It Could Happen Here - Nihilist Violent Extremism

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Garrison is joined by philosopher Michael Burns to discuss a new terrorism classification term that could shift the FBI away from right-wing militias towards "nihilist" extremists trying to accelerate the collapse of the United States. Sources: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%22nihilistic%20violent%20extremists%22&type=r&order_by=dateFiled%20asc https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-definitions-terminology-methodology.pdf https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/fbi-kash-patel-antifa-blm-terror-groups https://globalextremism.org/post/trump-abandoning-efforts-to-combat-white-supremacist/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/fbi-kash-patel-investigations-far-right https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-scales-back-staffing-tracking-domestic-terrorism-probes-sources-say-2025-03-21/ https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-strategic-report.pdf/view https://www.dni.gov/files/NCTC/documents/news_documents/2022_10_FBI-DHS_Strategic_Intelligence_Assessment_and_Data_on_Domestic_Terrorism.pdf https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/23_0724_opa_strategic-intelligence-assessment-data-domestic-terrorism.pdf https://bxwrites.substack.com/p/exclusive-the-satanic-plot-to-assassinate https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/what-are-nihilist-violent-extremists?r=1aiy5i&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=falseSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peace to the planet. I go by the name of Charlamagne the God and guess what? I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual black effect podcast festival. That's right We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia Saturday April 26th at Pullman yards and is hosted by none other than decisions decisions Mandy B and Weezy Okay, we got the R&B money podcast with tank and Jay Valentine We got the woman of all podcasts with Sarah Jake Roberts the the Funky Friday podcast with Cam Newton, the Neck and Sporch podcast with Carrie Champion, Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, the Trap Nerds podcast, and many more will be on that stage live.

And of course, it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with Black-owned businesses, plus the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us, all right? Listen, you don't want to miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now at blackeffect.com slash podcast festival. Proudly sponsored by Nissan. In the fall of 1986, Ronald Reagan found himself at the center of a massive scandal that looked

like it might bring down his presidency. It became known as the Iran-Contra affair. The things that happened were so bizarre and insane, I can't begin to tell you. Please do. To hear the whole story, listen to Fiasco, Iran-Contra on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version

of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only.

Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless D***less Me on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless, it's me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deep fake pornography and the battle to stop it.

Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Causal media. This is, it could happen here, or wherever you get your podcasts. CAUZO MEDIA This is It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart, and this episode is about the people who want to make it, being the United States, fall apart even faster, allowing them to install a white supremacist ethno-state,

though it kind of feels like that's pretty much already happening. This episode is also about the people in government who categorize and classify wannabe terrorists who want the country to collapse faster, and what these changes in categorization methods can tell us about the future of the country. I'm Garrison Davis, and today I'm joined by a very special guest, philosopher and comedian Michael Burns of the YouTube channel Michael O'Byrne's and formerly Wisecrack R.I.P. How you doing? Pretty good, you know, besides living in the world that you just described. Past that, everything's going great. Yeah, that's kind of been the my mood the past three months, maybe

longer. There's a tad, a tad like liminality, but I don't know if that's just like living in denial and trying to cope. But hey, you know, what's wrong with a little bit of coping? Especially if it helps one simply survive these times. So, you know, I encourage a healthy dose of, of coping or sort of a, you know, mental bifurcation if that's what we need to do to get up in the morning and get through it all, yay. Now, unfortunately, this episode that I have prepared today

is not a super cheery one for you, Michael, which is maybe kind of appropriate because the reason why I have you on this episode today is because the FBI and the Department of Justice have come up with a new terrorism classification acronym, which name drops the internet's favorite and sometimes least favorite philosophy, nihilism. They're calling these guys nihilistic violent extremists. Oh boy. We will get into this. Do you want to give like a philosophy 101 definition of nihilism?

A super well-known and universally agreed upon term that always means the same thing to everybody. So yeah, it's not confusing at all. And yeah, I mean, I think the root of it, at least in like a modern philosophical sense, is Nietzsche, at least that's a common reference point. And when Nietzsche is talking about nihilism, especially in a book like The Genealogy of Morality and a lot of other places, he is making the argument that Christian European culture, and particularly a Christian European culture influenced by idealist philosophy, creates nihilism. The reason he says it creates nihilism is because people care more about heaven than they do about earth. They care more about

the life they're going to have in eternity than the life they have in the here and now. So for him, it's like this devaluement of life that happens via Christianity. More broadly speaking, nihilism has a, I guess, more positive usage, which is the, you know, disbelief in the inherent or necessary meaning in an overarching system. Like in like the existential sense. Yeah, so you kind of have this distinction and some people use of positive and negative nihilism, and to be really crass and simple here,

negative nihilism is nothing means anything, so I don't give a shit, I'm just gonna hang out and do whatever. Positive nihilism is there means anything, so I don't give a shit, I'm just going to hang out and do whatever. Positive nihilism is there's no inherent meaning in reality, but cool, now me and the homies can construct meaning as we see fit, which is more like the existentialist response. We're going to create meaning where maybe there wasn't natural meaning in this like old school platonic or Christian sense. And I'm not sure how much the FBI agents who are doing these federal court

filings have read Nietzsche or the French existentialists and instead are probably using a colloquial definition of nihilism, right? This like, oh, nothing matters, you know, this like apathetic postmodernist like idea to go to go a little Jordan Petersony, right? Yeah, I mean, I think there's the sense in which it is the kind of weird Jordan Petersony alt-right philosophy version of nihilism, which just means like, people that think the dominance of the West is bad.

