Some More News - Culty Right-Wing Fandoms, Tales from Trump's Toilet, and Even More Fake Olympic Snow

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Hi. Lola Blanc (@ohlalola) joins Katy and Cody to talk about the culty fandoms of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, the many problems with the Olympics, the reason Trump was always complaining about toilet flushing, and more. Support SOME MORE NEWS: http://www.patreon.com/SomeMoreNews We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit http://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. Right now Trade Coffee is offering a total of $20 off your first three bags when you go to http://drinktrade.com/morenews. To get started, take their quiz at http://drinktrade.com/morenews, and start your journey to your perfect cup. Ready to give your brain some TLC? Download Best Fiends FREE today on the App Store or Google Play. That's friends, without the r—Best Fiends. Secure your online data TODAY by visiting http://expressvpn.com/somenews. That's http://expressvpn.com/somenews and you can get an extra three months FREE. 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/@somemorenewsSupport the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast my name is katie stole hi katie stole hey what's up what's up hi oh it's me hi i'm cody cody johnson hi cody cody johnson hello see you again every day every day all the time joining us today for the very first time is filmmaker actor musician and host of the trust me podcast lola blanc hi hello hi hello hi here's the i'm like reading off your list of of accolades here and it's a lot. It's a long list. You're good at all of them. Thank you. Thank you. You're like,

oh, also you're a ventriloquist. Well, I was. I was. I wouldn't say I'm an active ventriloquist. But it's like a skill that you have in your back pocket that most people don't have. Most people don't.

That is true. You guys are so easy. I can teach you ventriloquism at any point. I mean, done. Scrap the rest of the episode and just do that? 100%. Really quick, we're going to get into some chatting and get to know you a little bit.

I mean, I know you, but everyone else is going to get to know you. But first, I have got to call out this week's holidays. Today, February 10th, is national flannel day not appropriate for los angeles today it's so hot it's so hot winter got hot 90 degrees yeah i'm sweating i hope that's a fan i'm well yeah the coyotes are back i haven't seen coyotes in about three months um but last night or the night before was like the first warm night whereas like oh there's warm air actually. And then they're back.

Well, that's nice. There's something poetic about that. The Santanas are blowing in the coyotes. Watch it again. The fires are also back. So also February 11th is satisfied staying single day, but it's also National Make a Friend Day. So you guys have your pick of holidays this week.

Stay single. Make a friend. This is anticipation of next week's love holiday. Whatever. It's called Valentine's. No, no, no. It's the love holiday. Yeah, yeah.

The love holiday. Bullshit love holiday. I mean, if you're single, that's fine. Be satisfied. Be satisfied. Go make a friend and then see if they want to fuck you and then you are no longer single and you can cancel out the days you know what that's a good three-day action so yeah put on a flannel your singleness

with your flannel then go out make a friend hook up all weekend then you got a date for valentine's there you go this is bad advice and then then yeah it's fine i want to i mean there's so many things that i could talk to you about let's start with your podcast on trust me podcast you know you you cover a bunch of different cults um you've also done episodes on conversion therapy and physics Talk to us a little bit about the done and done episodes on physics. Did I say physics? Ooh, I just, I do that all the time. I wish our podcast was that smart.

Yeah. I'm going to share, we can either cut that out or I can add this fun little tidbit in for our viewers and listeners. We did a holiday special a couple months ago and I did a whole, I hosted my first segment on

our YouTube show and it was really exciting. And I was stoked because one of my segments was psychedelic drugs. And I really confidently spent the whole time saying psilocybin instead of psilocybin. I've always thought it was psilocybin and nobody corrected me. So I had to spend a significant amount of time like ADRing and trying to match my words in such a way. Anyway, I do this a lot. Leave it all in. Katie, I have done this exact thing on my podcast

with that exact word where I had to go through and replace it. Yes. It's a hard word to say. I think I still may have said it wrong. I was saying psilocybin. I don't know. Maybe it's both. It's just, it's a lot of syllables and it's a weird word. It's not a

psilocybables. Psilocybables. We got it. We got there. My point of this question was to lead us into talking about cult and culty behavior and the through lines that you're seeing in all of these different mediums, psychic mediums, if you will. Yeah, the through lines that I'm seeing in all, I mean, where do we begin? So it typically there is a charismatic leader of some kind or doesn't even have to be a leader.

It can be a family member. It can be a partner. But it starts with somebody who is particularly charismatic and offers some kind of answer to a problem that you are having. Or they generate a problem that you didn't know that you were having, but now you think that you have it. generate a problem that you didn't know that you were having but now you think that you have it case in point when i went to the ziontology center and we took the emotional iq tests and they told us that we were in deep dire trouble and we were like in danger of harming ourselves if we didn't get help from them uh and over time when did you go i thought they were like calm like chiller about that.

It was like, oh, maybe you're like dealing with some stuff. But like they were like, you're going to harm yourself. You use the alarmist language. Yeah. Well, so I did it on a date with a guy. And they separated us. We thought it would be funny. Actually, for Valentine's Day, like six years ago or something appropriate.

