The Daily Zeitgeist - Myanmar: A New Kind Of Revolution (with James Stout) 04.01.25

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

In episode 1838, Miles and guest co-host Francesca Fiorentini are joined by journalist and co-host of It Could Happen Here, James Stout, to discuss... The Revolution In Myanmar and more! LISTEN: Wu Punk by Georgia Anne Muldrow WATCH: The Daily Zeitgeist on Youtube! L.A. Wildfire Relief: Displaced Black Families GoFund Me Directory See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm thinking of doing a Korean perm. Okay, I'll bite. What's a Korean perm? I don't know. It's just a perm. Like what the fuck is a Korean perm? It's just a perm. It's just like, I think, you know, Korean women are like allergic to having the hair

that they were born with, which is straight. And so am I. And I want to mix it up. And I think that in my heart of heart, I am like a curly haired person. Does that make sense? Like, I feel like curl is like fun. There's like fun, you know, energy movement. It's starting to sound like one of these Japanese people that gets dreadlocks.

Well, this is the thing about me. I used to be into jam bands. It was very sad because I could never, my hair is too straight to dread. And I was like, it's never gonna happen. Oh, so wait, a Korean perm is to take your straight hair and give it a little flay. I mean, isn't that called a perm anyway? It's just a perm done by Koreans.

Oh, but I don't know, Korean as a modifier, I'm just like, oh, that shit probably bangs. Exactly, exactly. No, it does. It's like a wave perm. It's not like you don't go full 80s mom. You just go like wave. Yo, my mom had the fucking problematic perm.

Same. Asian mom, right? Asian mom with a full perm. Same. Curly ass hair. Same. What is this? Looking like Wolverine or some shit? It was crazy. It was so funny. The way it was shaped, my mom had like, it was almost like a flat because it was so curly. Oh, did she have rock short hair with the curly braids?

It was like short, long. But like the way I just remember always being like, that was that was so curly. Oh, did she have rock short hair with the curly brown? It was like short long, but like the way I just remember always being like, that was, that was a moment. Yeah, I know. My mom would do that. And then it would be like a big old side clip. Just like, that was like the most eighties. Yeah. Shout out to permanent.

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founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network. Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly, it just might leave thousands dead from poison. Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey all you women's hoops fans, and folks who just don't know yet that they're women's

hoops fans. We've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain as we near the end of one of the most exciting women's college basketball seasons ever. The most parody we've seen in years, with games coming down to the wire and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello the internet and welcome to season 382 episode two of the Daily Zeitgeist production of iHeartRadio.

This is the podcast where we take a deep dive into America's Sorted Shared Consciousness. It is Tuesday, April 2nd? Oh no. That was the worst April Fool's joke I could have done and I will see myself out. It's April 1st. Don't fucking, I don't know, I'm sure there's a bunch of corporate foolery going on in the internet because they love to do dumb shit where like McDonald's is is like you can now drink Ronald's blood in a milkshake Finally, it's legal to do jokes on April 1st. Yeah, exactly. Did you see that? There's a headline about how we're asking every woman if she's pregnant

Okay, you have put on a little weight I saw a thing that was like oh white white look, white, this new season of the White Lotus is the first great piece of media in the post woke era. And I was like, what the fuck are we talking about here? Anyway, I'm Miles Gray, aka the Shogun with no gun, the Lord of Lakershim out here trying to just scream into the void. And I'm thrilled to be joined by my guest co-host. You already know her from many fantastic places Look the bituation room You probably know her from doing stand-up comedy her activism anywhere. You've seen her you know her. She is a powerhouse

Please welcome my calls Aka mirror mirror on the wall who is the friendest of them all? Good to be here. Thank you for having me. Who is the Franist of them all? Thrasher? Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. No, I mean, that's true. The Francesca would be me, but yeah, Francesca's probably the Franist.

But also, we're not keeping score. Wasn't she running the screen actors, Guild Wars or something? She was. Okay, anyway, that's not relevant. What is relevant is introducing our guest for today. We are very, very, very lucky to have this fantastic journalist, someone who covers a lot of stories

that don't get enough coverage. If you obviously listen to this show, there's probably a very good chance that you're already familiar with him from his work with Cool Zone Media. It could happen here, et cetera. If not, maybe you know him from his work with places like The Wall Street Journal, National happen here, et cetera. If not, maybe you know him from his work with places

like the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, et cetera. Not only is he a fantastic avid cyclist, he's a polyglot and has a PhD in modern European history where I merely know trivia from antiquity, okay? So together we create one of the best trivia teams of all time. Please welcome to the microphone, James Stowe. Hey, that was great intro. I feel very hyped up on myself now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, James. Yeah. If I ever die, if you could just do the like, you know, the initial bit when I come into the funeral, I presume I will die. Here he is. Oh, wow. You think so? Yeah, I think so. I don't feel like I'm immortal.

I had a friend recently, like really confessed to me that they were so afraid of dying in like the most real way. And I was like, yeah, man, the thing about that is, it's pretty hard. We're all gonna do it. Not much we can do. I would, I would try and sort of have a reckoning with therapy. I don't know. However you need to.

I mean, that's why people turn to religion, you know? For sure. For sure. The idea that, but then I start getting in my head about living forever. I'm like, I don't want that either. I don't care forever. My friend is so- That would fuck me up as a kid, you know, when I was like thinking about that.

This, my friend, he's like the sort of, I don't know if you're familiar with like the old Ricky Gervais radio show with Carl Pilkington, where he was like kind of a strange, like he's just like a uniquely strange guy. And he said it to me so earnestly, like, I just don't. Cause he was, I saw he had some weird ass supplements in his case, I'm like, what the fuck is this?

He's like, it's like a salt, like your body absorbed. I'm like, what does that even mean? Is he like a live forever guy? No, like he's, he's, he's getting- Got a blood boy? He's getting, his head is turning that way. But he would never actually go through with it. He's just like healthy. Like it like, okay, but then he'll be

Not your friend is this but it's very funny that sort of like in the genre of like Like techie billionaire crypto fascists whomever whomever who are like obsessed with being, you know Like the most alpha male that they're like also trying to live forever meaning they're just like pussies about dying like, okay So you think you're so fucking hard and they're like also trying to live forever, meaning they're just like pussies about dying. Like, okay, so you think you're so fucking hard and you're like, fuck that bro. It's straight up, bro. Fuck him. Exactly. Not up and die. Yeah. Sooner than later. If you're Elon. No, like it's no his is more like a childlike fear of like, what happens after it's not even like, bro, I'm too fucking hard to die. Like, he's like, what if, but then what happened? I'm like, bro, you are 40 years old and you just stop fooling with these supplements, man.

