Some More News - Afghanistan, Gold Bars, and EVEN MORE Lace-Up Jeans w/Noah Kulwin and Brendan James

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Hi. Noah Kulwin and Brendan James, co-hosts of the podcast Blowback, join Katy and Cody to talk about America's decades-long debacle in Afghanistan, the bribery charges against Sen. Bob Menendez, awkward Kissinger photos, monstrous National Security Advisors, and Kevin James memes. Here's the photo of Henry Kissinger with Volodymyr Zelenskyy: https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1hcipJ.img?w=1920&h=1080&q=60&m=2&f=jpg And here's that photo of Bob Menendez's wife's jeans: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/09/22/15/75731693-0-image-a-18_1695393028195.jpg Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/some... SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqego... Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews Slow down the news ticker in your mind. Upgrade to better Natural Solutions from NextEvo Naturals. Go to https://NextEvo.com and use promo code MORENEWS to get 25% off. Get 50% off your first DoorDash order up to a $20 value on your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and use code MORENEWS at checkout. Limited time offer, terms apply. Get your business ready for the holiday rush. Get started with https://stamps.com today. Sign up with promo code MORENEWS for a special offer that includes a 4-week trial, plus free postage, and a free digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps dot com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code MORENEWS. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Sign up for a $1/month trial period at https://shopify.com/morenews (all lowercase) to take your retail business to the next level today.

Hello and welcome back to even more news, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll. Hi, Katie. Name another podcast. I can't. News? No. Hi, I'm Cody.

Hi, Katie. Hi, you'm Cody. Hi, Katie. Hi, you're Cody. Joining us today for the first time, we are very excited to welcome co-hosts of the History Podcast Blowback, Noah Colwin and Brendan James. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome. Hi, everybody. Hi. Everybody is saying hello back to you, I promise. Hello, hello, hello. Hi. Everybody is saying hello back to you. I promise.

Hello, hello, hello. Our listeners know what's up. They're very gracious. They're welcoming. They don't know how to listen to podcasts. It's weird. No, they don't. They are saying hello back. They don't, but they do say hi.

We are going to get to know you guys and talk about your podcast, Blowback, which is wonderful. I'll just say that now. Thank you. Get out of the way. Good podcast. Get that out of the way. The elephant in the room. Interview over. It ain't bad, folks. Thanks for hopping on. But first, we have to

celebrate something. Anything? Anything. Anything. Check the big calendar holiday. September 28th. This is a well cat holiday for all of our listeners dying to know. September 28th. Fish tank floor show night. I do not understand what these words mean together.

But let's read the description. Maybe that'll help. But let's read the description. Maybe that'll help. All year, the fish and other denizens of the tank have to stay under the spotlight and keep us entertained. Well, turnabout is fair play. Gather family and friends round the aquarium and dance and sing. Try La Mer Sea of Love or even Swan Lake. I still don't understand this holiday. Try La Mer, Sea of Love, or even Swan Lake.

I still don't understand this holiday. What is this, Jonathan? It's pretty self-explanatory. You're supposed to dance and entertain your fish. I'm like mad at you about it. Yeah, don't blame Jonathan. It's fine. So you go to an aquarium and you look at the fish tanks and they're working for you.

You're getting the entertainment of looking at the nice colors and water and we need to give back by dancing for them? This is a stupid holiday. you're like, they're working for you. You're getting the entertainment of looking at the nice colors and water. And we need to give back by dancing for them. This is a stupid holiday. Noah, Brendan, do either of you have fish tanks you can perform for this evening? I had a fish tank as a kid. It's long gone. And almost all of the fish died under my care. From lack of entertainment?

They were mostly, it was boredom yeah but yeah i should i so i shouldn't well i shouldn't be abuse yeah i know i i'm actually not at legally uh allowed near a fish tank uh within 15 15 years participate in the holiday if you wanted to yeah i know i'm out with the ocean yeah and obviously, yeah, this is a conflict that's been percolating for years and is really coming to a head these days. So... The orcas know. What side are you on, Wellcat?

What side are you on? Okay. September 29th is National Silent Movie Day. National Silent Movie. An annual day dedicated to celebrating and preserving silent movies okay maybe you want to wheel that over to your fish tank just like just put it on hopping on put it on i don't know that they're registering the sounds anyway so or colors or colors right so might as well give them a silent movie show yeah i mean you can even show them there's a silent hitchcock

you could show them that yeah there's a yellow culture is it called the fish i was thinking of no i was thinking of notorious but maybe there is the fish he's got a lot any film is a silent film to to a fish so it sort of expands, really expands the repertoire if you can be a fish on this day. Yeah. Honestly, I think I just have a higher opinion of fish than you. Well, you know, clearly you do. You know, I'm at war with them, as we've previously mentioned. Yeah, well, he's court mandated to stay away, so.

They don't let me into Aquaman 2. From the blowback hosts about fish. Damn hosts about fish damn at least i'm honest about my my record you know that's true but yeah if you are a fish uh enjoy i guess any movie day right for them i guess it would be yeah so put on a visually stimulating movie so notorious is a good one there's like what there's a big famous behind the back shot she's holding something in her hand if i remember correctly yeah so i will um read the actual description of national silent movie day just you know why not about 80 of all silent films are believed to be lost forever due to film degradation fires and the fact that studios often sought to reclaim this silver content from prince after their theatrical runs were completed.

That's not the actual description. I wrote that. Oh, Jonathan wrote that. But it does describe why we celebrate. That is a description, though. Yeah. Look here. We all love cooking at home. Why, every Saturday I make a batch of my famous fear bread. But it's hard finding the time to shop. Luckily, you can get all the ingredients you need with DoorDash Grocery Delivery. That's right, it's DoorDash.