They separated us. They told me that I had such intense anxiety that I needed their help. They told him that he was so depressive and he got a much more experienced woman than I did. And she like saw that that was resonating with him because he has very serious depression in his family. And so she like kind of latched onto it and was yeah preying on that fear of like hurting himself yeah and also i mean there's something so insidious about planting the seed of an idea and and you go well am i yeah and then all of a sudden that brings up and you start analyzing things from a different perspective and it can lead you down that path.

Totally. Okay. You recently on Twitter posted a question asking for recovered Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson fanboys. And I would love to talk to you about that. Is this for a specific episode? Is it research for something? And what have you learned?

Let's talk about them. Yeah, I really want to do an episode or maybe multiple episodes on the episode is it research for something and what have you learned let's talk about them yeah yeah uh yeah i really want to do an episode or maybe multiple episodes on the idw um i am finding i just i'm finding this subculture is like cropping up in my life so frequently it's like just more and more and more i think as a reaction to people feeling uh you know alienated by woke culture or whatever and um it's starting to scare me and i want to like bring more attention to it and not not in a not in a way that is saying like everyone who listens to fucking jordan peterson is harmful but that this is this is sort of a dangerous path to begin on and i wanted to get

some insight from people who had gone down that path and had come back and i got a lot of dms um partially thanks to you guys retweeting me so thank you yeah yeah and the common thread it seems to really stem from like it's there are so many similarities to the way that we see people begin to join cults in that it tends to start with people feeling like they don't really have a direction for their life or they're feeling kind of insecure. And here comes this great, you know, articulate seeming man or men who are saying this. I have a direction for you. I have the answer. That thing you're feeling that's correct you are correct to feel like attacked by this group of people whatever and i'm going to fix it for you right then yeah and then what and then once you are looking to

these people for like as authorities on a subject then you start taking their word for other things that maybe they don't have any authority on and then you kind of make them the center of your ideology and that's where it becomes harmful yeah it's interesting too because he well jordan peterson specifically uh purports to be very anti ideology in general um like he uh his whole thing is that like he's tried to find like where do people find meaning and how do they get wrapped up into these like authoritarian movements and totalitarianism

of all stripes and trying to like get people to resist ideology when what he's also doing is like creating his own and submitting that out to people without really like I don't know if he knows it or not or just like trying to do like a sleight of hand thing well it's like a combination it's almost like

well you just mentioned they might come to them on for one specific issue but then all of a sudden they're also talking about things that they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about change for example like climate change or whatever and it's almost like it doesn't matter they're just gonna fucking wing it uh yeah so that they don't show the weakness of not having an answer they'd rather just make something up right and there is this feedback loop of you know they're feeling validated from it and then these people that um you know don't that turn to these figures also feel validated. I don't know. It's it's pretty complicated and messy.

It's just he's yeah, he's because he's also he's a psychologist. Yeah. But he sort of like sets himself up to be like an expert in all these fields uh because even like he uses evolutionary biology and all these uh other scientific realms to basically say that like the way things are are the right way that they are um and so don't do anything about any problems you might have with the world um right and it's just interesting that he sort of is uh and he like he'll claim he's not like a right winger or anything like that when like literally his whole thing is like i'm gonna use nature to justify the hierarchies and traditions we have which is like definitionally right wing

um he just likes to talk out of a lot of a lot of different sides of his mouth he has more than two i was looking at his Instagram last night because I'm a masochist and I was reading the comments and just like the amount of, and not just on his, I also was looking at Michaela Peterson's profile, which she terrifies me,

but the number of comments. Tell us about Michaela Peterson. Well, tell us about her in a moment. I will, I will. But the number of comments that are just like pure logic pure reason all the rationality they're like fucking jacking off to this can I swear is that okay yeah yeah oh yeah okay cool jacking off to this idea of being logical and meanwhile like nobody ever is actually going deeper into things that they don't know about

nobody I liked your point Katie about like they're refusing to ever be wrong and that is just like inherently illogical to do there is we are not capable of being right all the time right I mean in that way it's also obviously not maybe not obviously but it feels like you know just another manifestation of toxic masculine masculinity where you're unable to even acknowledge a spot, a blind spot, or something that you just, I just don't know. I just don't know. It's just such a...

And it tends to be, instead of I just don't know, it's whatever experts say and the opposite of that. Well, and that's the virality. That's how you get everyone's attention. The climate change thing is interesting to me too, because he does this all the time for many, many topics.

But I think it's clearest with climate change because he'll talk about it, like the recent Joe Rogan thing, he'll talk about it in this way and like, well, you know, actually it's hard to predict things at all. Like you have all these variables and you can hear Joe like every once in a while being like, okay, but like we're talking about like carbon emissions and stuff it's very

clear like this effect that it has and then jordan will like go off on all these tangents and talk about fables and then he'll talk about how um well actually you know you know you can't predict a stock uh for a year in the end of the future so but like that's not logic that's not a one-to-one that's not even a a steady analogy or a stable analogy to climate change which is decades and decades of studying like the physical world so we'll sort of use these these ideas and even even use like uh equations and and uh theories and physics to be like, therefore, it's the same as this. But they couldn't be farther away.