And I was like, did you, you would really go through the act of seeing many people, you know, die over and over because you're immoral. He's like, yeah, yeah. I was like, okay, man, maybe you should read some vampire books. They seem pretty fucked up and they can live forever. It says like a primer. Anyway, James, maybe you should read some vampire books. They seem pretty fucked up and they can live forever. It's like a primer. Anyway, James, thank you so much for joining us. I think we're going to have like, you have such fantastic coverage of things that have happened everywhere from the Darien gap and how much of a tumultuous journey

that is for people who are, you know, being displaced by our policies in the United States and how this is sort of being completely put out of our minds, just how awful this journey is for people. But also your coverage of what is happening in Myanmar, I think is really fantastic and also something that regrettably, I only have just very superficial knowledge about in terms of what I've read headline wise. And I go, yeah, coup and now civil war and it's bad and many other things.

But most recently there was a terrible 7.7 magnitude earthquake there that, you know, with a unfathomable death toll that is still rising as we speak. So we'd love to just sort of have you offer us a bit of perspective on all of that, because there's a lot with Myanmar that I think you also have drawn inspiration from is probably you compare what is happening in the United States to a certain extent. So yeah, I

think that I think I I'm very much looking forward to picking your brain. Because we're like, I feel like everybody hears. I'm not I enjoy not knowing. I'm like, is it is it sad? If it's sad, I don't want to know. Is it going to bum me out? I feel bad about that because all the stuff I'm most proud of is shit that makes people cry on their drive to work. That is the genre of media I produce. No, but I mean, it's so on the other side of that coin, hearing from like, or hearing from journalists like you reading your work and hearing the way you

speak about it, it's also very life affirming. I think it's very like the kind of journalism you do is very noble, especially in an era we live in now where people are just like being like, aha, and you want to have a third term? Okay. How would you make that happen? Rather than be like, it's unfucking constitutional. Shut the fuck up. You're not gonna just shut up about it. So anyway, we will get to that. But first, James, we'd like to ask all of our guests, what's

something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? I was thinking about this because you sent me an email about it. I think like this weekend, right, I was building for a friend some like raised beds like planter boxes, where you can grow vegetables in. And I wanted to kill grass underneath, because they didn't want the grass to grow up. But I didn't want to put plastic down, because I wanted the roots to go down. So I put cardboard down, and then I was like,

because eventually it's going to compost, it's going to rot, right? And I was like, shit, have I invented this incredible life hack? And then I Googled it, and it turns out I didn't invent it, which is the story of my life. You know, you think you got something cool and someone's already done it on the internet. It's very, yeah, that's like, isn't that just affirming? I think maybe it's affirming, but I was like, I've innovated. I get it. Doesn't matter if it's out there already and other people are enjoying it.

Like, that's better in a sense that I would love to think like that. Like, meaning like, I don't think I'm the first, especially on that kind of stuff. I love, I don't have that brain, but I'd love to have that brain. When I was little, I wanted to like invent stuff and I would just take like a dead light bulb and like attach a string to.

Yo, same. So, you know, I was like, go, go. Yeah, yeah. So, so like it's fun though to be be innovating, especially with something with your hands and you're building something and that's just so healing. Yeah. But I never have the idea that I'm the first to do this. So it says a lot about you, James.

Yeah, maybe not in a good way. Maybe I'm not like a... Maybe I shouldn't assume that no one else would have. No, but that's the excitement. That's the excitement though. You know what I mean? That's the, that's the dragon we're chasing that we get bit by his children. Like it's so funny you say that Francesca's I remember I got a hold of a

soldering iron when I had like, oh Dan, I was trying to, I was trying to hack my PlayStation to play Japanese games too. And you had to like mod it yourself. And I had no, I had no business. Yeah. games too and you had to like mod it yourself. And I had no I had no business. Yeah, I had no business at 13 opening up a PlayStation and soldering shit onto a mother. Yeah, just fucking stupid. But then the childlike thing inside was like, what if I could like what if I take my old boombox and like wire this thing to this other part didn't do shit but I was

like, this is gonna be whatever to me. I love that. A boom station combined. Yeah. Yeah, exactly going to be whatever to me. I love that. A boom station combined. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It has a CD drive. I mean, shit. They're basically the same thing. I thought maybe.

Yeah. The closest I got was I had a very shit car. It didn't have much money to buy a car when I was younger. And one of the issues was it was the heater would always be stuck on. The other one was stereo didn't work. So I dremeled out that whole front panel with a heater and everything. And I duck tapes of boombox in there. That was pretty sick until we had changed the batteries.

And then they're going to get back in there. You got to go through the firewall from the front of the car. Right. Holy shit. Oh man. James, what is something you think is underrated? Underrated. You know what I think is underrated? What I've been enjoying recently is like Burmese rock music from Myanmar.

One of the sick things about the different resistance organizations, different groups in the revolution in Myanmar is that they make like theme tunes and they do a lot of like music videos. And some of them are really good. I've been enjoying them recently. This reminds me as if you Google Myanmar coup, one of the things that comes up is Myanmar coup dance. Oh yeah, the lady. What is the dance? And it seems like, obviously you're not talking about people who did the coup mongering, but yeah. It seems like music and culture is very much a part of also the civil unrest there.

Yeah, I think people are just like a lot of the revolutionary music is that folks are just zoomers, and they enjoy a TikTok dance, and they're going to continue enjoying their life. Not everything stops when the revolution happens. The lady who was doing, I forget her name now, which is really bad. She's a PE teacher.

She was doing a dance. Kingman Y, I think. Is that how you say her name now, which is really bad. She's a PE teacher. She was like doing a dance. King and Y, I think. Is that how you say her name? Like a dancer size, a jazzer size maybe, something like that. And she was doing it like as a live stream because at that time there was a COVID lockdown, right? So you remember people got really into that stuff. Yeah. Where everyone was doing workouts at home. She was doing that.

And then behind her, you can see all these APCs rolling into the government building. Military confidant. Yeah. Because they're doing a coup. She was doing that. And then behind her, you can see all these APCs rolling in. Military convoy. Yeah. Because they're doing a coup. And she just could soldier it on bravely. Yeah. Continue dancing. True entertainer.

A true entertainer. Yeah. The show must go on. I was listening to some show recently and they had a fucking insanely good, like sixties psych, Burmese rock band. Yeah. And it, but like, it was interesting because it sent me down this rabbit hole where like so much of this stuff is not available digitally.

And like people have had to like painstakingly preserve a lot of this music, especially from the sixties and seventies that I listen to now. I'm like, yo, this shit is fucking heads. Like this is amazing. Really, really cool stuff. What's something you think is overrated? James? Overrated?

