranoid about everything and

everyone in my experience other people have different experiences you know everyone is now an actor everything's now a conspiracy unquote and this is what's happening you're thinking everyone's an actor and everyone's conspiracy this is really i mean you can look at gang stalking which is probably an expression of people having schizophrenic episodes where people believe that like crowds of just random folks on the street are like part of an organized stalking thing. Or just there's these one kind of common thing that happens in psychotic episodes for some people is a belief that their loved ones, their spouse or whatever has been replaced by someone who looks exactly the same.

There's also certain kinds of like physical damage to the brain. We call that Nathan Fielder syndrome. I was just about to suggest that. I was going to say that, but I didn't want to drag him into this. And there's also certain kinds of damage. We call that Nathan Fielder syndrome. Yeah. It's rehearsal syndrome. I was going to say that, but I didn't want to drag him into this. No, no, no. It does feel like a rehearsal episode. It's, I mean, it's one of those, this is, I don't know how you actually would ever study this, but I think one of the major problems our civilization has that might actually end us is the fact that every mental illness on the planet is vastly exacerbated by the person having a lot of money which also happens to make it virtually

impossible to treat because no one around you will admit that anything's wrong yeah and this again might someday combine with the fact that we have an addiction on this planet to handing a single individual the keys to a nuclear stockpile this might all end really badly for everybody i mean yeah and when you're one of the most famous people in the world you constantly feel like you're being gang stalked because you are yes like yeah that's the point i was always watching you like ever like it's it's not humans weren't designed to reach that level of fame that's not something that we'd like developed like it's that's no we shouldn like developed. Like it's, that's, that should not be possible.

Our brains are not equipped for it. Yeah. And then I feel like it's like, they get affirmed in that belief because a lot of people do rely on them and maybe their mania to like make, make sure they get paid or make sure like their family. Absolutely. I mean,

I'm not affirming. They're being, yeah, you're being, you know, I like, I have have a a small list of like actual like a list like celebrity friends who have been you know who are like for real celebrities and also like yeah my uh my last accountant stole two hundred thousand dollars from me like and I didn't even know you know this person you know

I had this person on tour with me and you know they robbed this guy robbed the opener like just all these like stories to where you're like well yeah the people you do have around you so even if you didn't have mental health issues you would get paranoid you would still get paranoid yeah it's reasonable to

get paranoid I mean yeah yeah it it's i yeah uh all of it's all of this is is very obvious as a problem um but what's unsettling to me sorry i just want to say really quickly one of the things that the fact that kanye as you you out years earlier, very astutely talked about the things that happened to him when he is having an episode in a very lucid way. Yeah. Makes me wonder, and maybe this is a little conspiratorial, were there people listening who were like, well, shit, if we can just play into that stuff, we might be able to get him to, we might be able to push him in whatever direction we want, because there's definitely a whole bunch of people. I mean, I can totally see Candace Owens doing that.

Cause she's, she's been playing him like a fiddle for a long time. And that's going to reach a tipping point at the end, at the end of this episode. So one could ask, how could you be so heartless? Oh my God. How could you be so heartless? Oh my God. How could you be so-

See, that wasn't as good as the last one. It wasn't. How could you be so Dr. Evil? But also- I didn't get that one. Along the same thread of a tortured artist thinking they have to be depressed- To make art. I think there's an element of that, even for Kanye.

I don't think- I mean, who knows if he's medicated or not you know what i mean like well he is he has said that sometimes he goes off medication yeah exactly so you know and i and yeah the tortured artist thing i know some like new york times bestsellers authors who are like yes i know i'm bipolar and i know when i have to write this book i'm going to get off these pills i'm going going to write it in two days. It's far more common than you want to admit. I think that's made worse by people

tying... In doing my research for this episode, a lot of people talk to us in person and talk about his genius. Exactly. I think this idea of his genius mixed in with his mental state can create a really volatile reaction in someone's brain when they feel like certain altered states of consciousness are what makes you have your genius.

Exactly. And that's a really – the way people have talked about this to Kanye in person I think is really unhealthy. Yeah. I would argue that telling a child they're a genius is abusive, and it's probably true for telling an adult. It's one of the worst things you can ever tell anybody. No one's a genius. Stop using that word. Yeah.

It's poison. You think your illness is your genius. Yeah. Going back to these leaked, unused Tucker Carlson videos, something like this in a better world would like completely tank tucker forever like yeah it should but none of that matters yeah because in any other yeah in any other universe at that point you should be like yo we gotta stop the cameras man no yeah like yeah yeah this leak reveals unequivocally how carlson uses his platform to sanitize anti-semitism and other

conspiracy theories for a general audience carlson cuts out just enough to claim plausible deniability this will not impact him professionally at all um he makes his he makes a living manipulating people on fox news um this should tank him it won't but it does reveal how he works with extreme clarity having these behind the scenes glimpses and then also having having the added context of these cut segments also shines a light on some of the more dog whistly aspects that did make it into the aired interview uh like this bit that started with that that that started with kanye talking about his grievances with jared kushner you know where he made these peace treaties where was that do you know the facts on this right here so i I'm like, well, I think that was between Israel and some of the Arab nations.

I just think it was to make money. I don't know. Is that is that too heavy handed to put on this platform? No, that's that's your opinion. We're not in a censorship business. OK, thank you. And I just think that that's what they're about is making money. I don't think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they were born into money. So when Kanye said, I don't think they have the ability to make anything on their own and talking about,

you know, peace treaties with the intent to make money. Carlson knew that Kanye was just talking about like the Jews. Like that's like, he, he knew that's what was going on and decided to keep those dog whistly aspects. It's.

Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm going to quote from a lad, uh, near I, this provides uncontrovertible proof that Carlson knew Kanye was being anti-Semitic during the interview.

In other words, Tucker Carlson and his team purposely edited their footage to make Kanye's comments into a dog whistle instead of a foghorn. He purposely coded Kanye's antisemitism. Carlson knows how to spread antisemitism while avoid getting called out. He did it here. This itself should be a far bigger scandal than anything Kanye has said. Carlson knowingly spread this code of antisemitism and knowingly kept the anti-Semitism that he knew he wouldn't get called out on and knowingly cut the part that he knew would get him in trouble.

Carlson has spent years spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories from a full documentary about George Soros destroying Western civilization to multiple uses of the great replacement conspiracy theory to anti-Semitic guests talking about globalist elites ruling in D.C. This is who Tucker Carlson is, America's leading purveyor of mainstream anti-Semitism.

He also showed everybody the ultra light beam to the genitals. He sure did. He did one good thing. One of his more based moments. That was a thing i was like all right man okay you did you did your genital tannin got it uh but yeah that's his that's his particular like mutant power is saying something without saying something and all of us know what you're saying but you ain't say it so when i go what the fuck did you just say you could say what are you talking about nothing

you know it i mean yeah he's got it yeah i mean he's he's the picasso of that like just and it's and it's so infuriating and speaking of kind of dog whistles and stuff similar to kanye's bit about the jews creating cancel culture by doing the whole i don't think they have the ability to make anything on their own statement kanye is employing another kind of classic anti-semitic trope that or that originates with nazi propaganda um that you know jews are incapable of physical labor or making things this comes up a lot in the 1940 nazi propaganda film the eternal jew one of the most vile films ever made a quote from uh mike rothschild so and now i i don't think kanye kanye has not seen the eternal jew

obviously no the only people most weird nazi nerds who reference the eternal jew haven't seen the eternal jew obviously no the only people most weird nazi nerds who reference the eternal jew haven't seen the eternal jew like but but the point is that you don't need to see it these no these these stereotypes are so ingrained to how many people see jewish people that they're just things that you can believe without the slightest consideration or like a deep thought well and they were you know the the eternal jew eternal Jew was influential in antisemitic propaganda, but a lot of what it was doing was kind of codifying almost, if you will, the most popular stereotypes and racialist attacks of the day.

Like it, it, it didn't invent stuff so much as it was like, all right, we're going to, we're going to boil it all down in kind of the most iconic form. Yeah, I was today years old. I had no idea what you were talking about.

But I can see how that concept has such source material because as somebody who, you know, anti-Semitism has never been on the menu for me. Um, some of the, the tropes that come with that in my mind seems so bizarre. I'm like, what are you talking? Sure. What did that come from? What did you talk about? They did what now? You know, so like some of like, so to know that like well there is source material there's there's stuff that comes from it comes from this time it was because it is because this was like

an intentional thing that people have been pushing towards for hundreds of years like this is it's yeah this didn't just happen this is like people are trying to make this a reality like it's it's it has been a propaganda project and a hate campaign that's been genocidal for hundreds of years yeah because i'm like okay you know at sometimes okay i'm trying to say what i'm let me try to figure out what i'm trying to say sometimes you can track yeah like the protocols like the protocols i was like until you understand those protocols like some of the anti-semitic thought and rhetoric is like man what the fuck are you talking about like what you know texts like that don't just like pop into existence someone wrote

that with a specific intent with an intent for something but what i'm the point i'm trying to get at is like there are some racist sentiments and tropes that I'm following your logic as to why you're saying that about them. Like, clearly it's a racist trope, but black men are violent. And I'm like, well, okay. I mean, if all you know of us is gang violence, if that's all you've seen, I'm following your logic. You've just never been exposed to any of this stuff. Now, once you get exposed to any other stuff you still feel like that it's like all right you just you just trash you just you just trash but I'm like I I'm following I'm following you you know I mean you only know rap music okay that's all you know of us okay then

you think that this is what we are fucking racist because clearly most people are more everybody's more than the one thing you're trying to put them in you know but i'm following that it's just for me again like i said since and like anti-semitism was never on the menu like it was never just it just wasn't a part of my world when you hear things like the protocols of zion and and some of this stuff even even learning about the holocaust like if you a black person, you like, what's your deal? Like what is so wrong with them? Like I don't understand why you don't like them so much. Like it's like I can't even follow your logic, you know.

Yeah, it's not even personal hatred of all people, right? No. It's framed within this conspiratorial thing by like, no, I don't hate Jewish people. I'm just questioning the Jewish power brokers in Hollywood. And I think that they have too much influence, right? That's how it's framed. And that's how people, that's how someone like Kanye might actually think. Might actually feel because he works in Hollywood.

Yeah. Right. But that is the only way you get there is because of decades of anti-S Hollywood. Yeah. Right. But that is the only way you get there is because of decades of antisemitism. Yeah. That's the kind of point I was trying to get at. Yeah. The J.K. Rowling banker goblin

didn't just like exist by itself. Exactly. Like none of these things are made in a vacuum. I never even thought of that till you said it. Oh shit. Oh yeah. There's a Star of David on the floor of the bank. I didn't even notice it.

That is just. They'll point out. It's just so. Yeah. I mean, one of the things people will point out that is true is that that was not a set. They were filming in an actual building. And they chose to have that there. And the building had a Star of David in the floor. And they chose to have that there and and the building had a star of david in the

floor and they chose to film there yes it seems like that would have been something people might have noticed yeah at least yeah somebody who had just not even go over it not even yeah just throw a rug like y'all y'all maybe maybe listen maybe we don't mean anything by it but it could be seen as you you know, yeah. And just like none of these things are in a vacuum, and Kanye's own statements are not in a vacuum. After Kanye made these tweets, you know, 4chan was quick to eat up the Kanye pill. Kanye threads took up most of pole's posts for for days

there's there's just there's screenshots of of pole just kanye post after kanye post all of all of the trending ones are all about kanye uh nick fuentes and his like gripper followers were celebrating the tweets and they see this as an opportunity to kind of mainstream you know their their brand of horrible anti-semitic fascism um and i i uh i hope people are prepared to take on you know fake kanye stan accounts that are going to pop up everywhere to defending his anti-semitism like you know and defending and talking about anti-semitism from the point of quote-unquote being a kanye fan it's there's a lot of yeah i was like we've been a lot of fascist trolling is gonna it's gonna come in

the mask of kanye west now and that's just that's the way this works yeah we've i mean we've been enduring great among black twitter we have been enduring kanye stans for a while you know what i'm saying that are just like no he's just a genius y'all don't understand he's playing 3d we've been enduring this for a while it's actually been very interesting in the sphere of the internet i exist in of seeing people being like uh yeah no i got nothing so like people tap out yeah there has been a good amount of people that have finally tapped out yeah and i think well i think the what is that type of vacuum opens up space for bad actors to use the mask of kanye to then just promote fascism under under this mask now i like it's like what they did with trump and his like mega hat and everything sure i

mean like anything this creates a more specific type of dog whistle i think because mega is obviously way more way more broad i meant like i meant like kanye's use of the sure oh yes absolutely absolutely i mean we have you know nick fuentes posted the tweets and his dis and in his telegram saying no way we are so back do you trust the plan uh baked alaska do you trust the plan? Baked Alaska posted on his telegram, this is real, vindicated. And one of my least favorite telegram channels, Zoomer Waffen, which God. God damn it.

I know. God damn it. It's called what now? Tell me that again. Every time I talk about Zoomer Waffen, I lose five years of life. So people, again, because folks who are not terminally

online or like what are you guys talking about waffen yes means weapon in german the reason that it is a thing the nazis talk about is that the ss had like a bunch of different things the ss did but one of the things they had was a unit that existed within kind of the traditional hierarchy called the waffen ss which means the weapons SS. They committed a shitload of war crimes. Ever since Waffen has been a thing that you can kind of like stick to the end of the name of a group and you're signifying that you think the SS was based. Adam Waffen is kind of the most prominent terrorist group in the United States and other countries that's been a big thing.

And, you know, not like Zoom. Like you get what they're saying when they call themselves Zoom or Woffin, right? It's a thing. Anyway, that's what you need to know. I get so pissed because I'm like, these fucking nerds. And you're so dangerous. You fucking nerds. It sucks.

I hate you. Yes. I'm just like, you just, you, God, if you weren't so dangerously violent, you know, just fucking nerds. Yeah. That's,

yeah. That, that is the recurring statement on this show. Yes. Is that if they weren't dangerous, they would be much more funny. Yes. So yeah,

the, the, the zoomer waffens posted the tweet, and not all heroes wear capes. Some wear Yeezy Gap merch. And with it, anyway. So, just two days after the anti-Semitic posts on his social media accounts, which got him banned,

Kanye then attended the Nashville premiere of Candace Owens' Daily Wire documentary project, The Greatest Lie Ever Sold, George Floyd and the Rise of BLM. And just imagine being one of the most famous people on the planet and choosing to hang out with the Daily Wire. Yeah. the daily wire yeah it's like like they like the word grooming obviously means nothing now but like they they groomed him into this shit like yes they did they really did him and groomed him into this nonsense look kanye made a lot of choices here and those choices were like very selfish and based in narcissism and while he is is sick, he's not a victim fundamentally, but he also is being taken advantage of, right?

Like that's fair to say. That doesn't exculpate him from his guilt in this, but he is being taken advantage of. Wake up, Mr. West. Another Kanye reference. Wake up, Mr. West. And like, real quick, the part that is so, well, obviously it's all infuriating, but I'm like, you're going out of your way to purposefully tear down black people and they suffering. Yeah. tear down black people and they suffering yeah you don't have to you don't you can even say like

hey you know which is true like there are some in the organization of black lives matter as an organization there's some problematic stuff that needs to be discussed and worked out you know i'm saying and being like okay well let's get some oversight here what are we doing here let's have some accountability you don't have to why are, why are you attacking George Floyd, man? Well, because this is Candace Owens' explicit grift. Exactly, that's my point. Her job is to conflate the Black Lives Matter nonprofit organization

with the Black Lives Matter movement. As an idea, yeah. And use criticisms of the non-profit organization to basically say that any form of advocacy by people of color in you know using the black lives matter movement banner is is discredited because of the issues with the formal non-profit organization in portland i have never i've never seen a single thing related to the black lives matter organization not a single thing i to the Black Lives Matter organization. Not a single thing.

I mean, I guess maybe the signs like are sold by them. I don't know though. But like, it's, it's not, it's not a presence. Not what we're talking about. Actual uprisings. It's not a fit. Like it's the, the, the conflation of the, of the nonprofit organization with the movement is the specific thing that Candace Owens has focused on for the past five years of her

career. That's, that's what she makes money on is she makes money on, is exploiting this little thing. And it's the thing that Tucker has adopted, and this is the thing that she has convinced Kanye of. It's just so like, what do you do? Like, okay, so, okay, talk about globalism. Okay, that's your little thing okay that's your little thing that's your little thing okay uh you know you don't like the you don't like the democrats you know you know brandon whatever but it's like okay a man died and and was that's and the cop was proven guilty and that that's that's

the most gross part because kanye's embrace of conspiracy theories now about the fentanyl thing right is yeah like but his embrace of conspiracy theories is not just limited to anti is not just limited to anti-semitism yeah he now openly denies the proven facts of the events that led to the most recent international uprising in the black lives matter movement he jumped on board his pal candace owens absurd quote-unquote documentary that claims the sequence of events proven in court and witnessed by the world via cell phone footage did not actually happen um that's why i'm like you're going out of your way now it's like you you're you're on a path and i'm like you're purposefully going out of your way to hurt us and that's the part that i'm like like i said i don't use the word coon often but i'm like like why are you doing why are you doing this like you you're it will because we

know why you're doing it and it's just like candace come on like cape cape for the republicans do what you got to do if you honestly think the solutions for our community comes from the conservative world cape for them do what you got to you don't have to go out of your way like this is you're going the like you're taking the scenic route to just attack like i'm okay yeah it's they it's because i don't they don't actually believe that that's what the solutions are they're just they're just living a really wealthy extravagant lifestyle candace owens gets to travel with connie west to paris fashion week she gets to have a red carpet premiere with connie west kid rock and ray j like that's that's the life that she has been able to create by exploiting this thing and of course she's gonna do it because that's how you

become a millionaire yeah two kinds of people get successful on the right one kind is fuck you got mine i'm gonna get what i can as quickly as i can uh and the other is i want to create a christian fascist ethnostate um like those are the two kinds and one feeds into the other. And Candace Owens has decided I'm fine with helping the other kind of prominent conservative accomplish their goals because it won't get too bad. You know, during my lifetime, I can make enough money.

I'm one of the good ones. They're like, this is, this, this is the same thing with someone like Blair white for, you know, for, for trans issues

there's there's there's these specific tokenized figures yeah dave rubin with you know with uh gay people like if they they align as one of the good ones and they think that things won't get bad enough in their lifetime and they'll they'll they'll just they'll just be able to profit yeah it's this i yeah yeah hey's a wait is dave rubin wait just to make sure i'm paying attention is dave rubin the dude that was like well scientifically speaking a mermaid couldn't be that dark no that's uh that feels like a ben shapiro or crowder bit i i i don't remember specifically okay i thought that was either way that was hilarious it was one of those clowns. Yeah.

Well, scientifically speaking. They're all paid by the same dude. It doesn't matter. Yeah. They're all like... I still need to get this joke off. So, it's frustrating that Kanye not only just attended the premiere, but is now actually parroting the disinformation and the talking points that Kenna Soans used in her faux documentary.

So, just a few days after he went to the red carpet, he started spreading the disinformation on the police's murder of George Floyd on a podcast. I watched the George Floyd documentary that Candace Owens put up. One of the things that his two roommates said was, they want a tall guy like me. They want a tall guy like me. And the day when he died, he said a prayer for, you know, eight minutes. was they want a tall guy like me. They want a tall guy like me. And the day when he died,

he said a prayer for, you know, eight minutes. He said a prayer for eight minutes. They hit him with the fentanyl. If you look, the guy's knee wasn't even on his neck like that. When he said mama, mama is his girlfriend. They said he screamed for his mama. Mama was his girlfriend. It's in the documentary.

So that's pretty bad. And after that, he starts talking about other kind of random conspiracy theory stuff that inevitably leads him to making more comments about the Jews. So here's that clip. They block me out. The. They block me out. The Jewish media block me out. This shit lit, right? I'm lit, right? I'm lit.

I'm lit. You know what I'm saying? J.P. Morgan, I put $140 million into J.P. Morgan and they treated me like shit. So if J.P. Morgan Chase is treating me like that, how they treating the rest of y'all? That's outrageous, yeah. So if JPMorgan Chase is treating me like that, how they treating the rest of y'all?