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thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You have a new season of your show Blowback out. You can listen to the first episode for free and then subscribers get the full the full season it's great um as katie mentioned but before we like talk about it do you want to sort of give the basic like premise and like what what does the title mean in the context of the show great job cody thank you so much that was really well done good the answer

is going to fall so short of that lovely question and setup so i'll try my best uh yeah the the show's called blowback it's an old cia term that uh tends to mean unintended consequences or unwanted consequences uh from a covert operation or any number of things, a war or an assassination or things like this. And it's also a very punchy title. So we did our first season on the Iraq War, our second season on the Cuban Missile Crisis, our third on the Korean War, and the season on Afghanistan, the long, long history of our meddling in Afghanistan. And all of these are in some way or another a catastrophe brought on by, at least according to our show, the appetite of our empire as the big dog, as America. And so sometimes it's blowback, sometimes it's a

little bit more interesting, a little bit more complicated than just unwanted consequences, a little bit more insidious. And so we try to uncover this stuff that a lot of the times is sort of stuffed down the memory hole so that we don't have to think about it too much after it happens. always um sort of like you make the distinction i think it's important to make where sometimes it is sort of in intended consequences as opposed to unintended consequences because the interests are always sort of like aligning and realigning where whereas the end goal is always sort of kind of the same but the interests change the figures change change. And I just wanted to highlight that point because I think it's important to, it's easy also to sort of, I think to get conspiratorial about a lot of this stuff

in a way that's not necessarily helpful as opposed to just like, yeah, they're interest aligned. They have these common goals as opposed to like so many like backroom deals. Although that obviously is like, there is an element of that for sure. Don't downplay the backroom deals, although that obviously is like there is an element of that for sure. Don't downplay the backroom deals. They happen.

There is a literal club that we talk about this season called the Safari Club, which was in charge of directing anti-communist policy throughout the later period of the Cold War. And it was literally a club that met at a club. So sometimes it, you know, I think Michael Parenti once said, you know, do you think that people, you're saying that these powerful people get together in rooms and sort everything out? And he goes, no, of course not.

They go parachuting and that's where they work it all out. So, you know, there are some rooms and some backroom deals. But yes, broadly speaking, those deals are happening because of an alignment of interest based on all kinds of economic and political and social factors. Yes. Well, what's really interesting. So as mentioned, this season is Afghanistan unpacking so much. You know, this is a very broad period of time.

It's a lot of time and it's you know I listened to the first episode so far I'm definitely going to listen to the rest of it and I'm already just taken aback by just how much information gets lost like we said lost we there's so much that's happening and there's so much information and questions that might arise in your mind at the time, but you don't have a full answer. And the whole history of it gets lost to you. And our memories are so short. And it's kind of overwhelming when you try to unpack it.

And that's why work like this is so important. But what do you think most Americans still don't understand about the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, given this protracted experience that we've all had with it? I think that Americans don't necessarily realize the really determinant hand and role that our government played in Afghanistan, you know, not just in the 1980s, but really beginning in the 1970s, when we began to direct significant resources there in the hopes of destabilizing Afghan society and the Afghan government. And, you know, the title of our podcast, Blowback, you know, the title of our podcast, Blowback, it could be seen, and I think many people,

if they have heard the word before, it is usually in reference to, you know, the culmination, so to speak, of this policy, which was the, you know, 9-11 attacks. That's depending, you know, that's the American sort of perspective perspective and that sort of leaves out the degree to which it's like well it wasn't just that we funded these terrorists as part of this scheme to liberate afghanistan from oppressive communist rule but rather that we actively you know we we we did far more than that we eviscerated and shredded Afghanistan, made the country uninhabitable virtually for anything resembling, you know, a normal civil society and have basically, you know, insulated ourselves from the consequences of having, you know, turned, you know, an aspiring state, as it were, into basically the world's, you know, longest running heroin production facility and market. Yeah, America loves to point out problems in other cultures and countries and fail to recognize our own role in creating those problems and then demonize the people of those places as being

criminals or bad in some way you know moral superiority that over situations that we create and i think it's uh you know i remember uh can can people swear on the show? Is that allowed? Fuck yeah. Oh, that's that's shoot. Yes. I ask because of the time that the former president, you know, made part of a news cycle, probably that that hour by calling other countries shithole countries. Yeah. whole countries. And there is an immediate offensiveness to people with that because you're denigrating an entire nation or set of nations for whatever right-wing policy justifies the mistreatment of the people coming from them, etc. But the deeper problem with that is that some of those countries, they aren't doing so hot, and they're

not run well, and they are in bad shape. But it's because of American policy that that is occurring. And so in that Trumpian way, what we tend to do is meddle, for reasons we can go into further, but have already kind of touched on, in other parts of the world, creating problems in other countries that allow us to build wealth off the backs of those countries. And then say, while we still possess many problems of our own, we get very rich doing that, and then say, well, why can't everyone be like us? That's why everyone comes here, right?

Because we're free and we can have a better life here, when people would be quite happy to stay where they are a lot of the time. Some people want to leave their countries for different reasons, but it would be a very different world, and there'd be far fewer, quote unquote, problems with people coming to America in general if their countries hadn't been raided or destroyed or exploited by, again, the country at the top of the food chain for the past hundred or so years. It won't let them in after that. What'd you say? It won't let them in after that.

Correct. Like you do all these things and you're like, but also like stay away from me. As Kamala Harris said, don't come. Don't come. Do not come. Do not come. Do not come. Yes.

But that, and we touch a bit on Guatemala itself. I believe she was talking about Guatemala in that instance. And we touch on that in season two with regard to Cuba, because Guatemala was a proto Bay of Pigs operation that we carried out in that country that led to a civil war and a military dictatorship there that killed as many as a quarter million people. And so behind the news cycle of Kamala Harris saying, do not come to America, you Guatemalans, there's an entire history of unimaginable blood and violence and horror that I don't think most people probably know about because we are the big dog and you don't, there's not a great interest to keep people in a,

as they say, the imperial core or whatever, all that savvy to what we're doing abroad. Absolutely. It's best served for the American public as far as they're concerned, just to let us know that we're doing our best to be the good force in the world. We are protecting people.

And if that means that we have to get involved to protect people, fine. And that's just the mentality that at least my entire life has felt that the image of what it's taken a lot of depro honestly to realize you know the indoctrination people worry about is real just not what they're thinking in terms of our role in the world especially in the first episode of this season you lay out the business connections between the bush family and the bin laden. And it is wild. It is wild how we just brush right over that, isn't it? I honestly don't know how this happened.