I've been thinking about it. So recently, I think Skittles is the answer. You know, like, yeah, I, uh, I had an issue where like, I like to go trail running on the weekends, like to run around, listen to my Burmese rock music and like, generally what I'll do, and I'm now realizing this isn't the healthiest approach, like I'll go to the store and buy whatever discount candy they have And then like when like seven or eight miles, you know, whatever I'll just open it and put it put it all in my mouth and then chew it like a dip

Like if you'd like if you're chewing like you just have a sugar. Yeah, you just pack it in there, right? So I was doing that one day just enjoying my run and I felt like a crunchy bit I thought it's maybe like a hard skittle. Swallowed it, not a concern. It later transpired that that was a tooth. And so I skittled my tooth out. Man. So that was an issue.

And then you swallowed it and then you found it in your poo poo. I was really debating this. Like, do I want a poop tooth back in my mouth? Yeah. I never. Yeah, and I'm sure the dentist would be like, no, when that happens, it's for a reason.

Even if it wasn't. The body is rejecting it. The dentist straight up laughed at me. They, I went in there and they were like, we've got all your notes, lost tooth whilst eating skittles. And I was like, yeah, that's how it went down. Like that's more innocent. I mean, skittles are, do fuck your teeth up. But okay, so what, which tooth was it?

How did it, was it not painful? Like a molar back there? I didn't really notice until like the blood, you know, you taste, but you taste the blood anyway, when you're running in the cold, you know, you get that like blood in your mouth. No, I don't because I'm not, I'm have terrible, I'm a what? No, I do know that feeling because every, every like, you know, 18 months, I'm like, maybe I run. Maybe that's the thing I do. And then I get like, not even a mile and I can feel blood in the lungs cause your like lungs are pumping heavy.

Yeah, it's a taste. It's a running taste. It kind of feels cool. I, by the way, my whole reaction to this story was like, can't believe you fucking trail run for eight miles. Trail running looks like the most fun video game slash hardest thing you could possibly do. Yeah, I think there are harder things,

but like it's really fun. I don't know. You can't be looking at your phone. You can't be like checking the notives. You're just in the zone and like, you feel like a little antelope. You're just bouncing around. You can't even get your tooth. Yeah, you can't even check if that's a tooth in your mouth. Yeah, fuck it. Get it down. I just got it down. Yeah, I was unconcerned, but yeah, pulled it right out.

I left it for about six months to see, I guess I was wondering if a tooth would come back or maybe the hole would heal, but that hasn't happened. So I just put a skittle there. Yeah, yeah. I could have done, yeah. I could have plugged it with a skittle or like a candy corn I've always felt would fit well. Oh yeah. I was gonna say,

cause I just thought you were just saying skittles generally, cause I do feel like they are like mostly bad flavors. There's like, I don't like the red ones. I just, yeah, I'm like pink and red are good. Yellow and orange suck. I love lemons, lemons. I like orange. I don't like lemon or orange candy.

It's the same Starburst. Like give me a blue, give me a green. Skittles does have green, right? So it's. Yeah. But like the Skittles tropical, now I just want Skittles tropical. Those are good as shit.

Those are good. Like those, that's a good, except there's one with banana and I'm like, fuck that. I don't like that. Simulated banana offensive. Isn't that what bananas used good. Like those. That's a good except there's one with banana and I'm like, fuck that. Yeah, simulated banana offensive. And isn't that what bananas used to taste like this might be? No, no, I remember something like this that that flavor is derived from what a banana used like bananas did

taste like that. Bananas had a different flavor before woke and then woke took it away. Yeah. Let's see. There's there was a whole thing. Anyway, this is like the kind of stuff that would have been on crack.com. That's where Jack would have said, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Written 800 words about this. Yeah.

You know, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pretty sure I heard him say that. That's the quality of information you can come to expect on this, a second rate podcast. However, we are going to class up the joint in one moment when we come back from this break with a very fantastic conversation with James Stout right after this. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real, you will use this suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control.

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important creative spark, the magic. Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. you get your podcast. And we are back. So James, like in the buildup to having you on, I was like, okay, what should we talk about? You had many topics that you wanted to discuss. I think the one that absolutely is front of mind, I think Jen, even if people

don't realize or not is Myanmar. Uh, because on Friday, right, there was a just devastating, uh, magnitude 7.7 earthquake, the, as of right now, the death toll has passed 2000 and people say it's probably going to be much higher, but maybe by even five times. And again, for me, and I think a lot of people, unless people, you know, who are very much, uh, much knowledgeable about it and keeping their eye on the story, to me, Myanmar has been this thing where it's like, okay, there was a coup and since then there has been a civil war and things have become very terrible

and I get drips and drabs through either like weird videos on Twitter when you see some of like the guer the gorilla fighting or other just occasionally you'll see things about the workers in Myanmar being like a huge force for change and other many, all kinds of stories. But I guess to take it from the earthquake, can you kind of just paint a picture of how sort of how destabilizing the civil war has been to be to begin with and now adding on top of that, a catastrophic earthquake and what that means for the people living there.

Yeah, for sure. I like to conceptualize it in terms of a revolution, not a civil war. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's a way I don't like reporting it because what happened right there was a coup in 2021 where effectively like it's not a direct one for one, but you can imagine, like,

what if the US military supported the J6 thing, and then they stuck the landing on that, right? Like, an election happened. The election was not what I would call free and fair. Like, there were problems with the election, but it was broadly the best election that Myanmar has had. Myanmar was moving towards a sort of neoliberal-pacted democracy and that democracy had some deep issues, right, as we can see in the Rohingya genocide, which we're going to circle back to. But what happened was that the military seized power, it arrested most of the

members of the National League for Democracy, which was the sort of preeminent neoliberal party in Myanmar, and it began to rule like in a military hunter kind of way. People went out into the streets when I fucked that, no, like we're not having this. Because Myanmar has had military dictatorships for most of its independent history. And every generation, there's this uprising for democracy and every time they get killed in the streets.

So they came out like a lot of the people in this country came out in 2020, right? They came out with signs at first and then the cops tear gassed them. So they came out with like hard hats and gas masks, which they learned about from folks in Hong Kong. And then they got shot with rubber bullets. So they came out with shields and then they got shot with real bullets. And they, at that point decided that like, they weren't going to be

the another generation that died in the streets So they went to the mountains and in the mountains there are ethnic resistance organizations There are more than 50 different ethnic groups in Myanmar Many of them have been fighting against the majority ethnic group the Burma who dominate government and have done since 1948 when the UK left or Britain left in the 1948 when the UK left or Britain left. In the traditionally like the Burmese government and by extension, the Burmese military had used like a divide and rule strategy, just the way that other empires do, right, being like, oh, you young Burmese people can't be friends with the

Karen because the Karen fucking hate you and will kill you and they're like savage wild mountain people, I'm using heavy air quotes there for people who can't see me on this podcast. But these young folks were like, well, fuck it, the military is pretty savage, they're killing my friends. They went to the mountains and they of course found that these folks were perfectly accepting to them and that they shared a common enemy, right? Since then, they've formed units called PDFs, People's Defense Forces, which are mainly composed of young people

from the cities and they fight alongside the ethnic revolutionary organizations. And they've been fighting the military since 2021. So we're four years into the revolution. More than half the country is now is liberated, right? It's considered like to be controlled by the EROs or the PDFs. My friend, Robert Evans and I have done a couple of podcast series. We went over in 2022 to meet some young people. One of the biggest issues they faced was that they didn't have any guns to fight back, right? So they totally all sold all their shit to try and buy guns, but guns are very expensive there. That's not, not like here.

