It Could Happen Here - The Rail Strike is Dead, Long Live the Rail Strike

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

We discuss Biden and the Democrats forcing a terrible contract on rail workers, the horrific conditions of the railroads, and the consequences of both.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. It could happen here. Rail Strike Edition. I'm Robert Evans. Garrison Davis. Chris, how are we all doing? We're talking about a railstrike today. We're praying for it. It hasn't happened. If you're listening to this,

you probably know the broad strokes of this, which is that the people who make the trains go, and by the way, trains are a critical part of us all not starving to death or running out of insulin or whatever the people who make those trains go have a pretty hard job and there's not a lot of them and for a variety of reasons that boil down to companies not wanting to spend money uh it's impossible for that they don't get sick days um so there were a bunch of other shit thing like things that were shit about the job including pay especially since uh rail company profits have been at like record levels so they were threatening to strike there were union negotiations some of the union leaders reached an agreement with the rail companies uh but it wasn't it didn't include the sick days uh so a lot of workers, potentially most of them, were at least willing to strike.

And then Biden came in and had Congress basically say, do the same thing Reagan did to the air traffic controllers in the 80s, where it's like, no, if you strike, it's illegal because this is too critical a service for the country. Anyway, that's broadly the situation. Chris, you know this a lot better than I do. The most pro-labor president. The most pro-labor president. Oh my god, okay. It's very frustrating. I want to put this out.

I think this is actually like... That's my knowledge, and I think that's close to a layman's knowledge. So I'm waiting for you to fill in the gaps. Okay, all right. Let's start with what Biden has actually done, because it's slightly different than what reagan was doing there with the air traffic controllers um part of the reason everything is fucked up with the railroads is that

like railroads almost since their inception have had like an almost entirely different regulatory framework than like anything else so you know your normal strike is covered by the national labor relations act right you go through your national labor relations board you know your normal strike is covered by the national labor relations act right you go through your national labor relations board you do your votes blah blah blah uh if your railroad workers are not covered by that they're covered something by something called the railway labor act which lets congress just be like no fuck you uh you have to take this contract and the other thing it does i mean there is like a it is a oh i didn't realize that so yeah well before so well before like you know the modern era and reagan did his shit with the air traffic controllers there was a it was written into the law that congress could say like yay or

nay to a rail strike that's really interesting i guess that probably goes back to the days when they were literally making them out of human bones yeah and i mean it's been so it's been amended over time and it's changed a bit and there's some other stuff that happened in the 90s after there was a there was a failed rail strike in the 90s where congress was also just like no fuck you you have to take this contract but yeah the the important thing about this is that like okay so in order to even potentially strike you have to go through so much bullshit it's called self-help in the law like the people have been trying to strike for two years and everything that we're seeing now is the product of two years of bullshit of these like there's all of this nonsense you have to go

through there's these like cooling off mandatory cooling off periods you can't like uh you you have to like wait before you do anything else and you have to go to the next step the next step and the final step is joe biden had the choice to either let these rail workers strike and actually get the things that they fucking needed or he could tell them to fuck off and just eat a contract and that that that that's what's happened right now is that joe biden has just and and i also again with the support of both houses of congress and i i also like explicitly want to mention here that a lot of nominally socialist politicians, including AOC...

A lot of social Democrats have signed on. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about that, too, because that's another part of it that, again... So my surface... And I guess I'm playing the podcast idiot in this one, which is not abnormal for me. But my layman's understanding of what happened with this

is that there was a bill up in Congress as to whether or not to endorse this, and a bunch of progressives said that they wouldn't vote on it unless it included seven days of paid sick leave, including Sanders. That got pushed off into a separate bill, and there was some kind of sketchy wording about, well, we won't – I don't 100% understand the congressional hijinks, but I know they just wound up voting progressives in the House to vote yes on the sick leave, knowing that it wouldn't pass the Senate and knowing that the strike would still get stopped, right? Like, what am I missing there?

I mean, it's basically that. I'm not a Congress knower. Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of sort of hijinks that were happening in Congress where there's a slightly different version of the bill in the House, and they had this whole thing. happening in congress where there was a slightly different version of the bill in the house and they had this whole thing but okay i actually the the the house fund for sick leave did pass with support of every yeah yeah except and it just wasn't the house three republicans but okay the thing i think i want to point out here i want to move away from the sick leave thing because the sick that's the fact that these people don't have sick leave is important this is also not like the main thing the strike was about like things are things are things are so much worse like things are things