Why do you think this never became a bigger scandal? Well, I actually, there's a really funny kind of illustrative example of, of kind of like how, how shocking and also how known a lot of those facts were um shortly after 9 11 the fbi raided the whitney the art museum in in new york and they went after the conceptual artwork of a guy of an artist named mark lombardi who had died a few years earlier or maybe a year earlier and his work in the 90s, and it was very celebrated, became what are known as these interlocks,

which are just basically business diagrams linking people and entities to one another. And he did these, as it so happened, largely about, you know, the Bush family and Saudi royals. And the FBI was very curious about what was on those diagrams. And, you know, listeners can Google this.

It's a pretty well-known story. I believe there's a Daily Beast article about it from most recently. international uh dynastic wealth and oil uh fan you know like oil legacies of families like the bush and the bin ladens who as the largest construction magnet as the sorry as the as the bin laden firm was the largest construction firm uh in saudi arabia having built the roads to mecca and medina it you know sort of made sense in a you know in a broad way that like yeah there's this milieu on the other hand it is yeah pretty fucking strange right that we don't really talk uh that extensively or that we haven't really digested that the guy responsible for dealing the biggest body blow against america since not since pearl harbor as we are so often told you know his

brother was literally uh we are you know it's been reported was a business partner of george w bush um yeah bin laden's brother was was an investor in in uh george w bush's not even his dad the young george w bush's first oil concern it's not even a family dynasty so much it's so recent it's so recent do you find you run into that problem a lot because i feel like i feel like one of the reasons that like it didn't this information didn't catch on is because it's so easy to take that information and go well then bush did 9-11 like i thought you were you know i thought you were asking me do i run into that problem a lot like where uh my my oil concern is funded by ben london's brother is it also a question because we're here for you we can talk

like we can deal with that the answer is unfortunately yes uh that i've run into it but uh i'm sorry i think that the as they say conspiracy mindsets around 9-11 are are quite understandable given that um you don't have to believe that quote unquote you know the meme bush did 9-11 like he literally pushed a button you don't have to believe that uh or or think that it was um an inside job in the in the sense described uh on like youtube like loose change or whatever you know change right you don't have to believe that to to to admit the fact that there are that there has been i mean there's still stuff that has not been declassified relating to it there's things that have not been released that we're protecting. And this is

really directly related to the previous question, that we're protecting our friends in Saudi Arabia or the friends of their friends or friends of our friends in Pakistan. This is a common problem when you start to try to run the world is you're accountable for a lot of different nasty stuff going on or stuff that your friend's doing. And people can judge for themselves in the show what we are trying to say or uncover or reveal or present about what this tapestry of connections was like, because it's essentially a series of overlapping business partners. And then sometimes business partners fall out. And certainly in the case of the one bin Laden, he went a different route.

He was, boy, he was a bit like a rich, probably get crucified for saying this, but he was like a rich American kid going to fight in a war with that only for the thrill of it you know um uh because he went to afghanistan as uh the scion of you know as noah mentioned the biggest construction uh family in saudi arabia because he wanted to use his his wealth and his prestige to have more of that kind of bad boy globe trotting lifestyle, not unlike certain Americans or Europeans do when there's a war on, you know. And there was also, I think, with Bin Laden in particular, and we don't go too much into the show in this,

but, you know, we tell the story of what he was doing in the 90s prior to 9-11. But I think something that is perhaps underplayed is the extent to which, you know, yeah, like to build on Brendan's point, he was traveling in the sort of shadow of nasser's failed vision of the united arab world he was falling you know it was a pretty shattered environment divided authoritarian rules it was not like there wasn't really a particularly uh unified islamic world at that moment and he saw

that division and he you know laid it at the blame quite naturally at the hands of the United States. I think one other thing we were discussing just a moment ago about, you know, sort of, you know, who our friends are like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Later on in the season, we do kind of tackle head on the raid to capture and kill Osama bin Laden. And I think that that's a really great example of where, you know, we draw both from Cy Hersh's reporting, but also New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall, who's reporting in conclusions, you know, really align a lot with what Hersh says. And so there's, you know, like, it's a great example of how, you know, yeah, even when it comes to taking out ostensibly you know america's numero uno enemy uh you know we can't really ask a lot of questions about what it was that he was

doing hold up in a protect one you know in a walled compound you know just steps away functionally from the pakistani west point yeah the the word is kayf, I think is helpful for those in the World Wrestling Federation, you know, that there's a certain amount of performance to project the idea that two people are sworn enemies when in fact, you really don't know what next week holds. You know, it's all up for grabs all the time because it needs to be flexible. The system needs to be flexible. The world economy and the most important, so-called important states in it, oil states, powerful military states, you need to be flexible if you're going to rule the world together.

And so that means that sometimes you're going to be friends and on the same side of certain things and on the opposite sides of other things. But the layers start to get very confusing once you're dealing with all that. Yeah. things but the layers start to get very confusing once you're dealing with all that yeah yeah i know like a lot of your uh listeners might like re-listen uh a few times because there's so many people involved in all these things like it's a lot to unpack uh but they better pay but pay again as well they better repay exactly exactly um it can be hard to keep track of everybody um and often there are people that no one's ever

heard of and so i'm i guess i'm just wondering do either of you have like a figure in any of the seasons that you think like more people should know this name like nobody knows this person's name whether it's like oh they're particularly evil or like this is actually a person who's like worth yeah knowing about i mean i do think that that's a general lesson of history and like what's fun about like doing any historical work is that like you identify people and individuals in the past and you're like yo more people should know about this person found a guy yeah exactly but you know okay i say that because you know that's the nice part whereas with this season most of the guys

that people should know about they're real pieces of shit yeah uh yeah i mean a couple names that you know all of them yeah bubble up for me i mean in particular uh zbigniew brzezinski is uh was the national security advisor for carter a lot of people might know the name brzezinski because of his daughter who mika brzezinski has gone on to become a very successful TV anchor on Morning Joe, etc. And his other children have become ambassadors and envoys and things like this. But he was the national security advisor for Carter, not Reagan. Reagan certainly juiced the anti-Soviet jihad that we cover in this season, which on a basic level was kind of the beginning point of the organization of groups like Al-Qaeda and the

Taliban can be traced back to this coalition of Islamic warriors and commanders that the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others, including Israel and Egypt and others, started to fund. That played out in the 80s under the Reagan administration, but it was actually begun just a bit earlier under Jimmy Carter, who I think a lot of people think of, understandably, as more of the, you know, the sort of not peacenik, but well-meaning peanut farmer who tried to reign America's work. Yeah, he had a peanut farm. He had a peanut farm. He had a peanut farm. How bad could you be? And indeed, Carter the president is actually quite different from Carter the post-president, which is interesting.