That's outrageous, yeah. And there's murder arrests with Chase accounts. That's what I'm saying. I am outraged. By the time, people always, they want to calm it down. Because no matter what, you didn't break no law.

I didn't break a law. I didn't break a law. The bank shouldn't be a judge or jury on anything that's going on. It's like a social contract. Candace Owens has a word for it, I'm forgetting it. But it's basically like, they told Candace Owens she couldn't hang out with me for the Jewish people.

What I'm doing is I'm me-tooing the Jewish culture. I'm saying y'all got to stand up and admit to what y'all been doing. And y'all just got away with it for so long that y'all don't even realize what y'all doing. And it's like, y'all can't fuck with me either because y'all behind that gated fence y'all soft your hands got soft you ain't out here getting beat up every day like me you ain't out here getting called

crazy every day like me i'm not gonna play any more of that podcast because honestly this is where it starts getting into the territory where it's just kind of exploiting someone's mental health issues for entertainment and it gets like this is where it gets very disjointed connie starts talking about how the louis vuitton company killed one of his friends oh boy oh it's i'm a virgil yeah who actually died of cancer it's a conspiracy that connie's developed the year. And he also talked about this for seven minutes in the unused Tucker Carlson segments, which I'm also not going to include because it's, I don't think we should. Also for context, like Virgil is like royalty among our community. Like what he did being the first black, like head designer at Louis Vuitton. And I think a lot of us think a lot of us,

I sound like Trump. A lot of people are saying no, but there is an understanding that like in a lot of ways, Kanye was jealous of him in the, in the way that he was able to succeed in Louis Vuitton. And then now that he's gone and, and clearly Kanye doesn't grieve well, as we know. Yeah.

Yeah, that would be fair. Yeah. Another segment of the Tucker leak includes a clip where Kanye is discussing visions from God on how to build free energy and fully kinetic energy communities and kinetic energy cities. So this is where i'm not going to actually include any more clips of kanye because it's just it's it's just the laughing at the person who's not doing okay bit and that's not cool now obviously like mental illness is not

cannot be used as an excuse for bigotry or anti-semitism um but exploiting someone's suffering uh through like a manic episode to score political points is also like immoral um yeah and we're seeing a lot of like false choices being presented towards mental illness and anti-semitism and the answer can actually be both um you know those struggling with mental illness do not kind of, they don't originate these types of bigotry. Right. Um, but in,

but when you're a manic, you can latch on to things and reflect them. Um, and that's not saying it's okay, but that also it's, we should not deny that. Like I have seen a lot of people saying like mentally ill people don't say racist things, which are like, that's not true. Like if, like if you,

if you've been around a lot of mentally ill people, they can act, they, they can, it's, it's, it's the same thing with people. When people's brains are deteriorating on dementia, one of the last things they can say are curse words. It's, it's, it's, it's one of those weird, like like like vector points inside our brain so yeah you you actually can be be racist when you're not usually racist if you're experiencing a severe mental health episode and that's not that's not excusing you for your behavior but also we shouldn't create this false division and we shouldn't like in some ways it's like

you're like a gatekeeping mental illness by saying no no real mentally ill person could say these bad things which yeah i mean in support of people experiencing mental distress yeah it's on that same lane as like the uh you know the mass shooters and stuff like that like if you're just gonna call it mental illness then like you can obfuscate any responsibility but but also refusing to acknowledge that mental health can play a factor inside some mass shootings also misses the point exactly it's yeah it can play a very large factor especially in the wave of like schizo wave inspired shootings exactly that's that's what i was gonna say that that that conflation of something that really is real and really is important you know uh you see that i see that

with like i i've known people who've worked in like um you know like legit human trafficking like not like the dog whistly version but like actual rescuing you know trafficked girls from the sex industry who were like pulled from a village you know what i'm saying and and put into a brothel like people that are like really out here like actually doing the work you know where trafficking is a thing you know and then you conflate it with these you know know, QAnon conspiracies. And then like, and of course, a person who really works in this thing, you're like, you finally feel like you get some traction with people that actually care about the stuff you care about. You know what I'm saying? And now it's like, if you mention trafficking, it's like, I can't, it's like, how do I, it's like, no, serious.

It's really a thing guys really it is you know but trying to disentangle it from yeah it's what you're saying is like to to to do a one or the other thing is missing the point of both situations yeah yeah because because obviously like kanye isn't someone who's dealing with like a temporary mental health episode where he's yelling slurs on the side of a sidewalk kanye is like an affluent man who's making calculated and financially driven choices but that still doesn't mean that stuff like bipolar does not play a factor in the types of impulsive decision making he's making and the types of people that he surrounds himself with which influences this pattern of behavior combined with like social media and combined with his celebrity status creates this cycle of

really unhealthy choices um like when you're talking about like fake children being planted in your home i mean red flag guys like yeah that's not like it's that's that's not dismissing that as being no way related to mental illness i think is kind of a misstep yeah um that as being no way related to mental illness i think is kind of a misstep yeah um i mean it's caught one of the things that's tough about this is that it hits all of the areas that like the primary places where conversation takes part socially are worst at dealing with yeah because like as we've said mental illness is a major factor in this it also does not exculpate him from bad behavior it doesn't make what he's saying not racist um but it's also tied into like this deep manipulation campaign that the right is because

they've been looking for a guy like this forever and you can see like that that's why tucker and all these folks were so quickly to spin up when he wound up being like amenable to that like yeah and it's yeah because he's he's very clearly being encouraged to keep doing these sort of things for like entertainment and clout yeah um and i think a lot of the responses to this kind of show how stigmatized that more severe personality disorders are compared to stuff like anxiety or depression or adhd for sure um because you also don't want to like villainize bipolar disorder and and stigmatize it further because a lot of people can live with bipolar

disorder i've known i've known people that live with bipolar disorder who are not going on antisemitic rants like it's exactly it it manifests different in lots of other people so it's you should not use this as an example to stigmatize other people with this or say it's just this, um, it create, you have to talk about, you have to kind of think about this in a multi-faceted fashion where someone's not just good or not just bad.

It's actually, you have to get, you know, less into like puritanical, you know, perfectly unblemished victims or, and you know, evilly like like like evil intention

depressors like it's more complicated than that and the internet's bad with uh bad bad with nuance one of us yeah turns out turns out the internet sucks at nuance to close us off we're going to talk about how kanye really has kind of been played by people like Candace Owens. Because a little over a week after his banishment from the two big mainstream social media platforms, this past Monday, Kanye announced that he has entered a deal to buy the failed far-right social media platform Parler. Parler CEO George Farmer said that his wife,

conservative influencer Candace Owens approached kanye about a parlor deal while attending his uh paris fashion week show where the boat where the pair of them wore the black wore the white lives matter shirts so candace owens has been playing kanye this entire time and is and has convinced kanye to buy her husband's failing business. Like, she's just playing him. Like, Parler has currently only 50,000 daily active users. Even Gab, Getter, and Trump's Truth Social have way more daily users than Parler. And Candace Owens has convinced Kanye to buy this failing fascist platform. I'm sorry.

Did you say her husband owns Parler? Yes. Her husband is the CEO of Parler. Okay. And for an idea of how failed it is, the people I know who spend a lot of their time hanging out in far-right spaces don't even get on Parler anymore.

No. It's so good. It doesn't matter it's yes it's the ceo is candace owens's husband i am verklempt i did not i mean it's an obvious grift right yeah i'm like see which is not this is a bad one she's a very smart grifter. She's a successful grifter. That is, I can't believe it. She finally broke character. What I've been asking for these last two hours is give me a moment of clarity. You just gave it to me, right?

Like she, oh, there it is. This is what I've been waiting for. Got it. Got it. I have one more page before we before we close out so okay okay all right i feel i don't know i can't explain this the sense of relief i feel like it's so weird to say that but i feel so relieved that i'm like no it's it's it's extremely telling and it confirms a lot of the things that we've been thinking about what's been going on between her and kanye for the past like five years. Um, so Kanye has been hit with a, with a $250 million lawsuit by the family of George Floyd.

The lawsuit was filed by Roxy Washington on behalf of, uh, her and George Floyd's daughter, Gina. In a statement, Washington's lawyers confirmed that she's suing Kanye West and his business partners for defamation, harassment,ation and infliction of emotional distress um and the legal team is allegedly considering a number of other possible defendants in the case including candace owens so it sucks that that's happening but i like that like that that's just like re-traumatizing to the entire family um that they're having to dredge up all this stuff to sue fucking kanye west and candace owens that sucks but i hope that they get all of their money like yeah i i hope that they get to live forever on the money of kanye west

um it's like look dude like again it's just that like that old saying it's like, look, dude, like, again, it's just that, like that old saying, it's like, you ain't gotta like me, but just you, you don't, you also don't have to be in my way, you know? So even when I look at somebody like a Candace or whatever, this, like this fear of, of specifically persons of color in this right wing grift that I'm like, you don't like, you don't have to help me, but you also don't have to hurt me, you know? And that's, and that's the part to me. Again, I keep coming back to that. It's like, you're going out of your way to hurt us. Like that's, that's, I'm like, I don't get it, man. Like you don't, you don't have to do, there is so much money. Here's the thing. And this is going to sound terrible, but I mean it to be terrible. There is so much money here's the thing and this is gonna sound terrible but i mean it to be terrible there is so much money to be made off white people like you can make so much money from them yeah we have a lot of it we took it from everywhere else yes you can make so much from

them without destroying it without tearing us down you know just it's like get your money okay yeah i'm gonna i'm i'm now gonna read like my thesis on this because i again i i i did i did i did not and i initially did not want to cover this i thought we probably shouldn't yeah i thought that it's it's kind of exploiting the same media cycles that encourages this type of unhealthy behavior in the first place but i i i i have a thesis on this that i want to kind of go through and then we can and and end this discussion so in an online economy based on shock ad driven heated discourse and data collecting online engagement kanye's outbursts are useful to be deployed as ready-made ammunition for culture wars, even though what he said is so obviously beyond the pale.

Quoting New Republic, West's celebrity, still existent despite years of controversy and alienation, is simply too valuable for the right. After decades of being denied the endorsement of predominant celebrities, with the exception of Clint Eastwood and someone like Donald Trump, with the exception of Clint Eastwood and someone like Donald Trump, and the rights gritting their teeth through how celebrities don't really matter to them. The right cherishes the affection it receives from controversial crossover figures such as Elon Musk and Kanye West,

and doesn't want to lose them to disrepute, or at least wants to continue using them in spite of it. West's willingness to lend his imprimatur to the pet causes of people like Carlson and Kenesowans makes him invaluable and unjettisonable. To pick up a quote from the Washington Post, polling has repeatedly shown that white Republicans view themselves as targets of discrimination equivalent to non-majority groups. Carlson and Trump sharing in that sense highlight anecdotes that reinforce that sense and push back against the group that's most forcefully calling for the playing field to be leveled. The left, the new elite. So Carlson

sees Kanye wearing a shirt that explicitly casts whites as victims and understands the opportunity. Here's a member of the inner circle of the elite, a black man who's willing to elevate the idea that white lives are disadvantaged in an equivalent way to black lives to validate the victimization and discomfort. Let's set up an interview, unquote. So for Carlson's purposes, West did not have to be wholly coherent. He can easily edit out the parts where he's ranting about the Jews, visions of kinetic energy cities, and fake children. Carlson was able to present to his viewers a famous black man who was being punished for holding views abhorred by the gatekeeping cultural elites. In the podcast, West combined his anti-Semitism and anti-Black infantilization into slander that

Jewish people have owned the Black voice. But it's Kanye whose voice and platform is being used by far-right grifters for profit by stoking white populist racism against both Jews and Black people and now to buy their failed social media apps. The conservative Christian right that has grown to use Kanye as a token won't be so quick to disown him for overtly conspiratorial or bigoted statements. One of the lessons that the right has learned from Donald Trump is that there's no advantages to be gained from criticizing one's own, as long as they're remaining loyal to the fundamental causes of the movement, especially when it comes to exploiting white grievance. West is then permitted to be as blatantly anti-Semitic as he wants without

fear of sanction. He is clearly bigoted and clearly suffering, but the right clearly considers him to be the most useful idiot, or perhaps one of the brave few people who's willing to say the things that others may think, but don't yet dare utter. Some have argued that there's no point in searching for meaning in Kanye's almost decades-long dissent, that there's no deeper insight here, just the truth that anti-Semitism is noxious and we're a tragically long way from defeating it. But I think that misses the relatively clear trajectory that Kanye has been on since ultra-lightbeam to this now Christian identity, but black shit and the very real danger and influence that a relatively small and unknown weirdos like Candace Owens can have on like countrywide politics. And finally, to paraphrase from the Columbia journalism review, Kanye West's statements are not of no consequence,

but anyone who spends time thinking about them and talking about them needs to not be complicit in exacerbating those consequences, whether that be platforming bigotry or stigmatizing mental health issues. If the media and the press must cover Kanye, they should do so with context and with an eye towards accuracy, reality, history, and motivation. towards accuracy, reality, history, and motivation. At minimum, coverage should isolate what's important to Kanye's and the story and describe it clearly for what it is rather than mining him for controversy and then performing ignorance or agnosticism about the substance of what he's saying. Sadly, too much top-line coverage of Kanye's recent outbursts did the latter, with several mainstream outlets referring to the tweets and headlines as alleged anti-Semitic posts or wrote that the posts had been widely deemed to be anti-Semitic language that clearly reveals more about the authors than its subject. So that's kind of my thesis on why this is worth talking about and all of the moving

aspects about what's going on here between Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Kanye West so yeah that was really good work let's all go be sad yeah there's not really a solution here except I mean besides

the concept of celebrity like I mean you know all of this has at its root the same problems which is that when you allow money to equivocate like social and political power or equal social and political power and when you then hand certain individuals huge amounts of money um a lot of them will either be outright evil or out of their minds or a combination of the two and they can cause tremendous damage to society as a result of it um so it's good yeah i think that there's two you know from from my perspective there's the

the metaphorical question of like okay is he disinvited to the barbecue like which is a you know again a metaphorical question i don't know if you guys know what i mean when we say that was like can he come to the barbecue yeah so like yeah yeah you know what i mean like so the question we need to ask as a community as the culture like he so lovingly decides to mock um but is that okay so as a community what does it take for us to finally disavow somebody's statements and just be like all right brother you gone you know because right now it's up for debate you know there are people that like yo we checked out long time ago you know there are other people that are like still like you know we love the old kanye and that genius is still in there yeah but this album slaps okay i know he problematic i know he put the red hat on but you know the sunday services was so dope you

know i'm saying like so you have that discussion continually happening but i think that that's something as for for our community we need to learn how to we need to really discuss you know what does it take for us to like finally let somebody go? Like, again, I keep going back to R. Kelly because I'm like, dog, we knew we knew since Aaliyah that like this brother had problems, you know? I mean, I think if there's a way to not alienate him fully so that his only friend is Candace Owens, that would be great. Exactly. That's that's why it's up for debate. It's like, I don't know how that process works. That's what I'm trying to say. That's part of the problem. It's like, but you know why it doesn't happen so fast?

Like I said, like our defense is normally our collective identity is the community. That's how we defend each other and protect each other from falling off the edge, either from the police or from yourself. It's like you bring them in and just be like, oh baby, we need to have a talk you know um but at some point you're like all right fam we done you know and that's what happened

with r kelly it was like all right dog we tried you know uh you we we tried you we can't do this no more you know um i think there's that and I think there's also another question. Obviously, the the American evangelical, which, you know, statistically speaking, still only represents nine to us in America problem. And I just wonder, that's another question to me. Like, they always looking for, whether it was Tim Tebow or you always looking for champions, you know. And this keeps happening to you and y'all end up looking like assholes. You know what I'm saying? And just not like the faith you say you profess like when are y'all gonna stop looking for champions like when you gonna stop looking for yo and just be like let's

just do the shit our book says you know like just for better or for worse like you know I just think that these are again these are interesting cultural questions see you don't need no celebrity like why y'all always think you need a celebrity because you just because again you're just trying to be cool while at the same time saying that you stand against the culture it's like well fuck well if you stand against the culture why are you always trying to have somebody from the culture to be your hero you know like well shit like i don't know i'm just saying like i think i do think that i again i don't have no answers either but i think that these are like questions that everybody that this fool affected y'all really need to ask yourself like you need to ask yourself you know like you said like the mental

health stuff the problem of celebrity which is a bigger problem but to me these are he he he made he's making us inadvertently ask ourselves these big systemic questions that we still are afraid to reckon with. I feel like. Who's to say? I think that's a good note to end on. Well, everybody, that's going to do it for all of us here. Man, thanks for having me, y'all. The several podcasts that this is.

You can listen to Hood Politics by typing Hood Politics into whatever it is you use to look for things. And you can listen to, it could happen here by typing. It could happen here into whatever thing you type stuff into. Go type stuff now. Bye. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows.

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as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though.

I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, God is dead. I'm Robert Evans. Welcome to the podcast. The first episode of Spooky Week podcast. We try to figure out who murdered god and come to the conclusion that it was almost certainly

Wil Wheaton I'm pointing my finger at someone else actually Robert I'm fingering Bigfoot wow now Daniel I'm going to need you to just cut that audio line out of the episode so that everyone on the team can play

it as a drop whenever we need to. James admitting to fingering Bigfoot. Alright. That's going to be an episode. Everybody have a good week. God bless you. No, this is it could happen here. This is spooky week, right? We're recording our first spooky

week episode. This is the first spooky week episode, yes. Praise be to God. All right, what do we have for the ladies? Not the gentlemen, this one's just for the ladies. I'm going to say that right now. The sirs, hers, and slurs. That's right. Jesus.

Yeah, it is. What we got today, Robert Garrison, is some stories about cryptids. So I want to start in the autumn of 1993. Garrison was not alive and Robert and I were much younger. And I want to start in Northern California, where one night three men set out to execute a pretty routine weed trade. Right. They had to drop some cannabis off, get some money, come home. routine weed trade right they're gonna drop some cannabis off get some money come home uh and it's not exactly a secret that at that time and in that place there was a lot of illegal grow operations and it's not exactly a secret yeah yeah have you heard about this i don't know yeah yeah yeah i mean like it's number one once you hit about anywhere in like the coastal northern california from like santa cruz on up uh bigfoot

is like a topic not even not even really of discussion but there's just bigfoot shit all over the goddamn place um from arcata to like grant's pass is probably the biggest density of bigfoot shit but it's all throughout oregon all throughout washington you get a decent amount in idaho i think too um but yeah people make a lot of money with bigfoot there's even a bigfoot highway up there but yeah i was listening to a dog shit podcast recently it's not very good uh it's called wild thing and it's by some former npr reporter i've heard this the squatches podcast right yeah she's doing like a bigfoot thing it's just not very good like there's Squatch's podcast, right? Yeah, she's doing like a Bigfoot thing. It's just not very good. Like there's bits in there where she'll like quote one guy who's like, there's a lot, there's so much evidence for Bigfoot.

If you type Bigfoot into Google, there's like 11 million results. So true. And then an actual scientist will be like, there's no evidence for Bigfoot. And she just is like, what are we to think? What can we conclude? Both sides. Both sides.

Yeah. I did not find it very edifying. I was listening to it while I was alone on the mountain this weekend. There are two sides to Bigfoot story, Robert. It doesn't matter if one of them is wrong. No, it's very fun. But yeah, because I also the parts of the West Coast that are Bigfoot country are also the parts of the West Coast

that grow like more pot than anywhere else on planet Earth. Yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting, isn't it? Because these two things may or may not overlap. Yeah, I think they do. But please continue. Yes.

So Hulu made a, I will loosely use the word documentary here. Yeah, loose is good for this. Mm-hmm. So I'm going to use a few words loosely here. So according to David Holthaus, journalist, which is, again, a word I'm using, maybe loosely,

but he does a pretty good job in what I've seen. No, he's fine. Holthaus, so the interesting thing about him and what I do kind of like about him is he's like he he worked as a trimmer. Like so the pot industry, the there's the people who move the marijuana around the country, including smuggle it into places where it's still fully illegal. There's the people who sell it either illegally or at dispensaries. There's the people who sell it either illegally or at dispensaries. There's the people who grow it. And then the largest by number chunk of the weed trade are the trimmers. And those are the people every season, usually in the fall, come down for three or four months, Northern California, Southern Oregon mostly. And they take raw marijuana that's been like bucked and cut off of the plant and they trim it into the kind of buds

that you buy um and this guy was doing that back in the 90s and he ran into these stories about a bigfoot murdering two or three mexican guys yeah that's exactly it yeah so i think he actually does a really good job in in this documentary yeah i i actually didn't think it was was bad yeah no no i was ready for it to be bad but yeah i was quite impressed with so what happened is yeah like robert says that there are these probably migrant probably undocumented workers right who come well a lot of them there's a good chunk of them probably i don't know by my estimates maybe 20 to 30 percent are like mostly white kids from various parts of the country a lot of them are folks who are either kind of seasonally unhoused.