And it also reeks a little bit of like, big Lebowski nihilism for totally, you know, and of course in that movie, nihilism is represented by a crew of I think Austrian techno producers called Autobahn who are also nihilist and they say throughout the film, like we are nihilist we believe in nothing. Which is a really, and obviously the Coen brothers made that film, at least one of them was a philosophy major so they know what they're doing. That's kind of the really basic, not good enough version of this thing that it seems like the FBI is operating with, like people who don't believe in the goodness of the Western project. Correct.

And that's what they're really honing in on. I will read an expanded definition of nihilist violent extremism. This is from a federal court filing dated March 18, 2025. Nihilist Violent Extremists are individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability. Nihilist Violent Extremists work or as a part of a network with these goals

of destroying civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations which often include minors. Jesus. Now this is where it's going to get into some kind of weirder stuff that we will kind of explain later. They have like a second definition here, quote, nihilist violent extremists, both individually and as a network systematically and methodically target vulnerable populations across the United States

and the globe. They frequently use social media communication platforms to connect with individuals and desensitize them to violence, among other things, breaking down societal norms regarding engaging in violence, normalizing the possession, production, and sharing of gore materials, and otherwise corrupting and grooming those individuals towards committing future acts of violence."

Unquote. And that kind of outlines some of the strategy of these groups. The groups that they're kind of going to mention here, I've been doing like freelance research on for about four years now. I've been trying to publish a few articles on these guys over the years, but it's always, it's always tricky. And, and we will get to kind of the darker corners of that in a sec, but let's, let's first kind of talk about what this new term is that NVEs, nihilist, violent

extremists, what, what this is kind of replacing in the, in the FBI lexicon? It seems that this term is being used in place of two previous FBI terrorism categories. This is from a November 2020 FBI bulletin. Quote, anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism. This threat encompasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or violence in furtherance of ideological agendas derived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment, including opposition to perceived economic, social, or racial hierarchies, or perceived government overreach, negligence, or illegitimacy.

Whew. Can I say something that stood out to me about those definitions? The hatred thing I found really interesting, in like the very first definition you give, that nihilism is defined as like in a motive state, because again, I think nihilism is classically conceived is almost more like ontological or metaphysical, and by that I just mean looking at these structures of belief in the world. So rather than being like motivated by hatred or love or fear or whatever, more classically nihilist view is just again like, oh, I've been sold a bill of goods on what the meaning of existence is

or what the underlying principles of political reality are. And now I see that they are maybe BS. Not the hatred of society and wanting to collapse it. Yeah, I guess there's just like this negativity associated with all that language. And of course, I was having never heard the definitions that you were just bringing up. You know, the way in which it just quickly zigs and zags to like some very dark stuff in terms of like radicalization, it seemed like there was a reference towards like, like pedophilia or something there.

Child sexual abuse materials. Yeah, come up a little bit, yeah. Yeah, so it just, getting from A to B there is more like getting from A to Z or something. It's just not a connection that I think would be obvious to anyone who has thought about, read about, written about nihilism as more of an intellectual or even like a political and philosophical concept.

Totally, because there is like political nihilists in like the Russian tradition and more recently in like the American anarchist tradition or the Greek anarchist tradition where they believe in this like idea of like negation and trying to like negate government institutions. Yeah, but would you still a far cry from believing in causing active harm psychologically, physically, whatever, to human beings. Like vulnerable populations, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's a sense in which it's painted as, like if you knew nothing else

and you were to read those definitions and you were just a scared suburban insurance salesman or something, it would sound as if it was like a death cult infecting the minds of children, like zombie-esque little super soldiers. That's actually what they're going for. And I have a lot of mixed opinions on this term, because I think this term is trying

to describe a group that does kind of defy classification, but I think the use of the nihilist term is also not good. So I'm kind of in a rock and a hard place here as someone who does a lot of extremism research. Now the other term that the FBI is probably seeking to replace, at least in part, with this new nihilism definition is racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism. This is like you're a wet pharmacist, you're neo-Nazis. The FBI defines it as, quote, this threat encompasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or violence and furtherance of ideological agendas derived from bias, often relating to race or ethnicity, held by the actor against others

or a given population group. Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists purported to use both political and religious justifications to support their racially or ethnically based ideological objectives and criminal activities. This was the group that saw like a massive, a massive explosion in growth the past 10 years, really starting around 2016 to 2017 with, you know, the neo-Nazi mass shooting epidemic especially around like 2017 to 2019. This is the most lethal group and it grew exponentially during

that period and we're kind of seeing some of these groups start to reform now. Now, there's been some reporting that this anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism, which I'm just going to say AGAVE, which is the acronym, which does make me a little bit hungry for a glucose syrup, but it's fine. There, there's been some reporting that state agave is specifically like a Biden-era term. But it actually predates the Biden presidency and was in use under Trump. In fact, a lot of the internal FBI reforms that are being reported on right now are actually undoing changes and counterterrorism strategies that started under the first Trump presidency.

But we'll get more on that later. We're gonna go on an ad break real quick and return to talk about a gruesome act of violence in Wisconsin last month. [♪ music playing, gunshots and gunshots, music ends. Peace to the planet, I go by the name of Charlamagne the God and guess what? I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect podcast festival. That's right. We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards and it's hosted

by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Weezy. Okay. We got the R&B Money podcast with Tank and Jay Valentine. We got the Woman of All podcast with Sarah Jake Roberts. The Funky Friday podcast with Cam Newton. The Neck and Sporch podcast with Carrie Champion. Good Moms Bad Choices podcast. The Trap Nerds podcast.