Right. Because it sounds intelligent. It sounds like he knows what he's talking about. He sounds like he's researched this and this and this. They can look and go, oh, look, he's using logic to prove this point. And actually, if you if you sort of like pull of the threads, it makes absolutely no sense. Well, and that to me is part of why like no one's going to go.

I mean, some people might maybe you guys will. I don't go but go through like every fucking Jordan Peterson speech and like fact check everything he's saying. We know that that doesn't work. Like, well, we know that that doesn't work in general with like right wing politics and Trump. And like we know that facts don't work. with like right wing politics and Trump and what, like we know that facts don't work, but also with cults, just like the nature of belief is such that attacking the belief system

directly. Isn't going to do anything. You have to offer an alternative and give people a reason and a motivation to believe in something else. And I wish that we had more figures who kind of filled that void for these poor young men, you know? Well, young men you know well because you know partly because we're so polarized we're polarized polarized i almost said polaroided or something um it just you pushes you further and further into something you get more dug in because that's

where you get the positive reinforcement you know you're being encouraged to lean in to the grift right yeah and usually it happens online and so if you're pushing against somebody online especially then you're not going to have the ability to be like why do you like what drew you to this why do you uh why do you like this what do you like about this and then you find some sort of commonality and be like, okay, but maybe the problem isn't what he's saying here about that. Maybe it's this other thing going on. So it just makes it harder and harder to actually discuss these sort of topics with people and really see what got them into it. Unless it's like that personal level.

Right. You can't just tell people you're wrong. You have to give an alternate, give them something else, give them another option, because they're so dug in, they're going to believe everything. I mean, we can talk about this in context of QAnon.

What's ironic is that the people who hold logic as this God above them are ironically the people who are most acting out of their emotions. Because when you are refusing to acknowledge that the choices that you're making are coming from a place of like needing belonging, you know, or needing to have an identity. Like you are you are being less logical because you are like, yeah, you're not being aware of the fact that you're making decisions based on emotion. Yeah, that's a deeply emotional thing to be searching for. Right. And yeah, having like needing to sort of fill it with like, no, I'm actually like a very logical person.

And that's why I believe this instead of like, no, I need I need all this guy. I need somebody. Right. Because the vast majority of people have no idea what their emotions are. Actually, I was just listening to Brene Brown talking about this at some study about how most people can only readily identify three emotions for themselves of anger, sad, happy, sad, and angry. Yep. And it's like, what actually is that? If you're angry, if you break this down, what is fueling that?

It's just in general a lack of self-awareness about our own mental health culturally is my point. The complexity of emotions and how they work together or compound on each other or cover other ones going on. Shame is such a motivator for being defensive. Just go watch Inside Out. They get into it all explain the whole deal it's kind of it's pretty clear like how people sort of get into this and what attracts them to it um i'm curious if anybody sort of described so like we we've we've done like a big episode on ben shapiro and like how he's like a silly person uh don't take him seriously

he's a clown actually he's not a serious person uh don't take him seriously he's a clown actually he's not a serious person um and we've gotten some messages like people like i used to go to his speeches and now i don't um so like that sort of thing can be effective but i know it's not the most effective thing i'm curious if anybody sort of explained like here's how i got out of it here's what like kind of triggered like oh i he said this and then i started rethinking it or i heard my friends say this or if there's any explanation process in general for people to be deprogrammed right i mean it's so different for everyone but i did see some commonalities with these guys in particular um a lot of people actually were

sort of deconverted by channels like ContraPoints and PhilosophyTube, interestingly, just like being led to other thinkers who were giving a little bit like just approaching things in a more complex way. I got one. There was one great message exchange and I might ask this guy to come on. one great message exchange and i might ask this guy to come on he was explaining how what started to pull him out of it was that he became a public defender he was on his way to becoming a public defender and started having to like interface with different kinds of people that he had never interacted with before and saw how much they were suffering um and it just sort of opened his eyes to the real the reality that there are so many people suffering in ways that he had just never comprehended before and all of this like logic and theory and whatever was just not accounting for like real human life.

That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Profound. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we also had a former QAnon believer on the show and it was so random for

him. Sometimes it's so random. Like he genuinely just started. Oh oh no here's what it was it was that their q was talking about a phrase that with like predicting a phrase that donald trump was gonna say um at some point and then lo and behold donald trump said that phrase and everyone was like oh my god q is real or. And then he was like watching old videos. I'm probably getting the timeline wrong, but whatever. He's like he realized that Trump had been saying that phrase all along.