And so what they started doing was 3d printing guns using just like $200 3d printers. And the way we came across this story was I found a guy on Reddit who was in the gun 3D printing subreddit posting pictures. And I was like, you're not in America. Like those pictures aren't in America. So I DM the guy and I was like, Hey man, it's like, you might maybe be in Myanmar. Like, can I come hang out? And, you know, we chatted for a while and then it kind of worked out

roughly the area they were. And I went over and we visited them and we talked to them about like what it was like to kind of, they had no support from anyone, right? Like all the governments of the world, the UN, the US, the EU, all these places where we talk about democracy, like they didn't do shit where people were being killed in the streets. Oh no. 25th of April, armed forces Day, 115 people were killed in a

single day at a protest, unarmed, right? Not, not aggressive, not that it matters. They shouldn't be killed anyway. But, uh, that was kind of the big changing point for people when they realized that like if they needed to fight back, they needed to fight back with guns. And the world wasn't going to give them to them, but, uh, some people on Reddit did. And so they, uh, they went into the jungle with their 3D printers and set up these print farms in the jungle and they started out with printed guns.

Those guns allowed them to acquire better guns. And they fundraised, the way they fundraised is fascinating too. They, they have these huge telegram channels for the revolution, right? And they use pay-per-click adverts. So they do YouTube videos or write stories with pay-per-click adverts in them, and then direct like 10,000, 100,000 people to go to the article and click the advert. And so they generate revenue.

Holy shit. Yeah, gaming basically paid media like for their Revolutionary cause. Selling mud coffee is like, well, I'm helping the Myanmar revolution. Yeah. No, that is why, it's like the most gen Z revolution. Yeah. And it's, yeah, I mean, I think that just thinking about how things got this way and

just watching, in preparation for this watching a quick little explain way and just like watching, like in preparation for this, watching like a quick little explainer and realizing, yeah, that the international community has been, despite a lot of cries from the UN, kind of a zero on this, and there's been no coordinated response, unlike the response to, you know, Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, you know, and on and on.

It's like that Myanmar has largely been left to its own devices and China and Russia are actually fueling the, obviously the military side of it. And so they've got plenty of weapons there. And what's crazy, let's also learn about like the history is that the army has representation in parliament, like seats, which is just fucking like any kind of country trying to be a democracy, that's wild. That's so terrifying. Yeah. And for years, the US kind of boosted this kind of Aung San Suu Kyi, like we're transitioning to democracy. It's going to be the next growth economy in Asia. They called them tiger economies for a while. And the US really didn't demand inclusion for those different ethnic groups, right?

But they stood up and fought for it themselves. And I think in a sense, like, don't get me wrong, it fucking sucks how many people have died. Some of those people are people I really cared about and it was really hard to lose them. And like the revolution has been hard for a lot of people, right? Like four years at war is not a joke. Like some of these people, you know, they're 19, 20 now, they were 16 years old when they started seeing people die every day. Um, and that shouldn't happen to anyone.

But like, because they haven't had so much of this, like his aid from the United States, his aid from the European Union, and then you will have a nice neoliberal democracy afterwards. Like they've done it themselves and they found their own way. And like that gives me a lot of hope because like nobody came to help them. Right. They did it all by themselves and they built something really beautiful as a result that like, is it, you know, I'm sure there's someone on Twitter.com who thinks it's a fucking color revolution, but those people are dumb. Like these people entirely from their own

refusal to be like under the boot heel of the state have created this beautiful revolution that's liberated half the country. And in the process they've like, so to give an example, right, the Rohingya genocide happened in Myanmar. And it happened largely because Facebook doesn't have any content moderation in Burmese. And that allowed for horrific Islamophobic lies to spread through the hunters botnet for a large part. They have a huge network of bots. You can see them in the replies to my tweets. This happened less than a decade ago, right?

And Islamophobia was like, and there's a massively like Buddhist nationalist movement in Myanmar, which draws inspiration from groups of English defense league, like right-wing anti-immigrant groups. And this was pretty much the population with some notable exceptions from the anarchists, the punk movement and other groups

who are opposed to the genocide, let it happen, right? Now this earthquake that happened in Sagang on Friday, right? 7.7 earthquake. It happened during Friday prayers the day before Eid, right? Eid being the festival at the end of Ramadan, if people aren't familiar. It's kind of like church at Easter for Christians, right? So a lot of people are in mosques. Now, because the country has fundamentally sort of aligned Buddhism with being Burmese for decades,

mosques have been allowed to build or repair their structures since 1962. So all the fucking mosques fell down during Friday prayers. And like, this is horrific. It would have been inconceivable five years ago for 23-year-old Burmese Buddhist people to be like, hey man, this happened during Friday prayers and all the mosques have been destroyed and what can we do to help the Muslim community in these places? How can we reach out to solidarity groups from Muslim communities around the world? That would never have happened five years ago, right? And like that they've built that solidarity now.

And just from like sharing experiences, right? And realizing that there's a lot more that unites them than divides them. You know, likewise. So that's happening now. That's a conversation in the wake of the Rohingya, obviously genocide, the Muslim minority and the fallout and the junta turning people against them. That now when this happens and these mosques are you know disproportionately so many muslims have been killed that like there's

solidarity now because of the revolution and what it has built yeah because they began they were the same they were attacked by the junta the same way that the that muslim people were right and they saw the junta doing the same shit and, like, this is how the state operates. It turns us against each other so we don't turn against it. And like, not, not, there are resistance groups which are still Islamophobic and will still, like, like there's been, there have been serious problems with killing of Rohingya people. And then the hunter has tried to turn, co-op the Rohingya people, like,

it's absolutely insane that the people who did the genocide have now got Rohingya people fighting alongside them. Some of those people are forcibly conscripted, but some of them are not. So like there are still definite issues, but yeah, to have young Burmese folks like messaging me concerned about Muslim people. And this has happened, like it isn't just a Muslim Buddhist thing, right? Like you'll see it with, for instance, women fighting on the front line now, which would have been inconceivable five or six years ago, right?

One of my friends told me a story that I like to repeat where like in Burmese culture, it's really a taboo for men to walk under a woman's like under garments, I guess. Like they would like lose their masculine energy if they did that. They felt like drawing across the street, you know, how people tried to close. Oh, I was like, how would you walk under someone's skirt? It sounds like you're violating it. They just force you. You're doing the limbo underneath someone's skirt? Like what's happening?