But anyway, his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a real piece of work. He was acknowledged to be one of the most anti-Russian, as they say, russophobes that had ever occupied the White House, and not even an anti-Soviet so much as a 19th century style, great game type strategist. And so it was his injection of money and foreign cooperation into this jihad that we were already kind of starting to run in the 70s that created so many things that he was later asked about. He was asked point blank by more than a couple quite brave interviewers, you know, what do you think now about your support for groups and people who became the proto-Taliban, the Taliban themselves, Jalaluddin Haqqani, who's one of

the biggest leaders of the Taliban, was our favorite guy. Mentors of bin Laden. Bin Laden himself fought on our side. And he said, look, I mean, it was really important to work with these guys to defeat my enemy, Russia. And I have no regrets whatsoever. He started to quiet down a little bit about that after September 11, 2001. But even then, he really couldn't help himself. And he would often just say, look, I did what I did, and I'm proud of it. I think a lot of

people would weigh the alternate history of a socialist state that was still functioning, rather than the gangster capitalism that took root in that that area itself let alone the policies that produced uh a darker species of of politics in afghanistan and elsewhere um but that was all due to that one not all due to that one guy but he was the architect of of of that policy so brzezinski is a name that should be up there with kissinger, for example, I would say. Or down there with Kissinger. Yeah, down there. Yeah, down there with Kissinger. In hell.

There could be a tournament. Eventually, yeah. He's in the conversation. Did you guys see the photos of Kissinger? He was meeting with Zelensky and stuff, and he's at the table, and I guess one of his left hand was in a brace, and it looked like a prop. It looked like something. I was reminded of.

He looks like a Star Wars special effect now. Yeah, he's becoming. I keep thinking of Quado from Total Recall. Start the reactor. Yeah, like Kissinger burst out of somebody's chest, and now he's just. Oh, this is weird. Yeah, right? It looks like a foot.

What is this? Also, can someone just. It looks like a foot what is this also can someone just it looks like a foot on his hand yeah someone should just ratchet get his chair up like that all chairs have that guy up crank it up like brendan i think the chair is probably it's already as high as it can't go any higher. Captain, I can't. The crystals. We need more crystals. Stop down in there. Oh, boy, that's disturbing.

Look, I'll be dreaming about that later. Thank you. What an odd man who's somehow still chugging along. He's chugging. Speaking of, just wanted to sort of, I appreciate a lot of the editing in your show. And I think listeners will enjoy that. It keeps it pacing. How do you write that kind of stuff because a lot of times you'll be discussing something and then it goes

to like this just random quote from whether it's like an interview or like a movie or like some sort of reference is that a lot like in the editing of it or is that in the writing of it that's a great question it tends to come as we roll on with recording and editing more than anything. I don't think we tend to write the references ahead of time. If I really think something will go well here, we cut to Goodfellas or something, then I'm like, okay, put that clip there. But most of the time it's in editing where I will try my best to, you know, either cut to a real, you know, like a real piece of news or an old archive or, or, you know, Polly Walnuts or Eastbound and Down or something, just something that lends itself to the moment. But yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty organic,

you know, uh, the, the way, but we write the show, we, we, we definitely write our own narration very deliberately and all the fun stuff. The bells and whistles kind of come after. Yeah, that's the flourish at the end. Yeah. Garland on the tree. I don't know. The cream in the coffee. Yeah.

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click the microphone at the top of the page and enter code more news soon your clowns will be everywhere in every home sitting there in beds and on shelves waiting and we're back for more news what good promo codes oh my god i'm gonna use those promo codes are just so cody oh like you yeah uh so obviously recommend uh listening to the show everybody each season uh is very interesting and uh i well i'm curious like how many seasons you have in your head of like knowing like obviously there's no like uh absence of material you could yeah come on but like do you know like we're definitely doing this we're definitely gonna do this obviously you don't have to say like how many or like what specifically but like we don't know how many i can tell you that right exactly depends on how

many people subscribe to the shows that's right katie that's right at home um get your credit cards out but uh yeah we we definitely you know we're excited to start thinking about season five i think we can say that we're doing another season but uh but we but we we we tend to take a little break and and think about what what would be most interesting to do next sometimes it's very natural and sometimes uh we we calculate it a little bit more but we're we're in that process right now. And so I, yeah, to your point, it's unfortunately there's no shortage

of stuff out there to talk about, but I'm getting pretty excited with some of the ideas that we're thinking about and we'll just have to see where we are, but everyone will hear about it once we know. Yeah. I'll probably be in New Jersey. Perfect. Great. So it's going probably be in New Jersey. Perfect.

Great. I would love that for you. Also very helpful for where we're leading this direction. Just setting us up left and right. In listening to your Cuba, the first episode of Cuba season, A, I do think it's really helpful. Sometimes you're just like, we're not going to get into all this this obviously but like here's a list of just things we've done like in the span of a minute and a half just like this this this this this i imagine it's a useful skill if you could just

sort of pick any country uh in the world be like oh yeah we've done this this this this this this this but uh it was we should make like a wordle for that like some kind of spin-off you know you get three three out of the five blocks kind of depress yourself yeah that's the plan yeah there's a few moments where you sort of talk about current politics because obviously a lot of foreign policy stuff um is going to come up when we have an election every year basically and uh they start earlier and earlier so it's interesting sort of seeing the uh the cuba reaction to uh and like it come up obviously for bernie sanders uh during that election specifically um but you make a passing reference to bob menendez um and his sort of uh

bit bullishness on cuba which we don't need to get into too much unless you'd like to but we're going to talk about bob menendez is my point long long transition to say we're going to talk about bob menendez who's in the news and was in your episode at one point although before we do do you have some context about bob menendez yeah no this is your this is your best friend yeah he is the he's the senior senator from new jersey he i believe went to saint p Peter's University or college associated with the St. Peter's Catholic High School. And he is of the cute North Jersey, Hudson County, Cuban community. And his parents arrived.