And many more will be on that stage live. And of course, it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with Black-owned businesses, plus the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us, all right? Listen, you don't want to miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now

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In the fall of 1986, Ronald Reagan found himself at the center of a massive scandal that looked like it might bring down his presidency. Did you make a mistake in sending arms to Tehran, sir? No. It became known as the Iran-Contra affair. And I'm not taking any more questions in just a second. I'm going to ask it...

I'm Leon Neyvok, co-creator of Slow Burn. In my podcast, Fiasco, Iran-Contra, you'll hear all the unbelievable details of a scandal that captivated the nation nearly 40 years ago, but which few of us still remember today. The things that happened were so bizarre and insane, I can't begin to tell you. Please do.

To hear the whole story, listen to Fiasco, Iran Contra on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me.

And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid.

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless, it's me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever. You get your podcast.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the World on Drugs podcast. Sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studugs Podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug van.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. All right, we are back. I'm going to get more into how the government is using this term and like what they are applying it to, what they're applying the nihilist violent extremism label to. Earlier this year, a Wisconsin teen male named Nikita Kasap killed his parents in an attempt to gain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carry out a plot to assassinate President Trump and accelerate the collapse of the United States. I'm going to read a quote from a federal criminal complaint filed last month. Quote, On March 3, 2025, County sheriffs obtained a search warrant for CASP's cell phone. During the review, they identified material on the phone related to, quote unquote, the

Order of Nine Angles. The sheriff's review of the phone identified possible usernames for CASP, including Accelerationist 14 and Awoken." Now, Michael, are you unfortunate enough to be familiar with the Order of Nine Angles? I am not. So this is a group that was originally based in the UK and now is primarily active in Eastern Europe though there are branches or spinoffs called Nexions in the United States. This is a group that is kind of hard to define.

People often call it a Nazi Satanist group. I think it's more accurate to call them a white supremacist occultic group who essentially try to cultivate evil for the sake of evil. They're like a left-hand path occult group that has orchestrated multiple terrorist attacks, especially through radicalizing US soldiers. At this point, they're pretty mythic with their writing and tactics leaving a strong lingering presence across the left-hand path fascist occult milieu. We also have a reference to quote-unquote accelerationism here, which is similar to

nihilism is like this philosophical term, which has kind of been like warped and changed via people's application of it in politics. And specifically kind of the way that we're going to be using this word here is this idea of trying to like accelerate the collapse of the country, mostly to install like a white supremacist ethno-state after the country has collapsed. This is how most Nazis use the term, even though it has a slightly different like cultural background with the work of Nick Land and Mark Fisher. When I was growing up, acceleration just meant accelerating the contradictions of capitalism, but kids these days... That's right. ... took in all their direction.

And not a good one. So this federal criminal complaint alleges that Kassop was communicating with people on the messaging app Telegram and these people were possibly in Ukraine and or Russia and these people helped him plan this attack The FBI found tick-tock messages on his phone where he discussed the struggle of telling his friends that he quote-unquote Follows the o9a teachings that's order nine angles, and he discussed a previous FBI visit to his home in 2023. In other exchanges on TikTok, he shared information with a user named Nihilus about how to find Nazi Telegram channels.

I'm going to read through some of this chat transcript. Nihilus, hey dude, do you know any Telegram groups where Niners, that's 09A, and Drex can interact and exchange info? Awoken, that's Kassop. Sorry, no, I'm mostly in NSWP telegram groups, LOL. If you do find any, it'd be nice if you'd tell me. Nihilus, what's WP? Awoke, wikipedia.org slash national underscore socialism

underscore white power. Nihilus, oh, white power, cool. Awoken, do you know any 098 Telegram groups? Nihilus, oh, not a group, but a channel. You can find documents there. Awoken, all right, send. Awoken, can you send me the link to the account? Awoken, it says I can't access the message

Nihilus how can I do that? Wait a second awoken. Here's my telegram username Acceleration is 14 Nihilus. I sent a message. So there you go. That's man just There is some later telegram messages That are archived in this in this complaint as well, where at accelerationist says, what country do you think will get the blame for this? Meaning his planned attack. An unknown user replied, Russia will be blamed for it.

This is the goal. Accelerationist said, quote, when the time comes for me to send my manifesto to you so you can spread it online, should it be a PDF? Also... Sorry. Sorry. I just like that when the context of all that they're discussing file types. And also, you won't anyhow change or modify the manifesto, the unknown user replies, write it on a piece of paper and take a picture.

Wow. The FBI personnel performing the preliminary review saw images of a three-page document titled Accelerate the Collapse. The images are screen grabs displayed on a phone, and these images were created on February 28, 2025. This document is the manifesto referred to by at Accelerationist. The manifesto calls for the assassination of the President of the United States in order to foment a political revolution in the United States to quote unquote save the white race from quote unquote Jewish controlled politicians.