Yeah, yeah. Playing on a skateboard. Yeah, important context missing. It's taboo to do the limbo on someone's skirt, I think in most places. So it's like, like walking under a ladder, seven seven years bad luck, but if you walk under a clothes line with panties, like your name. Your nuts are gone. Yeah, immediately lose all your macho energy. So they had a barricade, right? And they had set some tires on fire and they were trying to stop the cops coming in, but the cops were

still coming in. And then they were like, oh shit, what about this taboo thing? And so the girls like, picked off their shit, put it on the washing line right, and the cops didn't come in. No, that's amazing. Use their own homophobia and misogyny against them. Yeah, totally. And like, for like, you know, 20-year-old guys are generally like great at this,

but like to have like 20-year-old guys being like, and that's how sexism hurts everyone is like yeah you know that's why i want to sorry miles i'm sure i just like wanted to ask because like the headline i woke up to today was that the government is has bombed the areas that were affected by the earthquake so So, okay, so can you just explain how since the earthquake, the war hasn't stopped? I mean, and how is that turning people against them possibly? Yeah, so the PDF, which is the main Nibama sort of revolutionary forces,

they're slightly distinct in their command structure from the ethnic revolutionary organizations. And there was something called a national unity government, which was formed of the people who were elected and then deposed by the coup, right? Not everyone is fighting necessarily to install the NUG, but NUG and the PDF declared a ceasefire for two weeks after the earthquake. Some of them even offered to go into junta controlled territory to help a risk to their own lives, right? Because they were fighting each other? No, the NUG and the PDF and the EROs are fighting against the junta.

Right, but they were like, we won't, we'll stop. Yeah, they're like, we won't bring our weapons, we want to come help. That was denied. So what the junta has done in response is continue to bomb civilian targets, right? Which is something that it has done since the coup began. It's because they get their ass handed to them in like small arms combat, right? Like if they're fighting, if two groups of soldiers are fighting, the Hunter soldiers are conscripts, their weapons are absolutely shipped here. Like I've never seen worse maintained weapons, but they, they just rely

heavily on drones, artillery and airstrikes, right? And they've continually airstruck civilian targets. They airstruck Kareni Christians during Christmas celebrations, right? They airstruck Kachin civilians during a Kachin music festival. Jesus. Like, they are on some, like, Assad regime level shit, but the world just doesn't report on it. Like, or it doesn't get reported on as much. So yeah, they did continue air striking even when, so it looked like in the day of the earthquake, like that afternoon, I don't know if their runways were damaged.

It seems like maybe not because they've been doing regular airstrikes since they used fucking paramotors. Yeah. I saw you post about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like to drop bombs.

Like they couldn't take a a break like a half day on bombing civilians. They continue to keep bombing shit. And now they're demanding international aid. Right. Like I think we need to be really careful that what they will do is hoard that aid. They will use it against the revolution. And they did this with Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Right. They have declined. They won't let certain aid come in. They didn't let a Taiwanese rescue team enter. They'll let Chinese, they'll let Russian. Right.

I think that's an Indian group. A Vietnamese, they're fucking down with North Korea sometimes. I don't think North Korea will be sending help, but like they get weapons from North Korea, they'll let those people come in, but they wouldn't let other international aid come in. And they did this with Nargis, a US warship is set off the coast, and they were like, no, we don't want the stuff that you have. So like, they will continue to use this as an opportunity. They don't care how many civilians for dying. It will be very hard for you to get accurate numbers on how many civilians have died. A, because

they don't care and B, because they don't want to look bad. They don't want to put that out there. Are there estimates? I mean, are there entities that do kind of an estimates of the toll, death toll? Yeah, I saw the US Geological Survey had said that a quake of that magnitude and that location would result in between 10 and 100,000 deaths, which is obviously a pretty big number. We can expect to see the death toll go up. I've heard from people in,

everyone's still sleeping outside in lots of places because of aftershocks. People have left their neighborhood because of the smell of rotting bodies in the collapsed buildings, right? And they've been trying to get people out themselves, right? Pulling stones off. The National Unity Government and the PDF have a large number of elephants that they liberated from the Hunter's Timber Camp. So they'd be... Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that. Wait, you didn't mention that. Freed elephants. I love this. They have an elephant unit. They have like an elephant... Yes.

Yeah. I'm hoping to go and spend some time with them. I feel like it's one of the last chances in human history for someone to ride an elephant to war. Right. You got to do that. Put it on their resume. But also, of course, the elephants are like a symbol of Burma and they were being mistreated by the hunter, right? And they didn't want them to fall into the black market, so they liberated these elephants.

And they're living with the PLA now, which is one of these resistance groups. But yeah, they use the elephants to clear the rubble. They've used whatever vehicles they have, but they desperately need international support and the hunter's not going to let them get it. And as a result, way more people will die than need to die. Plus you combine that with fucking we've cut USAID now, right? 18 case officers, I believe got laid off the day of the earthquake. 18 case officers, I believe, got laid off the day of the earthquake. I know the World Food Program already scaled back operations in Myanmar because of this. And globally, there's kind of a reduction in funding for humanitarian aid. Right? So that's, it's like a double whammy. I know that like when they shut down USAID funding,

when Elon Musk and his little kids went into the USAID and shut it down, Like I'm aware that they literally turned off life support machines in some refugee camps and aware of women having to give birth outside of like locked clinics. Jesus Christ. Yeah. It's, it's a lot of Burmese refugees end up living just across the border in Thailand and USAID has, and this is wrong, like it's instituted itself kind of as the only provider in some of those cases, or it's like one of the main ways to get medical care. So when it pulled out, it leaves people really in a shit situation.

Well, let's take another quick break. I have a couple questions and you know, and also a bit of optimism to offer, I think, James, because you do see that there is something inspiring about everything that's happening. So let's take a quick break and we'll come right back. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real? You will use this suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. What's inside a black hole?

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That's the reason why they're banning books like yours, George. That's the reason why they're trying to stop the teaching of Black history or queer history, any history that challenges the whitewash norm. Or put us in a box. Black people have never, ever, depended on the so-called mainstream to support us. That's why we are great. We are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. James, I think first, one of the main things that I really think about in anything

when we see people trying to liberate themselves and, you know, engage in some kind of violent conflict in order to do that for the betterment of their own lives is you see how media responds to it, especially in the United States. And like to your point, right, like I've ingested so many headlines that I'm using the term civil war. And that's what I see constantly in every, what is the earthquake mean for the civil war? What is the civil war in Myanmar? Can you sort of just, from your perspective,

the importance of really describing this as a revolution and why sort of the coverage of sort of characterizing this as a civil war, it does a disservice to not only the reader, but the people that are actually struggling for liberation in Myanmar. Yeah, definitely. So there's been war in Myanmar since 1948, right? Since the British left and the Panglong agreement, which is complicated, and I won't describe here, ended up being dishonored,

basically, and the Burma majority took control of the government and the military. What happened in 2021 is distinct from that. It is people rising up against a dictatorial government and choosing not to be swayed by violence, not to be like pushed back, right. And to go and join into or join up with these EROs. And at that point, like it stopped being a war between two different organizations and it became a revolution all over the country, right. We didn't have different, like, I think it's wrong to characterize the ethnic groups as only fighting for the independence of their ethnicity.

