It Could Happen Here Weekly 193

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode.

So every episode of the week that just happened uh is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want if you've been listening to the episodes every day this week there's going to be nothing new here for you but you can make your own decisions

Welcome to It Could Happened Here, a show about things falling apart and how to put them back together again.

I am your host, Neil Wong, for another It's Both episode.

And when I say both, I mean we are talking about something that we've been covering kind of to some extent in a bunch of different cities, which is a bunch of hospitals' incredibly cowardly decision to not provide

trans youth with gender-affirming care that they need out of a combination of fear, greed, and malice.

And with me to talk about one of the places where this has been happening and

how people have been trying to resist it.

And this in this case is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

And so we're talking to two people who have been fighting back against their just hideous cowardice.

One is Selena Binnock, who is a therapist at UPMC, and then also Dina Staley, who's the executive director and founder of Trans Uniting.

Both of you two, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And thank you for doing this genuinely, really critical work to try to get this hospital to not severely harm their trans patients.

Oh,

good lord.

Yeah.

Who knew we'd be fighting this battle, right?

Right.

Yeah.

So, okay, I guess the place I want to start is, can you explain sort of the exact situation of what happened after the sort of recent Supreme Court ruling and what the hospital decided to do and but not do?

Yeah.

So from our understanding, what's been going on with UPMC or the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is they've decided to end all gender-affirming care.

This includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, surgeries for people under 19.

And this is in response to an executive order that was put out in the spring by the Trump administration saying that providers who continued to prescribe these medically necessary treatments would be at risk of felony charges and that providers who supported accessing this type of care could also be in trouble as far as getting felony charges for aiding and abetting.

So that's the way that the hospital system is interpreting this executive order.

So there has been a lot of pushback from multiple providers, people throughout UPMC.

And

the biggest issue is that they created a deadline of making these changes starting June 30th.

This is an arbitrary date.

that they decided within the hospital system.

This date was not given to them by any kind of federal proceeding or or legal mandate.

And after that time, they're no longer going to be prescribing these medications.

So, starting in April, UPMC stopped taking any new clients who are under 19 who were looking for hormone replacement therapy or any kind of gender-affirming care.

And starting June 30th, they are slowly tapering off all clients from their puberty blockers or hormone therapy over the course of three to six months, depending on what their current medication course is.

So, what is happening, and the thing that I think a lot of people aren't saying out loud is that they're forcing these teens and young adults to detransition or to halt or reverse their gender transition, which the fear is that they will start seeking non-medically advised care to obtain and get the treatment that they're seeking for.

So that is kind of our understanding of what's been going on behind the scenes with UPMC.

Yeah, I also just want to say like, I've had like insurance bullshit where like I've been taken off of my stuff for like a month and a half and it sucks.

it is awful it is psychologically painful in ways that are like difficult to describe right like it really sucks

right from a physical standpoint you're going to get side effects you're going to have issues we're coming off these medications but from a mental standpoint right it's these people who are not your doctors are determining what your care is and it's incredibly harmful in both the physical and the mental aspect of it.

Yeah.

And again, we're just talking about healthcare for trans youth at the end of the day.

And a lot of them won't have puberty blocks and just by therapy that they're taking away.

Any person over 18 years old, they're legally, you know, able to vote, should be able to make their own decisions if they want to with their health care.

So it's really disgusting and disheartening what is happening.

And here in Pennsylvania, UPMC was the first large.

health provider, which is one of the largest in the state, to start this domino effect of stopping care for trans youth.

Yeah.

And I mean, it creates this hideous situation where just like

because of a combination of like some gender bureaucrat at the White House was like, I get to decide what your gender is now.

And I get to decide what your healthcare is because of that.

And then you have this like cascading effect of like some like hospital admin was like,

well, I don't know.

I think it would be easier for like me personally.

if you didn't have health care.

And it just like it's cascading for the hospital system.

It's horrible.

It's horrible.

And I appreciate that Dina makes that point of we use this phrase gender affirming care to specify what's going on, but it's healthcare.

It's, you know, not that different from someone being forced to come off diabetes medication or medication for a heart problem.

You know, this medication that makes people be able to function in their life and feel safe and physically well.

That's what's being forced out of their lives.

So it is healthcare, absolutely.

And going into spaces that are affirming for them, you know, as kids, you know, so now that they don't have this affirming space, they have to go into spaces that are not affirming, they will further damage their mental, you know, when they're going to these spaces being misgender and all of the other things that happen.

You know, this is what we're talking about, just a safe, affirming place where you can access safe, affirming health care.

I think it's worth expanding on that a little bit in the sense that, like,

a space that's not affirming isn't like a neutral space.

It's one that's actively hostile to you.

Absolutely.

That also just sucks.

Like

it's hideous.

And it's just like they decided to inflict this on a bunch of children because they're mildly afraid.

Right.

They're afraid and they're afraid of losing money.

And there's no way to say that it's in a neutral space, right?

It's you're affirming or hostile.

And that's the risk, right?

Kids can't go to the doctor and feel safe at this point.

That has like cascading issues too, right?

We've been talking about this a lot in like the context of some of like the Medicaid cuts, but it's like anything that deters people from going to the doctor prevents them from going in for like other stuff that, you know, could be treated pretty easily.

But then suddenly, if it's like, okay, well, my hospital is now in a hostile space, people just like stop going in altogether until something really serious happens that could have been prevented if the hospital wasn't being assholes to them.

Like,

you know, I think the fear is what we're going to see as the side effects or the consequences of this.

You know, we've been told by our supervisors or management at UPMC that we should expect an influx of suicidal teenagers or young adults, teenagers who are struggling with greater symptoms of depression or even psychosis.

Like acute psychotic symptoms are a studied side effect of abruptly coming off your hormones.

So not only do you now have these teens and young adults who will be scared to access their care, feel like they can't use their name, their pronouns, get the care that they need, but they're struggling with mental health crises that are due to the changes that we're seeing due to the withdrawal of their health care.

So, you're seeing this in so many different aspects hitting them.

And then, the providers in this hospital system, and I'm sure we're seeing this all over the country.

The providers are here to pick up what's happening.

That's a decision based on administrative opinions.

And, like we said before, fear.

Wait, so that was straight up hospital admin told you that that was what was going to happen?

So, basically, after this went into place, I work in a suicide prevention clinic.

so we were told by the people that we work with to be ready and to start having meetings and having discussions around how to better support these kids knowing that through research we've found that coming off of hormones can cause increased risk of suicidal thoughts psychosis and depression sure as does that

yes and so it's like physical side effects but also if you're forced to detransition you're going to be physically unsafe in a space where you're no longer maybe passing or you're no longer able to be yourself So you're at greater risk of harassment and bullying, which then in turn can cause higher risks of suicidal thoughts.

It's just like so hideous that there's people like you in the hospital system who can just tell them that this is going to happen and they're doing it anyways.

It's hard because it's coming down so many layers, right?

So we're hearing it maybe from our direct management whose hearts are in the best place.

They didn't make these decisions, but where they're being told to follow up our management who are making these decisions.

And yes, because they work in the hospital, they know the implications of it, but the fear is outweighing the risks.

And that's what we're trying to fight against.

The lightest possible response that I have to this is I'm thinking about that Lord Farquhat line from Shrek where he goes, some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

It's like these house reliables are literally doing that.

They're like, yeah, no, some of these kids may die, but like, whatever, that's fine.

I don't have to deal with like maybe a lawsuit in like three years.

But they will.

absolutely still have to deal with lawsuits.

Yep, yep.

At the end of the day, these are people's basic human rights if they're a clincher of harm.

So there will be lawsuits that happen because of that.

Again, what the president did was not law at all whatsoever.

It was just a directive to say, hey, this is something that we should do.

This is not nothing that he can actually put into law.

So what they're doing is all preemptive.

The fans are just fishing to see what they can get away with, what they can't get away with.

This is all about having autonomy over our healthcare and our volume at the end of the day.

And And they're starting with the most vulnerable population of people, which are trans youth.

Yeah, they're just testing, right?

This is a test to see what else they can get away with.

Absolutely.

This is the test.

And they're failing miserably.

Instead of fighting them back, you want to fight us back.

Instead of standing up and saying, we're not going to do this, because it's not going to stop with trans kids.

It never stopped with trans people at all whatsoever.

It starts with trans people.

And Gina makes a good point.

I mean, I know, Mia, you aren't based out of Pennsylvania, but in Pennsylvania, gender-affirming care remains legal from a state level.

And the city of Pittsburgh, which we are located in, has been working really hard to protect trans youth.

So the executive order that was put in place by Trump, one, is not a federal law.

And two,

is not at all supported by state or citywide laws.

So from a legal standpoint, you know, which we've learned from consulting with people like Dina, who have been doing this work much longer than we have.

We've talked with our local ACLU and other government organizations that this would not hold up in court.

So, you know, that's why the fight, I think, is starting here and hoping to get bigger.

Yeah, a lot of the way this administration does stuff is just by like writing it down on paper and then hoping that they can just sort of shock and awe terror people into complying.

But like if you don't comply, they can't make you.

Like, it's...

You know, I mean, this is only, so this is only we've seen across issue areas, right?

Like if people don't comply with ICE agents, it suddenly becomes incredibly hard for them to just like carry out mass deportations.

If people don't comply with their hospital crackdowns, it's actually really hard for them to stop kids from getting gender-affirming care.

But if you give up, then yeah, it's really easy.

Right.

Right.

Giving up before the fight really starts.

At some level of this, this is what they want.

They're okay with it.

You know, because it doesn't really matter.

Like, you know, it doesn't matter which way it goes.

Do we really want to fight it?

No, we don't want this small group of peoples.

We're not going to fight it.

And if they fight it and they win, then we'll give it back, whatever.

Like and they have armies of lawyers.

UPMC has armies of lawyers that can really go and really attack this from all different angles, bring in community advocates, bring together all these, you know, the Women's Law Project, ACLU, all these different folks to come in with them and really hammer it to.

this administration but they choose to not do that and choose to be complicit in the bull crap yeah 100 okay so we unfortunately need to go to ads when we come back we will talk about how we're going to fight back and yeah it'll be great

we are back So remarkably quickly after this stuff all started, there's a pretty large protest like outside of the hospital to get them to stop doing this.

Can you talk about how this all sort of started to come together and how these efforts got organized?

So I started hearing rumbles about this in December.

And in January, you know, once he got into office and things, you know, immediately he signed that executive order.

I think like a little bit after that and by April.

we start activating and figuring out what we wanted to do because UPMC had made that first directive to not accept any more trans youth at all whatsoever, youth and young adults, anyone under the age of 19.

So we did our first action in April.

I mean start following up, getting information out to disseminate the right information out to community members and doing all of the behind the scenes work, connecting folks to the necessary resources that they need so we could, you know, start fighting back at UPMC.

Loan behold to us, Dina and Trans Uniting have been doing a lot of work to kind of set the stage for us to get involved, which is really awesome.

We were made aware of what's going on with UPMC well after, you know, Dina and some of the community members have been.

So I believe it was early June, maybe end of May, some of my really amazing coworkers.

and I decided, you know, we can't really just sit back and do nothing.

And I think at the clinic I work in, there was a big feeling of helplessness.

You know, what can we do?

How do we fight back on our bosses?

You know, we're feeling stuck.

And we are a suicide prevention clinic.

We're not specifically a gender clinic, but because we know that there's a higher proportion of trans and gay youth who are at risk of suicide than the general population, we work with a lot of trans youth.

So we were seeing this impact us directly in the sense of the work that we do.

So some of my coworkers wrote a letter to UPMC.

explaining the way that we were feeling about this, asking them to reverse this decision.

The letter discussed several local laws and state laws that would protect them as well as hit them where they hurt as far as discussing the money that they have and the available funds they have to fight this.

The letter was incredibly signed by almost 400, actually, I think at this point, over 400 staff at the hospital system we work at.

It's amazing.

It's amazing, yes.

And while this letter was being drafted, some of my coworkers met with consultants through the ACLU and other local organizations to one, make sure what we were doing was okay, that we were not jeopardizing too much of our own safety as far as employment goes, but also to get their opinions and start to rally organizations.

So the ACLU is who put us in touch with Dina and Trans Uniting.

And Dina jumped on it in less than two weeks.

She and her coworkers had created and built up a rally for us, which we had outside of the UPMC building downtown just a couple of weeks ago.

And we had local lawmakers speak.

I spoke along with my coworkers who helped write the letter.

Dina spoke.

And Dina, if you want to speak more to that rally, I think that would be awesome.

Sure.

I just want to say this is what allyship looks like, you know, accomplices in the fight against this, you know, heinous crime, because this is exactly what it is.

You know, it's an attack on trans lives.

But we brought a lot of folks together, community members, politicians, and workers from UPMC all together.

We had about 300 and some folks that showed up.

We were on the steps of UPMC's headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh.

And we also coordinated with some statewide folks that are actually doing a couple actions throughout this month, but there were two actions that happened that same day as well.

And, you know, what is happening is not right.