Many of them like live in camp basically in places like Arcata, a big chunk of the year. And then we'll live on farms while they trim. There are a decent chunk who are undocumented. A lot are Hmong. Oh yeah. Like a lot of are like first, like particularly older Hmong people who like came here after Vietnam and started businesses and then like their kids and grandkids got into the pot trade and were like, well, my grandma or my aunts retired and they like living in the woods and are good at trimming.

Like we can make a bunch of extra money this way. It's all sorts up there. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating. um it's all sorts up there yeah it's kind of fascinating so these three guys set out to do this deal right that they're three of the people who fall into the uh undocumented labor category and they never come back um and whole house is sitting in one of these farm houses or in a trailer or something when when a couple of guys come in and say hey those dudes never came back and they've been killed right they seem to have been sort of uh pretty brutally murdered but the weed that they were carrying was still there so it wasn't like somebody shook

him down and stole the weed right and yeah you by the way if it was a weed industry thing you probably wouldn't because everyone's got a lot of fucking weed i mean people do steal weed but if you're out there doing a murder it's probably because somebody of fucking weed i mean people do steal weed but if you're out there doing a murder it's probably because somebody's fucking with your business in a bigger way than whatever they happen to have on the fucking farm like i wouldn't be surprised if a pot murder would not result in whatever shit they had in their trailer actually getting jacked okay rather than yeah because the weeds are thing that everyone has so uh at the time, their deaths are largely, if not entirely factually, attributed to Bigfoot, right?

It's put out there that these people were murdered by Bigfoot. Now, they are not the only people whose deaths have been blamed on Bigfoot. Earlier this year, July 10th, 2022, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office reported the murder of Mr. Jimmy Knighton. In a press release, they said, Larry Sanders has reported killing Mr. Jimmy Knighton. In a press release, they said, Larry Sanders has reported killing Mr. Jimmy Knighton by the South Canadian River. Sanders and Knighton had been noodling in the river

on July 9th. Okay. Now, yeah, so give it to me, Robert. You're from this part of the world. Is this when you stroke a catfish? You don't stroke... Well, yes, basically. It's when you use kind of your fingers as bait and you catch a catfish by the't stroke well yes basically it's when you use kind of your fingers

as bait and you catch a catfish by the mouth right great yes we call it noodling what a country yes i mean james see robert to the greatest these days catch a catch a catch a catfish by the earth means something very different yeah so does noodling yeah or as the mormons call it soaking sure there's a great story this is off topic but there was just an outbreak in uh south lake city of uh armpit crabs because so many mormon kids are having having armpit sex and also not using protection. Oh, dear. It's awesome. It's so funny. Really? No, it's not. That's just...

Wow. We're still doing this? We're still doing this, Gare. We're going to be doing this the rest of your natural life. Yep. Never getting past this shit. This is what the future holds for you. Decades of arm fucking.

So, Sandus and Nightingale, they were old school noodling. They weren't online noodling. Sureades of arm fucking. Sanders and Knighton, they were old school noodling. They weren't online noodling. Sure, of course. That's the best kind of noodling in my opinion. That's what I've heard. They're out there in the river. At some point, Mr. Sanders becomes convinced that Knighton has summoned

Bigfoot to kill him. That's interesting. You don't hear that a lot. You don't, because I didn't think Bigfoot was summonable that wasn't on the table of of things that i thought one could do to a bigfoot i mean i've always thought bigfoot was summonable but not for murder for sex sure okay yeah that's why his armpits are so crabby well that's what everyone says about bigfoot so you can identify him in a crowd so So at some point, Sanders becomes convinced that Bigfoot is on his way and he's going to kill him.

And so he unfortunately strangles his noodling partner to death. Well, that's tragic. Noodling partner. Well, I don't know. Is it really tragic? We're just going to leave it. We're just going to leave it. We're just going to move straight on.

Yeah. So, yeah, it does sound rather tragic. It does sound rather sad. We're just going to leave it. We're just going to leave it. We're just going to move straight on. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it does sound rather tragic. It does sound rather sad. But he seems to have reported pretty openly that he believed that Bigfoot was on its way. And if he didn't stop this ritual, that Bigfoot will kill him. And a lot of, as it turns out, things that people can't really explain. Often the times when people are inhuman to other humans

tend to be explained as the actions of monsters, right? I want to quote from the documentarian, the director, Joshua Rofe, who made that film. He says, The thing that people should be afraid of is not the boogeyman in the woods. It's our next door neighbors who will usually commit acts of violence that will then terrify, you know, everybody on the block or in the neighborhood. Rofe said that working in Northern California was very scary. We did enter a sort of underworld, you know, for lack of a better term.

And, you know, we were really mindful to try and not overstay our welcome there. of a better term. And you know, we were really mindful to try and not overstay our welcome there. So I want to get into cryptids a little bit. And I want to get into some of the more famous ones, as well as a curse. I've got a curse here. Oh, good. Yeah. The curse is great because it's invented by the California Park Service. But I want to explain kind of the social functions that they sometimes serve, as well as just having some fun talking about cryptids. So the one that I thought might serve a social function, and probably the most famous cryptid aside from Bigfoot,

is our friend the chupacabra, right? Yeah. Yeah. In English, that translates to goat sucker, which is... Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're staying on this bit, I see. Yeah, yeah yeah we're staying we're staying on this bit i see yeah yeah we're on theme it's not a bit garrison it's culture yeah yeah cheaper it's not a costume i'll say

this i'm reading a great book right now about the hapsburg sucker no it's it's called the last emperor of mexico and it's about that hasburg who tried to become the emperor of Mexico And they hung his ass in like three weeks It's very funny Love to see that But yeah, good stuff Huge respect to the people of Mexico So actually the Chupacabra doesn't come from Mexico

It comes from Puerto Rico Oh, I didn't know that actually Yeah, so we'll get a little bit about the Chupacabra Perhaps the best source for this as far as I can find rico but oh i didn't know that actually yeah so we'll get a little bit about the chupacabra um the perhaps the best source for this as far as i can find is this guy benjamin redford uh who has written a book about the chupacabra um and he shows that nearly all of the eyewitness accounts can be traced back to this one uh the first account, which was this woman called Madeline Tolentino in the 1990s,

in 1995 in Puerto Rico, right? So it's also much more recent than I thought. Like the Chupacabra is 27 years old. It is younger than me, which is quite remarkable given how much cultural impact it's had. Yeah, I thought it was much older. Yeah, me too. I thought it was much older. Yeah, me too.

I thought it was like an old-timey border legend. And you're, what, 49, James? That's correct, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just making sure. No, yeah, I'm just kicking here for a couple more years before I can claim that sweet iHeartMedia pension.

Get that AARP. Be able to go to the fucking Sizzler and get 5% off. That's it, man. I got to be issued my 1911, which you get when you're 60 years old. You get a 1911 and you get a Luby's gift card. And you get to evoke the Second World War whenever anyone is rude to you, even if you weren't in it. And you're allowed to drive your car into a farmer's market

in the state of California up to twice. Yeah, up to twice. After that, you have to move to Oregon. That's right. So yeah, until my retirement, I want to talk a little bit about this, this Tuber Capra. So they're fascinating because with Bigfoot, there are, as you have mentioned, 11 million Google results, but no actual Bigfoots. No one's ever found a Bigfoot.

No one can present to you. Big's feet. Big's feet? Is that? Yeah, yeah. It takes an eye, right? It's from the Italian, Bigfeety. That's righty.

That's right. Yeah, okay. So there aren't a Bigfeety, but there are chupacabras. And the reason there are chupacabras is that what people... A chupacabra, right, the name goat sucker, and this will shock you, Garrison, especially, that the way that they are sucking goats is perhaps not the way you would expect.

Interesting. Yeah. They're very innovative in this regard. What is happening is people are finding their goats, their chickens, their livestock with their throat ripped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so it is the way you would and most animals need throats right it's one of the parts that yeah they're not interchangeable they're not yeah they're really that's good to know this is all really important information yeah yeah so throat free goats cattle sheep chickens tend not to survive very long. A lot of times people come out in the morning, find their animals

throatless and dead. Deep-throated, sure. Yeah, you could call it a deep throating. That's where they get it, right deep in the throat. So they, these animals are dead, and the people claim that they're drained

of blood, which isn't quite true. Of course. There's only two possible explanations. Do you want to go through them? One obviously being vampires. The other being this Crippid creature. That's the only possible things it could be. The Chupacabra is a vampire. Okay, all right, sweet.

That's where the Venn diagram overlaps. It's got goat-like legs, actually, but then it's bipedal. It has kind of a human torso and a sort of lizard meets wolf face. Okay, so we're verging in like Jersey devil vampire territory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it prefers warmer climates.

It doesn't like Jersey, and frankly. I mean, me neither. Yeah, who does? That's something, yeah. i look i don't go east to new mexico and i don't think anyone else should either no it doesn't care for bruce springsteen and it doesn't want to live in new jersey so it uh it it stays out west uh but it's been reported all over the world actually now the there are a couple of interesting things about these chupacabras one is that people have found them, especially in Texas, right?

Are you familiar, Robert, with Texas blue dogs? No. Okay. I've got to tell Robert something about Texas. So this lady, I don't have her name written down here. She was a Texas nutritionist. By the way, I will say when it came to cryptids people taught me about in Texas, it was the chupacabra.

Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. Okay. Yeah. We, we, we, I mean, we're basically Mexico.

Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not Ted Cruz, who is the other famous Texas cryptid. Yeah. But unlike Ted Cruz,

this, this chupacabra had actually been to a farm and it had been ripping out the throats of these animals. Right. And this lady had a problem with, with the animal's throats being ripped out. And then one day she finds a corpse of what she presumes to be a chupacabra it is hairless it looks kind of like

a dog but it has pronounced glands on its bumps on its back i guess uh and it has thick blue skin so what would you do robert if you uh if you were living in texas you come across a dead chupacabra? I mean, fry it up. A little bit of a dough-booth sauce, you know. Maybe even some green chili, throw that shit on there and just kind of fry her. I hadn't even... Yeah, that makes sense. That one didn't even hit me, but yeah, having...

I know there was a couple of taco spots we went to in Texas, which that might have been what was going on. Yeah, you just get whatever kind of meat, doesn't matter, meat's meat. Yep, so that's not what this lady did. She was a nutritionist perhaps, so she was a little worried about the nutritional content of chupacabra. She had it

stuffed and it's in her living room today. Okay. That sounds science-y. Is it just like a coyote? What is it? That's an interesting question, isn't it, Garrison? That is an interesting question, Garrison. What the blue dog seems to be is some kind of hybrid of a Mexican wolf and a coyote that has some kind of mange, which has made all its hair fall off. Nearly all of the chupacabras are some sort of canine with mange, because mange makes it look like a fucking monster.

Yes. Yeah. So what people... Yeah, I yeah i mean like if you saw a giant sphinx cat you would also think that's a cryptid yes yeah and especially if they've been ripping the throats out of your animals right because these poor coyotes and feral dogs and such is uh so weakened by the mange that they can't prey on wild animals and so they tend to come okay right it's pretty easy to catch wild animals and so they tend to come okay right it's pretty easy to catch chickens if you can get into the coop right because they got nowhere to go

or to catch goats and so unfortunately poor little guys what's happening is that these dogs these various canids are getting mange and they are unfortunately too weak to hunt and so they're killing things like captive goats and chickens and that is where the chupacabra myth comes from uh going back to the bipedal chupacabra though it's very interesting that sounds a little bit more fun yeah so in uh the year before the chupacabra was seen there was a film made in puerto rico and it was called species and uh god oh man yeah okay okay so unfortunately the uh the original eyewitness report which began the year after that film was released uh-huh yeah this i've heard they all perfectly describe the creature uh it's got the spines on its back uh radford radford is the person doing writing the book radford said the uh the resemblance between the creature, which is called Sil in the

film, and the chupacabra is really impressive. So yeah, the old quadrupedal chupacabra, it's a dog with mange. The bipedal chupacabra seems to be exclusively explained by this movie and people's feelings about United States colonialism in Puerto Rico, specifically the number of defense facilities and labs in the Yunque rainforest and their feelings that maybe something like this shit could come out of one of these US labs, because if the US was developing a terrible creature that sucked the blood of people, it would absolutely do it in one of its colonial properties, right? Yes. That entirely makes sense. So this, in a sense, the Chupacabra,

according to Radford's theory, gives a physical manifestation of this feeling of disgust with the United States. I've got a couple of other cryptids. I was going to talk very briefly about the Beast of Proctor Valley, and then I want to talk about the curse of Bodhi, which is a curse, not a cryptid. But first, Robert, do you know what will not ambush

your livestock and rip its throat out? I mean, like a good sheepdog wouldn't do that. That's right. And that's why this episode is presented by Border Collies. Wow. Let's hear from some Border Collies. We finally got the big deal with the border collie yeah that's real complex that's good yep just use uh promo code uh robert evans when you're buying your border

collie for 10 off just walk up to a border collie and shout my name in its face uh try to grab its food away from it rapidly too that's a good way to get their attention and uh see what happens yep refuse to be herded yeah see if it likes that all right we're back i hope you've all got your border collies uh because this this next this next cryptid is it's a little local one okay so they're encrypted a bit like the chupacabra all across the country but the one that we have closest to san diego is called the proctor valley. Now, to understand the Proctor Valley Beast, I think you've got to understand Proctor Valley. Proctor Valley is exactly the sort of dirt road that you go down when you're 16 years old, when you want to go somewhere with your date,

pound a few beers, and get away from your parents, right? These kind of exist all over the country, all over the world, probably. And they're a little closer. They're close enough to know about, but far enough away to seem weird and distant, right? And Proctor Valley is a gravel road and you can drive down it in a regular car, but it's pretty washboarded.

There's no lights. There's no street lights, nothing like that, right? These days, your greatest danger when you're riding a bike or walking or driving down proctor valley road is the border patrol absolutely hauling ass in in one of their um ford raptors which they seem to have obtained and i will never understand their love for the ford raptor it is i i don't know how much those cost but it is an obscene amount of money to spend on a pickup truck well it's also

like look if i'm gonna be out in the in the middle of nowhere and trusting an off-roading vehicle my first pick is not going to be the ford goddamn rabbit well you're gonna buy american robot yeah but they're border patrol of course they're driving fords unbelievable yeah well they always have a predator drone hanging out it can come rescue them yeah yeah the the border patrol and steroid abusers in my old neighborhood in West LA shaking hands over the Ford Raptor. Yeah, Ford Raptors with illegal tints. Yeah. Ford Raptors, the car you can only drive if you have adult onset acne caused as a result of injecting hormones into your fucking thigh every night. Yeah, they sell a lot of them in LA, coincidentally.

Yeah. Well, you really need one for, you know, getting down Beverly Hills Boulevard. Not the good hormones, like the ones you steal from a horse's blood. Yeah, yeah. The hormones you take when you're wanting to be more macho, but maybe not quite achieving your gender insecurities. Okay, so legend has it that a young couple

headed off down Proctor Valley Road one night and their car broke down. So the young man gets out, this a male female couple and he's going to fix the car right and he says to the lady in a very chivalrous way that she should lock the door so she's safe right that's the last she hears of him so she assumes he's gone off to get some help and she nods off right she's got the doors locked she's very safe she nods off. She's got the doors locked. She's very safe. She nods off, and she's awoken by a kind of scratching sound,

and the wind's howling. Every time the wind blows, there's a little scratch on the roof. Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch. Wind noise. I'm not going to do the wind noise. And she starts shitting herself. She's very scared now. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Wind, wind, wind. Scratch, scratch, scratch. And she stays there till sunshine when she's sun up when she's woken up by the good people of the san diego sheriff's department san diego sheriff's department are shouting they're pointing guns they're doing their thing why are they doing that because her boyfriend is hanging upside down dismembered from the tree above her and his nails are catching the top of the car every time the wind blows him. He's been killed by the Proctor Valley Beast. Now, the Proctor Valley Beast is an animal of kind of nondescript shape and size.

In the 1970s, a local radio DJ organized a search for the Proctor Valley Beast. People went out at night. Previously, the Proctor Valley Beast, most of the stories, it kind of looked like a kind of winged, bipedal, half-human goblin creature. It changed its form in the 1970s when people conducting, it's kind of a teen radio thing in the 1970s, right? People conducting this search reported finding a deranged cow.

Okay. The cow was probably not deranged the cow was just sleeping yeah i i've known more cows than most people i grew up on a cow farm i've seen them behave in a variety of ways i've never seen one appear deranged yeah sometimes they're moving very quickly sometimes they're scared sometimes they're sick deranged is an interest because cows don't really have enough going on up there to be deranged. You didn't grow up in the United Kingdom in a certain period of time, Robert, when our cows became mad. Well, but that's still, I've seen cows that have mad cow disease and they're like, they're ill, but they're, I don't know. Yeah, they're not like, oho! Yeah, that's a crazy cow, They're not like forgetting the name of their eldest daughter

as they lose their way home. Going on violent rampages. They're not asking where their husband who died 23 years ago is when they wake up in the middle of the night. Anyway. A senile cow. They have to go live on...

They go and live on a farm when they get all the cows that's why you haven't seen him robert i sure do like that young ronald reagan that's it that's my cow voice yeah yeah they uh they get they get old they forget things they vote for donald trump they do a fascism that's what happens to cows it's the only ways cows can die otherwise they live very happy and fulfilled lives in the countryside so why do we have this proctor valley beast right why is there a mad cow that murdered a young man who was uh it was out late nights with a young woman no one no one knows who this young man is right i did

to try my best to find reports of any murders in proctor valley uh and of course it won't surprise you to learn that we have in fact discovered dead bodies in proctor valley uh and of course it won't surprise you to learn that we have in fact discovered dead bodies in proctor valley because unfortunately proctor valley is just a few miles from the border and ah yes well and uh i've spent quite a lot of time out in that area and unfortunately the people that we are finding dead in proctor valley haven't been killed by a deranged cow or a bipedal beast but in fact by the elements right so people trying to cross the border and find a better life for themselves and not making it as far as the dirt road, which leads to a small town, which leads to a big road,

which leads to a big town that is close to there. And so what the Proctor Valley Beast is a myth that serves to tell kids to not drive down dirt roads late at night on their own, right? Do it, kids. Fuck your parents. Yeah, absolutely. Fucking send it. tell kids to not drive down dirt roads late at night on their own right it's do it kids fuck your parents yeah absolutely fucking send it your miata can handle it get off road yeah do some drifting what's the worst that could happen uh maybe if you're out there take a gallon of water uh and uh maybe maybe i'm not gonna say that because there might be a crime

uh yeah we can cut that a handgun with a single bullet in case you get stuck off road a silver bullet and a nail to hit it with so the last curse I want to get to is the curse of Bodie State Historic Park do you know where that is Robert?

no when you said Bodie I thought immediately about the movie Point Break ok haven't seen it. Oh, well, that's okay. Garrison, you seen it? No. You haven't seen Point Break? Oh, sorry, I forgot. You've seen Point Break?

This is an audio medium. I can't shake my head no. No, I've not seen Point Break. You haven't seen Point Break? Oh my god. I only watched the filmmaker's previous far superior film that will not be named. Uh-huh. This is a joke that, like, one person will get who says it.

Well, we're going to have to watch Point Break, but there's a guy named Bodhi on it, and he is kind of a cryptid. Oh, interesting. So there, Bodhi has a bit of a problem, right? Bodhi is an abandoned. He did. He was robbing all those banks.