Um, they're not, they're fighting to do away with the dictatorial government in Myanmar. And so like, when we see it as a civil war and there's, there's been this, like you say, in headlines, it's consistent language, you see it a lot used by analysts too, I don't understand how you become an analyst, you just, just bloviate and say shit that isn't true. You become richer than I am, which is not very rich. Uh, and so like this language of civil war, I think it fits neatly into like

the securitization kind of discourse that the people in the West want. And like it, it's a lot easier to ignore a civil war than a revolution. Right. Like, right. And they're like, ah, they're fighting amongst themselves again. Yeah, exactly. It's like, hold on. These people have had it with the treat that the treatment that they receive under

this government and their response is this. And I think that yeah, probably seeds some ideas that they don't want to really have out there. I mean, that's sort of what we see. And I feel like there is, obviously, it is in countries where there is a Muslim population. Also, there are brown people. I mean, we saw it in the Syrian Civil War, right?

Which, I mean, I guess the Civil War is also a massive uprising. It was part of the Arab Spring initially. And so there are some corollaries. But yeah, I guess I'm also curious on, like, So a massive uprising was part of the Arab Spring initially. And so there are some corollaries. But yeah, I guess I'm also curious on like, why aren't we covering this? Is it because there are these religious minorities or is it because it's just seen as, you know, yeah, like brown people on brown people crime? Like, you know, there's no outside invader.

It feels like it's all of that, right? The narratives don't conform to what a sort of American imperialism wants out there or there are people to be thinking about, really. Yeah. And there's this whole thing when Chomsky writes about manufacturing consent, they don't tell you what to say because you know what they're going to say already. That is definitely true of a certain class of people who are editors of big newspapers in this country. Like I've tried to pitch, to me, it's, it's just a good story. Like it's a fucking great story. And, uh, they're not, it's, there's this idea that people aren't interested or

they won't take the time to learn all that background, but they, people are interested actually, like we make, like I got my job at IHART because I wanted to make podcasts about this, like people are really interested and people who listen to our podcasts have done amazing things to show their solidarity. And like, so I think part of it is editors being like condescending and thinking that their readers won't pay attention, which is bullshit. Right. I think it doesn't fit with these kind of general narratives that we have, right, that

we like to frame anything into. And it's affirming to me, at least, is like I was in Rojava in North East Syria in 2023. And there was a message sent from the Kareni Nationalities Defense Force, who are one of these revolutionary organizations in Myanmar, to the people of Rojava, because at that time that I was there, we were being bombed heavily by Turkish drones, and like expressing their solidarity with the people of Rojava, and then the people of Rojava sent a message and like expressing their solidarity with the people of Rojava.

And then the people of Rojava sent a message back expressing their solidarity with people in Myanmar. There have also been statements from Myanmar in solidarity with Palestine and Ukraine. Like, even if we're not paying attention to it, it doesn't mean that like the whole world isn't. Right. Yeah. So lots of people are, right. But perhaps people who can understand what it is to like, I mean, we're starting to learn what it is to live under a tyrannical state, I guess. But, you know, people who can take inspiration from people standing up to a state that doesn't

care if they live or die. Well, that's sorry, Miles, I don't know if you have more. I just want to jump in there, because when you talk about today, you know, I was I've been thinking about obviously the crackdown here in the United States on actual free speech and the rounding up of people deport deporting innocent folks, all this. It is interesting that you see the breaking point of the people of Myanmar being like, look, we've done military dictatorship. We've done putting our heads down.

It doesn't work. So, the only option is to fight. I see, as you see both media civil society not everyone obviously but like I don't think that Americans are truly prepared for you know this anti-fascist fight that we currently find ourselves in and there is like a crossroads of okay so what happens when they actually start really repressing you know and sadly I think maybe what happens is people kind of stop resisting.

And TBD on this, it's not a done deal. But you talk to some friends who are Egyptian or folks where there is a very, not complacent, but a very controlled society under a military dictatorship that's just like, we just don't resist. And so that is an avenue versus the one that Myanmar has taken. Yeah. And James, I know you said from just your time speaking with the people there and your coverage of it, that you are able to draw some kind of inspiration from that. And do you look at that just in terms of globally, of what human beings are capable of,

or do you also see that in the context of just spreading authoritarianism and what our human capacity is to resist that? Yeah. I think all of us have this desire to live free and not live under the boot of the state. It's that desire that it's the most powerful resource for the people of Myanmar. It's not like they have a great deal else, right? They don't have, you know, it's, this isn't one of those revolutions, which

benefits from having access to oil for instance, or any of those things, right? Like, and I've watched, I have watched some change and grow, which is really cool. I've watched people consider their opinions. I've watched, you know, like young people consider their opinions on gender, consider their opinions on LGBTQ people and be like, hey, I was wrong about that. These people are my comrades in the revolution. And that's cool. It's really beautiful to watch people grow. But it's been beautiful to watch them build something out of nothing based entirely on solidarity and a refusal to give in. I think we'd be really... We, we should see ourselves in that more,

more than I think we probably do. They have a long history of revolutionary organizing, right? Like if we look back to 8888, which was the 8th of August, 1988, when they had big pro-democracy protests that were violently put down by the government, people were killed, every generation had had these movements and they will talk about that. We don't have that, right? But we do have a long history of street movements, right? We have the 2020 uprising. We've seen like ACT UP for HIV AIDS, right? The civil rights movement. In this country,

we have a real problem with how we teach about the civil rights movement, I think. We talk a lot about nonviolence, but like nonviolence does not encapsulate the entirety of the activism that gave the one civil rights for black people in the United States. And I think we're kind of doing a disservice to young people, or maybe we're doing a service to the state by ignoring that. But we have a long history of people taking matters into their own hands and seizing rights back from the state. Right. And I think if we see things in those terms and we can take inspiration from the people of Myanmar, because they have that too, and they acted on it. Right. And they refused to comply. Like you were saying, Francesca, like they didn't want to just go along with it

and keep their hands down. Like they'd seen other people do that for too long and they'd seen where it got them. And they were done with it. And I think like, and the way that you're like, they have so much joy in what they're doing makes me so happy, like, like, you know, they make their music videos, they dance, like they, you know, like, I think people like who report on conflicts, sometimes we only focus on the sad stuff and I get that, but like, there's a sense of joy in these moments when you stand up to the state and you're like, no, fuck you, I'm not doing this anymore.