This wasn't a prediction. This was history. So if he would like use that as a prediction, then that was a manipulative thing to do. And if q is being manipulative then maybe q can't be trusted and then it like all broken broke open for him one oh wow yeah just finding a logic thread yeah good for that person that's incredible yeah yeah yeah like it's once yeah i just need that one little wedge to get in there right and and yeah i think he's an interesting story because i think

it also applies to this this kind of guy that we're talking about even though it's a little bit more extreme he when he first started going down the rabbit hole he was in a period in his life where he just like was isolated he was depressed things were not going great for him and by the time he came out like he had more of a system around him um he felt more emotionally stable and was able to like pause and see things a little bit more clearly you know and you know that's interesting too we lose we've talked about it on our various shows before but it's so easy to react to people that are in that have been snared in these situations with anger or frustration or like, there's something wrong with you or whatever. And that's never the way to get to somebody. All that does is make them

feel shamed and further retreat. So you're talking about by the time this person started to unravel the thread, his support system around him was stronger. Well, that says a lot about the type of person that gets swept up and the kind of thing that is necessary for them to come through it. Hey, y'all, it's Katie Stoll from the internet. I know, I know it's very exciting, but I'm going to need you to settle down for a second while I tell you about AG1 by Athletic Greens. It is a tasty drink that takes all of your daily vitamins and puts them in one tasty place.

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wonderful flavor that i drank earlier today for energy that's drinktrade.com slash more news for 20 off your first three bags try it volcano mayor um you mentioned q anon and i do want to pivot to that slightly because it's something that i've been thinking about you know obviously it's been a little over a year since january 6th then the last of the great predictions that didn't come through i guess not the last there was the jfk's big triumphant return that was still that's still still there's still a chance and even me saying it like that makes is sounds like a mockery of it. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to... At a certain point. But I guess my...

I know. But I guess where I'm going with this is like... Which is like, how much can you entertain? Like, yeah, JFK's going to come back. It's like... But at the same token, these people do believe that. I know.

You know, Jonathan found a great article that was in the Financial Times. He loves doing that. I know, Jonathan. I mean, I was in the Financial Times. He loves doing that. I know, Jonathan. I mean, I just love reading the FT. Good at your job. It is an article about how QAnon has fragmented post-election. And there's kind of like three different subsects. And it's not that QAnon has gone away.

It's almost like in a transition. Wow, rifts and grips. Yeah. Riffs and grips you know the core people there's the core people who still believe that donald trump is fighting some longing against the deep state there's others that are truly taking it into more of a spiritual space and that's maybe taking it into the you know yoga communities but you know like maybe it's more literally about demons um it's stuff like that and you know and then there's another version of it that's also like well something's amiss more of an in-between of like yeah i don't i still don't trust it and it's hard to fight

against ideology like for the spiritual people it's almost like you don't even have to have it it can be nebulous you know yeah and then the other thing that's wild in this article is also just talking about how it's proliferating overseas and in some ways that's very that's so dangerous in other capacities because like the immediacy of like oh that event didn't happen on january 6th is different because it's not like we're talking about Germany. They're not necessarily paying us. Anyway, it's just so I guess to me, it feels like we're in some sort of a weird transition phase of QAnon. But it's also it speaks to how conspiracy theories spread and and this cult like mentality can spread and morph and logic doesn't really stand a chance yeah i mean it's it's terrifying it's terrifying when reality when you're not

living in the same reality as as another person because what can you do there's nothing you can say and the only thing like when we've talked to people about you know what what do you do when someone that you care about is like going down this rabbit hole like what can you do and the answer is basically nothing other than be there for them and and try to like let them know that you care about them lest they lose their identity even more because they feel like they can't trust you right right right um and yeah i mean that's encouraged for all these cults is like get rid of any any like negative people in your life exactly that the reality you're buying into is false right the more isolated you

are the the more you lose your identity and the more you put all of your identity into this new thing so like staying connected to humans from your life or as yeah, staying connected to the human who is going down the rabbit hole is very, very important. But like, it's unfortunate that there's not more that we can do like other than culturally making people feel more comfortable in scene because it's been such a tumultuous time like you know what what else yeah there are also for sure a lot of like unique factors that have played into how q anon developed but it will continue to develop and change in this world that we live in um so real quick i just wanted to tie back to jordan peterson real quick again because i think even if there are like listeners who uh know somebody uh we get messages sometimes like what do i do about my

like little brothers like reading all this stuff or like listening to them uh i think it's uh one of the most important things about jordan peterson i think people need to know um that kind of says everything um and when i read it i was like oh never this guy is so silly um there's a piece from his old mentor uh from uh when he was a professor and uh he like took him under his wing and and sort of helped him uh you know be a good professor or whatever they have dinners all the time he was like a very very very very very good friend uh there's a piece by him on outline.com and describes uh two significant things one is that during this time peterson uh talked pretty regularly about how he wanted to buy like a new big house and the guy was like oh like you're looking for new homes like no i want to buy a

church and give sermons every Sunday. Like his, he wanted, he wants to be a preacher. It's like, that's what he wants to do with, by just using like intellectual like stuff and like, and spirituality and sort of like combining them all together,