Anyway. Yep, this story does involve some robbing. Oh, good. Yeah, but I have a bit of theft on the podcast. So what happened to Bodhi is... Bodhi's got a problem, right? Bodhi has a problem specifically with mail. Because almost every week when the rangers from Bodhi

travel into town to get the mail, they have to collect half a dozen or so little packages containing little things like rocks, pieces of wood, fragments of pottery or coins. And all of those little packages have letters attached to them. And I'm going to read from some of those letters. Please find enclosed one weather-beaten old shoe. The shoe was removed from Bodie during the month of august 1978 my trail of misfortune is so long and depressing it can't be listed here another one you can have these godforsaken rocks back i've never had so much rotten luck in my life please forgive me

for ever testing the curse of bodie okay so what we got here what we got here is a curse right just a good old-fashioned if you steal something from the town the town will come back and hurt you right yeah yeah and so bode popped up in the late 19th century gold rush right it's in between uh mono lake and lake tahoe they did it's named after a gold prospector. There was some gold found there. In fact, at its height, Bodie hosted around 10,000 people, right? And for those 10,000 people, there were 60 saloons, which is a pretty good ratio. There's multiple documented gunfights on the main street in Bodie.

It seems like your stereotypical Wild West town. But after the gold rush was over, it wasn't such a great place to live. So people abandoned it. And it's now managed by the California Park Service, right? And the California Park Service curates this ghost town in arrested decay

so that people can come and see this little slice of history. And there's a lot we can learn from these places that have been abandoned, right? We can learn a lot about the history of everyday life. Like, oh, what things do people have in their kitchen?

Why with this next to that? Why is there a knife here? Why are the beer bottles kept here? There's a lot that historians can learn over time that they might not find initially. So it's important to keep these things in really pristine condition, right? The problem that they had was once they opened the park you could just

walk around town right it's not like a museum there aren't little little ropes there aren't plexiglass dividers keeping you away from stuff and people took that as an invitation to steal shit and steal shit they did so uh the a park ranger who I cannot find the name of anywhere, but at some point, a park ranger, giving the walking tours around Bodie, started telling people about this legendary curse. And this curse, he said, made it so that anyone who took anything from Bodie would be pursued by bad luck for the rest of their life.

Didn't really think anything of it, just didn't want people to steal shit, right? And as a result, hundreds of people who had stolen things from bodhi started returning them in the mail right they're blaming everything from cellulitis cancer failed relationships on the thing that they stole from bodhi uh now this would just be funny if it wasn't for the fact that every single one of these items has been stolen from a protected site right so yes the park service has now set itself up with this huge administrative burden which is reporting a theft for every single shoe or piece of glass or button that's stolen

from bode so it's taking up a huge and inordinate amount of their time and they no longer will speak uh i've tried to reach out i didn't get a response i did i did drop them a facebook message on their page uh trying to try to talk to someone about this but they no longer talk about the curse because it's created such a burden for them uh filing police reports on all these broken buttons this is the actual curse that they did themselves. This is how most curses actually work, is that you just actually, like, the effect is what you turn the thing into.

And now you're forced to do all these police reports, and that's the actual effect of the curse. Yeah, I think it's wonderful. I think it's great that they made this rod for their own back. You know what won't curse you with cancer or cellulitis garrison i cannot i yeah there's there's a lot of weird stuff that xxon mobile will give you cancer so yeah well the gold that we're about to plug uh that's totally totally safe you can huff that gold you can melt it down dip your hand in get a gold-plated hand totally fine so yeah lick it lick it bop it you missed that too garrison sure it's a shame no

bop it was incredibly popular when i was a kid okay it was like everywhere all right we're back and having all received our little bags of gold for that plug. We did. Yep. I have mine right here. I like to keep it with me in case the shit hits the fan. Wow. I've buried mine in the middle of the Oregon desert. Smart. I've buried a couple of things in the middle of the Oregon desert. None of them gold.

Well, that was that Bigfoot. It depends on your definition of gold. Yeah. Bigfoot's armpit is what you buried out there. And your definition of that guy, I started a barbershop. Anyway, whatever, continue. Okay, yeah, yeah.

We don't need to talk about that on the podcast. Thanks for raising that out, Daniel. We don't want any more Robert's felonies on Maine. It's only a felony if the police find the body. That's true, but you could uh put some shit out there about a curse related to the body yeah for sure i'll give it some mange yeah and then struff it so why why do we have curses encrypted uh obviously partly because it's just fucking fun uh and partly because uh some of our beliefs right like if we if we look at dirkheim or what

dirkheim thought religion was religion is kind of an an outgrowth of society that unites people based on a moral code right and uh functionalists more broadly in sociology believe that these beliefs serve a function in society and i think a lot of these things help us explain things that we can't otherwise explain or give a more palatable explanation for things that we don't care to explain right or things um and like in in nearly all of these cases there are things that rip children away from their mothers right there's another mexican uh like shape-shifting witch uh that rips children away from their mothers right uh unfortunately there are things that rip children away from their mothers uh and your taxpayer dollars pay for them right but it it works a little better to explain things that we don't that don't fit with our other systems of

belief through like if we fundamentally believe, right, that the world is good and capitalism is wonderful and that gradually things will trickle down so that everyone gets richer if the rich get richer first, it can become very hard to explain the state of the world unless you are a member of the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of course. And so instead we create these external things right um these things that go bump in the night so sometimes they can be a proxy for external forces right uh the chupacabra in a way kind of explains as we get closer to nature and nature pushes back on us a little bit that why that happens right rather than just saying oh fuck we've given all these

coyotes mange how on earth are we in a state where there's a blue dog walking around? The chupacabra also serves as a way to kind of personify for people in Puerto Rico, either consciously or unconsciously, that the terrible impact of United States colonialism there, which it's not very hard to see. Even the Proctor Valley beast, right?

That says, stay away from this dark road near the border late at night uh there are reasons to stay away from there but unfortunately there are there are also reasons to go there and try and help people who are genuinely suffering and lots of people i know go and go and leave water out there so uh these curses uh they're kind of like credit scores right they're not real but they can sometimes ruin your life and so

sometimes it's just easier to pretend that it's magic doing that rather than this overarching global system which is not

very nice and that's kind of where I want to finish up I guess is this these are ways to explain things that we can't always explain

and that's sometimes okay because sometimes it can be hard to confront these things. You got anything else you want to say about cryptids, Robert? I don't know. I think if you're in an industry that's adjacent to illegal drugs and you murder someone in the woods, it's probably a good idea to blame it on Bigfoot. So that would be my advice for our listeners a good idea to blame it on Bigfoot. So that would be my advice for our listeners, is to blame your crimes on Bigfoot.

I don't know. Do you guys believe in Bigfoot? Let's end by talking about that. Like actually believe in a physical ape-like thing that's been thusly undiscovered that roams in forests? Some people say

ape like garrison. Primate, I think, doesn't necessarily mean ape like. Sure, primate. Probably not. Maybe Australopithecus. I do not think that there's a physical one exists. Now, I think like we've mentioned

before, like the words, you know, you can say like a curse isn't real, but it can still have effects based on how we talk about it and how like we've mentioned before, like the words, you know, you can say like a curse isn't real, but it can still have effects based on how we talk about it and how like we can kind of make it real by our own actions and the same thing. Like I don't think Bigfoot, the primate exists, but as a cultural symbol that has impact, it is real in some way. Um,

but it's not like, it's not like a physically manifesting. Except for, I would say it is real like a physically manifesting yeah I would agree with you except for I would say it is real in a physical way and have you seen a bigfoot Robert

are you gonna is this where you drop in your bigfoot sighting yeah I actually I actually have I've seen a couple I've seen a couple of large animals

out in the woods I have seen weird stuff in the woods I don't think I'm not comfortable calling it a bigfoot but well I am weird weird things in the woods. I don't think I'm not comfortable calling it a Bigfoot, but I am weird, weird things in the woods.

Certainly. Certainly. Yeah. I've seen a lot of weird things in the woods and all of them were Bigfoot. As far as anyone has ever taught, as anyone has ever been able to convince me. And you know, when you get right down to it,

isn't that what Christmas is all about? Yes, happy Halloween and Merry Christmas. Happy Halloween, everybody. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone

from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to

Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, oh no, there's that monster coming to kill me with his fentanyl knife. Ah, it got me. Ah, what a bummer. Welcome to Spooky Week, where we talk about all of the scariest things. A podcast with foreshadowing.

That is foreshadowing. That's right. When Deputy Garrison Davis just overdosed on fentanyl by being near it and will now consume 17 Narcans. Yep. It was very scary. Thank you. Very spooky. Yeah.

It's good to be back with Spooky Week. All right. So this episode, I believe Chris has something very special prepared for us yeah so this is today we are talking about one of the the most immediately recognizable and enduring symbols of halloween and one of the things that i've had to spend the most time cropping out of party invitations when i was sending them to my kids in high school oh what no we're talking about other iconic Halloween imagery. No, no.

Yeah, well, this is the one, like, specifically, I had to spend a lot of time cropping this out of fucking, like, party invitations to people because if, like, you're in your, like, fucking shitty Christian suburb, and if you send a kid home with an invitation that has a black cat on it, their parents will pull them out of public school because of, like, the rising threat of Satanism. better to stick to the uh the tried and true you know like put the unabomber on it or something yeah you got you got a lots of nice stars you put some crosses on it instead

but like a cornucopia make sure it's like called like a harvest festival or some bullshit yeah oh yeah harvest festival yeah no come to my fucking pentagram party or your party's sick. So, yeah, we were talking about the black cat. And ironically, the black cat's association with witchcraft is actually, this is the Catholic Church's fault, as are many things. As most things. The only bad thing they've ever done. They even created Protestantism.

It's a real issue so true so okay so pope gregory the ninth the may cats eternally feast on his soul uh took took office of the pope in 1227 and six years later and in it's in in 1233 he issued his first papal bull just this is this bull is called vox in rama and vox and rama is essentially like it's a giant anti-witchcraft bull that is designed to like okay what do you mean by bull like people people bulls are these like orders basically that are like declared by the pope and they turn into sort of like they they have this sort of legal status that they're they're they they determine what sort of church doctrine and church position is good. It's basically like – it's like an executive order for the pope. Okay, all right.

And they can just do this. So they do this a lot. And yeah, this is the sort of anti-Richcraft one because he's trying to rally support for like stamping out a bunch of heretics in Germany for the crime of like not believing in catholic doctrine and giving all their money to the pope so this bull like directly links cats to satanic rituals there's this whole thing about like half cat like half people oh i wish it was supposed to be there oh i wish yeah we are this is what we are back to iconic trans girl Halloween imagery. Full circled. There are no new moral panics. This is a fucking furry panic in like 1233.

It's amazing. It's great. Cat girls kill God. Yeah, unfortunately, the product of this is that... You know, like this... It's off to the races, right? Black cats have become associated with witchcraft and then sort of in general with bad luck and you get this whole sort of like, you know, like, this, this, this, this, this, it's off to the races, right? Black cats have become associated with witchcraft, and then sort of in general with bad luck, and you get this whole sort of, like, you know, crossing a black cat, like, bringing

bad luck. And this has really sort of devastating real-world effect on cats. Like, there are sort of, there are, like- It is. Mm-hmm. Yeah, like, I mean, like, throughout Europe, like, from this point on, like, periodically, there were just mass killings of cats in Europe. Yep.

Because, like, these people are fucking barbarians and savages who like should never have been allowed to like leave their stone huts um when i was getting a few a while ago when i was getting some childhood cats we were talking to the cat agency and we learned that they don't allow people to adopt black cats during october because people either buy them as props and then get rid of them or just abuse them. It sucks. It's like an actual problem. Yeah.

Are we going to get to the Great Cat Massacre? No. What is the Great Cat Massacre? That sounds like a sequel to that mouse Sherlock Holmes movie that Disney made. Yeah, it's the extremely dark version. Yeah, no, The Great Cat Massacre is a book by Robert Johnson. It's like a, it's a very, like if you're doing a history graduate degree and you're reading like these sort of histories of everyday life or like uh histories of popular laughter you will read the great cat massacre

and uh he details how like basically in france i can't remember when but uh these printers apprentices were like the apprentices lived with the printer right and the printer's wife also had a bunch of cats which she cared for much better than the apprentices uh so they got mad and started doing cat murders oh no they put the cats on trial and convicted them of witchcraft wait wait so this is like this is like judicial murder yes yeah they sentenced the cats to uh death by by having they hung them or something. Oh, my God. Did the cats have like a defense attorney? Like what is...

Well, you're supposed to have an advocate at a witchcraft trial. So one would hope. But unfortunately, my guess, though, is you're probably going to get another cat, which is like not a great defense attorney. No, they don't get a single fuck. Oh, I don't know. They could really fuck up your face or something if they just you know went uh claws out i don't know if the cats had a defense attorney it's an excellent question uh if someone's read it more recently than me this is this is reminding me of that that great poster someone took from a vet's

office that was like fighting cats it's like don't fight fair use drugs great one oh yeah yes but you know okay my piece of advice to you is don't fight fair yeah use drugs yeah it's great it's good it's good general advice and put them in your halloween uh sweets yeah yeah foreshadowing yeah so according to a study from the journal animals uh black cats have the highest rate of euthanasia and shelters and have lower rates of adoption like have the lowest rate of adoption among all fur colors which is like extremely fucked up and it's also like the number of cats that we euthanize every year is just so bleak it's very sad yeah so fuck the catholic church this is their fault somehow however

comma for millions of people across space and time the black cat has meant something else entirely this black cat with its fur raised and back arched is the bringer of the class war the herald of the new world and its name is sabotage and

it's a beastie boys song about it yeah and before before we get into how the sabotabby or the sabo kitty became associated with sabotage we have to talk about what sabotage actually is and the reason we have to do this is because sabotage like does not mean the same thing now as it did when the term was coined so if you look at sort of the modern definition of sabotage it's it's if you look at sort of the modern definition of sabotage, it's almost entirely focused around sort of the physical destruction of property. Like here's Merriam-Webster's definition, for example, destruction of employer's property, such as tools or materials, or the hindering of manufacturing by discontented workers.

Two, destruction or obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation's war efforts. And okay, part part of the reason why sabot why everyone thinks about sabotage is sort of like a physical act of destruction it has to do with the sort of folk etymology of you know where the word sabotage came from which is supposedly dates back to these like early 1800s french workers throwing these wooden shoes called sabots into like machines to break them and the problem is that this sort of just isn't true um like there there's no direct evidence that anyone sabotaged machines by throwing your shoes into them which seems like a kind of in a kind of inefficient way just grab a stick right like you

you need your shoes to walk on yeah and the other thing is that these are the people who put cats on trial they weren't always thinking in straight lines. That's true. Well, at least this is the 1800s. So hopefully we're slightly past the cat trials. But what's interesting about this is- The other thing about this- Okay, like, sabotage is a French word, right?

The French word for the shoe is sabbat. Like, it doesn't start- Up until, like, the late 1800s, it literally just means someone who- Like, it means to make a wooden shoe. Okay. But it turns out it's actually, its actual origin is more interesting than this. The term sabotage as, you know, like, the sort of, like, worker action was invented by the French anarchist Emile Pouget. Pouget? P-O-U-G-E-T. I don't know how to pronounce that.

It does not matter. No one cares. Poget? I don't know. He's French. It's not a real language. It's fine. I feel slightly bad because he's one of the few good Frenchmen. Controversial statement. Him and Poget,

the only flawless Frenchman. So, Emile Pagot is like, he's a... This guy's extremely French. He is in the period of French cool, which is to say he is

an anarchist, he is a cynicalist, he is doing all of the shit. And he invents the term sabotage as part of this report to the cgt's uh 1879 conference in some city's name i can't remember so the cgt is a really weird union it means cgt means like the general confederation of labor of workers basically um actually it's really funny because of how similar like French, Spanish, and Portuguese are. There were like 16,000 unions across like 12 countries that are named the CGT. They're all either the CGT or the UGC because they're all just like Confederación General Trabajadores or something.

Yeah. So the French CGT is like a very, very weird union. just like confederacion general trabajadores or something yeah so the french cgt is like a very very weird union they're like they're the only union i've ever seen that has at various points been an anarchist union a communist union a liberal union and a social democratic union and it also like

the the thing they're famous for sort of now is the fact that they sat out like every revolution that's ever happened in france like they're they're probably most famous for like telling people to like basically signing a pact with the government and trying to get people like to go back to work when may 68 was happening and you know the thing about like the cgt the cgt is still around today they have like

700 000 members or something like they're the the the second largest union in france and i don't know it's interesting so they'll go on strike for, like, pension stuff, but they won't go on strike to, like, abolish the class system. That's sort of how I put it. But in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they are a very, very radical syndicalist union. And Émile Pigot, who, again, like,

like, anarchist par excellence is, like, their vice secretary. So Pigot, like, invents, he invents the word sabotage as a way of translating basically the scottish term that i okay i apologize for my scottish pronunciation i don't i genuinely don't really have any problems with scottish people uh i i think the term is go con basically, which means go slow. Um, here's the go from his pamphlet sabotage.

That's, um, like his explanation of like what's going on here. The first part of it's him quoting a British pamphlet. That's about what, uh, go Connie is. If you want to buy a hat worth $2, you must pay $2.

If you want to spend only $1.50, you must be satisfied with an inferior quality. A hat is a commodity. If you want to buy a dozen of... Why is it a dozen of shirts? Okay, I don't know. People wrote weird in the early 1900s. If you want to buy half a dozen shirts

at $0.50 each, you must pay $3. If you only spend $2.50, you can only have five shirts. Now, the boss declares that labor and skill are nothing but commodities, like hats and shirts. Very well, we answer. We'll take you at your word. If labor and skill are commodities, their owners have the right to sell them, like the hat seller sells hats and the haberdasher sells shirts. These merchants must give a certain value in exchange for an equivalent value. For a lower price, you will have an article

of either lower quality or smaller quantity. Give the worker a fair wage, and he will furnish you with his best labor at its highest skill. On the other hand, give the worker an insufficient wage, and you forfeit the right to demand the best and most of his labor. Any more than you can demand a $2 hat for $1.

The Go-Kani consists, then, in systematically applying the formula bad wages bad labor so yeah basically what this is like it it's it's go connie is like it's it's a kind of strike where it's kind of like it's kind of like a slowdown or there's another kind of strikers name i'm forgetting right now where it's like you you you like exactly follow the rules work to rule yeah yeah it's kind of like a work to work but it's basically like okay so you're not being paid enough so you just intentionally work really shittily and you just keep working slowly and badly until bosses pay you more and so this had been a big thing in in britain and pigot like sees this and he writes basically

like a paper like recommending it the cgt starts using this as a tactic but he's trying to find a french word for it and he's like i don't know how to translate this and so what he thinks of is there's this sort of like well okay so here's where it gets messy because it's like there's like a couple versions of the story one version of it is like work as if you're being like hit with a wooden shoe so true i wake up i wake up every morning and turn on my podcasting mic and a clog just flies in through my window and smacks me in the face that's why sophie uh that's why sophie had to move yeah to go with the shoes there's there's these there's these slingshots set up outside my

windows that launch these clogs right at my face every morning hilariously hilariously we are going to come back to slingshots in i oh maybe 20 minutes so there's this thing in france like so people people with wooden shoes basically generally are like peasants right they're people from rural areas there's this whole sort of stereotype in france that like in this period and like for the through the 1800s that's like there's like these people with their wooden shoes and they're like peasants and they're like ignorant and they're bad at working and like and so basically what pago is the other thing the other theory of what's happening here is he's doing he's like reversing this thing right he's like well okay here's this here's this like stereotype about like workers working badly

and he's like okay now what what if we did this on purpose like what if we were intentionally just lazy and it's important to note that like and pagode does this in his writing that like so he invents the word sabotage but like he sure as hell didn't invent the content of sabotage here's from the pamphlet sabotage again sabot. Sabotage, as a form of revolt, is as old as human exploitation. Since the day man had the criminal ability to profit by another man's labor, since that very same day, the exploited toiler has instinctively tried to give his master less than what was demanded from him. In this way, the worker was unconsciously doing sabotage, demonstrating in an indirect way the irrepressible antagonism

that arrays capital and labor against one another. Okay, I have to do a call-out post on Porget, Porgy, whatever. That was very sexist. He said every man. That's true. That's not... Women should also be forced to work.