And like, and then you realize that like, you can push them back. And I've seen it in Rojava and I've seen it here. Like, like there's a sense of joy that people get when they liberate themselves like in that moment, but it's really beautiful. And like, I think if more people here could understand that experience that maybe they'd be a little more confident or a little less despairing that like, there are things that we can do. It doesn't, we don't need fucking Predator drones and $10 billion or whatever.

Like there are things that the people have done all over the world to stand up to tyranny. Well, that's really kind of my other question, just of geopolitically, like, can this revolution win is so long as China, Russia, so long as the junta gets this funding? And, or do they need some kind of international support? And what does that look like in a country at a time when, let's say the United States, which again, if it had any shred of good faith internationalism left, I mean, it's like, that's kind of flying into the wind now. But I mean, you know, I always like to think sort of in the future, like foreign policy wise, like what should we be advocating for?

I don't know what, yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Like there's internationalism that supports Myanmar, right? It comes from people, not from the States. So there are volunteers who fought in Rojava who are fighting in Myanmar now. It gets a dictatorship there, there. The revolution has succeeded. Will the revolution succeed in cities? That's a different question because urban warfare is a different thing, but they have taken big cities. The three major cities would be Napidore,on and Mandalay, right? Mandalay having just been devastated by the earthquake.

A lot of that would depend on their ability to shoot down aircraft. And the states of the world have been very reticent to give non-state actors anti-aircraft missiles for a long time, right? It will make your holiday in Thailand a lot less safe if people are just running around the whole area with anti-aircraft systems. So like, some of it depends on how can they do that. a lot less safe if people are just running around the whole area with anti-aircraft systems. So like, some of it depends on how can they do that. But there are other ways to achieve that, right?

Like if the hunter can't get jet fuel, it can't fight its aircraft, it can't get weapons to drop from its aircraft. Israel has also supplied the hunter with weapons. Oh, that's predictable. Yeah, yeah, but I didn't include that one, better. Little nugget, including during the range of genocide. So like, can we stop them getting jet fuel another way, right? That's something that like the neoliberal countries could do real easy, right? Right.

Now, if Russia and China want to keep supplying them, then that becomes a different question. It's how quickly can the revolution scale up its capacities to deal with that, right? What they have done so far is like used drones, civilian over-the-counter drones, to drop bombs on aircraft while they're hanging out at airfields. Right. They have a couple of surface-to-air missiles, they shot down a helicopter, but to my knowledge, they have shot down some fast jets, but only one or two. So like, that is an important question, if in the answer to, can it succeed?

Like the answer is yes. Right. Like eventually all those jets have pilots and those pilots aren't bulletproof. But like, we're also in a really interesting moment with the, sorry to interrupt, but like, you know, this massive earthquake and your government is still bombing people. Yeah. What are we doing?

Exactly. Like, I mean, people know that the government is shit for the most part in Myanmar, right? But I think that that's the other thing, right? Most people support the revolution. Even people with family in the military support the revolution. And so the hunter's morale, its military morale is so low. You have these mass surrenderings of thousands of troops, right? Wow. And often these troops,ings of thousands of troops, right? Wow. And often these troops, they'll bargain them back, so the hunter will get them back and they'll deploy these guys again and they'll get captured for a second time.

Right. Like morale is not high. And so I think it can win because you can only go on for so far with this morale, right? Like, and over time, one of the ways that they've armed themselves is people from the hunter defecting. Uh, and so like they can continue to get armaments, including anti air capability that way China has kind of flipped and flocked on the revolution, but there's possibility of China continuing to support it. It gets more mad with the hunter.

There's a whole issue of scam compounds that we haven't talked about, but you know, when you get those text messages, so like, Hey, we mean for lunch, it's Karen or whatever. Yeah. When are we playing golf? I saw a text thread of someone really like kind of being like, are you okay? And all this other information came out from something like that. Oftentimes it's Chinese nationals or other foreign nationals who have been

kidnapped and they are in these scam compounds along the Burmese borders. It started in COVID when the casinos, so they used to be like casinos kind of operated outside of the rule of Burmese law there and Chinese nationals would go, imagine like kind of Las Vegas on steroids, right? I mean, seriously on steroids, right? I mean, seriously on steroids, you've got like white tigers and shit. Wow. But in COVID, people didn't want to go to casinos, so they started running these scams.

They called it pig butchering. They like fatten up the pig and then butcher it, then develop their relationship with you and then scam you. So a lot of Chinese nationals are basically enslaved in these compounds, right, doing this scamming work. And that has been a major issue between China and the Hunter because the Hunter has done nothing about it. Most of the groups that run those scam compounds support the Hunter or at least rely on it to sort of give them sovereignty in those areas.

So there's this whole other, I mean, like you can even see them from the Thai side, like across in reality in that area. And thousands of people, a number of them just released thousands of people because a famous Chinese actor was scammed. So they'll put a job posting like, hey, come for this tech job interview. It's really well paying and the benefits are great. And then kidnap people and force them to do these, uh, these pig butchering schemes.

And the money is going where? To the people who run the scam compounds that these, uh, that they're making. I think I saw it. It's like in the, in the order of tens of billions of dollars. Yeah. It's a massive, they'll actually let you, so you, they're like, Hey, I'm starting a business. Can you loan me a thousand dollars? And the person loans them a grand and they'll pay them back. And then you they're like, Hey, I'm starting a business. Can you loan me a thousand dollars?

And the person loans him a grand and they'll pay them back. And then they'll be like, Hey, let me get to 20 grand. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, it's a very well thought out thing. There's so many scams like that using, you know, fake jobs and crypto and people having to pay to unlock more payments. And they're like, well, I got a little bit of money from when I started. And then it's you go to you're confident and then you really focus on giving it all away.

Yeah. Well, James Stout, thank you so much for joining us on the daily. I guess, uh, eye opening is probably the understatement of the year, I would say for this conversation. Uh, where do people find you, follow you, uh, read your work, hear you, all of that good stuff. Yeah, cool. Um, so I do, it you, all of that good stuff. Yeah, cool. So I do, it can happen here with my colleagues there. We make a podcast five days a week. And so that's a lot of content. If you're not getting enough here, you can find us anywhere that good

podcasts are given away for free. I have a Patreon. It's just my name. You can search it. And I write there, I write a lot about Myanmar. That's where I started writing about Myanmar. Those are two big things. You can also find me doing mutual aid

at the Southern border of the United States. So if you wanna come help out, you can, and I would encourage you to do so. Yeah. Hell yeah. Oh, I was gonna ask you, what is a piece of media? And I know when you're asking, like, is it okay if it's not in English? I said, absolutely.