Did you say cute? No, I said Cuban. Okay. He's not cute. We'll get to it. I think we can get to it. Is it like a really cute community? No, no, Well, I think we can get to it. I was like, is it like a really cute community? No, no, no, no.

I think, I think we can get to like a really good, I think we can get to an aesthetic appraisal of Bob Menendez shortly. But Menendez is, he, he, his parents came to the United States well before Castro was ever, you know, like a blink on, you know, a blink on the American Cold War radar. And he has, however, though, spent his career in the Senate, and in particular, as chair of Senate Foreign Relations as basically, you know, the as hawkish as any Republican, essentially a neocon, in particular on Israel, and his pet issue cuba and he's fundraised really substantially on it over the years and basically those were the people who are most responsible for

him surviving his previous prosecution you know they're why the party just didn't turn on him why chuck schumer didn't throw him under a bus for you know being homies with a medicare fraudster so yeah i mean he's a real he seems like he's really in hot water this time sure does doesn't it let's set up that thank you what a um a perfect setup love that we have a a bob expert from the cast today so yeah uh bob menendez and his wife pleaded not guilty this week to bribery charges uh he's accused of secretly helping i shouldn't laugh uh helping the authoritarian government of egypt including sending them sensitive information in exchange for money the indictment says investigators found

480 000 in cash and a hundred thousand dollars worth of gold bars hidden in his home they also have a google search of kilo of gold got a mercedes-benz out of it like just any criminal like checking the google search is so funny it's like where do i hide my gold that i stole of gold perfect not funny the the thing with the with the egyptian uh connection it's it's great because i think it isn't isn't he like basically doing thumbs up emojis and stuff like you know uh cool so we'll do the uh we'll do the handoff of a big bag of money with uh with the with the dollar sign on it uh on that day real housewives gif you know like they're they're incredibly casual and uh you know very very gen or millennial

or gen z about it with their their texting yeah it's interesting seeing how uh easy it is and how like they don't there's no it's like one of the like the kind of behavior of somebody who's like oh you do this all the time this is just your your mode. You're in crime mode all the time because you're not like, we got to keep this. We can't do... There's no sense of danger. I do think that there is another dimension here because a reasonable person has got to ask,

what can make a man make this kind of decision and i think the answer is his co-conspirator in this it's his it's his lovely wife his wife yeah i think you should look up a photo of the two of them together there's this one where she's got these genes that are like like they're like they're like 40 percent gene you know is how i'll describe them they i can't believe this is an auto uh autocomplete on google bob mineta's wife jeans yeah it did it yeah it sure is yeah so you know this is what i'm saying man yeah yeah yeah she's living the high life yeah yeah she's those jeans were split open and just stitched back together do people are saying you know cynical people cynical people say he just did this for cc he just did this for cc's money i say he did it

for love he did it for love and oddly enough in this photo it's henry kissinger's in it and he's super sunk down behind him in this photo he's got a foot for a hand. He's just showing up like Waldo everywhere. He's wearing the same jeans too, which is particularly disturbing. They're working for him. He did it for love. I mean, there's a romantic comedy in here for sure. Writers, you're off a strike.

Let's get on it. This geneless woman and a gardener from Hogwarts finally found love. Didn't he start doing these crimes right after being cleared last um around well that's what you gotta do if you're cleared for crimes you can do more right he wasn't cleared it was a he wasn't cleared but hungry whatever continuing his job to him that's cleared to him he's out of hot water let's just put the water back on boil he's refusing he's no has so far as yes signaled no intention of stepping down which is fun i love

that that's just the thing we do i mean it's because he will be financially ruined if he does like that that's his uh play um you you know you can raise money you know and you have like access to all of the ways to reach constituents whom you've raised money from before uh you know for a legal fund and so on so you know he's now you know he's going to be the most hated man in dc cory booker like you know announced like calling for him to go was definitely you know he probably thinks of that as a knife in the back. But I mean, he's I think I think he's it's going to be it's going to be he's fighting for his life.

I don't know how much longer he'll be able to hold out. Look, he's got all those gold bars. I couldn't make a dent in his legal fund. Do you confiscate? Did they confiscate all the gold bars? I guess maybe he doesn't have access to his gold bars. Three Kings remake or uh reboot you should have hit him under the floorboards or something buried maybe he can abscond to cuba maybe he lives safely there i don't think they'll have him i think they would love to have him they'd like to have him and ask him a couple questions i bet but

but he's yeah i mean it and it's great because i didn't he say like when he was discovered with literal gold bars that he was stocking he was like uh i was i was gonna send those gold bars to uh to people in need in cuba where not people in need my family which has a history of facing expropriation or whatever at the hands of the government which is to be clear a lie his dad like as a as a somebody i know pointed out uh you know his dad was a carpenter his mom was a seamstress there wasn't really anything for them to you know have the government couldn't really take from them so it's funny that he has to do the opposite of the normal politician thing we say like you know i come from humble beginnings but he has to be like no my parents were rich

as fuck in cuba and i was really spoiled and they took humble beginnings, but he has to be like, no, my parents were rich as fuck in Cuba. And I was really spoiled and they took all of our money. He has to be like, he has to say that in this context. But like, I think Ted Cruz as well, his dad left Cuba because of Batista, not Castro, the U.S. backed dictator before Castro. All of these right wing Cuban guys, the most prominent voices, none of them fled communism. They love to tweet about how they did, though. They turned, I guess they just, you know, like we said before, people who don't necessarily get a lot of background on all this stuff.

So you kind of hear it and you go, OK. But no, I think Ted Cruz as well, his dad was, uh, part of the revolutionary bands and left, but, and left because of Batista. So Menendez as well, uh, he was not, yeah, his family had nothing to do with the expropriations as far as I can tell. Sounds like a dishonest guy. What do you make of so many of the Senate Republicans being like either coming to his defense or, you know, they're trying to hedge this thing because of what they got going

with Trump. So they're saying like, well, you know, they're trying to hedge this thing because of what they got going with Trump. So they're saying like, well, you know, we got to wait for a fair trial. Well, like all the Democrats, except for Schumer, calling for him to step down. I wouldn't second guess their their their pure motives for a second. That's my reaction. I was about to say something like that. Yeah. Great, great way to navigate the world. I bet they're speaking from the heart and nothing else. It's a great way to navigate the world.