The third page of the document contains images of Adolf Hitler with text that reads quote Hail Hitler, hail the white race, hail victory. Now from what I can read of this Manifesto, it's pretty basic. It's heavily plagiarized like most of these white supremacist, accelerationist manifestos are. It talks about how Jews control white countries and are promoting white genocide and degeneracy. It talks about the need to quote-unquote collapse Jewish-occupied governments. The manifesto states that his motivation for wanting to kill Trump was to sow chaos and raise public awareness that quote, assassinations that accelerated the collapse are possible things to do unquote,

not that possible since he's arrested and did not accelerate the collapse. But he also advocates that people unable to commit to taking direct action instead make connections with other white supremacists and grow a network to take over the country once America collapses. He recommends the writing of Nazi accelerationists, including James Mason, who wrote the influential Nazi book Siege, and the Terrorgram Collective, a group of white supremacists from around the world who organize on the messaging platform Telegram to share guides on how to do terrorism. He also recommends the writings of former Adam Waffen members, an American accelerationist group, writing, quote, There is much to learn from the successes and mistakes of Adam Waffen. I think it's worth noting that Adam Waffen was also either like infiltrated

or partially co-opted and inspired by some 09A teachings. This is kind of how the more bizarre and occultic influence of 09A seeped more into the kind of general American accelerationist Nazi milieu. This was like in like 2018. Now Kasap advises that if the reader of the manifesto is already like, pilled, that you should just skip the theory and just read practical how-to guides for terrorism and bomb making, since quote unquote, there is no political solution. Huge amounts of violence will be required. Long past the days where we can vote for a Hitler to save us, white revolution is the only solution,

unquote. Which, I guess I'm kind of desensitized to this sort of stuff. In fact, I just find this slightly funny, considering kind of the victory lap that like Stephen Miller and like white nationalists are currently having in the government where many of them do think they can just vote for a Hitler to save us and that Hitler may they already be in office forever. Well that is what's so shocking hearing all this is someone that doesn't know all these details. I mean A, I feel like the blinders just got taken off me and I'm seeing the world anew. But B, shocking that from a more normie perspective,

in my mind, I would think all of these types would be pretty excited about how things are going politically, not trying to tear things down further. It's like, you guys won, you know, accept it. Even Trump is not extreme enough for a lot of these guys. Yeah. They really go places. Now, Kasap was coordinating with multiple Telegram users,

likely in Ukraine and Russia, on how to build a drone that can drop an explosive They really go places. Now, Kasap was coordinating with multiple Telegram users, likely in Ukraine and Russia, on how to build a drone that can drop an explosive and then paid some individuals for some of the required materials, and also had a plan to flee to Ukraine after his attack that he was coordinating with Ukrainian Nazis on Telegram.

Tough look for Telegram. It's always a tough look for Telegram. It's not great, look for Telegram. Hahaha. Not great. Not a great platform. Pretty much only used by these guys. Yeah, no, he was talking about how he probably needs to quote-unquote brush up on my Russian.

Oh yeah, definitely. Before he flees to Ukraine after trying to kill the president. You know, you download Duolingo after you do that. That's right. That's right He had plans to meet up with with ten people with similar beliefs in Ukraine My mind is just so blown by it by all this. I thought I thought I knew things. I know nothing now on March 10th sheriffs interviewed a classmate of Kasap and the classmate told them that the Kasap would send quote-unquote

of Kassap and the classmate told them that the Kassap would send quote-unquote gore edit videos that includes flashing like gore like a body gore imagery and war images put to Russian music sent via Snapchat. This is a common tactic done by these sort of like teenage extremists. This is a whole like sub-genre of video that has changed and altered inesthetic multiple times. Frankly, if you spend enough time on Twitter now, in the comments of Blue Check Neo-Nazis, you can find some of these edits where they have techno, fast-paced, sometimes Russian music set to glorified images of Rome or or Nazi Germany or a large variety of stuff. But the gore genre is specifically unique to kind of the to the O9A, like a cultic Nazi branch because they think that like viewing these images like increases your power level of like evil, right? It's a very video game view of like, of like spiritual development of like you have to, you have to like raise your evil stat by looking at gore,

and this will make you more able to commit like big acts of violence. Whoa, so just desensitizing yourself to them it just makes you a more violent person and capable of doing these things yourself. Correct, correct. Whew. And that's like a big part of their praxis.

This is why they send this type of stuff to a lot of like kids on the internet because they hope that if they desensitize these kids, it'll be easier to convince them to then do acts of violence themselves. Kasap told his classmate that he intended to kill his parents by shooting them, but could not because he didn't have access to a gun. He later told his classmate that he would befriend someone with a gun and then steal it, and told him that he was in contact with a male in Russia via telegram,

and that they were both plotting to overthrow the government of the United States and assassinate President Trump. Kassip told the classmate that when he saw 10 consecutive attacks in the news, it would have to be him. I've already transitioned to the sort of person who can now laugh at this because of the absurdity. Oh my gosh. And get those laughs in now because the next section is much more dark. Oh no. Because it's funny to laugh at a guy like this who mostly failed. I mean, he did kill his parents. That is bad. Oh, it really happened? Okay.

Oh no, he did kill his parents. He did flee to a different state. He wasn't smart enough though. He tracked him on him and his parents' cell phone and their car who he still had with him. So, again, not not a very good attacker, I guess. But no, like this, this, this, this kid murdered his parents, sat in the house with their decomposing bodies for 12 days. Oh, before trying to carry out the rest of his attack on the United States.

So, yeah, though he did not succeed in his larger goals, like these these people still absolutely do get like groomed into doing violence. And this is something that that happens at a pretty frequent basis, honestly, to the point where these types of things don't make giant headlines anymore. They would have maybe in 2017. But now a lot of journalists are desensitized to this. And because it happens so frequently, it is less newsworthy. Which is a very unfortunate place to be in for a country.

Do you know what else is unfortunate, Michael? I don't know. What's that? Having to pivot to ads, actually. Necessary evil. It's way better than killing your parents. Uh, yes. Yes. I will go on record. I will go on record. Eat me, Gita board. Sorry. I love ads, actually. I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right. We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards and it's hosted by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Weezy.