So we had to make sure that the community is being educated and we're activating community members at the same time.

We also wanted them to know about this fund that we were launching.

to help the kiddos in this situation because folks are still going to need to, you you know, be able to access some type of health care.

So, you know, making sure that they are aware of their options and making sure they're able to have funds to do so because, you know, with everything happening, they are probably going to get cut off of their health care insurance as well.

You know, and that is a real scare.

I mean, if that happens, then what?

You know?

So that was kind of what happened with that situation.

And it was amazing.

You know, everybody was amazing, but I just, you know, definitely want to shout out to to Delina and the whole team because, listen, we need more accomplices like that in this fight.

You know, we are a small but mighty community and we will not be able to get the things done that needs to be done to protect not just us, but all of us if we're not all united.

Yeah.

Thank you, Dina.

I mean, we couldn't do it without you guys and the power you've built and the beautiful voices that you bring to the fight.

It's truly awesome.

I think one of the things that we're seeing from this and, you know, that we've seen from all of the anti-trans repression is that, like, on the one hand, yeah, trans people are like one and a half percent of the population and we're disproportionately like the most broke and fucked up percentage of that population.

And also, we are significantly better organizers, like person for person than all of the people fighting us.

It's like, yeah, like they have unbelievable amounts of resources.

However, comma, we are really good at like this specific thing of organizing and fighting back.

And

well, sadly, like trans people have had to fight for so long.

They've learned how to do it.

And their loved ones, man, like they were there.

When we were at the rally a couple of weeks ago, I had parents of trans kids hugging me, you know, like they show up and they fight for their people.

And it's really empowering.

We don't have no choice but to do that.

You know, we don't have no choice but to show.

We don't have no choice but to fight because we had to all of our lives in order to, you know, continue to walk in our true, you know.

Yeah.

And like, I mean, you know, I could talk about sort of the structural factors that make that true, but there's also just, if you're going to be trans,

at some point you have to choose to accept it.

And like the fact that it's an identity that like, you have to make a choice to be like, I'm going to fucking do this.

And like, okay, I am this person that I've always known that I am, et cetera, et cetera.

I think that also just like.

it selects to like a small extent for people who are willing to just like

fuck it let's go and i don't know that's been a thing i've always like appreciated about the way that like these kind of organizing efforts unfold

okay so let's talk about what the reaction has been to the protest to the actions both from the hospital and from the community at large.

Looking at both of those things, I guess one of the coolest reactions we're seeing is a lot of people coming out in solidarity who work at the hospital system.

So

the people who originally wrote the letter, who were part of this rally, we are trying to organize more community meetings, more town halls, contacting people through email.

And Dina has been very involved in that along with some other local organizations.

The word is spreading and we're getting in touch with a lot of people in a lot of different departments throughout the hospital who are here and want to show up.

You know, know, we're seeing physicians, social workers.

UPMC is also, of course, a massive insurance conglomerate.

And we're seeing people who work in the insurance side of things come out to support this.

So that's been really amazing.

As far as what things are looking like as administration feedback, we are being told the same response repeatedly that UPMC is doing what they have to do to quote unquote abide with the law and they're making the decisions that they are making because of the quote unquote law.

And they will continue to offer behavioral health support to trans youth and young adults to support them through this crisis.

So, you know, we are trying to meet together and talk a lot about what that means.

Of course, there is some fear of will that be stripped away.

You know, we actually saw not that long ago, I think it was only last week, that in Ohio, they built into their state budget that Medicaid can no longer cover quote unquote trans affirming therapy.

So this isn't even puberty blockers, it's not hormones, it's talk therapy.

And what will that mean?

You know, we hope that we're protected here in Pennsylvania, but there's always risk that this can come into place at a federal level.

So, these talking points that they're sticking to, it's not to black and white as they're presenting it.

You know, they're not abiding with any certain law.

They we don't know that therapy is protected, but that's what's kind of they're sticking to.

And that's just what's repeatedly being stated throughout various press contacts that are being made through the hospital.

They're doing whatever the fuck they want to do.

Yeah,

To put it lightly, yes.

Yeah, this is what's happening.

And like we just have to continue to fight because they want to take us back to the 1950s and that's not going to happen.

That's not going to happen at all whatsoever.

This ain't 1950.

This is 2025.

And you can take away all you want to.

We're going to fight and we're going to put it back in place.

A lot of times it is.

so much harder to take things away and try to get them back.

But, you know, unfortunately, we're here and a lot of Americans didn't think that we would be in this predicament.

And it's not going to get nothing but worse.

So hopefully it opens up people's eyes and we have to unite as a people.

That's it.

That's it.

That's all around all of these issues.

There's so much happening, so much being thrown on us at one time.

But we have to unite as minority people or

we will be in a place like 1950s because, I mean, we're about to be in the great depression by january we will be in the great depression everybody get ready i hope you got your cat good

yeah

well and i think there's there's another element of this too which is that like you can look at them doing a like oh we're just following orders thing but there's no actual orders which makes it even more pathetic than like the original we're just following orders people which again and i want to note this just following orders did not prevent you from being tried at nuremberg like that was found to not be a defense so like

right it's remembering of where that went down history but the second thing too is like in terms of like there being so many different things where like everyone needs to sort of pull together and fight this the other advantage that we have that's different from like 30 nazi germany right is like this stuff is all really unpopular like everyone hates it everyone hates trump his approval ratings are terrible the approval ratings for everything he's doing across the board are just really bad The thing about the Nazis was that like

Nazi Germany, people wanted they were unified

yeah like at least to some extent and they were able to smash like you know they were able to sort of wipe out everyone who was opposing them but like significant portions of the population wanted all of that shit to happen and that is just not true here right and you know our job is to make sure that like the fact that nobody wants the shit to happen actually turns into it not happening instead of just you know this unhinged autocratic like your king is like writing decrees on a piece of paper and suddenly hospitals are following them even though there's just nothing absolutely nothing nothing but bull crap but again we just have to band together i think folks still in a sense they're in that mind frame of 2024 it's like this is not 2024 at all whatsoever and if you don't get with it i don't know

yeah but we're going to continue to fight that's not going to stop we're going to continue to you know make waves and activate educate people about their rights and you

create spaces or trans youth to be and be safe as much as possible.

And do it all, but as much as we can do, we will do.

Yeah.

And I think that also raises a question for the people listening to the show, which is that what can people

do to put pressure on this hospital or their local hospital to do this?

And how can people sort of help the effort to get UPMC to fucking give kids their health care?

Absolutely.

So what they can do is they can go visit transunitypgh.org.

They could sign a petition that we have up.

You can donate to the fund that we have going currently locally.

What they can do is, you know, work with their borough or city councils to create legislation.

to protect trans kids and youth, young adults, and on statewide levels as well.

But what we have to do is we have to put pressure from the top and from the bottom, you know, on the government to, you know, the state governments to make these changes.

Because again, there are no laws in place at all whatsoever.

So now we have to take that and we have to make laws statewide in each state to protect.

not just trans youth and young adults, but trans individuals and any minority groups that are being attacked by this this orange man's regime.

Yeah, it's a lot of rallying together.

And I think what we've seen here is how amazingly we were all able to come together as a community and fight.

And I think reaching out to your local organizations, I mean, if every city had a Dina Stanley, they would be in a much better position to fight this fight.

But,

you know, working together with the people who know how to organize and fight, but also not be afraid to get your feet wet in that act of organizing.

You know, we have been working with Action Network to open up letter writing to our community so that you don't have to be a UPMC staff to let UPMC know how you're feeling.

We're trying to host more town halls and community meetings.

We hit Instagram.

We have an account club providers for trans justice where we're trying to get the word out so we can rally more together.

I think a big piece is if you're able to contribute financially.

Trans Uniting has their youth healing fund, I believe, Dina, that's what it's called, where people can financially support trans youth who are having trouble accessing their care.

And especially knowing what we know, what's going to happen with Medicaid, this is even more important.

So, I mean, if you want to support us in our fight against UPMC, I think it's be loud.

It's not stop.

I believe that the hospital is just waiting for everybody to quiet down.

But we're only going to get louder because these taper plans just started for these teens and young adults.

They're still on their medications.

And the further away that gets, the louder we're going to be, because the risk is really going to increase as the months go on.

Absolutely.

So don't stop.

Be loud all the time.

Be accomplices in this fight because no matter what, know that you're next.

So you can either join in or you can wait for your turn.

And by that time, it may be too late.

and there won't be no one to be able to stand up and fight.

Yeah.

And the thing I've been saying on the show a lot is it's not even just that after they come for us, they're going to come for you.

It's that in order to come for us, they are going through you first.

Like that's what this whole administration has been.

They are willing to destroy the entire global economy.

They are willing to turn the U.S.

into a police state.

They are willing to, again, just grab people off the street in order to destroy very, very small groups of people.

They are willing to amiserate the lives of every single person in this country.

And the good news is that means that because we're all targets, we all have the capacity to resist together and to be

and we're going to.

It's just that people have to understand that, you know, that we are targets and understand what is actually happening.

Like these attacks on trans folks, it's not about trans individuals.

It's about autonomy over women's body.

The attacks over immigrants, it's not about the immigrants.

It's about citizenship for black and brown people that have it.

You know what I mean?

So this, again, it's just about having control over folks, period.

And as soon as people understand that and know that you will you know be a slave of this country and in a way that you've never been because we all are

but a slave of this country like you've never been before you better get with it open your eyes up and stand up and fight back or you will be in a situation that you would just be sitting there thinking like i should have coulda but you did

So stand up now.

The fight we're having with UPMC.

I mean, of course, it's important.

It's, this is my employer.

This is where I live, but it is just a small fight in the broader scheme of the fights we have.

And, you know, this brings up a good point:

we fight for trans youth because of what might come next, but it's already coming, right?

We have a lot of people of color who are already scared to leave the country because they don't know if they'll be allowed back in with their passport status.

We have, you know, women who are no longer able to access abortion care or reproductive care in many places in this country.

I mean, it's not if it's going to happen, it's when and it already is.

So the more we fight and the louder we can be for the people who are hit the most, the more likely that this fight will drag on and hit them.

So less fights can start in the future.

But it's happening.

We're seeing it everywhere.

Yeah, I think that's an amazing place to end.

Thank you to both so much for coming on and for fighting this fight.

Absolutely.

Thank you for having us.

I think it's really awesome to get the platform.

to show what we're doing and hope people

hopefully people will feel less scared right there's power in numbers, there's power in solidarity.

The more people we have fighting along us, the easier it gets to fight.

The power is the people, and we are the people.

I am incredibly looking forward to talking to you to you again when we fucking win this.

I love somebody.

It's gonna be great.

I will be back.

Yes, they will.

We'll pop champagne over the microphones, right?

We're ready.

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Listen to Close All Tabs, wherever you get your podcasts.

This is It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart.

I'm Garrison Davis.

Today we're talking about movies, one of my favorite topics that I never get to talk about on the show, but I'm able to talk about it this week because I found a way to talk about how movies are covering the death of woke.

Woke.

And to help me in this doomed endeavor, I have recruited artist and designer Bailey Newposter.

Welcome.

Hi, it's lovely to be here.

Bailey also is behind the new Stop Cup City show art, which will eventually go public, maybe in a few weeks, whenever I finally finish that episode.

So keep pounding me about it.

So.

We're going to talk about two films that came out this past July, Superman and Eddington, which I think are actually very closely related, despite being very

different from each other.

I believe they're kind of equal and opposite films.

And I realized this after I saw Eddington at a theater in Brooklyn and walked outside to the posters for Superman and Eddington being right next to each other, which are very different.

And then I realized this is actually kind of the same movie, but doing like,

or they're very related films, right?

Now, I think they really are like the equal and opposite of each other.

Both are like uber contemporary.

They're very online.

They have a sort of like gestural politics.

And I think they're both reactions to a conflicting view of American decline.

Both have surprised Tucker Carlson appearances and both have failed cancellations.

There's a lot of overlap in some of the

plot points of this film.

And I think what they're actually kind of saying about current current American culture, current American politics, and how it like relates to social media.

I think we should first talk about Superman to get over that so we can discuss Eddington because I need to discuss Eddington in relation to Superman in some ways.

So I guess people have been enjoying this film.

I think a big part of why is how the film tackles geopolitics, oddly enough.

The geopolitical conflict in the film was most likely, based on when it was written, trying to pull from like Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But because the film took a long time to write, by the time they shot the film, there was a whole other geopolitical conflict happening, which influenced, at the very least, the visual language of the film, which pulls from Israel and Palestine.

It's nice to see it represented, I guess,

on a blockbuster film.

Like, that's what it feels like.

It felt like nice to see it.

you know it's like an acknowledgement of the atrocities happening yes like essentially, a Benjamin Netanyahu stand-in is basically like the secondary villain of the film.

And at this point, I guess we'll just have to talk about hashtag spoilers.

If you haven't seen these and you want to,

you can go see them.

If you're okay with hearing us talk about it, that might make you want to see them more, then feel free.

I don't think spoilers actually ruin a movie.