are so much like infinitely worse than people like at all understand like what the thing that the thing this real strike is about if you if you go like actually talk to the people who are doing it is that these people are on call for 90 of their their lives. Like, and when I say 90% of their lives, they are on call while they're asleep. They're on call constantly. There's no way to plan a consistent sleep schedule because you can just be on call. And, you know, part of what's going on here,

and if you read the sort of detailed accounts, you will see a lot of people talking about this thing called precision scheduled railroading. Yeah, precision scheduled railroading. Yeah. Precision scheduled railroading was, it was a great theory kind of that was implemented. So atrociously badly. It's basically fucked like the entire economy. The idea behind it was like,

you could, you could schedule when like a freight railroad was going to go. Right. And this, this would give you a bunch of efficiency bonuses you could plan like you could schedule things around each other um this just didn't happen people implemented it but what they implemented was just this nightmare like amalgamation of we're going to reduce a bunch of staff and then we're going to make these trains

that have like 200 fucking cars on them. And this has been a catastrophe. Let's go monster trains. There's Justin Rosniak, who's a podcaster. It doesn't seem like a good solution to the problem of not enough guys to make trains work is make the trains huge. Yeah. It seems like it's destined to end in horrible train crashes. It's awful. These trains are nuts.

Again, these are 200 trains long, right? So if you don't get the weight distribution right, the train will fucking fall over. They keep doing this. This has been happening for, like, several years now. There's just trains everywhere derailing. There's, like, no coverage of it. The reason there's no coverage of it is because there's a bit of bomb in it.

You know where I knew that from, Chris? Garrison will tell you. When I get drunk or something late at night, my favorite thing to watch is videos of trains hitting stuff. Train crashes are amazing to watch. It's incredible to think of all the human ingenuity it took to make that big thing go boom. There's thousands of videos on YouTube

of a semi-truck's cargo getting stuck on train tracks. And a train just walking through there. And you get to see Amazon boxes being pulverized in the air. They get vaporized. It's so cool.

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 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. I know you. chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

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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. So the downside is that one day we're going to have one of these trains that is run by a person who has had three hours of sleep in the last 48

hours, and it's going to be carrying like fucking, I don't know, it's going to be carrying like sodium nitrate on it or some shit, and it's just going to explode and it is going to kill an enormous amount of people. This actually happened in Canada like a decade ago. But yeah, like Canada like a decade ago. But yeah, like these trains are too big.

They're so big, they don't fit in the fucking rail yards. Like they're so big that most of the train infrastructure doesn't work for them. They are so, the other thing is, okay, they're really, really, really badly planned despite the fact that this is supposed to be precision scheduled railroading. Like they're unbelievably badly planned. You have people just like being

forced to just like sit there for 12 hours in a train wait like waiting for the rest of like the other like 95 cars that are supposed to be on this train to show up you know the whole situation is like is utterly nightmarish and the other thing about this right is if you're an engineer right and you're in one of these trains and you're sitting there for 12 fucking hours in this train you legally can't have your phone because you know i mean this is a safety thing right and in some sense this makes sense it's like a safety measure you can't have your phone because you know you can't be distracted while you're driving but you're just fucking sitting on the tracks for like 12 hours and you know this this stuff is you know

and the fact that the fact that people are on call constantly the fact that the entire rail network is just physically falling apart because the other thing about these trains right is they make an enormous amount of money none of them ever fucking show up on time. It's a disaster. It's a catastrophe. Like, genuinely, part of the reason why we're having all these supply issues is that no train has fucking showed up on time in, like, four years.

But it's okay. The new contract It's okay. The new contract signed in says that workers can have up to three unpaid days off for medical appointments oh wow that's something oh yay it's bullshit three unpaid days days off for pre-made medical appointments yeah solving the problem forever yeah and again like like these people are on call for 90 of their lives you can't even like like you can't schedule when you're going to sleep

because you might be on call. And on call might be you have to fucking, like, drive, like, several hours to a place so you can get on a train and the train can not leave, and the train eventually leaves, like, six hours later, and you fucking drive, and then you're just, like, dropped off somewhere in the middle of fucking nowhere, and then unpaid, you have

to go back to, like, where you live. It is, like, like, okay, the thing I want to go back to like where you live it is like like okay the thing the thing i want to like get out of this is like the railroading system in general the system of freight railroading that we have in the u.s is is in the midst of collapsing like it is falling apart it is not working it is it's becoming increasingly dangerous it is i mean utterly inhumane for the people working on it and and you know none of the fucking even this even the sick bill contract like didn't do anything for it right the only way this actually could have been resolved is if joe biden

and if the democrats and if congress hadn't been fucking cowards and i'd let these people strike because these kinds of concessions like and you know i also like i don't want to let the fucking unions off the hook here too because they know all of this but again most of the sort of like senior union people are very tight with are very tight with democratic party this is part of why all of this shit was postponed until after the elections because they didn't you know they didn't want to fucking deal with this shit they've been trying to force people to sign this contract too and it's. And it's a shit show. It is a just absolute catastrophe on every level. Yeah. I mean, it's almost as if the rail system probably shouldn't be run by private interests.