Okay, we got the R&B Money podcast with Tank and Jay Valentine. We got the Woman of All podcast with Sarah Jake Roberts, the Funky Friday podcast with Cam Newton, the Neck and Sporch podcast with Carrie Champion, Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, the Trap Nerds podcast, and many more will be on that stage live. And of course, it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with Black-owned businesses, plus the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us. All right? Listen, you don't want to miss this.

Tap in and grab your tickets now at blackeffect.com slash podcast. There's a lot in life that feels like it should be guaranteed that just isn't. Fortunately, AT&T guarantees connectivity you can depend on or they'll make it right. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com slash guarantee to learn more. In the fall of 1986, Ronald Reagan found himself at the center of a massive scandal that looked like it might bring down his presidency. Did you make a mistake in sending arms to Tehran, sir? No.

No one was let go. It became known as the Iran-Contra affair. And I'm not taking any more questions. In just a second, I'm going to ask it. I'm Leon Neyfok, co-creator of Slow Burn. In my podcast, Fiasco, Iran Contra, you'll hear all the unbelievable details of a scandal that captivated the nation nearly 40 years ago, but which few of us still remember today. The things that happened were so bizarre and insane, I can't begin to tell you.

Please do. To hear the whole story, listen to Fiasco, Yaron Contra on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless D***less Me.

I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show.

We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless, it's me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the World Drugs Podcast.

We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. It's kind of star started a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. real. As a heads up, the next section will reference online exploitation and child sexual abuse material. All right, we are back. Let's get more depressing, unfortunately, but I think we will find a way to turn this around. Well, not like in an optimistic way, but in a way that it's useful. We'll learn something together.

So at the end of this section of this complaint that attempts to describe Kacip's collapse-driven political ideology is the appearance of this new term, nihilistic violent extremists. Now, this was actually the second time this term has appeared in court documents. The earliest appearance of this term was in a March sentencing memo for a child sexual abuse material case first filed in November of 2024, which was linked to the 764 child extortion and exploitation network. Ken Kleppensiehn, who first reported on the use of the nihilism term, missed this first

appearance and attributed the origin to the Cassip case. Michael, are you similarly unfortunate enough to be aware of 764? This is another one where my brain is more pure than yours, I guess, at this point, but it's about to get ruined, so let's do it. Yeah, I mean, it has been for a lot of people. Like, I've been doing like extremism research

and I've been aware of these guys for about four years. The FBI, I think, first did their public announcement, like warning parents about this in 2023. 764 is like a network of groups that operate either on Discord, Telegram, Instagram, social media apps. They're kind of inspired by some aspects of O9A, but they are much more focused on the production and distribution of child sexual abuse materials and trying to manipulate a groom and blackmail and extort minors into producing this material. A lot of it's done by other minors too. A lot of this is teens targeting other teens with adults kind of helping this process along. It's a pretty big problem. There's been some good reporting on it in Wired and The Guardian the past few years if you want to read more. Now this March sentencing memo for the 764 case describes the 764 and related groups as quote, nihilist violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct within the United

States and engage with other extremists abroad. 764 Network's accelerationist goals include social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the United States government. Members of 764 work in concert with one another towards a common purpose of destroying civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, including minors." Unquote. Now, I think this definition may be a bit too generalizing, but it's not incorrect. This is correct in what the explicit goals of this group are, maybe not just every individual member of this group. But I think it would be a mistake to dismiss this definition as outlandishly grandiose, right?

It kind of, it calls into like mine, you know, like conspiracy theory, like framing, because it sounds very like extravagant and complicated. And it kind of is, but it's also, it's also like simple. It's people trying to automate the process of producing and distributing illegal materials. But I do believe it is a mistake to completely dismiss this, both in terms of like the government's trying to ascribe political motive for the distribution of these materials and also the ideological justifications

held by some members of these groups. Now there have been two more 764 cases from April of 2025 that have used the nihilist violent extremism designation in court documents. Now part of kind of the struggle with this this is, Ken Klippenstein reported, quote, it sounds to me like some demented philosophical justification for just being a pedophile. And like, it is, but that doesn't mean the political motivations shouldn't be discounted. Because those motivations impact how they operate, how these groups spread,

which targets they pick, and other political impact how they operate, how these groups spread, which targets they pick, and other political actions members might take, like mass shootings, targeting racial minorities, targeting LGBTQ individuals. So, yeah, this is kind of why I push back a little bit on this kind of dismissive tone towards this, like, larger, almost conspiratorial kind of matrix put on to groups like 764. Now, part of the tricky thing with use of this new nihilism term is that it's being

used to rope in a variety of horrific incidents under a singular nebulous category. Right? So let's take the case of Kassop here. Kassop, the guy who killed his parents in a plot to collapse the United States, is a relatively bog standard like neo-Nazi acceleration, with seemingly no direct ties to 764 activity besides an interest in 09A, which was just one of the inspirations that influenced 764 as it evolved into its own complex machine about five years ago. But Kassop openly admitted to being radicalized by Nazism and the white power movement online, and yet,

in his criminal complaint, contains an expanded version of the nihilist violent extremism definition which is literally copy and pasted from a child sexual abuse material sentencing memo from five days before. They just used this same thing despite it not really applying, reading, quote, Individuals are targeted online often through synchronized group chats. Nihilist violent extremists frequently conduct coordinated extortions of individuals by blackmailing them so they comply with demands of the network. These demands vary and include but are not limited to self-mutilation, online or in-person

sexual acts, harms to animals, sexual exploitation of siblings and others, acts of violence, threats of violence, suicide, and murder. So very, very dark stuff. The definition goes on to state how vulnerable individuals are targeted and members of the group attempt to gain notoriety throughout the network and spread fear among those targeted individuals

for the purpose of accelerating the downfall of society and otherwise achieving the goal of nihilist violent extremists. So while that does accurately describe groups like 764, it doesn't really relate to the case of CASA. It's tricky because a lot of these 764 guys are also Nazis, and a lot of Nazis are also pedophiles.