But yeah, like Netanyahu dying in the film gets like a massive, a massive crowd reaction, at least when I saw it opening night.

And people definitely feel a degree of like catharsis, like watching, you know, superheroes stop the IDF from massacring, you know, civilians who are, you were like, you know, like Arab civilians.

Like it's, it's, it's, at that point, they transcend like the Russia-Ukraine aspect, and it's like very, very clear what they're visually pulling from.

Yeah.

I think the falafel card guy is the one.

Like, yeah, that's crazy.

Les Luther executes a falafel card owner.

And I'll talk about more about how the film like riffs on Palestine in a bit.

There's other aspects, I think, of how Superman is reacting to what James Gunn sees as like American decline.

Because I think Superman as a film is kind of a partially vapid take on like the corruption of sincere, positive futures and like the loss of hope.

It honestly feels very like...

Biden 2020.

It's like a battle for the soul of America type thing.

And I also see this as a reaction to the victory of toxic masculinity, especially among like the Twitch streamer class and like manfluencers like Andrew Tate.

And instead, you have Superman as this like goody two-shoes Boy Scout, the way he like he should be.

And this is the aspect of the film I think works the best is honestly their characterization of Superman.

The cast is phenomenal.

David Cornsweet does a really good job.

And I do like this version of masculinity.

It's still funny to see like posts online of people being like, wow, I'm actually going to try, you know, being nice to my neighbors now that I saw Superman.

Like, what the fuck?

I'm going to pick up my girlfriend today and be happy when I'm around her.

Yeah.

So that feels a little odd, but like, I guess it's good that people can feel like Superman when they're doing good things, helping an old lady cross the street or whatever.

I think that aspect of like decline, I sympathize with, is this, this like loss of like positive masculinity.

And I think a Superman can be a symbol for that for new people who are addicted to watching like Sneeko or whatever.

I think that's probably good.

And in some ways, I think this film, honestly, like the exact same film would have been received a lot worse if Kamala Harris was president.

I think that the fact that everyone feels so hopeless.

like depressed, hopeless and defeated because of Trump, I think this actually contributes to the positive reception the film is taking.

And myself and a few other people kind of even predicted this like back in November, trying to like forecast like the reception of Superman and like Fantastic Four and like all these companies who are trying to like save the superhero genre from like eating itself right now.

Yeah.

But for me at least there is a more insidious aspect of Superman that I do not see being discussed as much beyond you know James Gunn still obviously upset that he got canceled

and is

making that a core plot point in this film is he's actually Superman and he shouldn't have been canceled.

He shouldn't be canceled and the people canceling him were monkeys at typewriters.

Which wait, honestly,

that part is true.

Oh, yeah.

The people trying to cancel James God were monkeys

on typewriters.

I thought that bit was great.

I thought that bit was very...

I was like, that's very like one panel gag in a comic, which is, you know, wonderful.

Very.

The movie felt very Grant Morrison.

Totally.

Those are the aspects that I really liked.

Yeah, totally.

Staying on the political subject, I think you can draw a very good analogy between this and or not just this feels like this year's Barbie, if that makes sense.

Sure.

Like the kind of like corporate political, not girls get it done this time, obviously.

This is like more of like anti- not even anti-toxic masculinity.

I think it's just pro this form of masculinity, which I think is more productive.

Yeah.

But I also think, yeah, there, there is like neolib

stuff going on.

And also the fact that the movie, because it's a blockbuster, can't properly handle anything.

Like it kind of has to just leave everything at the road.

Yeah.

On the side of the road by the end of it.

Yeah, I don't know.

This is very much similar to Barbie, in which I kind of had the same reaction to.

It's like they're like okay movies, but I find the political posturing actually slightly insulting in a certain way based on how shallow it is.

And

I'm going to actually get into that more on Superman here.

I've seen people talking about how like emotional they got during the scenes, like very evocative of the Palestinian genocide, like people like, you know, crying and tearing up and feeling so seen.

And again, on one hand, that's good, but that also gives me a bit of an icky feeling.

And someone else expressed this very well, the co-host of the Hit Factory podcast at Deep Impact Crier

on Twitter.

She's the co-host of the podcast Hit Factory, which was about 90s cinema.

I think her name is Carly.

And she expressed this kind of soft disgust that was growing in me, both kind of during some of these scenes and frankly watching people's reaction to it.

She said, quote, that's the point, isn't it?

To immerse you in a fantasy where civilian life matters, to distract you from the reality where civilian life does not matter, to offer you abstractions of already abstracted images of imperial violence so that you can experience catharsis, escape, and absolution.

A movie like Superman exists to take the literal spectacle of genocide filling our feed for two years and further mediate/slash-abstract the spectacle so it can be transposed onto another product of empire and strategic interpassivity to keep us ideologically and emotionally confined to its order.

Any empathetic impulse engendered by forms and aesthetics of imperial violence and mimetic rhythms of technology it trades in confines us to the limits of the language of empire.

It keeps us operating on its terms.

We need cinema that ruptures familiar imperial forms and its rhythms.

Unquote.

So movies like Superman and the way that they depict atrocities actually like make us more indebted to the imperial system because the imperial system can give us a product to make us feel catharsis about the violence that the empire actually does.

And that catharsis keeps us going.

Like that's what allows us to not like fucking destroy everything around us because we get enough of that catharsis that it makes us able to keep living.

And that's in the end what products like Superman are kind of doing.

They're making us feel feel just good enough by expressing the displeasure we have at what our government is doing, but still making us like fully married to the existence of that empire.

Like we can't live without it because of the comfort it provides us, including this cathartic comfort watching fucking Guy Gardner stop the Palestinian genocide.

Which

if you told me that sentence like five years ago, I would have not believed you.

I would have not believed that a cinematic depiction of Guy Gardner is going to stop the Palestinian genocide, that that Hawk girl is going to is going to kill Netanyahu.

I would have not believed you for a single second.

And that kind of shows the level of absurdity that we're kind of dealing with.

And that aspect, I think, is what makes what Superman is doing actually far more insidious than any of the controversial politics in something like Eddington.

I also think that the whole like Indebted to Empire thing, I think this is like the case in point example of that, considering Superman is literally literally a symbol of American values.

Or certainly has like become that and like, you know, had a more positive version of that in some ways during his like birth in World War II as a way as like a symbol of like Nazi resistance.

But instead, it now is, you know, very much turned into like truth, justice, in the American way to the point where a lot of his, you know, like immigrant aspects have been, have been kind of undercut in the, in the past, in the past few years.

Yeah, I saw an article I didn't actually end up fully reading because it was on the, I forgot what it was, the Washington Post, or maybe it was the New York Times, where it was, it was like blocked or something.

One of the big two, yeah.

Yeah, it was an author who I think was an immigrant, and it was like talking about how Superman undercuts the immigrant experience, and that he is like literally born on the planet anyway.

So it's not really like an, it's not necessarily, he doesn't go through any like cultural conflict, I guess, you know?

Totally.

I also wondered about,

well, you know, I guess it doesn't, I guess it doesn't.

I was going to, I was going to think about the taking the immigrant aspect and then talking about one of the main parts of the movie, which was his parents are like, you need to go and make a harem on Earth or whatever, is sort of interesting.

Yes.

The aspect that his immigrant background has been.

very corrupted in this film.

Like there's like a certain like foreign evilness associated with Superman now.

Yeah.

You're an immigrant and like that's good and that's great and very American, but you shouldn't be what your parents were.

You're like foreign parents because they wanted a harem of lovers and to like conquer the West or whatever.

Yeah.

Which, you know, considering the fact that this was written during the Russia-Ukraine thing and not mainly during the Israel-Palestine thing, I don't know if that's like, but because that's in the movie, I have to think about it.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I don't think James Gunn was conceptualizing of that when he wrote it.

I think it's an unfortunate product of what happened aesthetically, but it's not that big of a deal, but it is weird.

Like, it's something to think about.

That aspect did not bother me as much as it did, like, for some other people.

Yeah.

For my overall thoughts on the film, I think it's basically as good as every other James Gunn film, which frankly just is not my cup of tea.

I've never really loved the Guardians films.

I don't think James Gunn's a very compelling filmmaker.

I thought it was just fine.

It definitely felt like episode 13 of a TV show that doesn't exist.

Yeah.

Which, as a comic book appreciator, I like.

As a film appreciator, I don't like.

But certainly, the more campy aspects, I enjoyed a lot.

I think now is time to go on a quick break, and then we will return to discuss the anti-woke cinematic masterpiece of the 2020s.

Eddington.

All right, we're back.

So, I would like to now talk about about Eddington for the rest of the episode, essentially.

But like I said before, Eddington is the equal and opposite of Superman.

Both are very contemporary, very online.

Both their politics, gesture.

And I think they're reactionary, but they're specifically reactionary in very different ways.

I think they're reacting to two very different types of decline in America or like perceived decline in America.

So Eddington is directed by Ariaster, who made Hereditary, Midsummer, and Bose Freyed.

I'll talk more about my thoughts on Ariaster at the end in a conversation with Janie Danger.

But I think Eddington is not anti-woke, actually.

I was lying.

I think Eddington is a post-woke expression of kind of scared nihilism, or like a depiction of the nihilism inherent to American politics right now.

Like every...

Everything is a conspiracy theory.

There's this specter of cancellation around the corner.

And like, speaking of specters, I think so much of both Superman and Eddington for me is like, there's this specter of wokism that's haunting America.

And both films are trying to deal with that specter.

I think Superman partially mourns that wokeness.

And Eddington deals with its more like actual, like, haunting and like, and like a ghostly quality, some of its more like uncanny qualities sometimes.

More than anything, Eddington digs into how we have created a profoundly antisocial culture, which even leftists contribute to, and in some cases actually conceptualize that as a form of like based praxis and how we've all become just reflections of our internet feeds and use politics as a justification for personal cruelty, or at the very least use politics as an outlet to channel antisocial behavior in a way that you can self-perceive as being morally good.

And I think both the left and the right do this.

Obviously, like the right does this with their like pedophile crusader shit.

Never mind the whole Epstein thing.

Just ignore that.

Ignore all of the actual right-wing pedophiles but

it's entirely about aesthetics it's about absolutely yeah who looks like a pedophile to me and it's the the gay person aestheticized politics right which is which is huge on i think political extremism in general politics start developing more aestheticized forms um you know this is true among anarchists and i think fascism more more purely i think is is actually like politics aestheticized to the point where you're aestheticizing you know like like people and like culture and like race right like that is a whole

a way different version than you know like crust punks or like yeah like like you know black block did you see the uh i don't remember what the account was it was like something of defense tweeted like some ai

like from one of those like mill military fiction like accounts or something it was like a picture of like a white dude holding like a up looking m4 because it was ai generated and he's got like a bald eagle on his head no but that sounds great it got tweeted today it's like the lamest lamest thing I've ever seen.

And like, I just don't even know.

Like, not only the fact that he's like, obviously, he's using a photo of somebody else, but it's not even a real picture of anybody.

It's like a fake image of somebody that somebody else made.

Yeah.

Like that he got off of like one of those like gun LARP aesthetic accounts.

I just found that very interesting.

I don't know.

Bailey.

What did you think of Eddington?

I adored it.

I loved it.

The moment that I I knew that I was going to enjoy it was probably where it's revealed, the energy plant is called Perfect Gold Magikarp or whatever, which is like so funny.

Like all those AI guys making all their products, like they're calling it Sauron's Eye or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So good.

But I adored it.

I think that Joaquin Phoenix is wonderful in it.

He's a great actor.

I think Ari Astor is like one of the few directors that can perfectly slot him into this like just neurotic, impotent man role.

You know, very impotent.

Yeah.

Yes.

So the scene that I really like that I think about probably the most, or the character I think of probably the most, is the, the homeless guy.

Yeah.

The homeless guy who wanders into the film and is the, you know, he's this, a stranger walks into a strange town like opening of the film.

And then all of the scenes where he's like, he kind of bothers everybody.

Like he's, you know, like in gavin newsom's like anti-homeless policies you know it's a it's a very bipartisan we have a bipartisan anti-homeless thing going on obviously and he is also like even when his character like snaps and kills somebody he like kills the homeless guy first which i found very interesting yes i think this is really crucial that when when when the sheriff starts his murder rampage the first expression of violence that he feels personally justified in doing or feels catharsis in doing isn't isn't like the fake woke mayor.

It's not Antifa.

It's the homeless guy.

That is the first target of acceptable violence in the mind of the sheriff.

And I think that is a very accurate look at American politics.

And that's not something I've seen discussed very much in relation to the film.

No, and I,

in a way, he's still impotent after that.

He's like, he's, he's not even enacting.

I wouldn't even label that as political violence.

I just label that as violence.

Yeah.

Right.

Like earlier in the movie, all the like teen woke protesters are like sitting out in the street and the homeless guy is kind of just standing.

And like, he's like, hey, man, I don't have any money.

Like, he's not even asking for anything.

Yeah.

He's just kind of standing there and making them all uncomfortable.