which I think is pretty telling. Also, he told his friend, Peterson told his friend, basically that his wife um sometimes has prophetic dreams and that she has dreamed that it's quote five minutes to midnight and jordan peterson is the person to like save the world basically um yeah so he's stanis baratheon exactly no just uh yeah um but yeah like and you know maybe maybe this entire article from this professor who's still teaching is a lie um but it's a pretty detailed story about his former very very good friend about how

he thinks that his wife has prophetic dreams thinks he's going to save the world and wants to start a church where he gives sermons. That to me is like everything you need to know about him. I just watched a video where someone on a podcast asked him if he was a prophet because it was like a podcast about religion. And he said no. But the way that he said no

made me think he does think he's a prophet. Because there's also a moment from an interview where he's asked about his fans. And he's like, I don't have fans. And what he means is he has followers. He has followers. That's what he means. It's creepy.

It's just every little bit like that. He lets it out and it makes a very, very clear picture. The family as a whole terrifies me they do we are going to take a quick break and then we will be back for even more news news hello human people i'm cody also a human one of the person things i like doing is killing time playing your mobile device games our games us humans us humans. And lately, I've been paid human money to talk about Best Fiends, a free-to-download casual mobile puzzle game with

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You're so welcome. Thank you. Let's talk about the Olympics. Have you guys watched any of the Olympics? Yeah. No. You have? Have you enjoyed them?

You don't have to be ashamed. They're on TV. I love figure skating, guys. I know. It's so hard to not watch the figure skating, but that's it. skating guys it's i know how so hard to not watch the figure skating but that's it i watched the nathan chan gold performance and i mean very impressive and uh i usually i don't like the kind of um musical montages or medley musical medleys they do but the elton john medley for his like free skate was pretty impressive. Here's my problem with watching live skating.

He's a revelation. I feel acute anxiety when I'm watching ice skating, live ice skating. I need to see the clips where I know they're not going to fall once the routine's over. Like I really, I find it to be incredibly stressful, mostly because of my own childhood trauma, but being on ice skates. really i find it to be incredibly stressful um mostly because of my own childhood trauma but uh i'm being on ice skates my parents used to have this holiday party for a couple years and um at an ice skating rink it was really fun but everyone would get wasted and then one year uh one person broke their leg another person got a bloody concussion someone sprained their wrist

it was chaos when you give one year yeah we didn't do it again after that but it's really a prominent figure in my mind anyway you see that guy ski into his balls what no what Yannick Bertrand what do you mean ski into his balls or was it new

is that an old clip the one where the guy takes the pole to his groin? That's from 2006. Oh! And it's amazing. Fine! And it makes the rest of the year because it's hilarious. Okay.

But that one is not. There's plenty of things we can talk about from this year's Olympics. Not that one. We won't talk about that. It just blows my mind that we had the Olympics six months ago and here we are with another set of Olympics and nobody knew what was happening. There's been

no talk about it. Really snuck up. Part of it is that we are tired of talking about it. I mean like at least in our show we've talked a lot about how bad the Olympics are in general. But this one's extra tasty because it's happening in China. And I don't know, let's just run down some things about China and the Olympics. First and foremost, China has

detained one million Uyghur Muslims in re-education camps, forcing them to work and often sterilizing women. This is a big deal that we somehow don't seem to be talking about ever, partly because there's not much we can do. We're economically tied to China, but it feels incredibly tone deaf to be completely ignoring it. Here's a quote from CNN. Let's start with the obvious. The atrocities being committed against the Uyghur Muslims. A number of countries, including the U.S., are staging a diplomatic boycott of the games to protest China's staggering human rights violations. Katie, side note editorial. What?

If I don't know that, is that an effective boycott? There. Anyway, back to the quote. The Chinese Communist Party's response was an opening ceremony that stressed China's multi-ethnic harmony, capped off with a Uyghur skier lighting the Olympic torch before she was promptly hustled off stage. China's choice of torchbearer harkens back to Hitler's propaganda use of the token Jew in the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics. I don't know. It's just galling. It's hard to reconcile me sitting there watching this and just the lack of attention that's paid to this and the fact that advertisers really don't seem to care at all.

It's especially galling. There's a quote from Jake Tapper that I don't need to read because I just read a big quote. But basically, you know, sure. Jake Tapper. Sure. Jake Tapper. Coca-Cola last year criticized a restrictive new voting rights law in Georgia, but Coca-Cola has not spoken out about China's human right abuses, even as Coca-Cola co-sponsors the Olympic Games in Beijing, along with many other major American companies. hypocrisy because coca-cola is triangulating the financially uh beneficial move uh which is to do like i'm gonna heavy quotes the woke thing yeah to do uh like yeah we're gonna do the georgia law everyone's doing this we're gonna uh we're gonna speak out against this but it's not financially beneficial to them to do this with China because of what you've just talked about. It's not enough of a culturally acknowledged thing.

Yeah. It's always going to be the bottom line for them. Hypocrisy is not the right word necessarily. Oh, yeah. No. It's like completely expected. I have been trying to wrap my head around a diplomatic boycott because I'm like, that just means Biden won't be there. What?