No! It shouldn't. Yeah, because there's going to be now 115,000 rail workers who are forced to work under these still not great conditions. Meanwhile, the managers and the owners of the railroads get to go back to just making tons of money yeah and again record profits none of this is happening not that that would make it okay but none of this is happening in an environment well well you know we're running at a loss and we we have no money and no ability to like take like they have they're making hundreds of billions of dollars yeah like this

is this is like one of the most profitable times to run a railroad and you can incentivize more people to be railroad workers if the job isn't a fucking nightmare for example what if instead of not being able to have their phones we gave each of them a dvd player and a screen with this dvd of stepbrothers and they could watch stepbrothers as much as they want while piloting a train. I think that would actually get people... I think that would cause mass layoffs at the rail yard.

That's how we get the strike. We include this in the next provision then they'll be forced to strike. I was stealthing in my accelerationist beliefs here. This is the fastest way I can think to destroy our transit infrastructure. We've got like two years before this whole thing fucking implodes anyways, because part of what's keeping people in the railroading system is that,

so railroading also has its own pension system that's like disconnected from the regular pension system. And you have to work there for 10 years in order to collect your pension. This is why like enormous numbers of people just haven't left right people have been leaving right but there's a there's a huge number of people who were hired in these giant expansions in 2004 and it's one of those you know like we're two years out from that contract from all these people being able to collect their pensions and fucking leaving yeah at that point it's like this is the only chance i have to ever not work myself to death, so I have to tough it out. Yeah, but those people are going to leave.

And this is the sort of hammer that capitalism has built over its own head, which is that, yeah, congratulations, you successfully flexibilized and casualized your entire workforce. That means that if people don't want to do your shitty job they can leave and find another job and at some point like there are there is shit that in this economy that like actually does need to be done but these people have been sort of like so blinded by just like you know they're so so blinded by line grow goes up they're so blinded by short-term profit that they they really don't understand that at some point there's just not going to be fucking workers to run the railroad yeah i mean a lot of this situation's built off of and instead of being compared to reagan's stuff with air traffic

controllers it's actually more similar to what uh carter did with some with some airline workers um then also with the uh with the the 1980 kind of Railroad Deregulation Act, which gave a lot more power to companies to run the railroads, and that is what kind of shifted things to our current problem, because they gave permission for these rail companies to close down lines that were less profitable and to set their own um freight rates and it's yeah it's a weird thing it's not being controlled by the interstate

commerce uh commission instead it's being controlled by okay so that that thing's weird right because like on the one hand like the the the wave of corporate consolidation that happened after that is like a disaster and the fact that there's basically like four real like rail companies now is a disaster on the other hand like it is also true that the interstate commerce board was like dog shit at his job no it also sucked and for a short like yes absolutely it sucked and for a short period of time it actually did improve things um it just got worse now it's it's it's powers coalescing again into the very types of monopolies that caused the, that caused railroad regulation to be necessary back in the 19th century, like in

the first place. Power is being consolidated again. And it's, it's this vicious, vicious cycle that are, that fundamentally puts short-term profits above uh the conditions of workers yeah i think like you know okay so there have been a lot of people talking about like what the potential solutions to this are in a sort of macro sense because like okay even even with a better contract right like something actually has to be done in order to force the railroads to not fucking suck and to like actually properly schedule their goddamn trains and not work everyone to death and you know i i want to put the it is worth noting like we actually did like have national nationalized railroad company for a while yeah and it was kind of a shit show like it okay okay this is something that's also important

to think about this like there's a lot of like there's a lot of different kinds of nationalization right like there there is a huge difference between a firm that's like tech like you know like we we sort of technically nationalized a bunch of the like car companies after 2008 right we bailed them out but you know like we like it went in that stuff we didn't really like take it we owned we owned like a bunch of their stock we didn't like take a controlling interest there's no saying how they run or how they treat yeah and employees and like we got like nixonite like proto-neoliberal nationalization of the railroads last time and it kind of contributed to some of the problems we have now there was also a period where uh conrails union was trying to like buy like the railroad so we all we almost we almost got a railroad system that was run by