Non-binary people should be forced to work um eight hours a day hopefully more so the fact that he's just making men work is a little sexist garrison doing a hillary clinton there doing a glenn greenwald there that's right we'd love to see it ah weirdly weirdly i in terms of in terms of canceling a frenchman a french dude for sexism like pretty mild not gonna lie least problematic french man he probably did do something horrible i just didn't see it when i was reading about it but you know such as such as the the the guy who invented sabotage um so okay so we have sabotage as like you know and this is an interesting thing about this right when when

pigot is first like defining the word right like he literally is just talking about like labor slowdowns right and but you know very quickly sabotage comes to mean other things. Yeah, like throwing bombs. Yeah, so here's again from this same pamphlet. He's quoting the secretary of a railway union who's, like, on strike for the right to unionize. And this is what the fucking railway union secretary, guys, says. With two cents worth of a certain ingredient utilized in a peculiar way, he declared, it will be easy for the railway men to put the locomotive in such conditions as to make it impossible to run them which uh fucking absolute

absolutely based 1870s french railroad union secretary ah it's great stuff it's actually funny because like so he's just like out there just like saying this and like every modern union has like a giant disclaimer in their thing saying like we do not endorse the destruction of machines like we do not do crimes we are not crying yeah the fucking base french guys like no no no no like we we are actively threatening you to destroy like every locomotive in france if you do not let us form this union this is why this is why my organizing with the iheart union is solely based on us planning future terrorist attacks yeah if we don't get our way the hollywood sign will never never be the same again oh god i've already poured sugar into the gas tank of my podcast recorder. Great. That's going to work out perfect.

Unfortunately, the gas tank of the podcast is like my stomach. So we're kind of... It's just as effective as actually pouring sugar into things. Yeah. That's why I'm hiding under your bed with a funnel right now. Some sugar. On the other hand, Garrison, do you know what else will put locomotives in such a condition that will make it impossible for them to run

uh, the is this an ad break? yes dynamite the products and services that support this podcast yeah, the fucking... The rail companies are making the trains not be able to work. The trains are too long.

They are too long. Okay. Dynamite. The answer is dynamite. And we're back. Okay, so from here, the definition of sabotage starts to sort of expand very rapidly.

Here's from the IWW in 1913 about what sabotage is. Oh, God. Oh, boy. I'm so curious. Sabotage is a destruction of profits to gain a definite revolutionary economic end. It has many forms.

It may mean damaging the raw materials destined for a scab factory or shop. It may mean the spoiling it may mean the spoiling of a finished product it may mean the displacement of parts of machinery or the disarrangement of a whole machine where that machine is the one upon which other machines are dependent for material it may mean working slow it may mean poor work it may mean missending packages giving overweight to consumers pointing out defects and goods using the best material where the employer uh desires an alteration and also the

telling of trade secrets in fact it has as many variations as there are lines of work this is this is so fascinating because sabotage definitely now is way more associated with like earth first like elf tactics and this is like very labor focused like sabotage is done yeah by the people who are working at the factory or place of production on the products that they're working on it's that that is extremely fascinating yeah and and i think there's another thing too right because like there is the sort of physical aspect of it but again like this was created this was created as a term of sort of specifically syndicalist political struggle, right? Yeah. And as that term, a lot of what they're talking about when people talk about sabotage is just strikes and labor slowdowns. And that part of the connotation of sabotage has just completely faded.

Yeah, no. And we're going to get into sort like how that happens and it's so based on addressing actual material changes as opposed to like a lot of sabotage now is almost like performative like even like even like elf type stuff it does it it does get a thing done like yes this thing did burn down but they're gonna build another one it's it's all it's obviously it's it's for kind of like spectacles built into what the actual goal is and for this kind of stuff it's actually it's about like it's more like improving labor conditions it's based on and like there's a lot of this that is this that is specifically designed not to be like very noticeable like i mean there's a very common thing you get strikes like in the u.s even like sort of

like conservative trucker strikes we'll do this thing, okay, so the truckers will go on a strike, and then they'll hang, like, they'll basically, like, hang, like, fragments of metal and shit from, like, the top of overpasses so that if you drive another truck under it, it'll, like, fuck up the top of the truck. And that's the, that's kind of stuff isn't, like, it's not designed, it's specifically not designed to be public, right? It's designed to be something that, like, okay, like, it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's it's it's about like directly materially hurting the bosses yeah over like a long period of time not just like one's like single action you do it and you run away and hope to never and hope to never be caught it's like no i'm just gonna work slowly for two years and cost my boss like thousands of dollars in profit i mean mean, there's something like, okay, so I,

I guess I'll talk about it here. So I've been doing, some episodes next week are going to be about Lula, who's like the sort of like great, like, originally labor leader

and turned sort of like, why am I blanking on the name of the term? Friend of the people of Haiti. Yeah, we're going to get to that. That's what he turned into there's nothing else yeah yeah no but yeah so he's a former president of brazil may be the next president of brazil also maybe you know he he has this interesting sort of like he has a bunch of labor organizing under the military dictatorship and he has this

really interesting line because during the military dictatorship in brazil there's a bunch of these sort of like like underground leftist paramilitary groups and like like his brother gets like arrested by the military and tortured horribly and he has this really interesting line about that talking about these clandestine groups which is like okay like if like if you guys had like talked to like the 2 000 people who work in this factory instead of doing this completely condescendingly and not even telling your own family that you're a communist like maybe if you talk to people like they couldn't have grabbed you off the street and just like arrest like it's like disappeared you overnight because there would have been people

there yeah and and that and that's that's the thing like all of this stuff like this kind of sabotage relies on like you and like everyone else around you also doing the thing and that makes it like harder to crack down on because you just you know you sort you have critical mass and yeah and that's something i think is very different from sort of modern sabotage which is yeah based on these sort of like either either like okay we're doing this and we're gonna get arrested or it's like here is like a secret cell in like the woods in oregon and no none of the people none of the people in this group will ever see each other again after they like spike this tree i wonder if it has its roots in like um i

don't know when these like sub-o people in france existed but like in britain we have the luddites at around a similar time who are sometimes seen as one of the original like trade unions right who would um sure break break boilers in the industrial revolution yeah based yeah britain still incidentally uh makes it a capital crime to destroy a boiler or like to break a boy yeah holy shit well it's a way of break because what the like the ned ludd is just like fictional leader of the luddites right like this giant general who's supposed to come and they were like oh it was ned ludd mate i don't think about it what you're talking about

like they made it a capital triumph to try but to try and break up specifically that right to what like chris is talking about like like it's obviously like personifying the forces of labor as a giant general it's not something that continued throughout space and time but that solidarity where we're like someone in the factory fucked up the boiler everyone in the factory has something to gain from fucking up the boiler so as long as we don't tell anyone the boiler stays fucked up yeah and it's interesting like pigot actually like specifically writes about well he's writing about the stuff the the stuff in the 1930s like the late uh 1830s

but like he specifically writes about like the little thing that that kind of labor struggle in britain is like one of the things one of the sort of like forebearers yeah like the chartists and the yeah yeah yeah the chartists are great we should do a thing on them yeah but so this stuff is sort of like yeah a lot a lot of this stuff is people is people in the 18 like the 1890s and like early 1900s like looking back on those groups yeah and okay so i i want to sort of pivot a little bit which is okay so we've mentioned the iww um and the iww are the people who are basically like responsible for associating sabotage with the black cat and it's sort of unclear how this happens um here's how the modern iww talks about in 2011 it which is like the sort of like sabotage cat

picture it was probably conceived by iww member ralph chaplin most famous for penning the iww labor anthem solidarity forever who produced many of the IWW's early silent agitator graphics, which themselves had close association with hobo signs, described elsewhere in this gallery of IWW culture. I don't know if we can cut that part. Although today the cat has a general association with the IWW, sometimes even as its mascot, its original purpose was as a code or symbol for direct action at the point of production,

specifically sabotage indeed the cat may have been may even have been chosen due to the convenient wordplay sabotabi possibly even a direct inspiration for mel blanc's characterization of bugs bunny often uh bugs bunnies often mispronounce sabotage sabotage oh really should be as like an anarchist sabotage icon though as described in the section on sabotage must be emphasized that the latter did not mean destruction of machinery or equipment although i i i really think that's partially like the modern iww being like hey don't sue us like all right this is the thing with the old iww is like you'll get you'll get like statements from iww leaders who are like uh we i we're not the guy we don't like our our strikers aren't the people who break machines there's another group of people

who are like here also but who are not us who are not us who are doing who are destroying all these things i i never do crimes it's great stuff only my identical twin harrison does crime yeah it's a bad twin it's amazing how many symbols of industrial labor come from the wobblies like the raised fist also comes from the iww right like it's incredible this global impact yeah well i mean like i think there's a there's a reason for this which is that like okay if if you're if you are a capitalist in the early 1900s like this cat is the spookiest shit you've ever seen like it is terrifying like they are like groups of wobblies will like try to step off a boat

and people and like this like sheriffs will just immediately start shooting them like it is to this day i think i think the iww is the only leftist group in the history of the u.s outside of puerto rico that has ever taken an american city which they did in the uh it was a very small town on the border but they they actually essentially American cities during the Mexican Revolution. Black Mountain, maybe. Yeah, United Mind Wars. Well, they didn't actually... That's the thing, though.

They didn't actually fully drive out... Okay. Yeah, true. Yeah, like they... The NWW actually fully took over these towns and was like, we're the fucking running this town. But the thing that starts happening here is you get like like people are really desperate like there's

still there's a bunch of houses like there's a bunch of like old mansions from this period like late 1800s early 1900s like in chicago that are are all built and online in one street and the reason they were all built that way was because uh they wanted to be on on the road to on the road to the fucking nearest military base so that when the revolution come they came they could run and hide like this is how scared peace people are and the like bosses start offering workers things as a compromise that like most people today like think are socialism like they have like you start getting companies that have like into that have their own workers councils in them like they're like here here is here is the workers council we'll give the workers council You start getting companies that have their own workers' councils in them.

Here is the workers' council. We'll give the workers' council a bunch of control over how the shop floor works. Please don't overthrow us. Rockefeller develops the idea of putting workers on corporate boards specifically as a way of trying to buy off workers and stopping them from sabotaging their way to a revolution and like stealing all of Rockefeller's property for the working class. And, you know, we've been talking about a lot about this and sort of like the American context and like sort of the French and English context, but you know,

partially because the etymology partially because of like, who's involved with like the Pacific black cat thing, but like syndicalism, which is the sort of like this ideology of using democratic unions doing a general strike to like seize control of the means of production and in the class system. This is fucking everywhere. This is these these these people spread like wildfire like i think i think probably the most famous syndicals other than the iww are the cnt in spain but like you know the italian in in in 19 in 1917 1919 like syndicalists in italy like very nearly pull

off a revolution during a period that becomes known as the benio rosso or like the two red years they they wind up being betrayed by the italian socialists and that's how we get mussolini but shocked yeah who who could have guessed but you know there are enormous syndicalist unions like everywhere that there's there's these huge syndicalist unions in both brazil and argentina and sort of bizarrely both brazil and argentina both have these sort of like general strike anarchist revolutions in both 1917 and 1919 yeah it's wild like the syndicalists are everywhere there's there's like there's syndicalists like uh tin workers in brazil they're in venezuela there's an iww section in south africa there's like syndicalists in egypt they're in japan like it from this period from like the late 1800s through really even the early

so the early 1920s like these people are a pretty significant section of like the entire international labor and socialist movement and everywhere in syndicalism goes this black cat goes with them now unfortunately as the 1900s wear on the the influence of syndicalism goes, this black cat goes with them. Now, unfortunately, as the 1900s wear on, the influence of syndicalism begins to wane as a combination of both intense post-World War I repression and, you know, as reactions, sort of like Red Scare reactions to the Russian Revolution. And also the sort of rise of, like, Leninist communist parties who have their own doctrines that don't like rely on sabotage in the sort of theoretical sense that syndicalism does and this has like this has a bunch of sort of maligned effects

on what people think sabotage is unfortunately but do you know what else degraded the use of sabotage as a political and ideological weapon it's ads it's the advertising industrial complex yeah not the beastie boys and we are back but wait there's still more sabotage because unfortunately you know as as the sort of like the syndicalist

movement is declining and like every single one of these people is getting shot uh there was waiting in the wings another type of sabotage that we've talked about a lot on this show yeah this is ecological sabotage which i i'm okay i also see people calling it eco taj and like i'm sorry i love you i love you all forest defenders that is a dog shit word like not a word eco taj like hey come on like this is this is not this is not actually a good word we could do better um it's also called monkey wrenching after the uh the the the work of ecological activist and inveterate racist edward abby that's right and sexist don't don't let him off the hook

oh yeah yeah yeah old white dude edward abby yeah he's a he's a very like he this is a very like pacific northwest kind of guy who's like a southwest kind of guy that's true yeah like yeah it's like a guy who's white really likes forest does not like brown people uh he loves the fucking desert like the yeah yeah desert boomers love some edward abby they pay up i was in moab recently and like the amount of people selling like first editions of edward abbey books oh my god like without like entire like first edition to like earth first gathering posters and stuff for like thousands of dollars to someone who's on an off-road safari oh nice i yeah that's a copy

of the monkey this may be a first edition, actually. Do you want to tell the crowd what this book is about? The Monkey Wrench Gang? Oh, it's a group of people who have some fun times. It's people who travel around, they play with some trains.

Some diggers. They play with diggers. Yes, they were. They were diggers. Yeah, I don yes, they were. They were diggers. Yeah, I don't know. He was just having fun times. Also, this is something that I did not know for a while, but Edward Abbey also wrote one of the adaptions of Lolita to play on stage.

Oh, shit, I forgot about that. Yeah. Just an unproblematic guy doing unproblematic stuff. He just loves trees. Yeah. Well, okay, so here's the one genuinely unproblematic thing that he did. He wrote another book called Eco...

Okay, so he's involved in the writing of this. There's a lot of people who've contributed to this. He's involved in the writing of a book called Eco Defense, A Field Guide to Monkey Wrenching, which is this unbelievably intricate and detailed guide to doing everything from tree spiking to disrupting power lines to breaking ranching equipment to sabotaging vehicles and aircraft

to freeing animals from traps to defeating surveillance to sinking ships to a section that is called only quote fun with slingshots uh great in the book it sure is fun even in monkey wrench gang like he goes into great great detail about how to start a caterpillar bulldozer. A lot of it was how to do terrorism, but in a novel. It's fantastic, yeah. There's a whole genre of post-World War II French films that are this with prison breaks. There's a bunch of people who've been in concentration camps and had broken out of them and are making these movies that are like just really intricate okay okay this is how you make a

lock pick like this is this is how you figure out guards like shift changes like this is how you like take out these boards it's great stuff it's it's one of the better kinds of things and eco defense like it's not the most banned book i've ever seen. An award that goes to... Yeah, it's not... Okay. So, on the one hand, like, the FBI is in a weird position because they can't, like, technically ban it. Because the U.S. has this thing called the First Amendment that, like, you can sometimes win in court. Sort of.

Does it really though? Well, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. The Eco Defense handbook was not written by Edward Abbey. It was written by David Foreman. Yeah, but okay. There was a foreword in the book written by Edward Abbey. Okay, that's the

first one. I think he was involved with the publication with it somewhat. David Foreman and Edward Abbey were friends. They were buddies. Abbey is less involved with this insofar as Foreman and Edward Abbey were friends they were buddies and Abbey is less involved with this insofar as he Foreman like the FBI tries

to like entrap him for writing this book like most of the people who actually wrote sections to this all these people the FBI tries to arrest him on other stuff because unfortunately this book doesn't violate traffic law so they can't arrest you for it and okay you can't buy it on amazon oh yeah it's on the anarchist library for

free yeah yeah don't buy it don't give jeffrey bezos your money yeah so it turn on a vpn use tor and go to the anarchist library i know it's in this category of books that are like like okay when you have your normal banned books list they don't include there's two kinds of books they don't include one is they don't include books where it's like well they didn't technically ban the book but they tried to arrest everyone who wrote it and then two they don't include Alfredo Bonanno's Arm Joy a book for which he was

arrested thrown in prison and kept there while the Italian government on orders from the Supreme Court like took every copy they could find lit it on fire in giant bonfires the other thing with the eco defense handbook even if they did not arrest the owners i've talked with a lot of green anarchists from who were active during the green scare and they definitely arrested people oh yeah just for having the book. If you had it, that was evidence that you were a terrorist.

It was something that you don't talk about, you don't put your fingerprints on it, because having this book could get you in trouble. Like, you don't... There's multiple ways to ban a book. One of them being, if you have it it they're going to try to charge you with like terrorism enhancement stuff um yeah they might also try to carve on pretext so yeah fun book yeah and so and like i think yeah calling it like i think with so i i think a lot of the stuff that people were doing that got called monkey wrenching or sort of like ecological sabotage just just called eco-terrorism today because people have – well, there's like a whole loop of this, right? Because there's the FBI, the Green's category going like all of this is terrorism.

We're going to use the fucking entire like giant like military apparatus we've built up to like go after a bunch of people setting free animals. setting free animals but then but then like like at some point and this is i think this thing is very interesting in the last sort of like five ten years like people who weren't really involved with the original stuff decided that eco-terrorism was cool and now everyone on twitter just talks about eco-terrorism all the time which is like they talk about an interesting term well they don't and this is the thing those people don't do it and it's like come on like but on the other hand there are a lot of people like we should maybe caveat for our british listeners that you absolutely can be prosecuted for having that book and multiple people have been prosecuted in the last two years for the anarchist cookbook i mean you could still be oh yeah you it's like they can't only from selling it yeah yeah it's like even

if you're an american you can still get they they've still gotten people for having the book like it's well it's it's yeah it does that's that's the interesting thing about how the censorship works right is it like like you you're allowed to be a capitalist and sell it but you're not allowed to buy it because it means you're a terrorist yep Wonderful stuff. In Britain, you can't even think about the anarchist cookbook. People have been prosecuted for having that on a hot dog. Anyone should be prosecuted for the anarchist cookbook because it's dog shit.

It's pretty bad. I've always wanted to do a deep dive into the history of all the shit that's been blamed on that book. All the people who've referenced it. It's funny too because it's not like the army literally doesn't publish fucking field manuals that you could just buy at a store that like has all the same shit like yeah yeah you know terrorism is when we do it and not when they do it yeah

that's right so i i want to talk about so like this whole thing is a product of like this like you know this is what sabotage turns into right and there's you know and so some of the people stuff that like is being done here isn't really that destructive like a lot of people like you know like people people like sitting in trees right there's a lot of stuff that's sort of like civil disobedience that is like you know included in this stuff but then there's also like but you know but the like stuff like spiking trees is where you i think you and it's basically like destroying construction equipment is where stuff you start you start to but the, like, stuff like spiking trees is where you, I think you, and especially, like, destroying construction equipment is where stuff, you start to get the sort of, like, modern understanding of sabotage is, like, a thing that, like, an activist does to, like, a piece of machinery. But, you know, like, there's a lot of things people a lot of other places in the world who do like who do a lot of stuff for ecological defense that doesn't get put

under this framework where for example there are groups like the niger delta avengers who are like okay fuck it if the nigerian government is just going to execute ecological activists we're going to pick up guns we're going to blow up pipelines and we're going to start shooting and you know there's ground in between like the sort of like we're going to do sabotage and we're gonna start shooting and you know there's ground in between like the sort of like we're gonna do sabotage and we're going to like do armed struggle like in ecuador for example one of the responses you see is sort of like attacks on indigenous land by capitalist developers this indigenous groups being just like fuck it we're doing an uprising and then tens of thousands of people like spend three weeks fighting and fighting cops in the street until they stop and you also see stuff that's like it's kind of of like, okay, so one of the other, specifically

in France, they do this all the fucking time. Like, one of the older sort of like workers, like, sabotage tactics is just like, you kidnap your manager. And like, people do this like, now, in France. Like, it's just like, okay, you're the manager, you can't leave until you agree to our demands.