You know, he's, he is, he is the specter of the other.

wandering into this town and then everybody has to like and he's like the you know the beginning of conflict you know yeah they're they're like the easiest group to other is the homeless and the mentally unwell.

No, I think that that part of the film works really well.

And I guess this film has received a mixed reaction, which I talk a little bit about with Janie, which you'll hear in a sec.

And I guess I'll start by talking about how I believe Eddington works as a as a piece of post-woke cinema.

And I was talking about this with someone and they asked me what post-woke was.

And I was a little confused because that's a term that i feel like i understand really well but then i failed to accurately describe it to them and i think it relates to like this whole cultural moment that we're in now especially after the 2024 election where we're facing this larger cultural backlash against you know woke tm and how that highlights like the limits of diversity representation and complicated language to explain topics that might actually be you know reasonable but by expressing them you sound very unreasonable.

And I think what post-woke is, and the reason why Eddington is post-woke and is not anti-woke, like Eddington's not a centrist movie.

I think it actually is fairly political, but it's post-woke in such that it is a continuation of radical politics, which incorporates critiques of the woke era, what critics would describe as an overreach or excessive focus on language or singular identity, portraying inaccessible education in favor of in-group signaling to prove personal political purity.

I think post-woke eschews a shallow performative politics adopted to provide social capital, and instead may deliberately flaunt humor, camp, or irreverence in ways that may have been labeled problematic or taboo during the peak of 2010s online activism, but often in a way that signals both accurate awareness of social issues as well as an exhaustion with or a playful rebellion against socially alienating language and ideas.

And this could include using irony, parody, and camp to engage with social issues without the existential gravity or earnestness of prior education-focused eras.

There may now be jokes, themes, or performances that skirt or playfully violate previous norms of cultural sensitivity, but not out of ignorance, but as a conscious reversal or escalation, while actually emphasizing material support over linguistic gestures and systematic pressure over individual personal action.

So that's what I mean by post-woke.

I had to workshop this definition with a friend earlier this morning.

But I think that works for both what Eddington is doing.

I think that works for what events like Twinks vs.

Dolls is doing.

How

it's not anti-woke, and it's not purely reactionary against woke.

It is actually a continuation and an escalation while adapting to fit the current political climate.

And still reflecting on some of the shortcomings of the quote-unquote woke era, which we see throughout Eddington a lot in the form of like, you know, performative politics, especially that like one like Zoomer guy character.

Oh, yeah.

Who, you know, goes on that whole rant about like abolishing whiteness to his parents based on like googling these concepts like 30 minutes ago and now feels like he has like an academic level understanding of whiteness as a concept.

The intro to him.

Or I guess it's the second, it's the second time you see him, but he's at the, he's at the party or whatever, and like he gives kind of an opinion to this girl that he has a crush on.

They're talking about like, you know, whiteness and like privilege and stuff like that.

And he class.

Yeah.

And class is the really like, because clearly he, I think, I think he's supposed to kind of be like a lower class like character that then jumps up the ranks through political opportunism, right?

Yeah.

But yeah, he brings up class and is immediately shut down.

And Googles Angela Davis seconds before, but only, but only so that he can flirt with the girl more effectively, which is very funny.

Incredible.

It's so good.

Other small bits like that, I really enjoyed that the fake woke mayor, who's actually just like a tech company shill, has he, him pronouns on his Zoom profile.

Very, very funny to me.

There are so many little things in this movie.

A lot of little stuff.

Yeah.

And like, Very obviously, this was a film that Ariaster wrote, well, like, way too online during 2020.

Like he was specifically Twitter, right?

This is a extremely Twitter movie, which is both works for the movie and sometimes works against the movie.

I have no idea how this film is going to age.

Maybe it'll age very well because we'll use it as like a cultural artifact to like look back on and be like, yeah, that's kind of what 2020 felt like.

In a couple years, we're all going to be looking back on it and saying, how dare they made fun of our new currency, crypto.

Our new Bitcoins.

Everybody has Bitcoin.

All of the Bitcoin stuff is really good.

I do also, I like that they gave the,

I don't remember his name, the, the black police officer who's like kind of another like main through line for the movie.

Yeah.

But he, his only other thing is that he's really into crypto.

He's like, so funny.

So good.

If, if anything, I think Eddington is really good at at showcasing types of guy.

There's so many like type of guys in this film.

And I think that's, that's one of the real highlights.

And at least for me, like I'm obviously I've been very politically aware and engaged since you know 2018 or so, especially starting in 2020.

So like knowing that this film is set in 2020 and knowing it kind of gets into what that year was like, I actually was able to go into the film pretty blind.

And I was able to start calling shots really fast as soon as soon as I realized like what Ari was doing.

So like the film starts off as this like political satire on like the absurdity of

COVID lockdown America.

And then we get into this like crime thriller genre.

Then it concludes with this action genre.

But at the very start of the film, when it's just like this kind of quaint, like parody of Lockdown America, I was like, okay, so at like 45 minute mark, we're going to get George Floyd, right?

At one hour in, there's going to be riots.

Hour 15, there's going to be some like Antifa type situation.

And I called so many things.

They just started happening exactly when I thought they were going to.

So I was not really surprised by anything in this film necessarily.

I saw everything it was doing.

Like

I saw it coming because I, you know, lived that for so much of 2020, especially like the 2020 protests in Portland.

But also my familiarity with it was also, I was also able to then like diagnose.

how the film was subtly like diverting from reality and just showcasing what 2020 felt like and like what 2020 was in the minds of like people who believed in conspiracy theories more so than the actual reality of 2020, which I will also discuss more with Janie Danger later.

But I think specifically like the genre switching and then setting up all of these like 2020 hallmarks, I think the film does really well doing like pretty solid foreshadowing and hitting all the points that you're going to have to hit if you're going to make a film about 2020.

Yeah, yeah.

We have the Wayfair pedophile closets.

Totally.

QAnon cults, child trafficking.

Yeah.

So I watched the movie Network like for four days before I watched this.

I need to see Network.

Oh my God.

Robert's been trying to get me to watch it for years.

I just have never found the time, I guess.

I don't know.

Ari Astro like explicitly brought up Network and said like he was thinking about it while making this movie, but that he wanted it to be more...

Because the network is definitely more like it tells you what it means

kind of thing and like what it thinks is the right way to do things.

And this film purposely does not get into that too much.

It lets its own depiction tell you.

It doesn't stop you and explain

whatever, like, you know, like what its politics are.

I think the movie does the politics.

Yes.

But I also,

I thought in comparing it to network, which I will try my hardest not to spoil the network,

but

there is definitely a theme in this and in the network of like forces above this this movie is about political puppets, about like non-political actors, right?

Walking Phoenix's character talks about how, like, he's not for the government, he's for the people, kind of thing.

So, he's clearly doing like a populist thing.

Yeah.

And then by the end of the movie, he's all the more like he's literally a puppet, right?

Like, he's, he's like, just a sack of meat that is like has to watch his mom is not even his mom, mom, his mother-in-law.

His mother-in-law has to wait.

Ex-mother-in-law.

Yeah.

It's just incredible.

One of the most horrifying concepts.

But this movie is about like, yeah, a bunch of stuff happens, like stuff that's like they're trying to kind of throw off the balance.

Yeah, people are trying to make political change while dealing with this problem that politics is both very real, it's physical, it determines almost everything about our lives, but it's also...

very vague and nebulous and removed.

So like, how do you exert agency over something that is both real and non-real?

To be a political actor, do you have to literally be like an astroturfed paid actor?

The people that seemingly have the most political agency aren't even acting on any personal agency, but instead are just furthering the interests of other entities.

Yeah.

But the corporations, the big money people, whoever's like in the background, right?

The plane with the giant hand holding the globe.

And the

Antiva globalist jet yeah yeah the the well so okay here's a question because because when i watched it i thought that it was um it's all it's like paid actors right like they're paid like a paid coalition group that's what that's what i write it as i think it's left for audience interpretation whether whether or not this is like the george soros funded antifa like spec ops crew who are genuine about their beliefs or if they're like a false flag crew who's just going around sewing chaos to promote like political discord yeah but not for like ideological reasons, like just through like false flag attacks.

I think it's intentionally left up to the audience.

And I think it's depicting that because of all of the Antifa conspiracy theories going around in 2020.

And I view that as

a manifestation of how the right wing.

viewed this concept of Antifa, even though Antifa is actually just teenagers wearing black hoodies.

Yeah.

But they treated it as if it was this like organized group going around doing push-ups on their private jet,

smoking big cigars, getting airdropped into small towns to go and

blow things up.

It's like

so funny.

Bustlers of Antifa are coming in.

Yeah.

And then that leads into what I think is the best joke of the movie, the TikTok Zoomer guy shooting while holding his phone.

And then like it cuts immediately into like a now this like TikTok about the Antifa of like militia dying is and then he's like a hype guy and he's got like a podcast where he's talking about if Michelle Obama is gonna run for president or whatever like so good.

What did you what did you think of of kind of the the semi-cliffhanger conclusion of some of the the threads, I guess?

Because and I'm only thinking about this as a cliffhanger because he's talked about it, him making a sequel, if that makes sense.

Um, yeah, like a like like a loose sequel.

Yeah, yeah, with like some of the same characters, I guess.

I don't know.

I felt pretty satisfied with how this wrapped up because, I mean, 2020 did not have a real ending.

We are still living in the shadow of 2020.

There still is loose threads.

Like COVID still is a thing that exists.

We're still living with like the way political violence escalated and never fully went away with especially like January 6th and how even the concept of pedophilia still runs almost all of politics.

Like, this is what politics is about is like deciding who is and isn't a pedophile.

Yeah.

Like the whole conspiracy theory angle, more people are conspiracy theorists now than I think they were in 2020, including like liberals.

Oh, yeah, no.

The whole like Blue and On conspiracy theories, the alt national park blue sky accounts, the Trump assassination was staged.

Like all of that kind of stuff is like, this has just become all of what politics is.

It's what your mom does.

It's what like your mom or like your every one of your parents does.

And not just your right-wing mom now.

Like this is, this is like everybody's mom.

Yeah.

And I think that's the sort of American decline that Ariaster is depicting as opposed to the type that James Gunn is depicting.

I think it's much more accurate.

I agree.

And it's much more holistic.

Yes.

I don't think you could, I obviously don't think you could kind of really hold the schizophrenia.

that the the post-2020 post-lockdown political schizophrenia that we exist in currently i agree right where like everything is ungrounded.

You know, you can't do a superhero story like that.

I don't think.

There's like no way to do that.

No.

Unless you use my favorite superhero, The Question.

Yes.

In which you could do that.

And James Gunn, if you're listening, I will write you a question film and it will be crazy.

But

in terms of like filmmaking, I think, I think post-woke as a filmmaking style and like what Ariaster is doing here is a reaction to the past like 10 years of liberal self-aggrandizing movies as content slop right which tries to get points for like diversity casting without having any actual like substantive politics or will like gesture to things relating to class even though it's made by these big you know multi-billion dollar corporations yeah and i think that whole era produced this sort of schizophrenia because everything feels so paradoxical and self-contradictory and i think part of the feelings that evokes is is what Eddington is trying to pull on.

Yeah.

And depicting those feelings as a subject itself, not just as like a background thing that we try to either like acknowledge, sort of, or try to like not acknowledge and like ignore.

I think viewing that, that cultural schizophrenia as a subject, if anything, that's like the main character of Eddington.

Yeah.

And I think that's the part that worked the most for me.

Yeah, I think structure-wise, a lot of people were talking about like, it feels like too scattered of a movie.

I think I saw that a lot in like the critiques of it.

And I think like, sure, if we're talking about like, just you know, does it become a little confusing to follow?

Maybe, but it's like, that's the point.

Like, and not to say, like, that's the point.

So it washes that away, but like, I don't think you could, I don't think you could make a movie accurately.

You can't make a movie about that era without it feeling scattered like that.

Yeah.

That's why I really respect Ari Aster.

I think

I was talking to my partner yesterday about who's the guy that made like Nosferatu and all those movies?

Robert Edgar.

Robert Eggers.

Robert Edgar's a very good filmmaker, but he's explicitly talked about how he doesn't ever want to do it.

I'm not wanting to do modern films.

Yeah, a modern film.

I guess I haven't seen The Shrouds, but I've heard very good things about it.

Me neither.

Me neither.

Yeah, I want to see that movie because I think Cronenberg is another one who's like, I also watch, I watched a great lineup for this movie.

I watched Cronenberg's.

What's the Videodrome?

You saw Videodrome recently.

That's good.

I can definitely see Eddington kind of being being a grandchild of Videodrome in some ways.

I would also recommend, I've also, I've been reading Mark Fisher's Flatline Constructs.

This is a very Fisher movie.

Yeah.

Very Fisher.

Yeah, I literally, I listened to the stupid Russell Brand audiobook of

Capitalist Realism.

Oh, no.

Oh, that sucks.

I know.

Russell Brand sucks.

But I was at work and I just needed something to listen to.