Some of these guys start off as like evil occultic pedophiles who associate with Nazism because it's a pretty universal symbol of evil, and sometimes it's the vice versa, where they start off as an anti-Semitic right-winger, a Nazi, or a fascist, who then associate with this weird pedo-occult stuff for a variety of reasons, like spiritual, perverted pleasure, or tactical network building. Usually it's a mix. Klippenstein writes, quote, the warrant alleges Cassip was in touch with the Order of Nine Angles, a satanic neo-Nazi group that espouses accelerationism, a fancy word for the belief that destabilizing the social order allows for radical change. That is pretty heady stuff to ascribe to a 17 year old and ends up having the feeling of an episode of Altered Carbon, unquote.

And I kind of like reject this dismissive framing, like, no, these 17-year-olds are thinking about this. They are getting convinced of this material online. That is the motivation for it. This isn't like a science fiction thing. This is real. And it's pretty common among like extremists this age. There's a lot of young teenage male extremists. That's kind of their main demographic.

And this type of stuff is popular. Like this is at least popular within this small group of extremists. So yeah, it is a little bit heady, but this is what they are genuinely thinking about. It's not incorrect to like ascribe that to them. Kassab openly admitted to this connection. Well, and even speak to the flip side of that, you know, over the years making philosophy stuff on YouTube, I've gotten in touch with people who reached out to be like, oh, I've been watching stuff

since high school. When I was like 15, I was watching these like philosophy YouTube videos on heady ideas and reading stuff. So like- Me! I was one of these people. Yeah. There's like young folks out there who take big ideas very seriously and they

have more access than ever to these things. So it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't shock me at all that some Teen could go down that rabbit hole or even could start reading like a Curtis Yarvin or Nick land and going to those rabbit holes and stuff Especially now that some of these people are you know put on like the New York Times and stuff like that so exactly It seems weird to dismiss that I can understand the the impulse to be like this just seems like a Very stupid evil teen kid. But it seems just as plausible, like you're pointing out,

that there could be an actual engagement with ideas. And it's important to recognize that, because then you have to get at the root of that. Exactly. And these people aren't necessarily philosophical nihilists or existential nihilists, but they could be interpreted as reacting to a general passive nihilist culture with this form of pseudo-political nihilism.

This attempt at social negation, total systems collapse. But even still, they aren't total political nihilists since they have a very clear system of hierarchy that they want the current world order replaced with. Though these individuals may be seen as victims of nihilism in the Nietzschean sense. Now, my main problem with the nihilist violent extremism term is that it's so depoliticized and in a way that's rife for political abuse. This term can be used to cover what the government deems as violence stemming from apathy, from frustration with society, as well as anti-tech or anti-civilization politics. And this is all coming from top down

at the new Federal Bureau of Investigation. For years, Cash Patel has closely associated with QAnon, has helped the legal defense campaigns for January 6th insurrectionists, which included Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 3%ers. And now, as head of the FBI, he's investigating FBI agents who worked those January 6 cases. Joe Kent, the new director of the National Counterterrorism Center, has made media appearances

with Nick Fuentes and neo-Nazi YouTuber David Carlson. He hired Proud Boys to consult in his failed congressional campaign and is friends with Patriot prayer leader Joey Gibson. Kent has repeatedly called for the FBI to investigate Antifa. The co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, Heidi Baric, has said that Patel's QAnon links and Deputy Director Dan Bongino's public conspiracism and bigotry make taking the threat of far-right extremism quote-unquote impossible for these two men. She says, quote, I think it makes it very unlikely that the far right will continue

to be seen as the threat it actually is in terms of hate crimes and domestic terrorism. All of this marks a huge departure from the first Trump administration, where the FBI for the first time declared white supremacy the country's greatest domestic terrorism threat. Facts about violence and its perpetuators probably won't matter this time around. Unquote. And these changes are already taking place. An old counterterrorism strategy guide was removed from the White House website in January. A current FBI agent was quoted in Vanity Fair as saying, "...the key is the Domestic Intelligence Operations Guide.

If they change that, Patel will be able to shift domestic terrorism investigations away from the Accelerationists and the right-wing street fighters, and towards things like BLM and Antifa." Patel has cut the domestic terrorism office staffing and reassigned agents and intelligence analysts, with new senior FBI officials reportedly considering to disband the entire domestic terrorism operations section. In addition, the FBI has discontinued their previous domestic terrorism tracking tool, where they tag relevant investigations to identify and track trends for terrorism probes across the country.