Okay. Like, so we're not sending anybody there. That's what I mean. That's what I mean as to like we are doing a diplomatic boycott. But what is what is that? What even the fuck is that? If if I didn't know that what that was that that was happening or what that means, then I don't know that. Like, but especially Especially during COVID times

when there's basically no one there anyway. It really amounts to nothing. Absolutely. Oh, and I love this. Nancy Pelosi felt compelled to warn American athletes to not speak out

against China's sins. That's fun. Did she? Oh my God. Yeah. She's like, don't don't don't make waves because so diplomats aren't going that's the boycott uh oh no our precious diplomats aren't going to the olympics uh but athletes can still compete but she's saying don't

speak out while you're there which is like it's so it's such a funny disconnect between like where is a diplomatic boycott. Well, go keep it. Keep it to yourself. I was actually dangerous. I was going to say, yeah, my understanding is that that would have been maybe even physically dangerous for them to do that while we're there. Yeah. Yeah. There's this also quote from CNN or actually it's from The New York Times.

Chinese authorities have detained activists in their homes and sent others to jail. Censors have shut down the social media accounts of prominent critics. Officials have warned Olympians that protests could bring prosecution. And of course, I just should also remind everybody about how China apparently forced their tennis star, Peng Shui, to recant. She accused a high-ranking Chinese communist official of sexual assault. And then she disappeared for weeks and everybody was freaking out. And then she resurfaced and had to do an official recantation of her accusations. And she keeps saying, you guys misinterpreted me.

You misinterpreted me. And I'm not going to put words into her mouth but this is not good anyway that's she just gave a interview where she's like everything's fine everyone needs to chill out but that interview was given to like one french newspaper with a chinese olympic official present and he translated her responses it's like, it's just not, it's not normal. So there's all of that. But I also need to just talk about, you know, other things that are terrible about the Olympics in general, not just this one. And again, we talked about this over the summer, but there's a huge climate impact. There is a huge impact on communities. And this is the first Winter Olympics where all the snow is fake. It's not, it's always, it's been a part of it for a long time.

Snowmaking technology has been around. But there's a lot of problems with this. Mostly, it's just covering up the fact that our world is warming. And that we don't have, you know, it's like a big show based on making money yeah you know it's it's in addition to it being dangerous for the skiers apparently right yes it's that thank you yes it is it very dangerous you know this is yeah here's another quote as the planet warms and the weather becomes increasingly more erratic, natural snow is becoming less reliable for winter sports, which forces venues to lean more on artificial snow, but it comes at a cost. Human-made snow is incredibly resource intensive, requiring massive amounts of energy and water to produce

in a climate that's getting warmer and warmer. Elite athletes also say that the sports themselves become trickier and less safe when human-made snow is involved. Yeah, okay. 1.2 million cubic meters of snow needed to cover roughly 800 square meters of competition area. An estimated 49 million gallons of water. It's a lot. And yes, to your point, yeah, I won't go find this actual specific quote. But yes, it is dangerous.

The iciness of the man-made snow makes it very difficult for athletes and you could kill yourself in temperatures that are inappropriately warm for snow yeah uh if freestyle super pipes are formed from snow making machines in a poor season the walls of the pipe are solid vertical ice and the pipe floor is solid ice that sounds dangerous sounds dangerous I'll just run through some more of these things. There's just been a ton of athlete complaints there as well.

Just basically, there's no hot food at the downhill skiing events. I know, I know. Finnish team says one of its ice hockey players was inappropriately placed in a COVID quarantine.

Then there's this story about the Russian figure skating team. And now they might be disqualified because one of their stars, the youngest one, or I'm not sure if she's the youngest, but she's 15, tested positive on a drug test. I dug into this just a little bit more right before we started recording. It turns out that that drug test was taken in December and she's already competed in other things since then. So it's pretty bizarre that they're just flagging it now. I don't know how that stands. And it is for a thing that's like a heart medication drug, but it could come up in other supplements. I don't know. It's just kind of chaos, whatever that.

Are you really doping as a figure skater? I don't quite understand this either. I mean, this is developing and they should have a ruling on it. I don't know that that's doping, but I read something said that there could be a stimulant effect in it. I'm reading that it's called trimetazidine. It's a metabolic agent that helps prevent angina attacks and treats the symptoms of vertigo.

It can increase blood flow efficiency and improve endurance. But then some other skater or some other athlete at another Olympics ended up being cleared because it turned out that that was a natural, that it scanned in their blood because of another supplement they'd taken that was approved anyway i guess this isn't the biggest thing to highlight right now as it's developing but it's happened also five uh female ski jump competitors were disqualified after their their uniforms were deemed too large they said that it would pick up air or something

and make them move faster. I wonder why that, like why, how? I know. Wouldn't it be the opposite of that? Yeah, you'd think. You would think it would weigh them, it would slow them down. You think it would slow them down.