So I didn't like blow my head off.

And it didn't end up working out actually because I was was working my shitty job and listening to capitalist realism

yeah russell brands russell brands capitalist realism oh god what a bummer yeah truly mark fisher is only l yeah it is unbearable to have to listen to his voice but it's a great book uh i would definitely recommend reading that uh if you want to go into eddington even more like locked in i guess but this is a very like yeah like uh you know capital can convert anything into the image of something else.

There was one shot that I really found very evocative, which was the shot of like him Joaquin Phoenix's character is having his hair cut by his

whatever stepmom, uh, ex-stepmom.

And she's talking about like conspiracy theory while filming it.

That's good.

For TikTok, and it's like, this is.

So perfect and so morbid.

And like.

Yeah.

No, there's, there's a little bit of like Baudrillard's book on America here.

There's certainly a lot of Guidaboard in this, and I think that also is part of what relates it to me to Superman is how much like Superman is accidentally doing Guidaboard regarding the genocide in Palestine and how much I think that critique is actually built into Eddington.

No, absolutely, yeah.

I

Superman is such an interesting

movie to take on that subject because obviously in a way you're kind of like, well, good for James Gunn for doing something daring, I guess.

Daring, I say with air quotes.

But it's also like, you have the Israel-Palestine stuff placed right after a scene where Superman saves a green baby from a river of like cosmic sludge.

Of like CGI squares.

Yeah, which, by the way,

I'm sure, I don't know if this is the general consensus, but I thought that that scene was ugly as sin and I kind of hated it.

I hated the whole Pocket Dimension

aspect.

I don't know why they shouldn't do a quick 10-minute interlude into the Phantom Zone, keep it that.

But no, I think that that whole Pocket Dimension

40 minutes derailed and stagnated a lot of the film for me and did not look very good.

He's doing like Lex Luther is Peter Thiel, Lex Luthor as Elon Musk, Lex Luthor's

work.

Yeah, yeah.

Which I think I found it funny.

At least I said like,

I watched it and I thought like, oh, I know what he's doing, you know, that he's Peter Thiel shut down gawker or whatever.

Crying Man Baby.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's like, I get it.

But I also, I mean, it's been done before kind of thing.

Like, I don't find it, you know, that,

I don't know.

But he, hey, his performance is great.

But then the whole Palestine stuff is also capped off with a scene where Les Luther gets like bullied by a dog.

You know, it's sandwiched between two things that are just like, I don't know if you can do this or if you should do this.

Like, I don't know.

No,

I think it's it's part of that sort of cultural schizophrenia that i that i think that eddington is is pulling on yeah is is moments like that in in in the david zaslov warner brothers discovery superman 2025.

eddington just is uh you know it's a film that is like its entire thesis is that is is the yeah is the jumping around the just rip like his car is covered in shit for the entire movie i love it so funny all the all the slogans slogans are like kind of like they're all trying to put in their own little thing.

You know, like he's like, can we make it about Bitcoin?

Can we make it about...

It's like a 2020 conservative Facebook feed brought to life.

Yes.

Yes.

It's a great movie.

I love Eddington.

I think that this movie will age very well.

Well, what would you like to plug, Bailey Newposter?

I think you should follow me.

If you have an X, you should follow me on at what is it called?

At new poster2 on X.

If you're on Instagram, you should follow me at PostLitical Bling, which is a terrible username, but I made it my Reddit username like ages ago, I think.

And then on Blue Sky, if you use that, you should follow me at what even is my Blue Sky.

I don't even use it.

I'm gonna be honest, I don't use Blue Sky, but if you

gotta fix the vibes on there, Bailey, we got it.

We gotta get more like

crazy unhinged art on Blue Sky.

You're right.

it's it's newposter.bluesky.social or whatever.

So there you go.

If you need that, there, there's the there's the plugs.

Well, thank you for coming on to talk about Eddington and Superman.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

This has been wonderful.

I love Eddington.

I enjoyed Superman.

So this is a good talk.

There you go.

Lovely, lovely.

For the last segment of our post-woke cinema episode, I'm going to play a conversation I had with Atlanta musician Janie Danger.

We talk about her thoughts on the film Eddington and the way it manifests 2020's hyper-reality.

Just a little background, I guess.

Like, I really like Ariaster.

I remember talking with you about Bo is Afraid a while ago.

I remember you weren't a huge fan of it.

Not so hot on Bo is Afraid.

I'm afraid.

I wanted to like it too.

Cause whenever people talk about this like like off-putting long, slow cinema about like anxiety, like I want to like that.

Like Inland Empire is one of the best films ever.

There's other

films that do, that, that, that also tackle this.

It's not just like David Lynch.

Yeah.

And like the rest of Ariaster, I was always like lukewarm to kind of positive on.

Like I don't hate him as a filmmaker.

I don't have that as part of my personality the way some people do.

Yeah.

I think his movies are just fine.

I think he does dabble in, or I guess he like over-relies on a degree of shock value, which you can even see in his earlier like student films that I think are like very juvenile and not interesting.

I think Hereditary's fine.

So Ariaster has always like been there, but I've never been like a Ariaster in bio.

I think he's kind of cool to hate now.

Like, I think with...

He's very cool to hate now.

People really like hating him.

But Eddington, I think, has done him a lot of favors, though, among the people who used to hate him.

I've kind of noticed that.

It seems like with Hereditary and Midsummer, those were generally very well received by the A24 crowd.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it was kind of like, I guess the cool opinion would be to be like, those movies are mid.

And then like, Bo is Afraid is a masterpiece or whatever.

I like.

his horror movies.

I think they're slick, well-made films with good stories.

I love Bo is Afraid, though.

I think it's incredible, but it is not the kind of, it's the kind of movie that, like, as much as I love it, as much as it means to me, as seen as I feel by that film, it's not the kind of thing that, like, if you don't like it, I'm not going to like convince you, you know?

Like, there's probably, like, if you told me you didn't like Malholland Drive, like, I'd be like, you're fucking stupid and wrong.

You're dumb.

But like, if you tell me you don't like Bo Was Afraid, it's like, fair enough.

It's, it's

certainly the kind of thing that's not for everyone.

I bring it up mostly because I think with Bo and Eddington, there's a very interesting thing he does that is kind of, I guess I'd compare it to maybe like French New Wave directors, maybe like something like Celine and Julie Go Boating, where

the protagonists are living in

a fake insane reality where in other directors, like most other films, like you'd have someone who's like going insane and hallucinating and like everyone's trying to kill them, et cetera.

And then maybe there would be like a cut.

Which is kind of what happens at Bo is Afraid.

Yeah, but in other movies, there would maybe be like a cut away for someone else where they see like the character like arguing to a shadow.

Like the quote unquote real perspective.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

And I think that Bo is Afraid, it's like, it's no, this is real.

And I think Eddington does a very similar thing where the beliefs of the characters are real.

And that's why, like, you know, all the conservatives, like, I mean, if you remember 2020, they're like, there's antipho super soldiers that are going out and doing terrorism.

It's like, so in this world, in the Eddington universe, it's like, what if that was real?

Like, what if Fox News was actually in motion here?

And I think that's very interesting.

The approach that he does in Eddington, I think, is a little bit more subtle than the way it is in Boas of Fraser because you start the film way, way more as like a

political satire on the absurdity of like pandemic era america

and then the reality starts diverting from

what we can agree as like as like a shared consensus reality yeah and then it it it diverts from that the same way reality diverted away from that in 2020 for for people and we created this like yeah massive like reality fracture point yeah like the first time i noticed this in the filmmaking was there was like a news clip about like a portland riot in 2020 and it had people like exchanging gunfire on rooftops.

And it was played next to actual news clips of like the third precinct burning down.

Like it was played off as like a real legitimate news clip.

Yeah.

And like, I was, I lived in Portland 2020.

I know that's not real, but to many people viewing, they might not catch that.

Yeah.

That might just be like, that might just go into like, go into like the background.

So at that point, I realized that actually the way that reality is getting diverted in the film is way more subtle.

And then, of course, you get like the Antifa Super Soldier Private Jet later, and it's more obvious, like what, what he's doing.

yeah um but even like small things like that I started to really appreciate you like no you're like getting into the mind of people who believe these things and that's what we're that's what that's what's being depicted like the feelings of 2020 are more important than the reality of 2020 and and that is what he's trying to to show That that's even kind of like a meta in a sense, because it's like, if you watch that, that scene of like the footage of the Portland like shooting and stuff, and you as the audience are like questioning if that was real, then it's like your consensus reality is also diverging from the regular consensus reality.

It's like it kind of makes you a cipher for the characters, which also leads me to something, something else,

something I don't see a lot of people talking about, but the

vagrant character that starts the film, where he comes in and he's just like mumbling like messages.

And if you've ever like been around like a, you know, know like a homeless person on a bus or something they they they they like to mumble and um it's i i read that as someone who's like just essentially doing what everyone else in this movie eventually comes to do totally yes which is just taking all of your like internalized like messages traumas like things you've heard things you believe and just like grumbling it spitting it out and anyone who talks to you you just incessantly just like messages, messages, messages.

The similarity of that character to like the mom character who does the same thing, but is seen in a very different way.

Yeah, because

he has like a home to live in and has like family.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there's no, there's no place for a person like the vagrant in this world, but there is a place for all these other types of insane people.

And they're all able to find their little niches and such.

When maybe in a world before that, in a world before it was so easy to find such niches.

Maybe like you would, I don't know, go to therapy.

Maybe like maybe your family would

be concerned.

It is very interesting because people very are

very prone now.

And it's like, that's because they're able to like get pulled into these cults.

They find their own kind of Austin Butler figure who's able to talk to them directly and be like, no, come with me.

You're okay.

And

just to go back to the point of like messages and stuff, I think that the

Joaquin Phoenix character, I think he starts out as a very like, like Hank Hill, like very, I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't want to wear a mask.

He's obviously leans a bit conservative, but he's like trying to kind of be like a reasonable guy.

Right.

And I see him as someone who's trying to like avoid the messaging from everyone.

Like even when people tell him about like certain news stories and stuff, he's like, I don't know.

Like he just doesn't know.

And yeah.

In the process of him like avoiding all these messages, what does he do?

He buys a truck and covers it in fucking messages.

In messages.

He starts broadcasting his reality to everyone around him.

Exactly.

It's like, I don't know.

I think that normally, normally I would call it bad writing for like every character to be like a cipher.

But I think what he does in this is is really really interesting like i i think it's uh i don't know i guess like one more thing that i really like do want to say is like ari aster did an interview with uh will menneker and hesa of like chapo and um

he said that he kind of wanted to make this movie like a rorschak test of sorts

and i think he maybe overly succeeded in that.

Definitely.

And in fact, if I had one criticism, it's that maybe I wish there was like a few things like tied together that.

And I just wish Austin Butler and Emma Stone got a little more meat to do things.

But aside from that, one of the biggest criticisms that I'm honestly just going to dismiss outright is people saying that this is like a centrist movie

or comparing this to South Park or something like that.

And if you view this as a centrist movie, I mean, the liberals in this are like kind of annoying, ineffectual.

A lot of them don't really believe what they do.

Some of them do.

I think the girl character is very sympathetic, but like the younger girl.

But Joaquin Phoenix, the ostensible, like, you know, right-wing version of this, kills a child.

Like,

he kills three people, including like a teenager.

Like the woke characters engage with politics in a...

vapid and self-serving way to mask their own insecurities and shortcomings and for their own personal benefit.

The right-wing characters murder and have rape cults.

And

right.

Like,

I don't see how you could look at the actions of the characters in this film and just be like, yeah, I guess everyone is stupid.

I guess everyone is wrong.

Because it's like, no, like, I mean, I guess everyone is a little stupid and everyone is kind of wrong about things, but like, that's not like what it's getting across.

I think that's a very shallow read of the film.

This is what people outside of the Brooklyn theater were complaining about when I eavesdropped for like nearly 45 minutes after the film just to hear what people were talking about.

I love eavesdropping.

I love snooping.

So I was really feasting out there.

And yeah, a lot of people upset at how quote-unquote little this film had to say.

It's just, it's just depicting these things, but doesn't have the audacity to actually like say anything about them or like take a quote-unquote stance.

And like, that's so not what the film is trying to do that the film is pointing out like the social media style engagement with politics is this incredibly self-serving thing.

And it's this performance that we put on for other people and sometimes put on even for ourselves.

And 2020 was a way because of the conditions of the lockdown, the internet and real life combined in a way more like totalistically than they have ever before.

And then that combination grew pressure and shot outwards into

physical reality in a very bombastic way, both for the 2020 protests and eventually something like January 6th, right?

Both these things, I think you can look at a similar like political pressure like building and manifesting.

And it's not saying these things are like equal.

It's not the centrist, I'm better than thou for, you know, look at all these crazy guys.

But it's talking about how we as a culture associate with politics now and like how as like American culture, we associate with politics now.

And maybe that's kind of troubling and kind of scary.

That's like the horror of the film is the way that we associate with social media politics now is really frightening, which isn't like a revolutionary thing to say, right?