I bet they're speaking from the heart and nothing else. Yeah. There's not a shadow of a scintilla of a dishonest thought in their minds. No, never. Straight shooters. They haven't gotten themselves in a situation where they have to say this. But it is, you know, baseline embarrassing. You know, we could go on about this in general. But I mean, just not a day goes by where one of the parties doesn't have a giant corruption scandal.

I mean, I mean, Trump is obviously the most indicted man on Earth. We that that's he's he's hit that that that milestone, which is the record. And it's not going to be broken anytime soon. It's not going to be from him. He set the record and it's not going to be broken anytime soon. We don't want to take that away from him. But it's like in a way he's useful for the Democrats for many reasons, obviously, as a symbol and as a vote for us because of him and all these other things. But but it's also like his corruption always makes regular corruption look like, oh, well, we can't even. Who cares about that? Like it is weird that Joe Biden's son had natural gas.

It's Hunter Biden. Is he a natural gas expert that I know? He should have had that job. He should have a lot of jobs he should not have had. I don't know what you call that, if not corruption and all these other bad words. Yeah. But then Trump will literally like get on the line and be like, you know, start like henry hill things and being like by the way i know we're being recorded and i'm i'm i'm saying this against any future trial that what i'm doing is criminal i just want that to be known so then you're just like oh god we this is just like 10 times more blatant so it sort of covers everybody and so much of it is like yeah this sort of like like the this like I'm like

calling it soft corruption, but like the kind of like legal stuff. It's like it's legal, but it shouldn't be. So maybe we talk about making it not legal. Yeah, because it's such it's such a common thing that happens. And when you run into that, like, well, can we do something about it or are we just going to let it continue happening? Now you got to let it rip. Let it rip. You got to let it rip let it rip you gotta let it rip i agree with you completely this is remarkable and

frustrating moment in time that we are in and i've always been in but we're seeing it very clearly uh is like yes obviously this person's crimes but i don't like to just point to this to this guy this gigantic criminal and as a way of dismissing this person just because they're on the left quote unquote as if they even actually are i don't i'm not comfortable with any of it and i have a problem with uh a knee-jerk defense of it not that I'm seeing a bunch of people defending Menendez. Right. He's too hated. Or like anything. Yeah.

But it's like, it's like, well, we don't, we can talk about how this is wrong and we can expect more. And I do think that that's a problem and a benefit of this time that we've lived through. I think that the masks are being torn off and the general public is starting to understand how, yeah,

just how corrupt things are. Your podcasts, for example, like not just accepting the narrative of what's been presented, but realizing the what's actually been happening. And it's important, but it is hard to navigate. Yeah. And without a coherent political framework, which doesn't really exist in our country right now, despite our, as we said before, despite our desire to tell everyone how to do everything in other parts of the world, we don't. in America. There are a set of interests that the two parties are pursuing, but making sense of it, it should be easy. It would be nice if all this blatant decay and corruption were something that the public could see and then process and then turn into political action to change or reform or revolutionize or whatever you want to call it. But unfortunately, it all goes through these different channels of, well, I subscribe to this face, this insane Facebook group. So I'm going to process it like this because there's a thousand, you know, articles or weird, you know, algorithmic things to tendrils boring into my brain as soon as I hear about this.

And then another person has the opposite, you know, so-called political valence. And then they get the the Democratic Party version of that. And, you know, like everyone's a little bit QAnon now is what I'm trying to say. So like there's no way for the clear as day, you know, cross the board corruption to be internalized by a coherent public because there is no coherent public because we've let it get this far. So, you know, you'd think all these things would be clarifying. coherent public because there is no coherent public because we've let it get this far so you you know you'd think all these things would be clarifying but in fact uh it only you know then

someone is like you know this proves my theory about the adrenochrome or whatever and then it's like well right uh that's a bummer yeah my actually i had a really funny moment the other day i don't think i think my dad would be cool with me sharing this where he like saw something on Facebook and he was like, Oh, like some like high school classmate of his, you know, was raising money for some like environmental cause or something or some

like, you know, like medical thing for kids. And he, you know, he kicked him $10. But then when he got the email, he realized it was like an RFK junior.

realized it was like an rfk junior like he's now on the website as a proud donor and now he's a sponsor yeah yeah proud supporter of free market solutions to health care and energy so now he has literally voted for rfk i think that's what i think that's how that works that's that's what that means. I think that's how that works. That's what I told him. Yeah. RFK Jr. is going to be like, they make tens in this money now? I didn't know they came in such small denominations. I mean, RFK, I almost don't even want to talk about him because I'm sick of hearing about him. But he is a great example of the incoherence that we were just talking about. And I owe this to um my good friend and and uh brilliant uh brilliant thinker uh matt christman but the way he's talked about rfk is i think the is the correct way where you have you know a guy who says or people think

stands in for a more populist honest non-outsider or rather outsider politician or truth teller and like on a couple things he's right like he's like kind of anti-war but then in other ways he's not and then you know then he's obsessed with with the with the medicine and all that but like it's all based off of his individual you know problems, problems as a, as a rich kid who had kind of like a troubled life, who had immense access that no one else has to a political dynasty and the ability to speak from a political dynasty. And it all gets down to his little bug bears. So then when you get at the end of that, there is no universal healthcare.

There is no making things better for everyone. It's just kind of his little pet peeves turned into a politics and you know that that i think is you know resonating with people on a surface level but um even that even the kind of bad boy outsider is hostage to the same individualistic thing that all the corrupt all the you know other bad ones like the Pelosi's and the Trump's are are are criticized for pursuing their own individual interests so yeah it's uh it's it's it's seems inescapable right now yeah I mean this is all maybe this is too meandering but I think about it in terms of climate conversations. And, you know, I live in the mountains and I have lots of debates with people up here, different politics. And, you know, they'll say, like, you can't trust these politicians for their private interests.