its but it was owned by its own union and then the the company just like refused to sell it to them because they were like wait no hold on we can't have a worker run railroad but one thing one thing i am interested in is i i because don't actually know this. What would the – how would an illegal strike actually work? Like what's the – what is the differences between people striking illegally now? Like there's some discussion of that. Who knows if that's actually going to happen. But what is the main kind of difference between that and the non-illegal strikes okay so the basic thing is okay so the thing about the national labor relations act right which is the thing that covers normal strikes was that like and this is also true to some extent under the robot like okay so if you're doing a legal strike you have legal protections right like there there are things corporations can't do to you um like yeah there's there's a bunch of stuff that can't like i don't know like it's it's a lot harder to just sort of fire people the other

thing is that also like especially something like this there's a like you you you if you do if you do a wildcat strike like this and you do a specifically a strike that is like that is specifically illegal under this act like you can all get fired um i i'm i think i think they could technically arrest you like it's it's i don't know that that part of it's not exactly clear to me but yeah i don't know i mean there there's sort of like i feel like if if if they arrest you just for not going to your job i feel like that is uh i mean that has happened to people like oh i i know people have been murdered this is this is a thing like yes like in the long history of labor struggles people have been straight up killed um but at least in 20 in 2022 i think it would be a a bad look yeah i mean i i think okay so i think where we're headed and

i think what they ought to do is just force get all of like the the worst criminals and i mean the murderers the terrorists all of those guys and you make them run the trains whoever blew up all of those power transformers in north carolina you make them run the trains and it'll be fine nothing bad will happen as a result of this it'll work out perfectly well the the the alternative plan and the thing that maybe these rail companies are just holding out for, because maybe they're just making conditions be not great and underpaying and not giving sick days, is because they're waiting for trains just to become autonomous. They're already planning to severely cut down the crews that are on the trains.

There's already trains in Australia that are totally autonomously run that carry mining materials for hundreds of miles. And that is the future that these companies want because they don humanely and equitably, then this would be good. Because it seems like working on trains sucks, and it would be great if we could automate most of that work. And then people, less people would have to work in order to keep society running. But that's not what's going on. Except less people don't have to work, less people don't get even shittier jobs. Yeah, we're just going to run through these people's bodies as we get up to automization,

and then we will throw them away. And then because they'll do it badly, there's going to be a disastrous train crash caused by the fact that they got all of the people off of a train hauling nitroglycerin or whatever, and it's going to destroy, I don't know, Duluth. Which, you know, not the worst city to lose, but I'm sorry, Duluth, y'all are fucked.

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 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. 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 podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Well, okay. It's worth mentioning like this stuff, like the automation stuff is already happening, right? Like we have like this, well, and I mean, it's like a very real sense that there's this sort of nightmare. One of the other sort of nightmare things that's going on right now is that there are these like, I don't know, like, driver assistance programs, basically, that are being run on trains now where – that are, you know, they're supposed to be, like, making decisions, like, for and with the drivers.

But A, they suck ass. B, they're designed to basically maximize – designed to maximize profitability, right? And the way you maximize profitability is by running trains really really slowly and you know that's contributing to the fact that every train is fucking late now and the freight system doesn't work and the third problem is that these is that these things keep fucking running trains off like this is another reason why trains keep fucking crashing is that they suck yes they keep running trains off of tracks and like you know and like there's there's like there's there's a lot of shit here right because it's like if you if you override the system like you can you can get discipline for for overriding the system but then you have this sort of like you have this thing

where it's like okay so do i do i get discipline for overriding the system i'm not making the train crash or do i just make the fucking train crash and like doing doing the trolley problem! Yeah, yeah, it's literally yeah, Justin Ross is going to talk about this a lot. I do love that this is just going to inevitably result in an exact recreation of the trolley problem. This is already happening to people. It's just like

none of this stuff works. The AI is going to make us crash into this orphanage. I can divert it and instead hit this old fuck's home so it's literally happening like it's just like none of the stuff like okay the thing that's like frustrating about this right is okay if any of the people at the sort of like at the level of where they're planning these trains could even sort of do their job right this isn't even a thing that's like an inevitable contradiction between capital and labor like this is just if any

of these people could actually fucking schedule the railroads which is the thing they're supposed to be trying to do if they could actually schedule when the train was supposed to go and when it was supposed to leave you wouldn't have these problems because then all of the people who work there would also be told when the fucking train was leaving and they could schedule around it but no they can't fucking do it because they're too fucking lazy they're too fucking stupid and they don't want to spend the money to actually make any of these systems fucking work and so the consequence is just this bullshit and then also because again and this is everything like that like capital is also really falling down on the job here because like the rest of capital needs to get their shit together and

force the railroad to do something because like it's your asses on the line, too, if this railroad thing collapses. But because of the sort of immediate amount of money that these shitty rail companies have pumped into Congress, they were able to buy people off. And the rest of capital was just like, eh, we don't care. That's, like, three years out. We don't have to care about this shit. It's like, guys, like, Bernie Sanders is fighting to save capitalism, right? These people are trying to save you from yourselves. And, you know, you won't even let them. That's their entire job, though. Of course, it's like, yeah, that's the entire reason they exist.