This isn't like, you know, breaking new ground here.

But he is expressing something that everyone, I think, has felt at a certain point.

Sure.

But

it's presented in a way that I think is, it very much is a Rorschach test for a lot of people.

I think a lot of people are uncomfortable.

I think some people just see too much of themselves.

And like, I was speaking specifically to like liberal audiences.

I think a lot of them are seeing something of themselves and they feel like they're being being made fun of and they don't appreciate that.

I'll just say I was at the Black Lives Matter protests and stuff.

I was there and I don't feel that way.

No, I don't think I was being made fun of.

Yeah, I don't like, like, I think that like, that's kind of on you as a viewer for like expecting a movie to like look directly in the camera and be like, I believe the same things you believe, you know, because that's, I mean, that's bad filmmaking.

That's bad writing.

Explains the exact type of communist that I am.

Right.

Yes.

I am the exact kind of leftist you are.

We are on the same side and we are all laughing at the same things together.

It's like...

No.

And if your engagement with like social justice and anti-police brutality protests is shallow enough to feel called out in a film like this, I think that is cause more for self-reflection for why you participated in those things.

Yeah, I agree.

Not a fault of the film, or it's not the film taking a stance against those things.

I think it's showing there's certain types of people who participated in an extremely performative and like self-serving manner.

Yeah.

And like specifically the way that like the main like like Zoomer guy character who in the end becomes a right-wing grifter.

Kyle Rittenhouse.

I think this manifests this like like

perfectly.

And like I think his character, I think, is

one of the funniest characters in the film.

I do so.

One of the best jokes is just him like liking a tweet.

And Googling Angela Davis.

So I think that kind of stuff is more what it's talking about.

And when you have those types of people being some of the most vocal people at these events, it contributes to this kind of psychosis.

Yeah.

And I think that's what the film is specifically saying.

I mean, did we forget that people like Sean King were like popular in 2020?

Look, if you see this and like the portrayal of like these liberal characters doesn't apply to you, I don't know why you're mad.

I don't know why you would look at that and be like, oh, they're making fun of me and everything I believe.

Because if it doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you.

And that was how I watched the film.

Like, I didn't feel like any of these characters applied to me.

So I don't really care.

And I guess a final point is like,

I haven't heard anyone else say this, but like Sheriff Joe at the end of the film is, I feel like it's very

unsubtle symbolism to say that he's lobotomized 100%

with

stabbed in the head with a knife.

That's what's happened to all of us in a way.

And I mean, it's funny that Ariaster avoided a lot of mother-related trauma up until the very, very end of the movie.

The very last scene.

He had to squeeze it in there.

I know, I know.

It was, I know.

And he's being like raised in the bed.

And it's very, this kind of like angelic, like ascension kind of thing.

I don't know.

I think it's a pretty unsubtle and funny way of saying that like there's really for some people after going fully there in like being insane, after like just plunging yourself into the heart of all of this like chaos and unreality.

that the only thing that is going to save you is a lobotomy.

If nothing else, I think that's very funny.

So yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.

I've wondered,

after about a week after I saw it, I was kicking it around in my head more.

And I was wondering, like, will this grow on me?

Will this age well?

And I think it definitely has grown on me the more I've thought about it.

Same.

It has also grown on me more over time.

Once I got out of the theater, I was...

sorting through a lot of different feelings about what I just saw and it has definitely grown on me over time.

Where can people find you and your work?

Yeah, so I'm a musician.

You can go to janiedanger.com and find most of my links and stuff.

I have a new song and video out.

I'm working on a new album that should come out later this year.

And if you're in the Atlanta area, I'm playing a show at the end of August at Bogs Social and the Mainline Music Festival in.

uh September.

But if you follow me on like Instagram or whatever, you should have all your all your updates there.

And you can follow me on Letterboxd at Janie Danger.

So, yeah, thanks for having me.

Thank you, Janie.

That does it for us at It Could Happen here.

Thanks once again to Janie Danger and Bailey New Poster.

Follow them both online.

They do great work.

If you want some good music, listen to Janie.

If you want some cool art, look up Bailey New Poster.

Oh boy, I guess I will hopefully see you on the other side of this post-woke nightmare.

Bye-bye.

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Welcome to It Could Happen here, a show about things falling apart.

And today, the thing falling apart is the internet.

And today, we have a special guest episode with Bridget Todd.

Hello, Bridget.

So Gary, it's kind of funny that we are talking just a few days after the Trump administration put out their woke AI executive order.

Yes, I have not read this yet.

I have to for next week's executive disorder.

I'm not looking forward to it.

I like that the cool zone team kind of sections off all the Trump federal nonsense so you don't have to be mired in it all the goddamn time.

I still still kind of am.

I just schedule it throughout my week, I guess.

There's certain days where I have to do it.

Yeah, you got to pepper it in.

You got to pepper it in.

Well,

not to give you a spoiler for when you dive into it yourself, but it's all nonsense.

Basically, the Trump administration is saying that right now, the biggest threat regarding AI is it being too woke and essentially telling folks who make AI tech leaders essentially to be more like Elon Musk and Grok and make sure that your AI models, the only AI models that we will accept in this country are the non-woke ones, ones that don't incorporate DEI.

Would love to know more about what he thinks that means, but that's a little preview for you.

Fantastic.

You know, it seems like the most important issue facing our nation right now.

Definitely, definitely.

And so it's funny that we're talking about AI because I don't know if you're on TikTok, but there have been these kind of shockingly racist AI-generated videos all over TikTok to the point where I would say that we are witnessing the revival of the minstrel show using AI on social media.

This is not a claim I use lightly.

That is how extreme some of this content is.

I'm not on TikTok, but I think I've seen some of this content permeate across platforms.

Certainly on like Instagram, Reels, and even bits of X the Everything app.

I love that you call it that.

That's the full name.

So, for folks who don't know, I want to ground the conversation in what a minstrel show is.

So, the minstrel show was an incredibly popular form of American theater and entertainment in the 19th century, where mostly, but not all, white performers would wear black face makeup to make themselves look like these exaggerated racist versions of black people and essentially portray very racist stereotypes of black folks being lazy buffoons.

And a common trope in these skits was Black people trying and failing to gain American citizenship because at the time, Black Americans did not have full citizenship.

And so a big plot line would be like, oh, we had to take a test for citizenship, but we were too stupid to figure it out.

Or we spaced the date and overslept because we're very lazy.

When these shows would depict Black women, we were often shown as what you might think of as like a sapphire caricature, which is rude, loud, malicious, stubborn, and overbearing.

Kind of like the angry Black woman trope that you probably are familiar with in media today.

So these skits were incredibly popular entertainment, but they also served the purpose of reaffirming political and social ideologies.

And so, you know, the dominant way that people consumed media regarding black people showed us as lazy, stupid, angry, loud, and importantly, not really able to conform to the dominant culture of like mainstream, hardworking white Americans.

That is obviously an incredibly powerful tool to uphold and reaffirm the idea that black folks should not be given full citizenship, should not be given full rights, cannot be, you know, integrated into polite white society.

And it almost kind of became this for their own good attitude that provided like a polite justification for things like segregation.

Like, oh, well, you know, I've seen in minstrel shows that black folks are very lazy and stupid.

So it's honestly for their own good that we treat them like shit in society.

You feel me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a sort of like infantilization.

Exactly.

And so even though the minstrel show did die out, I would argue that we are kind of seeing a little bit of a comeback using AI in the digital realm.

And just like the minstrel shows of yesteryear were used to affirm political and social ideologies under the guise of just being entertainment or just being jokes or just being funny.

I really think it's not a coincidence that we're also seeing the rise of digital blackface, where non-black creators are using AI to create these viral racist skits that are steeped in black stereotypes and that they're really taking off all over social media today.

That sounds not fun to hear about, but I'm excited for you to explain it to me.

Yes.

So I will say initially, the first iteration of one of these videos that I saw was not really racist.

It was made by a black creator, I think, trying to use AI to create sort of humorous skits.

But when that first video took off, people on TikTok started using AI to create more and more extreme, more and more racist iterations of these kinds of videos, which is what we're seeing today.

So I will play a little snippet of an example for you.

What's up, bitches?

It's Bigfoot with Han, the baddest bitch in the woods, part-time cryptic, full-time problem.

Don't follow me if you scare the fleas.

So this is a TikTok that got over 2 million views.

And basically, it uses AI to generate this black woman stereotypical version of Bigfoot.

And this account is so popular that has generated so many copycats.

Like, this is a format that is really hit with TikTok.

There also is another kind of bucket of these that people call Slave Talk, where it uses AI to sort of reimagine enslaved people on plantations if they had social media and were doing vlogs.

And so a lot of those videos were taken down by TikTok, which is, I think, good.

But essentially, it would reimagine these AI generated enslaved people basically saying like, oh, well, yeah, I do have to work out here in the cotton fields, but at least I'm going to get meals.

At least I have a roof over my head.

Essentially, really affirming the idea that like slavery wasn't that bad.

One of the more heinous examples that I saw of these that was removed from TikTok.

was a TikTok shop sponsored video that showed an AI-generated enslaved person working in the fields wearing a solar hat with a fan in it.

And basically, he was like, oh, this work in the fields would be so horrible if I did not have this hat.

And then there's a little link to the TikTok shop and you can buy the actual hat, which is just some really dystopian, awful shit.

No, that is like quite literally it's like evocative of like cyberpunk tropes that people I would assume would not want to use due to fears of insensitivity, but it's just on your phone, like as like a real thing.

Yeah, I completely agree.

and i love that comparison and i think like i would imagine if i were running a tick tock shop that using the ai generated image of an enslaved person i would think like oh well this is certainly not something that i would use to like sell some cheap fan hat but i mean i think it is exactly what you're saying that i think that the extreme quality of these videos people are just like well it'll get views and then it'll get more eyeballs on my tick tock shop i don't think there's any kind of sure yeah

gross way of doing like outrage farming for engagement, I guess.

Like, because surely they know that these are not going to go over easy.

Like, I think part of this is generating some degree of attention based on it being offensive or extremely gross and knowing that people will comment things of that nature.

Exactly.

And it's funny that you mentioned that because the AI component of this is sort of what makes this novel and new, but that kind of thing has been all over social media for the longest time.

Sure.

I remember how big stuff like skit culture was on TikTok.

And I don't mean skits like Saturday Night Live or Portlandia.

I mean skits where they are trying to get you to think this is somebody's cell phone footage of something that happened.

But really it's like, well, those are two actors.

And there was a type of these skits that would really tick off on TikTok where it was purporting to be, oh, this is a parent who is going off on a trans teacher for trying to indoctrinate their kid and all the comments would be like good for them good for that mom yeah and then the screen flips and it's like oh well the woman you were just telling me is the trans teacher now she's the mom who was going of the next video yes exactly exactly no i i i like the ones that are set on airplanes where they all use the same airplane set yes and they get into like fake fights on on on airplanes uh using the same like five actors playing different roles yeah and then if you look carefully in the background you start thinking well airplanes don't have those strip LED lights that you can buy on Amazon.

Like, this is not actually changing.

The TikTok lights and the hallways like five feet wide.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And listen, I am not above getting taken in by those kinds of skits.

And I guess like, I don't love the idea that someone would be dedicating energy and brain space to getting.

upset about a set of circumstances that never really happened.

But it's the internet.

Come on.

That's, that's like, that's half of the internet.

Yes.

Like, you know, I don't love it, but when the state, so like when the stakes are low and it's just like a random fight on an airplane, fine.

When the stakes are higher and it's like, this is a skit meant to like attack or demonize trans people, queer people, black people, that's where I'm like, well, what are we really doing here?

I think whether or not this kind of content, like when it's AI generated, we're looking at things that never actually happened.

Even though these circumstances and these situations never really happened, they still very much affirm the worldview of the people who are consuming it.

Right.

And so if you are consuming a skit involving whether it's human actors or AI-generated black people, if that skit reaffirms your worldview that these people cannot be trusted, these people are bad in some way, it kind of doesn't matter if it's real or not.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

That's like the concept of like hyper-reality where you're trying to like blend the internet's exaggerated version of reality with our like physical lived existence and how these things start combining into each other to create this idea of reality in our heads that's more real than it actually is to the point where we take things on the screen to be more accurately reflective.

of what's going on in the world than what we actually experience in our day-to-day lives.

And so much of that concept is what drives like American reactionary politics.

Exactly.

And when you actually go into the comments of these videos, which in my opinion are very clearly AI generated, people are leaving comments.

Well, I mean, that's what I mean, that'll hold on to like easy for you to say.

Someone who spends their time like researching what's going on on the internet.

I'm not sure if Mima and Papa are finding these videos.

They're going to be like, well, this one's obviously AI generated.

No, and that's my point is like, I don't even think they're thinking about it that way.

And I don't think they care that it's not real.

in the comments of these videos it'll be a video an ai generated video of a black woman behaving in this very stereotypical racist way and the comments will say they're all like that and it kind of misses the point of like well there's there's no they in this video because it's ai generated this is just a computer puppet this isn't real like yeah I completely agree, but I think when you see something online, whether it's obviously AI generated or not, if it reaffirms your worldview, it kind of doesn't matter.