And like, why are they telling you this to promote their narrative? And I understand why people have that mentality, but then I turn it around and say like, well, how can you trust this narrative? Who, what are the private interests behind this? Because I can literally tell you it's the oil companies. Like who has more invested, who stands to gain from whatever narrative. And it's,

but at the end of the day you're not moving anything because it's yeah but once you pull it back there's other interests it's like whenever someone says you know like well see the thing is i i think that that group they sound good but i bet they have an agenda and it's like well i mean of course they have an agenda like an agenda means things you want to do and any presumably, presumably any political actor or whatever, like wants to do things. So the idea of this kind of this American skepticism, which is, is in theory good skepticism of power and blah, blah, blah. It gets turned into like, well, what do you, do you want no one to have things they want

to do? Because if anyone has an agenda and that's disqualifying, then it's like, well, then this, this, it's like, that's not politics or whatever it's right yeah it's what it really is which is a show it's a tv show we're watching theatrics yelling at each other and that's all we sort of get um and then if you get it's that sort of team mentality like kind of what we were talking about earlier with like hunter where it's like you we should be able to talk about problems over here without it being perceived as like well then you support the other guys surely that sure that means that you like them um because even

it makes me think about the show not to crowbar the show in uh again but in this season in this season you know boy i don't think i don't want to get offended by this but but to compare what we were just were talking about there were different commanders in the Mujahideen. And the worst guy was a great name, guy named Golbadine Hekmechar. And he was the original throwing acid in the faces of women type guy. And he was the highest paid of the guys we were paying. And not even that great of a commander. He was usually fighting against his fellow mafia bosses in Afghanistan. But he was one of our top guys. One of our other top guys was a guy named Ahmed Shah Massoud. And he was not exactly a household name in America, because again,

the attention paid is always quite low. But he was known known certainly in media circles or whatever as the heroic religious patriot um the the good one you know but in fact some of the stuff we dive into in in this season is his gangs were dealing drugs and uh sexual violence was a key tool in their in their armies and he was getting rich off of heroin trade and all these other unsavory things, just as much as Golbidin Hekmachar was. So you had the good cop, bad cop. You had the smooth operator,

which I guess could stand in for the Democratic Party, where they're good at corruption, except for Bob Menendez. Like, you know, they're good at it. And then the other side is so unhingedhinged openly acid throwing you know type type guys yeah aggressively cruel yeah it makes it so easy to be like well yeah i mean that that guy's a problem but we have this other you know much more polished dashing figure over here so if you don't like that other flavor try this flavor because uh he at least appears more palatable.

And that's very useful when everyone basically is implicated and you need people to make decisions within those parameters. And so it reminded me of that because there was a real PR machine behind this commander. And he would come up in all these books of the wars, like this lion. They called him the Lion of the Panjshir Valley. But we spoke to several guests and Afghan guests, and they were like, he was a war criminal. We want to tear down all of his, not everyone in Afghanistan does, some drink the Kool-Aid, but a lot of people are like, this guy butchered a village here and there and blah, blah, blah. But we have his face up on the wall, just like any other tin pot dictator has his face on the wall, just like, you know, any other tin pot, you know, dictator has his face on

the wall. So these problems are are not as far away as Afghanistan is, as we think, you know, it's the same. It's the same level of a breakdown in in in politics or political imagination and possibilities. And then you get stuff like Trump and hunter biden and uh benendez and q anon and and the taliban and all this other shit you know i mean benendez it's real it's true i mean like egypt is you know like they are you know like like the uh tom moran the columnist for the editorial writer for the star ledger the state the newspaper in jersey pointed this out but you know i mean like it's a real like the the you know like the the menendez side of this is very funny but the reason the menendez side of this is funny and that it happens at all

is because it's it's just like built on the most like you know explicit uh kind of you know and grotesque corrupt favor trading uh imaginable i mean long time what you know and very recent uh speaker of the house was a was a child molester yeah like in in american politics not that long ago not that long ago and how short the memories for for years and years it was like the jerry sandusky thing but for the speaker of the house not like a regional house not like a local council the government and and yeah that was what i mean he was like till 2007 it was many years it was like it was like from the late 90s to 2007 early 2000 yeah but he was french denis haster right we don't need to you know focus on this guy he shouldn't have even been allowed the only one yeah yeah i mean i mean it makes you

wonder you know like it's and and this is again this is how you can like you know wily coyote your way into being q anon you know i'm not saying like everyone should just not care about this quite troubling implications of people opting in for a mad outlook on life. But I mean, there's just enough breadcrumbs that there's enough. Exactly. If Facebook poisons your, you know, 72 year old mind, then you it's not like you're dealing with no prior skepticism and or well-judged skepticism about this stuff. But but then you go down the slide and you end up in the ball pit of a fucking, you know, all these weird all these weird things. And and then and then backing guys who actually are child molesters, you know, who are the ones leading the leading the charge against the real ones. The white helmet pedophiles. Someone, by the way, there's this Kevin James picture that everyone

keeps posting. I don't know why it's happening. I gotta look this one up. It's just a promo. It's just some promotional image from King of Queens. Noah probably knows why it's happening. I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know why it's happening. I just see it. I don't know what. Oh, yeah. Everyone knows why it's happening. I don't know. Yeah. I have no idea.

I don't know why it's. I just. I mean, I don't know. Like, but this is like, like what? This happened. This happens like every meme. Whatever. It just happens like every three months. Like, oh, here's like a new image people are obsessed with.

And then gone. Poof. But I was just going to say about it that that. So that's some whatever. That's some indecipherable meme that's happening. I, you know, that so that's some whatever that's some indecipherable meme that's happening i i you know uh that's that but the last tweet he did before like acknowledging or tweeting that photo it's him being like hey everybody check out my my my buddy's new movie and it's the sound of freedom uh movie wait awesome the uh the movies yeah yeah um and and uh which which again the guy who i don't want to say

anything libelous but like something happened where the guy who reporting of the producer of the movie well i'm gonna say that he just got and i know this because one of my mountain friends sent it to me like but granted i also sent it was the first one when he got arrested sure sure like i was like but they just got the charges got dismissed apparently this was some sort of thing about him paying some i get lending money to a tenant whose child was taken by a custody thing that's the cover i don't know actually but he just got the charges were just dropped like two days ago it's a shady organization all the same it's a shady organization no i'm not defending it by the way um i'm just saying like there's been some development in that story there

has been some development with the sound of freedom producer arrested on well there's two different sex guys right there's fabian marta the yes and then there's the subject right who's been accused of a bunch of stuff as well yeah which one the charges got dropped against the first guy yes i believe though now i'm getting confused cool it's good though because they can do a sequel about the guys who are in the organization and then it's like literally just that brass eye sketch though like about like i was a pedophile and then i had to kill the pedophile inside i tweeted that i i i tweeted that for some reason uh yeah yeah there's the guy the god if anyone hasn't seen brass eye which is a great british uh the british comedian um oh god i'm blanking on his name what is his name chris morris yeah If anyone hasn't seen Brass Eye, which is a great British comedian.