Like, but like, people will do this in ecological settings. They'll government they'll send in a government minister to like negotiate something it'll be there'll be like a my manager around and people will just be like okay like we're kidnapping you like we'll let you go when you stop doing this i don't know it's good good stuff yeah and i think and i think like and these tactics also sort of spread like for example in chile if you look at like if you look at their sort of like like militant ecological struggles especially like indigenous apuche resistance like that is a place that like more than anywhere else i've ever seen love setting construction equipment on fire like they they really they really like this lighting backhoes on fire it's

it's it's good stuff um but you have having sort of said all of this like the fact that sabotage is synonymous with sort of like property destruction is i like i genuinely think like a triumph of corporate propaganda because the original meaning of it right the original politics behind it uh which which is this like very explicit class politics of like fuck it like if we are not going to get the actual like products of our own labor we are either not going to work or we are going to take it from you or are you going to make sure that you also don't get the products of our labor like that stuff's all just could have gone and that's that's that's very sad to me because it's it's a good politics and we need more of it

and yeah all of this sort of is to say that workers have no reason to fear the black cat but bosses owners and capitalists live in fear your time will come happy halloween happy hallows eve cut fences somehow i didn't somehow i never mentioned bolt cutters in here which is sort of wild oh yeah that's fine buy a bolt cutter that hopefully will be for bolt cutters so i so something i learned on a job once is that like okay so so razor wire is really scary stuff like it has like it has like anti-clotting agents in it that like i've like on the wire but i've gotten past a lot of razor wire yeah well but i mean the thing the thing about this right is that like you could just cut, like, it's actually really easy to just cut, like,

the chains on the chain link. So many people... It's like, I can do it. Many people are not very strong. Like, you could just sort of do this, and, like, this is useful for a lot of things. Like, for example, if you have to break down sections of fences, fences in your lawn.

Like, yeah, you could do lots of fun things with bolt cutters. Keep the kids... Oh, tin snips. Keep the kids off your lawn. Like, yeah, you can do lots of fun things with boat cutters. Keep the kids... Oh, tin snips. Keep the kids off your lawn. Yeah. Ooh. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows Presented by I Heart and Sonorum An anthology of modern day horror stories Inspired by the legends of Latin America From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

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has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right. It's spooky week. It can happen here. Those were ghost noises, if you hadn't realized. And that must mean that today we are doing a podcast about mass graves. What the fuck's happening in the background?

There's some noise. The sound. There's running water. We've summoned a fucking spirit. Where's that coming from? Yeah. I don't hear anything, guys. You're just... You don't hear it?

No. It's gone now, right? It's gone now. It's the podcast where we convince Garrison that there's a ghost in the Zoom machine. It's okay. I could do a lesser banishing of the pentagram if we really want to.

It's fine. I'm not worried. I like the pentagram. It's what I'm tattooing on my children. Oh, nice. Yeah, me too. Yeah. You haven't done the forehead, though,

like a coward you've done there. Yeah, no. I mean, elbow is the way to go. So, Garrison, what do you know about mass graves? Never been to one, to my knowledge. They seem like they're not great. Usually they're a signifier that something not great happened. A little bit of an oopsie.

Yeah. Yeah. Can be a way to hide one's mistakes, certainly. Where would you, if you had to guess where the biggest mass grave in the world is where would you go for well i know there's a lot of big ones in canada uh but if i'm gonna guess yeah they call those schools in canada don't they they should yeah i would say like russia maybe has like a biggest mass grave i don't know that's just like off the top of my head no it's not it's uh you got a guest shireen

oh no i i know where the biggest cemetery is but i guess that's very different yeah where is where is the biggest cemetery a rock oh really okay rock has the world and it's supposed to be haunted so well this one is not haunted but as far as i tell, it's the biggest mass grave in the world. About 34,000 people. And this is in Spain. Spain does not get enough credit for its mass graves, in fact. Second only to Cambodia in the number of mass graves that it has. Spain has about 115,000 people who were forcibly disappeared

and are still buried in unidentified graves. But about 34,000 of them are buried in the place we're going to talk about today, which is the Valle de los Caídos or the Valley of the Fallen. So the Valle de los Caídos is not only a mass grave, but it's also a Catholic basilica. It's also the largest basilica in the world uh and it was built by one francisco franco who was the dictator of spain from the 19 from 1939 until 1975 and it was also his own grave until 2019 when spain dug him up put him in a helicopter flew him across the country so that no one could car bomb or protest or otherwise desecrate his corpse, and buried him in another grave.

So that's what I want to talk about today. The Valle de los Caídos, it means Valley of the Fallen, right? Incidentally, there's a film called Valley of the Dead, which has anyone else seen this? Or is it just me who's decided to curse himself? Okay. Just you. Just me.

More the shame. Yeah. Many more people should be enjoying Spanish Civil War zombie fiction movies in which both sides come together to fight against the greater foe of the undead. Not actually a thing that happened. So it greater foe of the undead um not actually a thing that happened so it's the valley of the undead yeah it could be called the valley of the undead but they didn't they didn't quite get that far uh some of the least spectacular dubbing i've ever seen in

a film like i'm used to watching like english stuff dubbed in spanish but i don't think i've before seen something spanish dubbed in like really cringe american english it's not it's it's it's not great no it's not but in a sense it is also great but okay okay in you know in in a sort of uh enjoyably bad sense but yeah it is it is very funny it's on netflix it's free uh mal naziros i think it was called in spanish but uh valley of the dead in in english so yeah people should check it out if they want a different spooky film to watch this halloween uh so let's talk about uh the valley of the fallen it was built under franco's direction as kind of this national act of atonement for the Civil War. At first, he said it was going to be a memorial to both sides,

the Slick Valley of the Fallen. But at first, it was supposed to be a memorial to the martyrs of his glorious crusade against the Reds, against Stalinism, against Satanism, against all the things that are bad according to franco's but it wasn't really it was just a giant monument to franco's national catholic ideology which kind of fuses the nation the church in this one massive ball of terrible shit it's designed in the neoclassical style which fascists love fascists love the neoclassical style because they can like draw these direct lines between

themselves and the empires of antiquity right and except without the fucking paint because they're cowards and fools yes look white because they're tiny babies this is true yeah yeah they uh they never did the thing where they like bedazzled their statues like the the greeks and the romans did more is to shame someone should bust in there with some glitter spray paint and uh tart it up a bit they haven't done that unfortunately look return to tradition make your statues look cringe yeah that's how they're supposed to look don't worry that the statues do look cringe but unfortunately they're not shiny, which is disappointing. It is built of granite, though, which I guess is kind of a return to tradition. It was built very near the Escorial, which is like the resting place and palace of the kings of Spain. And that's because Franco wants to draw a link between himself and Philip II, right? Philip II was the king of Spain,

who at the time that he ruled, ruled every continent that was known to European people, or ruled territory, which is great, which is not a problem, of course. It's in fact good. An inbred old Spanish dude was ruling over places that he couldn't really conceive of and had never visited. And there are no problems with that.

Okay, so work begins on Valladolid in 1940, right? It's a year after the end of the Spanish Civil War. And Franco decrees that he's going to make this memorial to the glorious National Crusade against the Reds. And unbelievably, he wanted work to be finished in a year, against the reds and unbelievably he wanted work to be finished in a year which uh obviously he's not operating in like reality because he's a piece of shit but uh it it it took 20 years to build right so it was off by wow yeah big construction understander francisco franco uh unlike king philip he couldn't plunder the entire uh labor and capital of the americas to build his folly and instead he relied on the forced labor of about 20 000 prisoners of war these were former republicans right uh and they were forced to

build a church obviously many of them did not like the church and were not really very fond of building what is now the biggest catholic cathedral in the world actually and it has the biggest cross in the world which it shocked me that the biggest cross in the world wasn't in the united states but i'm sure ted cruz is actively working on it as we speak uh or joe yeah i feel like if you like walked around my hometown and told people that the biggest cross in the world was a catholic one they would immediately spend 20 trillion dollars building a bigger one yeah the only thing that could convince them to defund the police would be we We need a bigger cross. Yeah, owning the Catholic cross.

Maybe we should put that, maybe we should enter that into the discourse on true social or something. Franco, of course, is not the only person buried there. Right next to Franco in the center of the Basilica is his friend, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Primo died exactly 39 years before franco on the

20th of november 1936 uh and he died because he was killed by the republicans which is based in good um and he has his little gravestone there uh next to franco which, of course, has not created any problems after Spain sort of began to transition to democracy when Franco died. It's, of course, not a bad thing to build a giant monument to fascism and Francoism. And nobody is going to turn up there and do a fascism in the years afterwards. Oh, boy. Yeah, it's a little bit unfortunate. So every day at 11 o'clock a priest says a mass um and at that mass you can generally find old people who will sort

of mill around for a while and then quietly start doing fascist salutes um which is not which is not great yeah yeah you have to be comfortable first Yeah Well you gotta get You gotta sample the vibes And then do a fascism And the vibes here Are probably not great

They also have a choir It's only a choir Of small children Who Sing Why? Because fucking What?

Because everything about this Is cursed There's a uh there's a film there's a film about these little children who go to a quote unquote traditional school at the basilica uh which i can imagine it's great and they learn all kinds of wonderful things about critical race theory yeah so the priest also says a prayer for the fate of spain and the blessed blessed martyrs which uh really really is wonderful and perhaps uh points in the direction of the complicity of the catholic church in lots of the war crimes that we're going to talk about today second consecutive episode where the catholic

church is responsible for the whole thing wow i can't believe the catholics did anything bad no it's shocking, isn't it? Given their history of being kind and good and generally respectful towards people they disagree with. So true, James. Yeah, no problems with the Catholic Church. So this particular church is hewn, it's just a giant hole in a granite ridge, right?

Again, a giant hole cut by the forced labor of prisoners of war. It's called the Valley of the Fallen because today it houses the remains of about 33,000 people. And this is what makes it the biggest mass grave in the world, right? The monument's register includes many of their names and it has the motto,

Caídos por Dios y España. So fallen for God in Spain, which conveniently overlooks the fact that most of the people there didn't like God very much and really didn't like the version of Spain that's being presented here either, right? Because the vast majority of them were Republicans,

people who had fought against Franco's idea of Spain in the Civil War. And the bodies that came there really kind of came there in two distinct waves. So like I said, Spain has about 114,000 odd people who are buried in unidentified graves, right? The vast majority of these people are Republicans who were killed by Francoist forces, but some of them are not. Some of them are Francoists, Catholics, Carlists, other right-wing fascist type people who were killed

by the Republicans. Now, the bulk of those people were dug up and identified by the Francoist regime in the time that he was in power, and many of them were moved to the Valley of the Fallen and they're identified there. But the majority of the people in the Valley of the Fallen were Republican people whose remains were taken without their consent from mass graves where they were victims of Franco's terror. Right. where they were victims of Franco's terror, right? And they were moved to the Valley of the Fallen to be some kind of like weird pyramid sacrifice ritual.

I don't have a complete grasp of Catholicism, but I certainly don't understand this shit, to sort of, I don't know, make Franco's temple more like spectacular and it's very strange is it's it's very cruel right uh i want to quote uh from the bbc article in 2011 that was written about one of these people jorge valrico so um jorge valrico canales was taken from his home in august 1936 in the middle of the night and shot by a fascist execution squad.

His town had fallen to the uprising and he had been singled out as a socialist. In 1959, his remains were dug from a well and moved to the Valley of the Fallen. More than 30,000 war dead from both sides were transferred there on Franco's orders. For me, it's excruci sides are transferred there on Franco's orders. For me, it's excruciatingly painful that my father's remains are in a place built to the glory of the victors in a military coup, says Fausto Canales. It feels like a double crime. First, when he was executed, then when they moved his body without our permission to a place which is totally inappropriate. So that experience, sadly sadly is far from uncommon, right? Between 1959 and 1983, like I said, about 30,000 of these graves were dug up. Lots of these were like

shallow road-sized graves. They were wells. Some people were buried in graveyards and they were transferred to the valley. sometimes they weren't transferred in their entirety incidentally uh it's like they the these mass graves are not well organized um so like to to perhaps give some uh context here like these they began in spain began exhuming these mass graves in 2007 right there was a historical memory law passed uh and and they're often just just jumbles of corpses and bones right some of these mass graves contain like a thousand people right i don't imagine them being like hey we're gonna do a mass grave now you know what i mean like they're just kind of digging a hole and putting bodies in it yeah yeah

it's fair to say yeah no one made a good plan uh which is unfortunate isn't it but uh yeah they like they would well they would get all the people who they identified as socialist or feminist or otherwise objectionable to their vision of spanishness and then kill them all yeah and then put them in a hole uh because they considered them to be less than human and they seemingly seem to like, dived into the hole and grabbed some bits and pieces and moved them to the Valley of the Fallen at some point. Wait, so, like, how are... Okay, like, what actually...

Like, how are, like, the bodies in the Valley of the Fallen, like, held? Like, what are... Are they just, like... Are they in, like, caskets? Did they just dump them in another hole? No, there are, like... There are, like, various...? No, there are various... It seems like there are various different...

Some of them are in these little stone... There are these little stone tomb-looking things, but I don't think that those actually contain the remains. I think they're in these various pits. So it's another... They moved them from one mass grave to another mass grave that they built a sacrifice temple over. Yeah, so they're now beginning to exhume the already exhumed bodies.

So they're now digging up the Valley of the Fallen, right, to identify these remains. Catalonia has a DNA registry. So if you believe that you're, would be like um people of our generation's grandparents if you believe that your grandparents are in a mass grave that they were disappeared then you can register your dna and they test it against the mass graves that they're exhuming so that's how they that's how they identify people and chris do you know what won't dig a mass grave and throw your grandparents in it? I cannot. ExxonMobil.

That's right, everybody. Black Rifle Coffee Company. I was just going to go with Coca-Cola, but that works too. Well, that's three options. Three for three. Here's the ad. And we're back. Hopefully there was no reference to mass graves in those uh adverts

but we can't promise you that sadly we also can't promise you that there's mass graves they didn't talk about yeah that's probably more likely isn't it anyway enjoy that advert for nestle moving on uh some of these mass graves have been identified by a Spanish nonprofit group called innovation and human rights. And they actually have this incredible data set specifically on the Valley of the fallen, where you can look up the location of, of the corpses that are there. Right.

So like, where did these, where the, of the remains that have been identified from where, where did they come? Um, 3,902 corpses. That's about 70 busloads of dead people, if you want to imagine that. They came from this small

town of Talagona, which is where I used to live. That's not a big town. I was trying to think of a California town to contextualize it by, but I think most people wouldn't have heard of towns that small. Despite being a pretty rural area, the Camp de Tarragona contributed about 20% of the corpses that remain in the valley. And that's probably because it's part of Catalonia. Spain is a multinational state. So there are lots of nations within Spain, right? Catalonia, the Basque country being the ones that people are most familiar with. Franco particularly hated Catalan separatists. And so as part of this ongoing punishment of Catalonia for like trying to leave Spain during the civil war, the Francoists dug up the remains of the people they'd already murdered

and moved them to a long way from Catalonia, right? The Valle de los Gairos is near Madrid. Conditions for people who built the valley were pretty appalling too. The workers and their families lived in these shacks, according to archaeologists who exhumed them last year. Families lived in nine meter square shacks with no water electricity they made shoes out of old tires and they had no windows or no heating their beds were made of stone and they and their children suffered from malnutrition it's it's not particularly rare for people to have suffered from malnutrition in spain after the civil war uh this period was called the Years of Hunger. But even so, it seems like there was particular cruelty

applied to these people, many of whom were serving sentences for things like forming unions or forming student political movements. They hadn't done anything wrong. They were the victims of a totalitarian state. So one of those people is Nicolás Sánchez Albornoz. He was interviewed by the Catalan newspaper El Nacional, and he talks a lot about his memories there. Incidentally, he escaped after a few months

with the help of Norman Mailer's sister. Hell yeah, basean mailer sister she's incredibly based actually uh like yeah she she like helped him escape and then ferried him across the pyrenees to france uh where he escaped into exile in argentina and lived for decades um the only good well okay i was gonna i was gonna make an only good argentinian exile joke but i'd it probably probably is actually genuinely worth mentioning that a lot like a lot of people who were jews fled to argentina too like right before world war ii yeah and that's a huge thing and you get people like calling them nazis because they're fucking dumb as shit and it it's like, guys, come fucking on. If you can't tell the difference between a Nazi

and the people they were killing, please stop. Okay, this has been my interlude about people doing this shit because, oh my God. Yeah, maybe don't cast aspersions. Maybe do a little bit of reading first. So yeah, a lot of people,

a lot of them end up in in argentine exile actually ironically argentina also claims universal jurisdiction uh so what we've seen in the last few years is like uh spanish historical memory groups trying to uh trying to get people who perpetrated crimes against humanity under franco extradited to Argentina to be questioned. Which is also very funny, given that Argentina has its own legacy of crimes against humanity, right? And Spain does this shit too, actually. Spain claims universal jurisdiction

and will try and extradite people who have done crimes against humanity in formerly colonized countries without... Spain has not faced up to its own crimes against its own population you know i i will say i am entirely down for like intentionally starting some sort of like spain argentina like shit fest where both of them like get pissed off at each other and start trying each other's war criminals that seems really funny i would be but i would be even more impressed to see um are you familiar with who Balthazar Garzón is? Is he that weird prosecutor guy?

Yes, yes. Who tried to try US officials for crimes against humanity for the things they did at Guantanamo Bay. Yeah, it would be outstanding. I would love to see Spain and the United States come to blows over their respective crimes against humanity. It would be outstanding i would love to see like spain and the united states come to blows over like their respective crimes against humanity it would be wonderful uh sadly and like in iraq too i think he like um what was it called that the uh did they call it enhanced interrogation techniques that they were using when they were like electrocuting people and such yeah so like

he tried to prosecute people for that. Sadly, like everything else in Spain, he strayed a little bit too close to looking at the corruption of the Spanish state and lost his position, which is a shame. He did some pretty chudly shit himself. Like he very clearly presided over trials where people had very clearly been tortured

and was just like, oh, that's interesting to see you in the witness box giving this testimony. I'm not going to note the fact that you've like very clearly been beaten to shit with a nightstick. Jeez. Yeah. Spain, a country with no problems, famously.

So yeah, Albornoz escapes. Actually, there's a film called Los Años Barbaros, The Barbarous Years, I guess, The Barbarian Years, which looks at his escape. And he was one of only two people to have escaped. But people died building the Valley of the Fallen, right? And then were buried there in this weird monument to Francoism.

So like I said, Spain really hasn't dealt with its legacy of mass murder. And it never really had a truth and reconciliation commission. It never really dealt with the amount of people murdered after the war. And it's really only in the last like 10 or 15 years that spain has begun digging up these mass graves so um under pedro sanchez and the socialist government um they've they've begun doing more to deal with this in 2007 and earlier spanish socialist government passed this thing called the law for historical memory and the law for historical memory funded, um,

the recovery of the memory of the civil war. Right. Um, and you can draw very obvious parallels between how Spain has dealt with its civil war and its transition to democracy and, and how the United States has dealt with its civil war. Right. Um,

you will see like there, there is, um, do you guys, do you know what vox is yeah they're like the insane far-right party in spain yes uh and so fucking cringe holy shit even by the standards of far-right parties like oh my fucking god oh god yeah i fucking uh do they wear silly outfits well oh yeah I would imagine so. I don't think there's ever been a picture of them where they haven't been in the weirdest looking shit.

Because occasionally some of the Spanish fascists wear some pretty gay outfits, and it's really funny. Are you talking about the Foreign Legion? The ones who wear... If Tom of Finland created a military yes yes that is exactly who i'm referring to yeah okay yeah they they are not so much like outright fascist as a fashy military unit yeah yeah but yes uh yeah it's i know yeah absolute thirst trap and just like if people should google photos if they haven't seen them it'll occasionally pop up

on like uh twitter or something where people will find these incredibly butch dudes who like like it's not that they've unbuttoned their shirts just so you understand their pecs are ripping out of their shirts no it's their shirts are not equipped with buttons yeah yeah because it yeah like to be in that unit you have to be so incredibly buff that you start buttoning your shirt from the navel down. Which, to be fair, is more appropriate in Spain. I remember I used to teach in Spain, and then I taught in the United States, and coming back and being like,

oh, I really have to change the way I dress to be appropriate for an American audience. To get back to mass graves and away from tactical thirst traps, what Spain didn't have, right, was like, Franco didn't get hung upside down from a gas station and beaten with sticks in the face, right? More's the shame.