Sources for outlets like Reuters say that changes to the agency will reduce counterterrorism operations against far-right and racially motivated extremists and militias. Jacob Ware, a domestic terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Reuters, quote, There is a broader desire, I think, within the administration to at best ignore data and put their head in the sand, and at worst to realign resources away from this battle. unquote. A spokesperson for Ohio Representative Jim Jordan told Reuters that the termination of

the domestic terrorism tracking tool is a, quote, great step in the right direction of returning the FBI to its primary crime fighting mission, unquote. Representative Jordan previously in 2023 ran a congressional panel that alleged the FBI terrorism case tagging tool was being improperly used to target conservatives after January 6th. Three former FBI agents testified at the Republican-led panel, and two of those former agents admitted to being paid by Patel, who at the time was not director of the FBI, he was just a right-wing influencer, after being kicked out of the government after the first Trump administration. We've also seen the Joint Terrorism Task Force largely shift their efforts towards immigration enforcement, helping

ICE with deportations, and the so-called wave of Tesla terrorism. The other thing is that this new nihilist violent extremism term isn't just replacing agave, it's not just replacing the anti-government or anti-authority of violent extremism, because the agave term itself has three subcategories, as referenced in an FBI document that outlines domestic terrorism activity from 2015 to 2019. This includes militia violent extremists, anarchist violent extremists, and sovereign citizen violent extremists. And even in addition to those three, there's actually a newer subclassification from 2023

called agave other, which really isn't a great term at all. This is the problem with trying to use these like tracking and tagging tools is that they can get very convoluted. But now they've seemingly collapsed all of these and are just using the term nihilism. So would you say like when you bring up the Tesla example is one of to be very reductive here, the big risks at play that like someone who starts Tesla on fire or causes some damage at a Tesla dealership, largely for the motivation of trying to stick it to Elon Musk or something like that, gets classified in a way by the FBI that is similar to some of the folks you have previously talked about.

Exactly. Doing things that most rational humans could agree are deeply more insidious than like set a car on fire. They can frame this as like a rejection of society. Yeah. The same way like there's there's been talk that they're going to try to use this label to explain cases like United Health Care CEO shooting, the arse attack at Josh Shapiro's house.

They're going to be using this term to apply to any act that they see is contrary to society and civilization, and anything that's stemming from frustration with society. And that's a huge problem. And in doing so, they're shifting focus away from right-wing militias who do the majority of actual lethal violence. When these reports from the past five years talk about, you know, militia violent extremism, it talks about how there is an increased lethal threat from these militias

to law enforcement and government personnel due to factors related to grievances from the perceptions of fraud in the 2020 election, government measures related to COVID-19, and legislation to restrict firearms or expand immigration or manage public land. And these are the people that do the vast majority of planned attacks or executed attacks. This report for 2023 outlines two attempted bombings by militia violent extremists in early 2021, one by an individual targeted against a data center thought to provide services to the FBI and CIA, the other by two people against a state Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, California,

as well as the, quote unquote, dozens of militia violent extremists arrested for their involvement in January 6th. So even though we're going to take the gas off of groups like those, as well as racially motivated violent extremists, this definition can still include a lot of anarchist violent extremists, which the FBI admits in a 2023 report, are most likely to engage in non-lethal criminal activity and just impact law enforcement operations. You know, this makes me think of like climate activism as well. And you know, the work of those in the climate community that call for like the destruction

of equipment and not the harm of human life. Totally. I mean, and the irony, of course, that you could call someone, you know, disabling an oil pipeline, a nihilist extremist when the act they're doing is precisely for the purpose of ensuring the continued existence of human civilization on a large scale. That's the big issue here. Like the Trump government still wants a term that focuses on what some people would like colloquially refer to as like accelerationist terrorism. And that does encompass some of the extremist violence from the weirder corners of the far

right, like in the case of Kassop, but as well as leftist or post-left anarchist extremism. But in the administration's mind, the previous terms for this were tainted by crackdowns on right-wing or patriot movements after January 6th. And like, the nihilist-violent extremism term is not replacing the term terrorism necessarily, like the way Klippenstein suggested in his article. The word terrorism appears frequently in these very documents that we've been discussing, nor does the term terrorism have quote-unquote limitations in law, as Klippenstein said, that like, prevent its use in political prosecution.

If anything, it carries kind of special powers of punishment, which can be over applied to increase sentences, sway juries, and strip rights. We've seen bills to label Antifa as terrorists introduced to this year, the whole Tesla terrorism thing, and historically, like the use of terrorism has been used as a repression tool in Atlanta's Stop Cop City movement, which similarly has like a climate focus like you mentioned. And what this new nihilism term lets them do is it allows the Trump administration to signal to their base that they aren't going to be going after like right wing malicious style groups anymore, not anti-government, anti-authority extremists.

Instead, they're just going to target zany weirdos who want to destroy society. It's a looser, more flexible term that can be applied to a much wider swath of people. And like the kind of final thing I want to note here is that for groups like 764, we really don't have a good term for them. Some people have defended this nihilist term specifically for groups like 764 since that was where it originally appeared. And it is true that these groups kind of defy classic categorization. Some of them are certainly motivated by racial bias, in the case of Kassap, who's like tied with 09A, but not specifically 764.

But a lot of these other 764 guys who are mostly in it for the pedophilia still do have anti-government ideologies that they are roped in with. Now I have seen a few alternative terms lofted by certain independent researchers that don't really do a good job but are gaining influence under Trump's government. There's this like freelance researcher named Becca or BixRights who mostly operates on Twitter. She's proposed the term Satanic Accelerationism or SAC. Not good. And this kind of outlines my problems with this person's research now because all of the legitimate extremism researchers have kind of moved away From Twitter and are just on blue sky now people like this have like exploded in influence under Elon's