Put us onto something different, please, please. What is the work of media that you've been enjoying? I enjoy a lot of stuff from Myanmar. I try and keep up to date with that. Recently, I've just been going back to music I listened to. Like when I was a lot younger, I've been listening to like early stereophonics and Manic Street preacher shit. When I was like 16, I volunteered in an orphanage for

neurodivergent kids in Romania. And we had like a boom box and two CDs, you know? And so like that takes me back to that time in my life. Damn, James. Geez, you've been lifelong on this. It's so dope to finally actually meet you. I've been listening to your pod for a while now. So cool, thank you.

Yeah, it's nice when people listen. Of course. Very weird to meet people who listen, cause you do. I know it always is like, I'm always, I always think people are lying when they're like Yeah, I get into my closet and I yell for yeah, and then I don't know I mean I know I know I see that people do Listen, but it's yes

What the intention of our shows is? What are you the cops you're like what What the fuck oh my bad, man. Sorry. I'm on it. I'm, yeah. What? How gay? What are you, the cops? You're like, what? No, I'm a fan, what the fuck? Oh, my bad, man, sorry, I'm on it. I'm on it, I'm on it. Francesco, thank you so much for joining me. Where do people find you, follow you, hear you?

See all of the great work you do. Bituation Room podcast, and come see me and Matt Lieb live in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 7th at Cops Comedy. Tickets, francescofiorantini.com. Boom, boom, boom. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying? Shit.

It better be in a foreign language. Fuck. I forgot to prepare for this show. Maybe something in Catalan. I saw James, James, you speak Catalan? Yeah, I do. My PhD was in, I wrote about the anti-fascist Olympics in Barcelona in 1926. Oh shit.

Oh my God. Yeah. I've written, I don't buy my book, by the way. This is the first time you hear someone say it's on a podcast. I've written a book about that. It's very overpriced. It's an academic book. I wouldn't pay for it if I was you. It's too much money. Just go to the library if you want to read about that and ask them to get it. There you go. I don't know if this is old or not, but there is a video of somebody, or I think it's a TikTok

of somebody trying to get into an LA fitness with a fish using the barcode on it. Oh, scanning the fish. Scanning the fish. I haven't seen this. And someone just brought it to my attention because they retweeted it with a like, you know, how I'm going to get into all the like anti-trans, you know, gyms or whatever. But it doesn't, whatever it doesn't matter, but it's the fucking funniest video. And she's like, that is not an LA fitness. That is a fish.

He just goes up to the thing and goes, beep, beep. I don't know. I don't know. I made a beep. It's scanned. I'm going to get in with this cod. She's like, I'm calling the cops cops the fucking funny thing I've ever seen. Okay first piece of media like is from at Jeremy Capulets calm it's on blue sky. It's it's like quote like it clearly a Tweet from over there the shitty website and it says it has like a picture of sunglasses where it's like looking down the street But through the lenses it looks like sort of jibbly esque through the lenses of like the cityscape and says, Could we

have Apple, Google and Open AI working together to give us Google Glass tech with a jibbly switch? Please. And then Jeremy quote to that said, getting hit by a bus because I think it's a big fuzzy cat with fucked up hands. Sounds Yeah, that's how that would end. There's no such thing as a Mechobus. Also, at victorweintrout.beastguy.social posted,

I bought Twitter for 44 billion and sold it back to myself for 33 billion. I have 43 kids and no friends. Everything I make explodes. Yeah. Cause Elon sold himself Grokbot Twitter? He sold to XAI and then said, but we bought it at 33 billion, so now that means the price

is that's what it costs now. It's so- What does that even mean? It's so valued at less? There used to be fucking laws. There used to be fucking laws. And this is clearly just self-dealing in order to help your stock price so you can avoid your debts anyway guys let's all strive to be a billionaire oligarchs huh? We about to say something James? No I'm not a billionaire oligarch.

Yeah yeah yeah well one day. You're not striving hard enough. Yeah you're not. What time do you wake up James to start crying? You know I didn't even duct tape my fucking mouth. So yeah, exactly. I was going to say you didn't enter this with a nose strip and a duct tape and then emerging from an ice bucket of Saratoga Springs ice water. OK, I'm ready. Yeah, maybe I need to get on my grindset and do that. Yeah, no, it would be very painful. I feel like I've got like facial hair in the duct tape.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. But that's how you know you're on your grizzly. OK, yeah. I worried about tape. Oh yeah, yeah. But that's how you know you're on your grizzly, man. Okay, yeah, yeah. Because you're not worried about that, you know? Yep. You can find me at milesofgrey, pretty much everywhere they have. At symbols, you can find me and Jack talking about basketball.

I'm Miles and Jack, I'm at Boosty's. I also talk about 90 Day Fiancé on 420 Day Fiancé, my escape from talking about the news and everything else. So check me out there. You can also find us at Daily Zeitgeist on Twitter, at Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram, we're also at Daily Zeitgeist on Blue Sky, everywhere. You can also, if you're listening to this episode,

just check out the little notes section where you can find all the links to this show. It's also called the footnotes. Thank you. As well as a song we're gonna ride out on. We're gonna go out on a track from LA's very own Georgia Ann Muldrow. She's like one of those like avant-garde musicians

who's been in the scene like forever. Like if you went to low end theory, you're probably familiar with her. She's now signed to Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label. This track is called Woo Punk. It's very dope. She's just like, she's just so talented. She's like a producer, musician, song. She does it all.

And this track is just so vibey and nice. Nice to just take back to. So this is who punk by Georgia animal drove. And that's it. You can find us pretty much everywhere. You know, wherever they give away the podcast for free, as James said, that's going to do it for us today. We will be back later on to tell you what is trending. So until then, we will see you. Be safe, bye bye.

Bye. Bye. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? Am I going and she's eating my lunch? Or if hypnotism is real? You will use a suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole? Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart

original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me or Hitcham as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeart video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up y'all? I'm AJ Andrews, pro softball player, sports analyst, and the first woman to win a Rawlings Gold Glove. On my new podcast, Dropping Diamonds, we dive headfirst into the world of softball by sharing powerful stories, insights, and conversations that inspire and empower. It's time to drop bombs and diamonds. Dropping Diamonds with AJ Andrews

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Hey all you women's hoops fans, and folks who just don't know yet that they're women's hoops fans. We've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain as we near the end of one of the most exciting women's college basketball seasons ever. The most parody we've seen in years with games coming down to the wire

and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spayne on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My husband cheated on me with two women. He wants to stay together because he has cancer. Should I stay?

Okay Sam, that has to be the craziest story in OK Storytime podcast history. Well John, that's because it's Dumpin' Week and this user writes, Last week we had an attempted break-in. I asked my husband, who was supposed to be at his mom's, to come over and change the locks, but his mom told me he wasn't with her.

And it took me less than an hour to find the first two women he was cheating on me with. Did she leave him? Well, to find out how this story ends, follow the OK Storytime Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.