There's still time, right? His body is still available for beating. You know, maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing but uh it spain never really faced its past right so in 1977 an amnesty law was passed which prevented any criminal investigation into the crimes committed in the franco years um statues of franco some of them were not moved until the last 5 or 10 years and when they were removed it was like the government just went in in the night and scooped them up

and no one really said anything and then they were gone so like Spain has only really really recently entered into this period that we call its second transition and that's like its transition from uh spain began transitioning to democracy in 1978 right but what we call the period

after that it's more of a post-dictatorship then like a complete democratic transition and spain was still processing as you can see, many of its crimes under Franco. And it's really only begun to process those in the last few years. So that gets us up to the 2017, I think it's 2018 election of Pedro Sanchez in the socialist government and their decision to exhume Franco. So Franco's lying in this monument, right? It's the biggest mass grave in the world. And on the day of his death, on the 20th of February every year,

it's a gathering place for fascists, right? So Franco and Primo de Rivera both died on the same day. And fascists and Catholics both love this this kind of weird spiritual magic shit and oh oh really oh really yeah you don't say yeah I've heard I don't know yeah there are some books about it apparently uh-huh yeah okay so yeah it it's said that both of them have a fondness for this stuff So them both dying on the same day Is an extremely fucking cursed thing

That has led to That sucks It sucks if you Ever have to go near this place on the 20th of November Which I don't recommend Oh god I can only imagine That must be the worst time Because it's all Of the worst time yeah because it's all

of the nerdiest Nazis it's like yeah yeah it's like if like nerdy like Nazi internet people had a real life place to gather and just openly do fucking fascist salutes

god that sounds like sounds horrible it's a fascist with a calendar like no yeah a calendar who's like into praying it's like yeah it's good fucking incense really into praying I'm just gonna say this

if the anarchists were in charge we wouldn't be having fucking stupid cringe prey fascist meetings this can be prevented the cnt can rise a third time uh-huh sure sure but it is the nerdiest thing ever to think about a fascist like updating their google calendar being like yeah for all their spiritual holidays where their leaders died why do they always celebrate the day that their leaders died it's always the weirdest thing.

That should be a celebration for us. It's a death cult, right? Yeah, that's fair. Their leader dying, this is the moment when they finally express the pure core of fascism? That's true. That's actually a really good observation.

That actually is more on the point than what it should be. Right. Yeah. Like immortalizing them on that day. Forever. Yeah. I mean,

Viva la Muerte was the slogan of the, fuck, was it the African, the African army? Yeah. I think it was Spain's foreign legion, actually, like long live death.

And they called themselves. Yes. Yes. That is their slogan. They called themselves the, what's it called? The fiancés of death. Yeah, they're all gay because they're all married to death, which is pretty metal.

They're also kind of fashy. But yeah, that does really showcase the whole death cult aspect of fascism. Yeah. You know what isn't a gay necromancer again we can't promise okay james i wish i wish we could advertise some more gay recommend gay necromancers i would i would be in my element ah yeah i've just done an ad read for a couple of them actually i should have should have let you know i am so jealous that's all That's all I want out of life. Yeah, please enjoy these gay necromancy products and services. Okay, we're back. I hope you enjoyed that as much as we did.

So the incredibly cringe and just boomery fascist celebration on Franco's death and Primo de Rivera's death on the 20th of November always happened at the Valle de los Caídos right they would turn up in 2010 Spain banned uh like fascist symbolism but this hasn't really stopped fascists doing fascist symbolism right including bringing their phalange flags giving it the fascist salute um marching and just generally doing like cringe like where like uh Rc cosplay meets the catholic church stuff um on the 20th of november of a year at franco's grave uh and like there are always flowers on franco's grave like you can't go there on a given day and not find uh someone like lamenting the fact that Franco is dead and they can no longer just disappear. People they disagree with. Right.

It's shit. And so incidentally, an amusing sort of side effect of this with that. Do you remember the storm area? 51 like Facebook thing? Oh, I sure do. Yeah.

The right area. 51. Yep. Challenge like last year or two years ago. In 2019, three years ago. That's a lot longer ago when you say it that way. It does. It also feels like a very 2020 thing.

It does. Yeah, so the Spanish version of this was invade Valle de los Caídos. With the slogan that if the state can't get him if we get him first i don't think this was an anarchist attempt to steal his body but like massive respect if it was i think it was just some extremely online people doing something that they thought was and actually is funny. It is. Yeah. Like, unfortunately,

it didn't really come to much because they planned to do this on the 20th of November, 2019. And in October, 2019, Franco's body was removed from the Valley of the Fallen. Okay, see, this is the thing with all of these things.

It's the same thing with the fucking Stop Coney thing. Like, the problem that all of these groups have if they want to do is they always set their date too far out like you gotta give it like at max it has to be like two weeks out because if it's any longer than that you the momentum you can get fucking yeah you get scooped so look if you if you if you if you want to seize the body of a dead dictator and throw him into a canal, you have to move fast. And that's why I'm announcing that for November 19th, we probably should not go to Russia to have fun with Trotsky's body, should we?

Is Trotsky's body in Russia? Yeah. I thought so. Did they take it back from Mexico? I have had friends that have gone places to make fun of Trotsky's body. Where is his body? Lenin's body is up for grabs.

Okay. It's just sitting there. Well, maybe we can go do Lenin's body. I think we should start small. Let's encourage the fans of the podcast between now and what we got. But now, on 11th of November, go after Papa Doc Duvalier.

Get him. Start, you know? And then move on from there. Okay, it's in Mexico. Yeah, you're right. There we go. Closer to the geographical heartland of our listener base.

And we don't need to go into a war zone. So yeah, in the middle of November, we're all going to be going to Mexico. Road trip. Yep, field trip. Yep, let's go. You know, I will say there is something genuinely interesting here about the way that like, okay, so you look at sort of fascism, sorry, you look at fascism's death drive in the way that it sort of like creates these monuments to death and then like you look at the way that every single sort of like

like all of the say socialist regimes like it's not so much that they have a death drive but it's like they're like all of them like i learned this recently like i so i i knew that they didn't tune that they'd like embalmed stalin right and like well they embalmed lenin they embalmed mao i learned they also yeah they they but i also learned they did it to ho chi minh too no yeah it's like they did it to like all of these people and it's like there's there's this sort of weird like almost inversion of it where it's like like fascism is based sort of on like you know like on on the sort of totalizing worship of death whereas st Stalinism is like it has this kind of inversion of it where it's like it's based on

like a kind of like eternal life for their leaders in this also incredibly bizarre way I don't want to be like all of Europe is determined by its previous like totalitarian religions but there's something there's something orthodox about

the way they've done the dead russian dudes so i want to talk about franco's corpse a little bit and then i want to end with something else because i i don't want to just focus on spanish fascists because they suck and i hate them and uh i am sad that they are not all dead but franco is uh so franco's family weren't allowed to use the Spanish flag on his coffin. Yeah, so instead they fucking got the Francoist flag, right? The old nationalist flag, which because they are filth, they did that instead. They carried his coffin onto a helicopter.

They flew him by helicopter to Madrid, where the service was provided over by a priest who is the son of Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero Molina, the man who led the failed 1981 coup that attempted to topple Spain's young democracy. So great to see this continuation of these elites, right? This is a country which has, of course, moved on completely from its civil war and dictatorship. On the positive side, Franco is now buried with his wife and he is very near to Luis Carrero Blanco, who people will remember as a podcast alumni

and Spain's first astronaut. So I was going to quote Vox, but I won't because they fucking suck. And no one should quote Vox. You should just like throw fruit at them um and i think that's like that's not an actionable threat right it's just uh sure sure don't throw like any fruit sort of potentially lethal right like like a large watermelon or something potentially fatal like just a banana or if you know the the vox representative is like allergic to a fruit

you throw it at them gets on on their face. Then they die. Then it gets blamed on James. We all got taken into a years long lawsuit and then we all lose our jobs. Don't do that. Don't do that. No. Uh, blame someone else for that.

Uh, you can, if, if you are directing the police, uh, to me in Spain, they can contact me by Twitter DM. My Twitter is at,

at, at chop at Chapo trap house. Yep. That's where you can find me uh yeah i uh yeah sell traps uh okay so um uh of course vox make exactly the same bullshit destroying history argument that neo-confederates make in the united states it doesn't make them any more right uh because they're in fact wrong but incidentally someone else died um on november the 20th uh and that is one bueno ventura duruti right um unlike franco he is not buried in a monument made by fucking slaves uh he's buried uh alongside other anarchists uh in monch week in barcelona you can visit his grave there. It's very cool. You can always meet interesting

people hanging around his grave. And if you're in Barcelona, you should do it. Durruti died in the middle of the Battle of Madrid. Like so many other Spanish anarchists, he died. It's a little unclear, actually, if he died because someone negligently discharged their own weapon into his back, which seems to be the most likely case or leading a frontal charge on a machine gun which which is how so many spanish anarchists died because they were so utterly convinced of their incredible like and they're not wrong they were right about most things uh but like you get their willingness to die for anarchism was perhaps a little bit problematic well i mean this is this is like a thing across the whole history of anarchism. Like, one of the reasons the Russian Revolution went the way that it did was that, like, the sort of, like, first crop of Russian anarchists, like, the moment the White Army formed immediately just went to the front lines and all got killed.

And, like, Lenin, and meanwhile Lenin and Trotsky are, like, fucking chilling and Lenin, like, fucking Petrograd being like, ah! Yeah, which is exactly what happened in spain right like to rutias caso ferrer all these people like get to the front lines and immediately start killing fascists meanwhile tanky people uh i was gonna say something else um uh like spending their time plotting and scheming to from becoming a completely fucking irrelevant political force in Spain to taking over in a year and a half because they are the only people willing to provide weapons and many of the anarchists are dead. What were you going to call tankies instead of people? I kept thinking about that all along.

What were you going to call tankies instead of people, James? It makes me angry. That was just gonna just that's that is that is an evasive answer yeah i was just gonna say scum or filth or a british swear word that i can't use on the podcast because it offends american people which is fine yeah it's disappointing i don't want to be cancelled by work mob uh okay yeah you're not gonna have a heated australian moment yeah yeah exactly yeah i nearly went full australian um which like i've done it before on television and it just doesn't end well um all right uh in spanish not english uh which's also a spanish word 20th of november in spain this year it'll be like what three weeks when people are listening to this some fascist shithead if you

live in a town in spain will be walking around doing shitty fascist things um and people who of course very aware of this but i wanted to finish said, with another thing that anti-fascists in Spain do in November. So on the 15th of November this year, anti-fascists all over Spain will be gathering to remember 15 years without Carlos Palomino. People might not know who Carlos Palomino is, but I want to very briefly recap his story to finish up. to finish up. So on the 11th of November 2007, Carlos Palomino and about 100 other anti-fascists got on the subway in Madrid

to counter-protest a right-wing rally in Lucera, an immigrant neighborhood that's home to Madrid's Chinatown today. On the train on the way there, he ran into a 24-year-old Spanish soldier, José Estebanez. Estebanez was dressed in clothes.

I don't want to talk about the brand, actually, because we shouldn't hype market Nazis. But the clothes showed that he was a far-right skinhead. Carlos Palomino notes this. Estebanez takes offense at Carlos Palomino noting his Nazi clothes and stabs him with a machete. Jesus.

Yeah. He stabbed someone else as well, but unfortunately, Carlos dies pretty quickly. He was 16 years old at the time of his death. He was the only child of his mother, and he lived with his mom, who was separated from his dad and his grandmother. It affected his mother, as one can imagine,

pretty terribly right the loss of loss of her young son um and as a result his mother has become a prominent anti-fascist activist in spain uh she founded the association of the victims of fascist racist and homophobic violence uh and 10 years after his death a thousand people turned out and a memorial to him. And ever since he died, every year, you'll see these massive rallies in Spain of anti-fascists. If you've ever seen... Do you remember a year or so ago, there was this video going around Twitter

and there was a group of people chanting, like, aquí están los antifascistas. Here are the anti-fascists. I see such videos on Twitter all the time. So I don't know. I don't know. It gained relevance among people who I've never seen engaging with Spain

in any degree before. It was a huge rally. So in 2021, thousands of people came out to remember him. And I'm sure thousands of people will this year too like it did with spain's like spain's right for a long time tried to couch itself in terms of like the neoliberal center right yeah so like the partido popular would see itself in terms of like maybe the tories in britain although the tories are pretty uh pretty mental uh but like this kind of neoliberal european right yeah and it it broadly uh sort of

wanted to see itself as part of this like post-fascist european right uh but in recent years it's just taken this this swing towards the hard right like vox has emerged and even the partido popular which would have seen itself as neoliberal right, have tried to outvox Vox. They're now just openly standing Francoism again. In this climate, anti-fascism has also seen itself resurgent, I guess, where anti-fascist identities in Spain are more relevant or more common than they would have been 10, 15, 20 years ago, something like that.

And as a result, these memorials for Carlos have become bigger and bigger every year. So I wanted to end with a letter his mum wrote to global anti-fascist collectives in 2011. In our memories, all the anti-fascist victims would always exist, who, fighting for a world of equality, dignity, freedom and social rights, were killed by the ideas of intolerance and fascism.

The memory will exist for all those victims who, due to their different cultures, religions or sexual orientations, were murdered by the same murdering hands who hate those who are different. Now it's time to continue working against hate. That is the best tribute we can offer their struggles were not in vain we will continue the path although they are no longer with us in every action of anti-fascist struggle they're inside and in each and every one of our hearts which i thought was really poignant his mother is amazing yeah this whole thing fucking

breaks me like i i was like this was a time when like i too was being a teenage anti-fascist in spain uh and this is someone who's like almost exactly my age uh and i obviously isn't alive anymore and uh yeah i'd encourage people to read more about him uh i normally share these events on uh on social media when they happen and yeah this is extremely sad and continues to be extremely sad because spain refuses to face up to its past dictatorship uh you can look up where franco's grave is uh organize a protest and execute it within two weeks and toss him in the uh in the river if you want to be very proud of you that is absolutely a legal thing to do.

And I would be prosecuted in Spain, but yeah. Incidentally, Spain has prosecuted everyone from fucking clowns to puppeteers. Okay, now it's serious. When you start coming out for the clowns is when I start getting personally insulted. We need to do our episode on clown block soon,'t we we do i i can put on i have clown block right behind me okay yeah and then the british police will send someone undercover in your

clown movement for five years no who will marry one of you and let me let me be a silly jester leave me alone nope not in britain it's a crime all right uh okay that's been our podcast do crimes Here is San Diego, San Diego! Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. cruising confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by

everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the peopleaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying

to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzales story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the final Spooky Week episode. Hi, well, this is It Could Happen Here. This is our last Spooky Week episode for this year. And we're going to be talking about something extremely spooky and Halloween-themed. Rainbow Fentanyl, the newest deadly threat hiding in your kid's trick-or-treat basket. Or so you would think if you were a frequent viewer of Fox News or really any local cable news channel.

And that rainbow fentanyl in particular is troublesome because of its appearance. This is treacherous deception to market rainbow fentanyl like candy. This is every parent's worst nightmare, especially in the month of October as Halloween fast approaches. That was Fox 5 News New York and DEA Special Agent Frank Tarantino giving a press conference on the rainbow fentanyl scourge sweeping the nation. It's not hard to see how this narrative became the new protect the children, pearl-clutching panic.

It's a natural extension of the police officer touches fentanyl and spontaneously overdoses lie that local news across the country have been pushing for over a year now. More on this later. Coupled with the old classic poisoned, drug-laced, tampered Halloween candy myth that's captivated American parents for decades. Whether it be razor blades and apples, needles and Tootsie Rolls, meth in gummy bears, cocaine candy corn, or THC Sour Patch Kids.

If you've ever watched any local news during the month of October, clips like these should sound really familiar. Police in at least two Wisconsin towns are investigating reports of possible Halloween candy tampering. Breaking right now at 10, concerns about possible tainted candy in Oconomowoc tonight. Police tell us they've received reports of a suspicious person The world's leading researcher on Halloween candy tampering, Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, has found little evidence to substantiate Halloween candy fears. Joel Best has published multiple studies analyzing the legitimacy of Halloween candy tampering, including his research paper, The Razor Blade in the Apple, The Social Construction of Urban

Legends, and his sociology book, Threatened Children, Rhetoric and Concern Around Child Victims. I have followed press coverage of Halloween back to 1958, so more than 60 years, and I cannot find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating. So let's go back to kind of where all this started. The first report of Halloween treats being tampered with in North America was in 1959. That Halloween, a California dentist named William Sheen distributed 450 laxative-laced candies to children, 30 of whom fell ill. He was later charged with outrage of public decency and unlawful dispensing of drugs.

This is kind of like the only incident that this has ever actually happened with. It was back in the late 50s. This is the only true one of someone like handing out actually laced candy to tons of kids. Now to determine whether the current tampered Halloween candy myths hold any weight, Joel Best examined 25 years of Halloween coverage from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. In his research, he found that there's only been one confirmed death from a poisoned Halloween candy, and it wasn't from a nefarious stranger who wanted to harm trick-or-treaters. The fatal incident occurred in 1974 after a Texas man named Ronald Clark O'Brien poisoned his eight-year-old son with a cyanide-laced pixie stick shortly after he took insurance claims out on his children. O'Brien had reportedly given poisoned pixie sticks to his daughter and three other neighborhood

children, but the candy had not been consumed. Since then, Joel Best said that in some instances, kids tamper with their own candy to get attention, or a friend or a family member played a prank that went awry, or even a foreign object ended up inside candy during the manufacturing process, and that's the majority of these types of claims that you'll see on the local news. Now, Halloween can be a particularly dangerous holiday, but not due to tampered candy. The real notable danger comes from pedestrian deaths. A study published last year in JAMA Pediatrics analyzed data over a 42-year period in the United States and found a 43% higher risk of pedestrian deaths on Halloween

night when compared to the week before and after. John Staples, a lead author and clinical assistant professor of medicine and a scientist at University of British Columbia said that, quote, we found that particularly among kids age four to eight, the risk was tenfold higher on Halloween. So yeah, Halloween actually is pretty dangerous, but it's from a car, not from someone sneaking drugs into your kid's candy. Last year, before the current rainbow fentanyl scare, the drug-laced trick in your kid's treat was weed-laced candy and snacks, causing quote-unquote THC overdose among children. But shady marijuana pushers package them just for kids. And if stony patch kids are mixed in,

it's hard to tell. And unfortunately, the black market is making it easy for children to get these products. Ben Salem police confiscated what looks like normal candy during a traffic stop earlier this month. But these sweet tarts, they're medicated. These Sour Patch candies have a twist. And these Cheetos are anything but. All of these items are laced with THC. By laced with THC, they mean the $40 stoner patch dummies

are a manufactured weed candy sold in legal weed shops across the country. The fact that these novelty THC products are incredibly expensive and in packaging covered in weed leaves doesn't seem to matter. But yes, I'm sure the black market is super eager to give away tiny $50 bags of weed Doritos to children dressed as the Avengers. All right, now the details on a big warning for parents tonight. Police officers in Ben Salem confiscated these items during a traffic stop. It's candy laced with marijuana. And now police don't want these friendly looking snacks to get into the wrong hands

with Halloween coming up. I'm going to quote from Filter Mag. Quote, attorneys general across the country are participating in the annual tradition of urging parents to stand vigilant against free drugs disguised as candy. On October 26th, four state AGs issued such claims, all using the same data and language, which appears to have been generously pre-written for them by the Department of Homeland Security. Ohio, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York, and Arkansas earlier that month, decried the dangers of youth THC overdose, but without hinting at what those dangers might be,

except for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who alone of the AGs swung big, saying, New York parents should be on the alert for deceptive cannabis products that look like standard snacks and candy, but contain dangerously high concentrations of THC. These products are especially dangerous for our children. We've seen an increase in accidental overdoses among children nationwide, and it's vital that we do everything we can to protect our children and curb this crisis and prevent any future harm,

or even worse, death. Now, that's a stunning claim, even by weed disinformation standards. To date, there's been no confirmed evidence that THC overdose has ever killed anybody, adult or child. So with all of that drug-laced Halloween history, onto the latest rainbow-colored menace in your child's trick-or-treat basket. As Halloween approaches, federal authorities are warning parents about the deadly consequences of fentanyl pills, particularly about the rainbow variety that look like candy. 2022, claiming during that month that the DEA and law enforcement partners seized brightly

colored fentanyl and fentanyl pills in 26 states. And this is how the presence of colored fentanyl was framed in the DEA's initial statement. Quote, this trend appears to be a new method used by Mexican drug cartels to sell highly addictive and potentially deadly fentanyl made to look like candy to children, unquote. Now, obviously, children aren't the biggest consumer base for these drugs since they have no money, have very low tolerance, and are unlikely to be a repeat customer. But that hasn't stopped the DEA from continuously referring to these colored pills as quote-unquote marketing to attract kids, as if there's rainbow fentanyl

ads on Nickelodeon or something. It seems the only one marketing rainbow fentanyl is the DEA itself, and now news channels across the country. This is from Good Morning America. A warning, certainly one here that parents need to hear with Halloween coming up. It's about potentially deadly fentanyl pills that look like candy. Obviously, the DEA is an enforcement agency, not a harm reduction agency. And the way they've been talking about fentanyl the past few months has focused more on old war on drugs style propaganda with anti-immigrant drug warriors pushing the fentanyl for kids narrative. The DEA's messaging seems largely targeted to parents and more intended to cause

panic than actually work to prevent overdoses And it distracts from experts that say drug criminalization is what actually increases overdoses, not these quote-unquote candy-colored pills. Mariah Francis, a resource associate with the National Harm Reduction Coalition, says such rhetoric is, quote, an active byproduct of drug policies that prioritize criminalization and political agendas over active harm reduction, unquote. byproduct of drug policies that prioritize criminalization and political agendas over

active harm reduction, unquote, as colored fentanyl can actually serve as an indicator that these pills are not prescription drugs. The other war on drugs style scare tactic being used a lot recently has been promoting heavily publicized drug seizures and making highly exaggerated claims about what the busts mean to the illicit drug supply and public health. Michigan and Ohio, we've seized approximately 4 million deadly doses. Special agent in charge Orville Green says nationwide that number jumps to 36 million deadly doses seized in just four months. And they're in pill and powder form. They source materials coming from China produced by drug cartels in Mexico.