It's the same reason why when there's like four-legged veterans in AI slop holding a sign that says, everyone forgot about me, wish me happy birthday.

3 billion likes on Facebook.

I mean, what do you think is going on there?

I find that so fascinating.

Oh, I mean, I'm not a psychologist,

but

I don't know.

I think it is just this simple reaffirming of someone's previously held view, people are very receptive to.

And we even see this with like, you know, with like fake news headlines, headlines, right?

And people might point out that this story isn't, isn't actually real.

And when people are confronted with this idea of that they've been tricked by unreality, they'll be like, no, maybe this one isn't real, but it could be real.

And that's what, and that's what really matters is that this, this feels true.

Not that it is true, but the fact that I feel it resonating is actually more important than any kind of physical trueness out inside like the flesh world.

Like that, that that is honestly, that that matters far less than how it impacts how I feel and how it reflects the world as I see it.

So, I did an episode of my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet, all about the sort of weird economy of AI-generated disinformation, essentially fan fiction that came out of the trial of Sean P.

D.

D.

Combs.

Ooh, that sounds incredibly upsetting.

It was so upsetting.

And the reason I looked into it is because I have to be honest and say one of these AI-generated videos got me, right?

It was a video that claimed that the late musician Prince was able to testify in Diddy's trial from the beyond the grave and that they played a video that Prince made warning everybody that Diddy is this bad guy, right?

I am probably the world's biggest Prince fan.

So I was like, Prince always, like, it got me.

It totally affirmed what I want to be true, but it was all a lie.

It's compelling.

It's like it's trying to like, it's trying to impact you emotionally, especially for people who, who like Prince, who, who miss, miss Prince.

This could be emotionally compelling.

And that's what they're intentionally going after.

I think that's why something like that could work so well.

It got me.

And when I looked into kind of how these videos are cranked out on YouTube, so basically any celebrity that you can imagine, there is an AI generated video on YouTube saying that they were somehow involved in the Diddy trial.

And what's so interesting is in the comments of these videos that are, again, pretty obviously AI generated or not real.

And even the description of the YouTube account will say this is just for entertainment.

Nothing here is supposed to be true.

People won't read that part.

Basically, if you've ever had a bad feeling about a celebrity, which who hasn't, totally, there's a video that affirms with that worldview that is like, well, did you know they were involved in the Diddy freak offs?

And everybody's like, I knew it.

That person always gave me the ick.

Fine, I knew it.

I was smart enough to pick that up.

Not everyone else was smart enough, but I was.

And that's that, that's a whole other emotional feeling that is being targeted by these like AI slop creators where they're trying to affirm people's like like narcissism about their ability to judge the moral character of strangers.

That is so it because the people, the celebrities they choose, it's people that maybe you would have.

Like I have no real reason for this, but I hate Kevin Hart.

And so in the videos, don't even ask me why.

I don't even have a real reason.

I just don't like him.

Well, he is short.

He is short.

There you go.

Love to my short kings.

I think one of the reasons I don't like him, this is just me, Specky, like he just does a lot of ads, and you can't get on social media without his cryptocurrency ad, his DraftKings ad.

I just like hate seeing it.

Sure.

And then in the AI-generated video claiming that he was mixed up in the Diddy trials, every comment is like, I knew it.

I always hated him.

And that's affirming.

People like feeling like they knew something that other people didn't see and they knew it early on.

Well, and I think something that's similar to this that's happening right now is there's a massive media campaign right now against Pedro Pascal

with with AI generated videos of him like touching his female co-stars and these these videos have been have been digitally altered and it's in service of this this big harassment campaign against someone who's like very vocally pro-trans rights there's other possible reasons for why he's he's being targeted by these videos but but no similarly it's trying to create this like ick around Pedro Pascal using AI altered media and it's it's gaining a lot of traction right now and it's something that people need to be like very very cautious of but yeah, it's trying to affirm whatever.

Maybe you, for some reason, have never liked Pedro Pascal.

I can't imagine why.

But if you find a video like this talking about how, how he's using a social anxiety diagnosis to inappropriately touch his co-stars, you're like, I knew it.

I knew it.

I never trusted Pedro Pascal.

And I don't like that he's pro-trans rights.

And you're like, there you go.

They've completely got you.

They've been able to like automate and monetize internet hate campaigns against people that you don't know.

Garrett, literally right before you and I got on this episode, I saw a video on Reddit, and it's a, it's a scene from an episode of Always Sunny, where one of the guys is like essentially lifting Dee, the female lead, up by her crotch.

And the caption was, Pedro Pascal, when he feels anxiety next to his female co-star.

And I remember thinking, like, this is such a weird fucking video.

Like, what corner of the internet have I wandered into?

But it's, I didn't, I did not know that there are horses trying to make me get the ick about Pedro Pascal.

Yeah.

Coincidentally, Coincidentally, he is someone who speaks up for LGBTQ rights, you know, progressive causes.

Palestine.

Of course.

Yeah.

No,

it's a huge thing sweeping the internet right now.

And I think it really goes to show how

kind of easily we can be manipulated using digital content, whether it's AI generated or AI manipulated or not.

Like our

understandings of the sort of general temperature of what's going on are so much more tenuous than we think and so much more easily manipulated than we realize.

No, absolutely.

No one is immune to propaganda.

That is a great way of putting it.

I'm happy that you used the word propaganda because that's what I really do think these AI generated, essentially menstrual show videos are.

I think it's not a surprise that we are seeing them the same way that back in the day, minstrel shows were very popular at a time when there was an active campaign of attacking black folks and saying they weren't smart enough and did not deserve full citizenship, did not deserve rights, all of that.

I think we're basically seeing the same thing today.

I think the rise of popularity of this kind of content is.

against the backdrop of a very real attack on marginalized people from this administration.

You know, there was just this very meaty piece in ProPublica about how Trump and Musk, their doge stuff, really was an attack on Black women specifically, like Black women with stable federal jobs.

Totally.

And that these attacks, essentially, it was like you were able to smear Black women, career civil servants, as, you know, they were DEI hires.

They were undeserving of these jobs.

They really just deserved to be fired.

And, you know, really.

Black women just became these easy targets for an administration hostile to marginalized people.

So if we have all of that happening against the rise rise of this form of digital media that is using AI to reaffirm these stereotypes about Black women that we aren't able to behave ourselves in polite society, cannot figure out a way to solve conflict without resorting to violence, are loud and obnoxious, then when you hear about real life human black women getting pushed out of their employment or attacked by this administration, you might think, well, Maybe it's for the best because they're not suited for that work anyway, because of the kind of content that I have been consuming on TikTok.

And I think it just reaffirms this worldview that real life human black folks are not self-actualized human beings.

We're just a collection of tropes and stereotypes and caricatures.

I don't know what to say there, but I agree.

Yes.

And I do think there's a kind of platform accountability question in all this because.

Oh, most certainly.

Yeah.

Like the reason why we're seeing the rise of these videos is because of the recent introduction of Google's VO3 creator.

It came out about a month ago, and it's Google's latest AI video generation model.

And essentially, it's designed to create these realistic-looking videos from text prompts.

And the thing that kind of makes it a step above is that you can incorporate things like synchronized audio, dialogue, sound effects, music.

It is really...

taken off with creators online who are using this tool to create everything from these AI skits to AI influencers to AI mukbangs, you know, where people eat tons and tons of food.

Oh, this is so upsetting.

It is.

And then like another kind of offshoot of this is you have people who use VO3 to make content like this and they get tons of views.

And then they're like, oh, if you want to learn how to make this yourself, pay me and I'll teach you how to do it too.

So it's, it's, it's like, there's always a weird like MLM grift in there somewhere.

That is the content creator classic as like a mid-tier influencer who's not like that good at what they do, but is able to supplement their income by offering courses to people to teach them how to make similarly subpar content.

And it's interesting that we've reached the full AI automation aspect of this, right?

This is, this used to be a big thing among like YouTubers.

I was not aware that this is now a thing among like AI TikTok influencers, but that makes sense because this is like the easiest thing to automate.

So, of course, there's going to be like an influx of people trying to make a quick buck on racist AI slop.

It makes me so sad.

And I do think, I mean, when I guess I would be curious how Google feels about the fact that like, this is what their, their tool is being used for, right?

I wonder like, if leaders have a sense that this is harmful, not just harmful to Black women like me who are depicted in this kind of content, but harmful for the internet as a whole.

It makes the internet experience worse for everybody.

And

I guess I would imagine that like Google probably doesn't care that this is what their technology is being used for.

Like if I had a direct line to Sundar Pachai, the head of Google, I would show him these clips and say, is this what you had in mind for VO3?

Or is this a misuse of this tool that you just put out and unleashed on all of us?

Yeah.

And are you going to dedicate millions of dollars of research into stopping this from happening?

No, of course not.

Like, they're not going to build comprehensive tools that prevent platform abuse like this.

Like, that's not going to happen.

As long as people are using it and then people are hearing about it and it's spreading, like, that's that's what they want.

If there, if there happens to be offensive use cases of it, if anything, that's good because that drives engagement.

It gets people to know about the product.

And I think that's another one of the reasons why Trump's, you know, executive orders on AI that we saw earlier.

Early AI.

I mean, like, I will be the first person to admit that we have very deep problems when it comes to AI.

Anybody who listens to Better Offline knows this, like, this is not a secret.

AI is often biased.

AI is often wrong because it is trained on us humans, the biased little fucks that we are.

Right.

And so that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.

I also will say like some of the solutions of how we fix that are complex and not super simple.

But with Trump's executive order, he basically is signing an order saying all AI must be objective.

It must adhere to the objective truth of the United States.

And it's like, well, who determines that?

Who determines the objective truth of the United States?

The president?

I mean, if you ask Trump, yes, him.

And I guess that's the thing that pisses me off is that there actually are complex issues and problems when it comes to AI.

But this executive order just is like, oh, the problem is, is that it's woke.

The solution is me signing an executive order saying no woke in AI.

And rather than getting any kind of actual solution or having the conversation, we just get fucking nonsense.

No, it is worrying for multiple levels, including the fact that the president thinks he's the orbiter of objective truth and it thinks he can legislate that that or thinks he can uh executive order that into being by either you know benefiting or punishing tech companies who follow his his policies yeah i mean spoiler alert for that executive order that's exactly what he's saying and you know you used the word propaganda earlier and that really is if there was like a thesis statement of what i wanted to say in this episode is that That is exactly what I think is going on here.

It really does remind me of minstrel shows because even though minstrel shows back in the 19th century were were this popular form of entertainment, it also was an entire manufacturing enterprise where people made very good money selling racist black-faced figurines as novelties and all of that.

David Pilgrim, the founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan, put it like this.

They were everyday objects which portrayed black people as ugly, different, and fun to laugh at.

They were, in a word, propaganda.

And I think that's exactly what's going on here.

Like people like to think about racism as if it's just this thing that hangs in the air as opposed to a system that specific people are personally and intentionally perpetuating because they are cashing in on it i don't see how google letting creators use their tools to create content like this is any different like no yeah it's that is exactly what's going on in my book that's flatly like that's just like one-to-one like you're using tech to create like unreal depictions of racist characters to please audiences, to reaffirm their own, their own biases, to reaffirm their own racism.

And you're monetizing it and you're automating it to create hashtag viral moments.

Like it's

the most explicit and like gross, blatant form of this that I have like seen.

Like I think Robert a few years ago reported on people using AI to like make like true crime videos of like

animating like victims of crimes or like murder victims and talking about how they were killed or something, which is very gross and very, very disgusting.

But this sort of like organized like racist video propaganda stuff can lead to a lot more like actual like real world uh damage i completely agree i mean those true crime videos i remember that imagine if your kid was murdered and then no it's so gross 20 years later someone is like oh i've made an ai depiction of your murdered child telling their story no yeah it's it's it's it's evil but i think the damage that can do is is kind of limited the the damage that this whole altered reality where racism can get affirmed leads to I think, a lot more actual, like political and personal consequences.

Completely agree.

And I also think just taking a step back in the conversation about AI, we're all being told how the proliferation of AI is going to be the linchpin of our economy.

It's so important.

It's going to change everything.

And then you actually look at some of these use cases that are taking off, and it's like, well, was this really worth all the fucking climate degradation to make this racist AI version of a Bigfoot that looks like a black woman?

No more rainforest, but at least we get racist racist Bigfoot.

So,

oh my God.

Well, Garrett, I think that's a good place to end.

Thank you so much for letting me rant at you about this.

I really appreciate it.

Where else can people find your work, Bridget?

Well, you can listen to my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet.

You can listen to my other podcasts with Mozilla Foundation about ethics in AI called IRL.

And you can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC.

Fantastic.

Oh, the internet.

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Hi everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a very special edition of It Could Happen here in which we are very lucky to be joined by Inman from Live Like the World is Dying in what will be the first of many crossover episodes where the folks from Strange and Tangled Wilderness are going to share with us some of their preparedness advice.