More resistance or something, more surface area. I don't know. I feel like Peterson would know. Anyway. Let's ask him. Obviously, I think that we shouldn't do the Olympics anymore. Well, yeah. Between this and the last episode we did on the Olympics.

Because I could just, I mean, I could do, we could talk for hours about the IOC and all the different things and the impact on low income people and, you know, local maintain economies that we buy an island and we turn it into the olympic island yeah we have summer and winter olympics there we make sure it's correct for the seasonal aspect of it and we just build a town only for that and then we just do it once it's there every year we destroy one island that's fine we destroy one and then we don't have to go everywhere around the globe and destroy places. I know. I was just saying I was reading that the most ethical way to go forward with the Olympics would be to like have a specific place that is allotted for the Olympics.

You have your summer place. You have your winter place. And you just do that. We have ski resorts. We have places that set up and obviously with a changing climate um you might they still use man-made snow on those mountains but their infrastructure is there as well to set up to house people that are coming in as long as you're keeping them smaller you don't have to have this huge footprint you can do different events you can do them every year there's different ways of

approaching well if you yeah if you had the if you had your own play like here's here's the winter olympics place on the off years you can let people ski and stuff on them right make some money you make all the money that you need to make the shitty olympics in two years and unfortunately all those summer olympic those islands that are would be used for the summer olympics are all being turned into crypto islands now exactly right right like palau or whatever yeah they're just turning it into these like like virtual nft islands that we should yeah can't live on a bunch of servers and is there more than one is there multiple nft i just assumed every remaining island on Earth is going to be a criminal. It's going to be an NFT island. Maritime law. Jonathan, I think we've done enough of the Olympics. Why don't I throw to you for some broken news?

You got it. How do you guys feel about Trump and toilets? You guys have thoughts on that? This is my favorite thing. Okay. What? I love this story so much obviously he's a criminal he broke the law he should go to prison and all that kind of stuff wait wait i don't think

are you gonna say remind remind world about his position with toilets okay so for well first of all trump took a bunch of boxes of records to mar-a-lago uh that he was not allowed to take national archives are like you can't take those and so they're investigating that um and it's like you know his letters from like kim jong-un and like obama and stuff like that who i guess he's still in contact with well so i think it's i think that's like a hilarious encapsulation of trump because he i don't i don't think he knew i think that he was just like oh i get to keep my little my little things and he put them in boxes and took them and he had no idea that he was breaking the law i mean he also took some classified documents i i maintained that maybe he didn't know um but probably probably did again breaking the law i should go to prison uh but also apparently according to a new book by maggie

fucking haberman uh they white house staff would find that the toilets in the white house were clogged and they would call well the quote says engineer but i'm pretty sure they mean a fucking plumber um so they would call plumber and he would uh come in and take care of it uh and they would basically say like the toilet was clogged because there are all these printed pieces of paper in the toilet, clogging the toilet. So he would be flushing documents down the toilet to try to get rid of them, which is incredible.

And I don't know if you remember this from maybe two or three years ago, where he would, there's a period of time where he would rant during his rallies about the low water pressure on shower heads and the low water pressure in toilets he complained about how americans had to flush 10 15 times nowadays and it's perfect and i think it's because he was flushing documents down the toilet i hadn't heard that detail about there being paper printed paper in the toilet according to this report i can't believe i missed this that is incredible okay it's pretty it's the most beautiful thing uh it's which is every he

gets in these he's in his own reality and he's always like letting things leak out in ways where you're like you don't necessarily know because his thought process is foreign to everybody uh so in his mind he's thinking about like, oh yeah, I flushed all the documents down the toilet and I can't do it. Oh, you know what? The water pressure is really low. Don't you agree?

And everyone cheers because they have to agree with him. And like three years later, we find out like why he had that period of time. It's like when you would complain about like birds dying from wind turbines and the wind turbines give you cancer. And then you're like, oh wait,

it's because he doesn't want them built at his golf course. Yeah. So he's just saying, there's always this little tidbit and it's like a three year long joke and it's beautiful. you know, what's fun is that a lot of these things do come full circle. If you,

if you can remember, I mean, it might seem like a bizarre thing, but it it makes sense eventually it makes sense to him it'll all make sense eventually flush the toilet 10 15 times and we can

thank Maggie Haberman for for saving Donald Trump's reckless flouting of the presidential records act for her book which is coming out several months instead of what a hero wasn't he hasn't he not been the president for like more than a year yeah but she's got she's just saving all the juicy juiciest tidbits the the juiciest law breakings for her book

yeah yeah kamala's first term she releases a book about how you strangle the guy to death that's just good business. Yeah. Alright, give us some more news. Real quick. How about you guys want to talk about some gazpacho soup? Yeah, I do. Why not? You guys like talking about gazpacho soup? Yeah, we're doing... I could just

play this clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene real quick. Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. Not only do we have the D.C. jail, which is the D.C. gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi's gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do,

spying on our staff, and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives. This government has turned into something it was never meant to be and it's time to make soup the gazpacho police it's so good i don't know what to say it's just so embarrassing but she didn't also yeah she's like even if she had correctly said Gestapo, she is still very, very incorrect. Capitol police are not spying on.