What is happening here is that like is liberalism is running an accelerationist program to like cause the American American infrastructure to fall apart. And social democracy is attempting to save capital from itself and capital was like literally fuck you eat shit no it's it i i've i've i'm reading right now in interview with a railroad workers united member and they're talking about how like there's this plan to increase uh increase their pay 24 over the next five years. And he's there, like he says that, um, lots of the railroad workers that he's talked to as a part of the union is saying like, people are willing to work for less money and take a job at like an Amazon factory or like a trucking job,

because at least those offer slightly more consistent hours. And like, yeah, like it's, it's at least when you're not working, you're not working. Yeah, and I just wanted to mention that because we were bringing up, like,

how these people are getting not very good pay, which is true. But for a lot of people, it isn't even just a pay question. It's just overall working conditions. And, like, when you're thinking about moving to an Amazon factory instead because they have better working conditions, like, oh,'s like i mean they they've they've managed to create

like one of the worst systems that is imposed on like any worker in in the country like it is it is genuinely stunning and right now again they're getting bailed out that people are by the fact that people are stuck in because they want their pensions but like but as soon as people are done and we start moving to more autonomous things then it's not it's not going to be worth it i know media companies have spent decades trying to convince kids to work for trains with thomas the train chuggington for for decades and decades we've tried to send train propaganda to these kids, and I don't think they're going to buy it.

Did you guys know that in Thomas the Tank Engine, canonically, World War II happened, and canonically, all of the diesel engines sided with the Nazis? Well, that doesn't for us today. That is official Thomasomas the tank engine lore i wonder how many other zoomers will um sympathize with me on this i recently found out that thomas the train wasn't just the uncanny train segments they used to have live action

actors in like little intercut scenes no and it it was fucked up because it was no good by the time thomas the train was airing on television when i was a kid all of those were re-edited they were they had they had no live action segments at all it was all the weird stop motion animation uh which is still very uncanny with like the faces but i had no idea until like a year ago that there was live action actors in the original editions of thomas the train completely oblivious well i'm glad i'm glad we're gonna have this important union discussion i i am too i'm gonna i'm gonna admit to you all right now there was a moment earlier where chris you kept saying that that the owners of the railroads were blinded and i very nearly went into a bit where i just started reading

the lyrics to bruce springsteen's uh blinded by the light but i didn't do it i didn't do it we thank you for that i'm glad we were saved from that that's that's that's because everybody nobody nobody gets the lyrics to that one right because of the manford man's earth band version which makes it sound like he's saying douche when he's really saying deuce and talking about an engine, which is why it would have been relevant to railroads. But none of y'all would have gotten that, and you would have fucking made a big thing about it on Reddit. So to hell with you all. Anyway, support rail workers.

If they do an illegal strike, make sure we set up things so that they get protected and they get food and yeah go fight cops go make railway like i mean people like just keep it keep an eye on what's going on and if it happens there will be ways there will be ways to support these overthrow the u.s government like i don't know things of this nature yeah i mean that would be that that would be nice but if we got to put a pin in that, you know, keep an eye on the situation, and if these people go on strike, there will be community resources and whatnot

popping up to support the Wildcat strike. It's a thing that's happened before. Wildcat strikes have a long history in this country, too. You know, and we will be collecting resources if that happens for ways people can help with the wildcatters. So this is a thing to have on the old noggin as we lurch forward into the holidays and possibly a gigantic labor battle. We'll see. People in the UK have been doing rail strikes for a good part

of this year. There's been on and off rail strikes for most of the past few months. It's possible. Except, again, they're the British, so they stopped doing the strike when the Queen died. Well, of course.

Look. Look. There's certain realities that can't ever be eclipsed. When the queen died. Well, of course. So look, look, there's certain realities that can't ever be eclipsed. Regardless. Yeah. Here's the thing. Here's the thing.

We have thrown off the shackles of the Anglos are where all rail strike stops for no one. All right. Except for the most pro labor president, Joe Biden. All right. And that's the episode. Yeah,

it's the episode. And remember, if you see a diesel train, it is a Nazi. You are obliged to punch it. 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. dot 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 slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Rife. Join me,

Danny Trails, and step into the flames of Rife. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeart Radio 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 G 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 Tex 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.