Calling them quote unquote deadly doses. Like, yeah, dude, if you quantify your seizure by an amount that could be potentially deadly, I suppose you could only measure in deadly quantities. I could do the same thing with caffeine. I can go to the store and pick up like 10 bang energy drinks and be, I just got a deadly dose of caffeine. Like, yeah, if you're measuring it in that way, sure, you can measure it as deadly doses. Plus, in that clip from Fox to Detroit, you can see the anti-China, anti-Mexico angle that they're running with. Now, obviously, places like Fox News has been eating this stuff up.

Just during the first half of September, the network mentioned Rainbow Fentanyl at least 66 times on the air over the previous month, weaponizing the narrative to blame migrants at the border and China for the supposed threat that the drug poses to poor, innocent children. And many of People's most trusted news sources, which are local news outlets, have contributed to the DEA's panic by parroting the agency's statements as pure fact, pushing the claim that Rainbow Fentanyl is meant to attract kids just at face value, presented without any skepticism, without any fact-checking, or information from independent drug policy experts. Here is a headline from ABC24 in Tennessee, quote, Rainbow Fentanyl, the colorful marketing tactic already in Memphis streets. And this is from a

TV channel in Raleigh, North Carolina, DEA warns of so-called rainbow fentanyl putting children at risk, and headlines like that have been a dime a dozen the past month, never once bringing up that there's not a single piece of evidence that these pills are being peddled on the playground. This is exactly the kind of behavior from news organizations that leads to misinformation and panics, which distract from actual public health dangers and relatively simple things we can do to combat them. tradition of Halloween candy-based fear-mongering by baselessly claiming that parents should be concerned about fentanyl appearing in their child's Halloween candy. Federal agents with an urgent warning to parents about potentially deadly fentanyl pills that look just like candy. Dubbed rainbow fentanyl, authorities are calling it a newly packaged

poison as Halloween is around the corner. The idea that people are going to give away free drugs for Halloween, which is a wild concept. I wish I would go out trick or treating more if there was free drugs. But this idea has been boosted by elected leaders and non-DEA government officials. Florida's Attorney General Ashley Moody did a whole press conference saying, quote, Halloween can be very scary, but nowhere near as scary as rainbow-colored fentanyl that looks like candy and can be lethal in minute doses. Whether these drugs are being transported in candy boxes or mixed in with other common drugs and sold to unsuspecting users,

the threat posed to the safety of kids and young adults is very real. Just one pill laced with fentanyl can kill, so parents, please talk to your children about the dangers posed by this extremely lethal drug. Halloween can be scary, but not as... Anyway, Senator Rob Portman wrote, quote, We must have all the boots on the ground

to interdict deadly rainbow fentanyl as Halloween approaches, which he posted alongside a Fox News story about fentanyl disguised in candy packaging, which is simply a common tactic to smuggle drugs through borders, which is why such packaging is found so often in drug seizures. Now, nobody is planning to give away free Skittle fentanyl to little Timmy when he comes knocking on doors.

And more quote-unquote boots on the ground is exactly what law enforcement wanted when they started this lie. The DEA budget has gone up every year, and so have fentanyl overdoses. But it's the won't-somebody-think-of-the-children angle that's so irresistible to news media. It provides a huge rush to our culture's actual favorite drug, fear for our children. It's the same undercurrent that fuels attacks on drag queens and trans people. Fear for the kids.

While a long piece in CNN explicitly said, parents of young children should not overly panic, a WRAL piece cautioned that, quote, we all know how easy it is for children to pass candy around to each other. As if like Rainbow Fentanyl is gonna be shared around, like, M&Ms at a lunch break or something. And one of the more silly things that I found, people running the account for ABC7 Eyewitness News hid over 100 replies pointing out the disinformation in their so-called eyewitness news story in their tweet that read, quote,

Hashtag breaking 12,000 fentanyl pills seized in wrappers of Skittles, Whoppers, Sweet Tarts at LAX, sparking renewed Halloween warnings to parents. Halloween warnings to parents. So yeah, they hid over 100 replies to that tweet, basically saying this is bullshit. You have no idea what you're talking about. This story, again, it conflates methods of drug trafficking with the longstanding myth of expensive drugs being hidden in cheap Halloween candy. And then by far the most ridiculous thing that I found is just because it's kind of absurd and slightly funny. Laura Trump on Fox News did the most ridiculous rainbow fentanyl segment that I could find, including spreading the blatant lie that police officers have indeed died by simply touching fentanyl. Yeah, you look at the police officers who, when they just pat people down and they find it, if it touches their fingers, they literally go into shock and almost die from it. Some, I think, have died from it. The idea that you could have a kid anywhere in America, if one child dies from this on

Halloween, I got to tell you, we have to take action to stop this right now because parents are terrified and we have no answers. What are we supposed to do? They're going to go trick or treating. So Democrats ruin Halloween, too. That's right are we supposed to do? They're gonna go trick or treating. So Democrats ruin Halloween too. Man, they really do. They're doing everything. So what you wouldn't know by watching these types of news programs, whether they be Fox News or just regular cable news, is that the colors in these drugs have been added to pills for years. The

real danger isn't that kids are being given fentanyl-like candy. It's that fentanyl is being pressed into the shapes of other prescription drugs like oxycodone, and people will take a fentanyl pill thinking it's something else and then overdose. And throughout many of these news stories, they don't mention Narcan, or if they do, they mention it in the context as saying like, this school in LA now carries Narcan. That's how bad things are getting. Like, they use the presence of Narcan as like a bad omen, which means no, people should just have Narcan everywhere because it's great. Well, more on that later. But these colored pills provide such a compelling visual for anyone with a financial stake in

continuing prohibition. In a way, the DEA is right. Rainbow Fentanyl is a marketing stunt, but one concocted by the DEA itself as a justification for its own existence, rather than drug sellers marketing their product to kids. Using the escalating demonization of fentanyl to call for increased funding to law enforcement and border patrol, and the need to convince a public acclimating to the idea of fentanyl that actually fentanyl is even scarier than what they once thought. Quoting Filter Mag again, quote, people sell drugs because they are economically motivated to do so.

and quote, people sell drugs because they are economically motivated to do so. No one except the DEA and its allies is arguing that it's a good business strategy to kill off your adult buyers and give free samples to children, a previously untapped customer base because the fentanyl was never pretty enough and not because children do not have money. The emergence of different colors of pressed pills alongside the traditional blue fentanyl pills won't lure in younger buyers. If anything, it'll help keep newer buyers safe. Unquote. Brightly colored fake pills that are clearly fake are helpful for people being cut off of their prescription and turning to street drugs to remind them that what they're getting is not the oxycodone that they're used to, but something more potent. And for more on what fentanyl actually is, and to kind of get an expert opinion on these topics, I interviewed Ryan Marino, the resident fentanyl expert who's cited in basically all

of these news stories. So after this ad break, you will hear that interview. First, can you introduce yourself? So I'm Ryan Marino. I'm a medical toxicologist, emergency doc, and addiction medicine specialist. So what exactly is fentanyl? What's the deal? What is the actual thing? Because people I know have heard a lot about it, but they may be unaware like what this type of opioid is, how it's different from other things, why it's around. Yeah. And I think most people hear kind of one side of fentanyl. And so fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. So it's a lot like heroin, morphine, oxycodone, all those other things. It

acts the same way. The difference is that it is more potent. And because it is fully synthetic, it can be made without the necessity for like large poppy fields, weather, all that stuff. But it's very easy to produce. It's used medically all the time. It's like one of the most ubiquitously used medicines and very invaluable for its medical uses. But in the street, because of its potency, small amounts can make a huge difference in the dose that people get. And so fentanyl in street drugs has been the main driver behind what people call our opioid overdose epidemic and the kind of record-breaking overdose deaths that we've had in recent years.

I would like to guess that one of the biggest reasons that people have heard about fentanyl is due to police officers and all of the stories from the past year of police officers spontaneously overdosing by either touching it, getting too close to it, breathing the same air that it's around? Can you overdose by touching fentanyl? You cannot. So there is a patch that's made for the medical fentanyl, so it can absorb through your skin if you try really, really hard. But it's incredibly ineffective, even with the best pharmaceutical technology that money could buy.

This is still very slow, very ineffective. Touching fentanyl cannot cause an overdose. And the way it exists on the street, particularly, you're never going to encounter the form or quantity that you would need to cause an overdose. So these stories are nothing more than urban legends and misinformation. Why are people having these effects then, right? Because there's videos of people like fainting and falling over and they're like, this police officer needed to receive Narcan and was rushed to the hospital. Like what's actually happening there? Because people obviously look like they're experiencing something, but it doesn't really match up with what fentanyl is able to do.

So it's a really interesting phenomenon. And if you look at any of these stories, any of these videos, you can very clearly see people having real symptoms. I'm not trying to cast any doubt on that. But what's reported and what's shown is actually the opposite of what fentanyl would do. And so people report feeling very anxious, breathing very rapidly, having their heart race, all of the things that fentanyl would do. And so people report feeling very anxious, breathing very rapidly, having their heart race, all of the things that fentanyl would actually cause the opposite. And so I can only speculate on what's really happening there. But my guess would be

that this is some sort of panic reaction related to the fact that people are hearing about this every day, hearing that fentanyl is killing hundreds of thousands of people, hearing that other people have just dropped down from being near it. And there's also this related concept called the nocebo effect, which is kind of like the dark side of the placebo effect, if you will. And so basically, it's just that if you believe something so strongly, you can have very negative real symptoms from it. And the way you would treat this would be with a placebo, which in these situations, Narcan is a placebo. So the fact that Narcan works for some of them

kind of suggests that there is some sort of placebo, nocebo effect going on. I know that fentanyl has become more common since the pandemics. I would say probably starting in California is what most of it looks like. In terms of the whole opioid epidemic thing, why has this become such a big problem in the past three years, specifically with fentanyl getting into so much of the supply? Well, so fentanyl started getting cut into heroin, particularly on the East Coast pretty early on, probably 10 or more years ago now, and took a while to, like pretty early on, probably like 10 or more years ago now, and took a while to make its way west. It seemed like California actually had different

heroin and particularly like black tar heroin was more prevalent there, which can't be as easily replaced with a powder for anyone who's familiar with heroin. But now I mean, there is really no like other opioid supply. So things like heroin are almost impossible to come by just because it doesn't exist in the world. The like oxycodone, oxycontin, all of these pills that people used to sell on the street also just don't exist because they're not being prescribed anymore. Some of them aren't even being manufactured anymore. And so what's left is really when you take away the supply, but you don't address the

demand is something's got to fill it. And fentanyl is there. Fentanyl is really easy to make. It's relatively cheap and simple to produce. And so you can press it into pills that look like oxycodone. You can mix it up into a powder that looks like heroin and gives people similar effects. But because it's so much more potent, which it's like 50 times more potent than heroin. But because it's so much more potent, which it's like 50 times more potent than heroin.

So, I mean, if you think just in terms of percentage wise, like a one or two percent difference could be double the dose when you compare it to something. So that's where the trouble comes in. And then with the rainbow fentanyl angle, the DEA has been talking about how rainbow fentanyl is this new thing to market to children. They've used the word market a lot. This is like some advertising job done by big drug to sell to kids. I guess first off, why would these drugs be pressed into different colors? Like with the fentanyl pills being in, you know, the multicolored collections, like what's the actual purpose of that? Well, so that's a great question. And I don't know what to make of whatever the DEA is doing and why they make these announcements because there's no evidence behind it.

They have provided no evidence, and their own press releases going back years show multiple colors of fentanyl pressed pills. My best guess, and in talking to people who use drugs, people who work in the same space across the country, is that pharmaceuticals come in different colors. And so these probably were mostly just to mimic things like oxycodone tabs. Also, I mean, dealers like to add their own kind of like, marked the things in terms of heroin will come with different like stamps on the bag. So probably something similar there. But also, I mean, people just tend to like things that are colored more than like a grainy beige pill. If it comes with like a pink

or green on it, it's going to be more desirable. But there's no evidence whatsoever that this is intentionally marketed towards children. Children are not good clients for drug dealers. These are just things that adults want. American adults are the ones buying these drugs. I guess, can you speak more on how the DEA's rhetorics around this thing, specifically it's been escalating the past few months leading up to Halloween, there's been a lot of heavily publicized seizures saying, we seized enough fentanyl to kill 500 million people or something. They frame it in this really

like a bombastic way and then you're there's a lot of stuff talking about how it's it's being hidden in like candy boxes and they're going to be giving it out on halloween to your kids and like what is the dea doing like what what's their incentive for talking about it in this way and obviously I can't like ask you like what what is the DEA doing Ryan why are they doing this but like from your perspective like like this rhetoric doesn't seem very helpful in terms of actually preventing overdoses it seems to be kind of just fear-mongering um and specifically with stuff like like like with stuff like with the drugs being hidden inside candy boxes,

there's reasons for why people might do that, to smuggle them. But with all of the rhetoric that the DEA has been pushing, is it actually dangerous, the way that they've been talking about it, in terms of it's not talking about harm reduction, it's not talking about ways to actually help, it's just

scaring parents, it seems. Yeah, I mean, I think the DEA is solely a law enforcement agency. There is no one there involved in the treatment of addiction in terms of like addiction science, chemistry. No one there who is like a former drug user even. So their motives are always suspect to me. And I think with this Rainbow Fentanyl press release, they put it out, there was no evidence behind it that none of it made any sense. The term Rainbow Fentanyl wasn't even searchable before August of 2022, when the DEA made this announcement, which is kind of crazy to think about. And then within six weeks

of that announcement, US Congress has pledged to give them hundreds of millions more dollars to quote unquote, fight rainbow fentanyl, which is, again, a thing that does not exist. And I mean, looking back, the DEA budget has gone up year on year, hundreds of percent since like the 1980s. gone up year on year, hundreds of percent since like the 1980s. But even within the context of our opioid overdose crisis has gone up year on year for all of the past, I don't know, however many years you want to look at it, their department size grows every year, and overdose deaths go up every year. So whatever they're doing is obviously not working. And like you said, I mean, they particularly ignore and distract from things like harm reduction from real evidence-based measures and kind of public health investments that we could be making. And when it comes to hundreds

of millions of dollars extra being thrown at the DEA for rainbow fentanyl, and we think back to, thrown at the DEA for rainbow fentanyl. And we think back to, was it just like last winter, when the current administration set aside, I think, $30 million towards harm reduction, being the first time the federal government has put aside dedicated money for harm reduction. And that created its own kind of like moral panic backlash as well. But $30 million was the first and only federal investment in harm reduction, and yet $300 million can be drummed up at the drop of a hat for an invented crisis. So it does really kind of beg the question of like, what are we doing here? And why are we continuing to do things that don't work? What do you wish people knew that would help them maybe combat some of the misinformation that gets peddled by like, lots of like local TV stations to do things that don't work. What do you wish people knew that would help them maybe combat

some of the misinformation that gets peddled by like lots of like local TV stations are very quick to cover these types of stories, very quick to cover the stories of like your local cop just almost died at the school

by getting within five feet of a fentanyl vaporizer or something like that. What do you wish people knew to help like combat this type of stuff i mean it seems like common sense is just not common when it comes to drug topics if the police were saying that people were giving out guns for halloween if they were saying that they found uranium or plutonium in a car and four officers went down, that would require serious consideration and fact checking before it ever was reported on or accepted. And so, I mean, I think when it comes

to this idea that someone was in a car with a bag of fentanyl and nobody in the car was affected, but the officers outside the car all went down, like just basic kind of critical thinking or applying any lens of skepticism, I mean, makes all of these narratives fall apart. So that would be, I mean, my biggest ask in people watching these stories, I feel like the onus of responsibility really should be on the ones who are reporting it, not to just necessarily take the words of law enforcement as authority on every subject, especially when they do not have the background to be authorities on how things like fentanyl work. Before we close out, I would like to talk a little bit about Narcan, like what it is, what it does, and where people can get it. So Narcan is amazing. I cannot say enough positive

things about Narcan. I mean, I'm not like a religious person or anything, but if miracles were to exist, Narcan is literally a miracle. And especially if anyone has ever seen it in action. But so what it is for people who don't know, Narcan is the brand name nasal spray of naloxone, which is the antidote or the reversal agent for anyone experiencing an opioid overdose, including fentanyl. And there are no opioids that Narcan does not work on. It isn't going to reverse every situation, certainly, but it is a perfect antidote, so to speak, or as close to one as we have ever had. And so, I mean, if you are worried about someone experiencing an overdose,

it's something that you can carry or have nearby and anyone can give it. It was the nasal spray was actually designed with taxpayer dollars, interestingly enough, so that an untrained child could administer it. And so it's very easy to use. It's very easy to obtain for the most part. Nowadays, it's available in, I think think almost every state without a prescription. You can just go to your pharmacy and ask for it if you can't get it from like your local health department or another harm reduction organization. But I have it in my car and every work bag I have. I take it with me when I travel. It's something that people can carry and really makes a big difference. And obviously you don't want to experience or come across someone having an overdose, but it's much better to have with you. If you need it,

then to be unprepared and have to kind of deal with the consequences. And I think this far into this like opioid overdose crisis that the United States and now most of the world has been experiencing, most people can probably think of someone who they know who they've lost to overdose or, or similar situation. Um, and you don't want to kind of be stuck regretting it later. Well, thank you so much. Um, where can people find you on the internet? So I'm mostly just on Twitter at Ryan Marino just my name one word alright well thank you so much for coming on to talk to us about

the latest scourge hiding inside your kids Halloween basket thanks Kirsten so with that that does it for us today here at it could happen here have fun trick or treating if you have any drugs,

good for you. I'm happy you got those for free. Watch out for cars. Those are actually dangerous. And thanks to everybody who attended the recent It Could Happen Here livestream. Thank you so much for coming. I hope to get through more questions, but we went a little long because there were

so many people. But I will answer two more questions here. Did you know that the latest My Little Pony movie has a literal xenophobic fascist dictator as an antagonist? No, I did not know that, but it's not surprising based on what I know about the recent My Little Pony media. And then what do you think is the most important thing somebody can have for a disaster or chaos preparedness. My personal answer to that would probably be friends. Friends are really useful. Books on how to like make stuff and like how to like, you know, basically like survival books because you don't want to count on having the internet.

And then I don't know, like water, water filters, water purification tablets. Those would be those would be my picks. But I hope everyone has a happy Halloween and that does it here for It Could Happen Here, closing out our latest spooky week. 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, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. at coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

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