Oh, sure. Oh yeah. That's almost the problem. In many other ways. Is it that we all focus on the obvious dumb thing while making jokes about that instead of acknowledging like it's bullshit. Well,

right. It's, I mean, we literally just did this. I spent like five minutes talking about Donald Trump flushing the toilet 15 times. But also, he broke the law a bunch by trying to get rid of his documents. Oh, Marjorie. Yeah, I'd love to play this last Fox News clip.

I'm not even going to set this up. Let's just watch and react. Can you go pick up the steaks? Right? Literally, can you just go pick up the steaks and walk out of the store but the reason that he's so casual is that even if he gets caught um you know i i get i my guess is that nobody's looking for this guy are the police hunting all over manhattan for the hamburglar right now no no there's no why why are they not because we have created a society that has more

empathy for the criminal than the cop which is why new york looks the way it does new york right now looks like gotham city before batman shows up except batman's not coming because he's not vaccinated so they're like sorry you can't come bruce they don't know he's batman it's a terrible time to be we i i want to live in a world where criminals are nervous like i'm more nervous than criminals now that's not how you're supposed to do this. But I do think something that's emboldened the meat thieves. The meat thieves. This is so unbelievable.

It's not just Fox either. This same story. And this happens all the time. You see like an isolated, like a video of a shoplifting. And it's the crime wave. It's just one video of a guy taking some stuff from fucking Walgreens or whatever. Uh, MSNBC had a whole segment about this.

Um, uh, this one, this same incident, uh, I believe Al Sharpton was on to talk about it. There was like a five person panel, uh,

talking about, uh, like the woke city council letting, uh, people steal meat, people steal steaks and stuff and like these are like serious news people what are you doing um also like a month ago msnbc had a piece uh quote debunking the right wing shoplifting freak out and now they're just participating in it and it's like clockwork it's so embarrassing they just can't get enough fear of crime in their

daily diet and steak also there's such a paranoia I mean I don't know if you guys are if this is in your circles at all but people in LA also are buying into this like crime wave propaganda not to say that like murder is up across

America for a variety of reasons but like we are not all in danger constantly of being burgled in an unusually higher way than we were before right right yeah it's just we have cameras and stuff like well and and people are the media feeds on it and it's been talked about and it becomes a thing. And yeah, you're preying on individual fears to amplify something. But like we're talking about people stealing meat. How about pivoting the conversation to why are people stealing meat? And why can't people afford it?

Why are people hungry? What's been going on the last few years? We're so quick. And I see that in, yes, in our communities here in los angeles i've mentioned being on next door a bit because it blows my mind there are some good people on next door saying good things but the vast amount of it majority of it is suspicion and pictures of care of people walking by like someone posted like uh this couple stopped in front of my house and took pictures the other day what should i do and i was like they probably like what you did with your yard constantly i think they're pretty there's a there was a post about uh some some woman uh

what oh needed a band-aid um and it was like a fucking woman got out of her car and then they they like checked their ring light their ring camera later and we're like yeah and she like walked to my neighbor's yard and then like turned around and then walked to our door for the band-aid yeah she like probably saw that you were home and went to your house instead it's just it's very, very bad for people, I think. Right. Real quick, I wanted to just take a second to highlight the comedian, the commentator in that Fox News clip because he knew he had like 30 seconds to talk. So he crammed in all these little right wing bits. He talked about, well, society cares more about criminals than cops and Batman would be kicked out of Gotham for

not being vaccinated and the mayor of New York putting everyone on a plant based diet and he did like his tightest 30 seconds so efficient he was rehearsing that dressing room so who was that guy his name is Jimmy I don't know how to pronounce F A I

L L A Jimmy Fila he has a nation show and a Fox Radio show Okay I want to steal my burger From Jimmy Faila Just for fun We have to assume that the person That stole the steaks from Trader Joe's

Was Jordan Peterson though right Oh right He's running out Well in that case. All right. I think we've done it here today. Guys, I really think we did. Stuck the landing.

There's a Summer Olympics reference. Ooh. Lola. And Winter Olympics. Figure skating. I guess. Sure. Skiing.

All that kind of stuff. Sure. But it's more appropriate for gymnastics. Okay. Whatever. we'll talk about that later it's fine yeah you are a delight this was wonderful um please plug your work tell our listeners where they can find you i mean there's just so much stuff of yours to plug we talked about one tiny facet of what you do but you've got so much work out there

um okay i also do music and I'm a filmmaker. She's so good. Thank you. Thank you. You can find me on Twitter at Olalola, O-H-L-A-L-O-L-A. And on Instagram, it's Oolalola because they didn't have matching handles. So there's one more O and lolablanque.com. And trust me, wherever you get your podcasts.

Guys, that's it for us this week. We will be back next week. In the meantime, remember, with all sincerity, we love you very much.