Oh, God, I'm blanking on his name. What is his name? Chris Morris, yeah. He did the Day Today, an early Armando Iannucci show in Britain. Now everyone loves Veep. One of the earliest collaborators he worked with was a guy named Chris Morris. And he has an amazing movie called Four Lions as well that's hilarious. But he had a show called Brass Eye, which was kind of the inside edition parody.

And they're big special because at the time, it's very interesting. This stuff cycles over again. At the time, the British press is like 2000s or something, was just obsessed with talking about pedophilia. It was just like everyone was just on like your kids aren't safe. Any street you go down, there's a pedophile waiting and they're just letting them out of all the jails and all this stuff. So he satirized that with this very special broadcast about he called it pedo get in. Although in England, it's called pedo get in.

But but one of the commercials, one of the fake commercials is an American style like dog, the bounty hunter show about a guy who's like, I was a pedophile and I shot the part of my brain that was a pedophile. So now I hunt them. And it's like that is that is these guys they it is they're like yeah i know how they think that's how i find they deserve gunishment they deserve gunishment and they're just gonna like you're saying like they're just gonna come back around and be like and paint themselves as victims of of trying to stop the thing they'll call it the silencing of the sound of freedom or whatever, and then that'll be that. There are only pedophiles who have been set up who are actually innocent men. That's the only type of pedophile out there, apparently.

Except unless they're Democrats, those are real. Those are the real ones, obviously. Obviously, because of their political affiliation. But in a way, they aren't even real because they've already been put in jail by trump and executed oh so we don't know if the lizard people pretending to be them are pedophiles we have those are clones or whatever and then i'm like well then isn't everything fixed i mean i've never tried to interrogate why would i try to interrogate them there's no uh well this has been very fun. We have to wrap things up.

Sorry to our listeners who we didn't get to talk about the really interesting debate that you had last night. No, we didn't get to talk about that. I did want to talk about the WGA stuff, but we'll talk about that next week. Because guess what? Strikes are still happening. SAG's still out there. We're out there waiting for our deal and it's going to be tough so um definitely we'll dig into that next week and the president uh showing up at

an actual uh the president's showing up for a few minutes pretty wild oh yeah you're talking about donald trump right yeah he showed up uh that's what i would be there to that crowd full of union workers so embarrassing how easy it is for him to play people i like how we put an audio asterisk on that everyone could hear the big asterisk there was enough stink on that um but you know what i don't even care we didn't get to those topics because the topics we talked about, we fucking talked about. We did it. We talked about them. We talked the entire time. I want to give you guys a moment to tell people where to find your show, how to listen to the first episode, all the episodes of all the seasons, and where to follow you.

Those fun things. Sure. the seasons and where to follow you those fun things sure uh just go to blowback.show and click the big button that says subscribe if you'd like to get the season but uh the first episode if you type it into whatever you listen to your podcasts on apple spotify all those other weird ones that i don't know what they're called um pod pod brain whatever yeah um but uh it should work on all of them and you get the first episode is out there right now for free. Get a taste. See if you like it.

You obviously will. And then you can go sign up at Blowback. You will. That show. And, you know, there's other bonuses or kind of bonus perks. We're giving subscribers. We have some merch coming out soon. We have, you know, some discounts on stuff.

And there's bonus episodes as well behind the paywall. So, you know, you get the bang for your buck as they say and um i'm not really online anymore but i i am i still technically have an account uh deep underscore beige on twitter uh if you want to uh basically retweet uh king of the hill and simpsons uh clips now so you know that that's what i'm doing but noah is more active on the line. So you can get his Twitter. Where do we find you, Noah? I'm on Twitter.

You can search my name, Noah Colwin, K-U-L-W-I-N. And I also, I do journalism still. My clips and I update them, or I try to, are at noahcolwin.com. And most recently, I reported for for the intercept about an NSA official who, uh, was investigated for being an HR problem. Uh, so yeah,

if you like reading about that kind of thing, uh, go check that out at the intercept. I sure do. And I sure will. Well, thank you guys. You know where to follow us i i never do a plug for us at the end of the show but like subscribe i don't know whatever forget i said

that um i'm just gonna go ahead and tell you guys we appreciate you thank you for the support we love you very much. I love you very much. Hiya, folks. If you're listening to my voice right now, that means you're into learning new things. Like, for example, how to build a tiny house for at least 12 pet toads. You're not content to let the world's critical insights pass you by. Like, for example, the fact that toads need way, way, way more space than you would think. Yes, that's right,

and I think that an inquisitive person such as yourself should definitely check out the Jordan Harbinger Show, which features in-depth interviews with some of the world's most fascinating minds, like Bill Nye, Terry Crews, and Annie Duke. They've also got Feedback Friday episodes to respond to listener questions about everything from asking for a raise at work to helping a family member escape a cult. A toad cult? Who's to say? Anyway, the Jordan Harbinger Show is a great compliment to this podcast. Here you might hear the latest news about America's toxic food system. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, you can listen to a Skeptical Sunday segment about why some foods that are available in the U.S. are banned in other parts of the world. Whether Jordan is conducting an interview or giving advice to a listener, you'll find something useful that you can apply to your own life in every single episode of the

Jordan Harbinger Show. That could mean learning how to ask advice the right way, or it could just be discovering a slight mindset tweak that changes how you see the world. Search for the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's H-A-R-B, as in boy, I-N, as in Nancy, G-E-R, as in really i n as in nancy g e r as in really gotta read the wikipedia page on totes through to the end next time available on apple podcast spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts good day what's up guys i'm brendan shop if you love everything mixed martial arts i'm talking ufc breakdowns ufc picks one championship picks, PFL, you name it, your boy breaks it all down. Tune into The Shop Show, available every Monday, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

The Shop Show. Enjoy.