Shepherding of Twitter and like this this person just spreads like satanic panic style writing that appeals to conservative Christian audiences She she boasts about how many mutuals she has with these Nazi terrorists. She posts on Rumble. She went on Infowars. So that kind of tells you everything you need to know about this person. And a big part of her work is trying to downplay the right-wing and white supremacist influence in extremism. She excitedly posted, quote, the FBI has coined a new term for this type of individual,

nihilist violent extremists. This makes me so happy because it indicates that law enforcement are listening to researchers on the ground and are no longer considering these groups neo-Nazis or quote unquote white supremacist. So yeah, this is a big part of this push is appealing to these types of people who don't want their weird pedo freaks to be labeled as right-wing, even though they all are pretty far-right-wing

terrorists in most cases. This researcher also falsely linked Kassap with a Ukrainian Nazi occult group called MKU. She later retracted this claim on Substack, but left the original viral tweet up online, because hey, engagement. Her Substack post reads, quote, when I first heard the news of Nikita Kassap, my mind immediately darted to another O9A and MKU linked individual named Nikita. This turned out to be a mere coincidence. I know, because the other Nikita reached out to me personally to clarify. It's

moments like these that cause me to reflect on just how big this movement really is and just how close to the fire I am." This is not how you do extremism reporting. This is not how you do journalism. But this does demonstrate kind of the problem with this term is that, yeah, groups like this do need a different term. Maybe like accelerationist violent extremists. That's a term. You could use that if you're going to remove all the other acronyms. But certainly the nihilism label just kind of complicates things and allows for the targeting of just a massive swath of the population that could become like political prosecutions that then get linked to these child sexual abuse material cases. Okay, that is my that's

my that's my script, Michael. How do you feel about that info dump? I'm so sorry, truly. You know, you've, and I can send it to you, you've extracted a part of my soul and put it into a cosmic toilet today. I know more than I've known before. As a human, as an American, as a parent, I'm terrified on every front.

And you know, my simple guy takeaway here is, yeah, like the idea that this is going to both let some of the worst folks off the hook, or at least make it harder to classify them with the groups they should be classified with, while also making it easier to lump in forms of what many of us would consider more reasonable political activism under that umbrella

is quite bad. And I think, of course, for me, due to my pet interest, all of these instances of continuing to like pervert and misuse philosophical terms that have meanings developed over hundreds and thousands of years for these political ends is very upsetting. Well, I'm excited to usher in the new wave of Kierkegaardian violent extremists who are going to usher in the-

Don't get me on a list. Stop it. I am actually sorry that this went on nearly double the length of it, which I thought it had planned. After such a depressing episode, I'm going to ask a kind of an odd question. What philosophy books do you think people should read in this political moment? Because a lot of people are approaching me with like, how do I stay sane? How do I stay? How do I, like, keep going when things feel so bad? And for me, I've always turned to philosophy.

I've been recommending different books to different friends. And I'm kind of interested in, like, what you have to say about kind of what philosophy can like offer us in these times of like existential torment. Yeah. I mean, a really simple one that I talk about way too much is, um, Kierkegaard's The Present Age, which you find in this book called Two Ages, that's easy to buy. It's normally really cheap or you can just read it online someplace that kind of describes a society in which people get caught up in media and reflection and the BS they are told rather than developing their subjectivity for themselves.

I think that one's really great in terms of more contemporary stuff. I've been very Frederick Jameson pill recently. Right. And I think I mean, I've read Jameson before on and off, but recently dove in more deeply and there's one Okay. I have it at arm's reach so I can say that the title correctly that I've really been enjoying it's um called an American Utopia Dual power in the universal army by Frederick Jameson edited by Slavoj Zizek and it's this large Jameson essay about What he sees as an alternative for leftist power in America, responses from a bunch of other scholars. I have found it very interesting, but for me at least,

I find comfort in the fact that others have accurately diagnosed and understood what is happening right now, and at least give us the tools to understand the thing so it feels less nebulous and mysterious. We don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time. Yeah. And that's something I feel like some leftists kind of get trapped in. Or it's kind of a two sides thing.

Some people just get fully lost in like the labyrinth of theory. And the other people get lost in trying to constantly reinvent or like make for the first time stuff that already exists, right? And I think there's a really careful balance between like reading some stuff so that you can like know what's going on and not feel the need to try to like, cause every, you know, philosophical evolution to come about via your own thought. Yeah, you don't have to be the one to do it. Someone else already did it.

You're not alone. Like other people have done this and you should still like think for yourself and still compare. But people have thought about this type of stuff before. People have been in bad political situations before. And it's useful to know what they've thought. And like this is like, you know, my work is mostly looking at like current events and like trying to track like extremism and like what the government is doing. And you know, more information always helps me choose how to navigate in the world.

That's why I do episodes like this. And I think philosophy is just one other side of that. Unless you have anything else to say, do you want to talk about where people can find you online and your new YouTube channel? Yeah, I have a recently launched YouTube channel that's just under the name Michael O. Burns. And I think it's literally just YouTube slash Michael burns and quickly. Yep YouTube slash Michael burns where I'm gonna be doing more stuff quite regularly extremes and video essays Largely doing some of the stuff

We're just talking about using philosophy and concepts from theory and from theory to try to understand what's going on in both the political and like the social and interpersonal levels and I'm working on a Thing I'm excited about on a on like depression and capitalism and mental health. So yeah, and I'm on all most of the social medias. I'm just Michael Burns or Michael O. Burns relatively easy to find on most places. Well, thank you so much, Michael, for joining me in this dive through the darkest depths

of the Internet and the extremism milieu that is festering in America and abroad. Thanks for having me. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26 at Pullman Yards and is hosted by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Weezy.

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podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless, D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the old one.

I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show. We're not quite sure.

We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless D***less Me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever. You get your podcast. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levitown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast.

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