Welcome to the show.

Would you like to introduce yourself?

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, James.

I'm Inman Narowin and I use they them pronouns and I'm one of the hosts of Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times, which is a lefty prepper podcast about community and individual preparedness for disasters of all kinds.

And really excited to be on the show with you.

Yeah.

On a different show, because you're on that show with me sometimes, which is great.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It's

bringing together the two.

Like I'm sure there's a superhero reference I could make here, but I don't really understand that world, so I won't.

I don't either.

No, great.

Okay.

Two people talking about a thing they don't understand.

That is what podcasts are sometimes,

but not today.

What are we going to talk about today?

Well, what I'm really excited to talk about today is preparedness in general, how community preparedness differs from some more conventional modalities.

I'm being really nice with that phrase.

Yeah, that's one way of saying it.

How individual preparedness fits into community preparedness and kind of about my own journey into prepper stuff or preparedness, which might be a new term for some people.

Yeah.

I like to call it preparedness over like prepping as a term, sort of because like, I don't know, like if I say I'm into prepping, then people start to give me funny looks and think I want to live in a bunker with a thousand cans of beans and more guns than I know what to do with.

But if I say I'm into preparedness, people are like, ooh, I know who to call if I need help with something or get in a jam, you know?

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

And it's kind of exactly that sentiment that I want listeners to think of when they think of preparedness is what connections and resources we have for when things go wrong and how we are going to respond to disasters of all kinds when we're faced with them.

Because having a plan kind of makes things less scary, you know?

Yeah, definitely.

I feel safer approaching bad things because I've approached bad things with my friends and we have gone through them and we've helped other people get through them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I also think a lot of people engage in preparedness without really realizing this.

I feel like I'd ask these questions to you on a less rhetorical basis if I didn't know them to be true.

But for instance, listener, do you keep tools and a snack in your car in case you break down on the side of the road?

Or if your car won't start, do you have a friend that will take a look at it for you and help you fix it?

If so, then congratulations.

You're into preparedness for a very specific kind of disaster.

And now we just have to figure out how to apply that to other disasters, whether it's your car breaking down, the climate breaking down, or the world as we know it breaking down.

Because

unfortunately, with the world as it is right now, as Margaret has said before, we're all preppers now.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's something that makes thinking about disaster just less scary.

And I think that's ultimately kind of one of the best reasons of like why we should get into preparedness is because it makes things less scary.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think it gives you, if you're doing it right, and I think this is something we can get into, like, you realize how much your community can get through if you all have each other rather than necessarily like the alternative that the other modality that you talked about is theoretically thinking how much you could get through whilst never helping anyone.

Yeah.

And that's a very different things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

And I don't know, listeners, we're talking about kind of more traditional like bunker mentality prepping, which we'll get into

a little bit later.

But that is my euphemism so far is a more conventional modality.

Yeah.

So like, can you give some ideas of like why people might want to get into preparedness, what they might want to be prepared for?

Yeah, absolutely.

So many things.

The list is kind of endless,

which is unfortunate.

And I don't want to

overwhelm people, but there's just a lot of things and new things are emerging every day.

But the first step of preparedness is kind of identifying what your threat model is or really just asking yourself, you know, like, what are you personally worried about for yourself or for your community?

And some kind of like larger categories that we can lump that stuff into is, I feel like what comes to mind for people immediately probably is natural disasters.

They're ever more frequent.

They're growing in intensity and happening in more places.

People who never thought they would become climate refugees are now becoming climate refugees.

I used to live on a chunk of land and like we got flooded out.

We lived in a hundred-year year floodplain.

And like, I know it's not once every hundred years.

That's not how it works, but like our time came and we got flooded out.

Yeah.

There's migration.

This could be due to climate change, political upheaval, economic reasons, family bigotry.

Yeah.

An obvious tie-in to this right now is everything going on with.

ICE raids where a lot of people are being displaced and either trying to return to their homes or find new ones.

And there's also like, I don't know, there's like a lot of people like in more conservative states in the U.S.

who, for instance, are trans or have trans people that are in their family or in their close friend group and are deciding whether they need to move somewhere else or at least come up with an escape plan if things get worse where they are.

Yeah.

And the same is true for like, I don't know, maintaining access to abortion.

Everything is very different in very different places or very close spaces, even in the United States.

And so I think a lot of people who never thought they'd need to think about migration are now thinking about it.

Yeah.

A big problem with how migration is reported on in America is that, like, people who are migrants are seen as like some kind of subcategory of humans, you know.

Totally.

Yeah.

Like, if you're a person who can get pregnant and you're a person who might consider in whatever circumstances accessing abortion, then in some states, you need to be prepared to become a migrant, like at

relatively very short notice, right?

Like

it's something that we're all closer to than we think.

Yeah, absolutely.

Another big one is kind of like larger economic, social

or political collapse, you know, simply meaning that like

the structures of the world no longer mean what they used to mean.

This could mean the collapse of capitalism or capitalism turning more into like literal corporate feudalism.

Another big one is I just have this broad category of war.

This could be an invasion, a civil war, a revolution, a rise in right-wing militias, another rise in right-wing militias, whatever.

I'm kind of neglecting some more fantastical apocalypses that I'm sure we can all imagine, but there are those.

We might wake up as fungus.

You know, who can say?

Yeah.

And then lastly, there's the current disaster that is late-stage capitalism.

And this one is the one that I spend the most time thinking about because it's the one that's ever present in our lives currently and kind of informs and maybe creates a lot of the other larger threats I just mentioned.

Yeah.

Except becoming fungus.

Well, yet.

Yeah.

Maybe.

Yeah.

I know we're doing a lot with the old whatever RFK is in charge of Ministry of Health.

It's not called that.

Health and human services.

Yeah, I think this is the one that like this is a disaster that people don't often like see because it's slow.

Yeah.

It kills us slowly rather than quick and kills us quickly.

Yeah.

Talking of killing us slowly,

my obligation to pivot to adverts is slowly killing my soul.

But I have to do it anyway.

Yeah,

this is new for me.

We don't have these on Live Like the World is Dying.

Yeah, I know.

I thought I'd take the first one.

I'm going to leave the second one up to you.

You can have a swing at it.

Great.

All right.

Thank you, products and services, for supporting this show.

We are back.

Amen.

Let's break it down for people in like a very basic sense, if that's okay.

How do we start being more prepared like i imagine the first step would be to immediately go to a federal firearms licensee is that right

um

yes that is that is the first step it is to fill your bunker with guns no that's that's not the first step because you can eat them yes and no um jokes aside um so The first step, we just talked about it before that break, is determine your threat.

You know,

in the case of, let's use earthquakes as an example.

If you live somewhere with earthquakes, then your threat model should probably include earthquakes.

You might prepare for earthquakes more than you might prepare for wildfires too.

The second step is make a plan, which means like when there's an earthquake, you're going to do X and Y and meet so-and-so at blank.

You can also include not living somewhere with earthquakes anymore as part of your make a plan.

because maybe that's just the one thing you don't want to deal with.

The next part is acquire the parts of the plan.

And so like if your plan includes resources, which everyone's plan should include a go bag,

an escape route, and any kind of equipment that you need.

And at this point, you're mostly ready.

I maybe would add to collaborate with others.

And then

this step gets missed a lot.

But at this point, since you're mostly ready, hopefully you can let go of some anxiety and despair.

You've done the hardest part, which is to get started.

And hopefully you can, we can feel comfort in that if we can't forestall a disaster, that we can at least be ready for it.

And then act on the plan, do the thing and assess what you can do better next time.

Yeah, that's, those are my basic steps.

Yeah, that is, uh, makes it seem all so simple.

Um, it's so simple.

Yeah, obviously, we will spend a lot of time in the next few months breaking down each of those steps and explaining them for people.

Yeah.

But yeah, like, like I live in a place where wildfires are common.

In my time living in California, I've been evacuated for a couple of fires.

I've had an earthquake.

You know, I've had a few of the natural disasters.

Of course, earthquakes can also become fires.

They did in San Francisco.

But yeah, it would not make sense if you live where I live to not have a plan for that.

You would be being naive.

Yeah.

Is there like a story like that for you?

Like, is there a thing?

Did you, did you like,

you know, have to evacuate evacuate for a for a wildfire and you couldn't find your uh shoes like what so one of my funny things was i'm living on this land project and like we were we were experiencing a flood we were experiencing what could have very easily been a flash flood yeah and i was trying to just convince people to leave and um i had a hard time convincing people to leave yeah like there was like water up to our chests and this is my answer now but um my answer that i wrote about for this episode is

so a little bit of prelude.

In the first episode of Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks with Kitty Stryker about anarchist prepping.

And Margaret talks about the possibilities that she's preparing for, which she identifies as kind of these four possibilities.

Living like the world is going to end and that we might not survive.

Living like the world is going to end and we can try to survive.

Living like we can prevent the end of the world and then maybe trying to live like the world isn't going to end after all.

And

I

got into preparedness for a lot of reasons, some of which evolved over time.

It went from something that felt scary to something that feels comforting.

And I hope that it can become comforting for other people.

I hope that's where a lot of you can land who are listening, who are either new to the concept or think that prepping is only for people who expect to need to survive for 30 years in a bunker after a nuclear zombie bio apocalyrev or whatever eating canned beans.

I'm really harping on this image because I think it's what a lot of people think of when they think of prepping, you know, beans, bunker, a little batty, and the fourth, maybe lesser known one, billionaires or the four bees of the apocalypse, as I want to think about them, to kind of confront.

this as like a word, this like apocalypse.

There's a lot of different kinds of apocalypses and whether whether we like it or not, if it isn't already here, it's coming.

And for some people it's coming swiftly.

For others it's slowly, but it is coming.

And billionaires are preparing for it, even if they want us to think their tech will save the world.

They have all the money and resources and they are still worried.

And while they'll try to use their money and power to kind of escape the consequences becoming a billionaire has had on the world, most people probably don't have access to those kinds of resources.

But what we all do have access to are social and community ties, even if it might not seem like that now.

And oddly, these social ties are things that billionaires often lack or doubt the authenticity of or just can't comprehend.

There's this article by Douglas Ruskoff, this tech consultant who gets flown out to the desert to talk to rich people about collapse.

And he's surprised because they don't really ask him about tech stuff.

They ask him about like maintaining social control over the people that work for them when when money no longer means anything.

And I'm like, I don't know, dude, maybe make like more authentic friendships, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe don't rely on having people subservient to you.

Yeah.

But I think this kind of air quotes conundrum speaks a lot to people's fears about collapse and is what gets people into a bunker mentality.

You know, everyone's worried about roving bands of armed people taking what they've prepared for their own survival.

And I think that is a fantasy that we don't really see happen in real life as often as we might think.

Yeah, I've reported from plenty of natural and human-created disasters.

Actually, it is the opposite of that.

Like we can talk about this another time, but it's one of the reasons I can keep doing it, like despite it being hugely dramatic, is...

It's actually incredible how much people go out of their way when they're thoroughly miserable to help other people who they see as needing help.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a really beautiful thing.

Yeah.

To be a little bit of a word nerd, real quick.

I feel like everyone who talks about prepping has talked about the etymological origins of the word apocalypse, but it is very interesting and I think it's relevant, which is like, okay, it's from these two Greek words, apo and kaloptene, which means like often to conceal.

And so like a more literal translation of it is a revealing.

And I think that disaster really reveals things.

It reveals the ways that society has really like failed.

It reveals the consequences of what living in a corporate oligarchy looks like.

And it also reveals like

what beautiful and powerful things people have built as communities and prepared for.

to give like a little bit of a positive spin on a

grim, grim, grim word.

Yeah.

No, like when I think about that, I think about like two years ago, I was in the Marshall Islands, right?

Where like the apocalypse has come, right?

The atomic bomb has dropped on the Marshall Islands, United States.

We did that.

And the sea levels are rising such that like children born there today won't die there, right?

They probably won't even have their own children there, you know, 20, 30, 40 years left.

And I didn't see like people fighting each other for the highest point of land.

Yeah.

I saw people taking care of one another, thinking about how, like, not just their individual, you know, they could maintain their assets,

but how their community could survive, how their culture could survive, and how they could keep the things, the incredible hospitality that's so special to them, which I thought was like very revealing compared to this sort of mindset that you see more conventionally in prepper spaces.

Yeah, absolutely.

And to finally get to my own kind of little journey into preparedness,

I wasn't a prepper until like not that long ago, really.

Yeah.

When I first heard Live Like the World is Dying, it was 2020.

COVID was still new.

There was like extreme civil unrest because there was an uprising going on.

And the same fascist that's our sitting president now was our president then.

And he was backed up by people like Kyle Rittenhouse who were gunning people down in the streets for protesting a racist murder.

Where I lived, an entire mountain range was also on fire.

Yeah.

And the idea that it was the coolest summer I might ever remember was still setting in.

And then I heard about Margaret doing Live Like the World is Dying, and I actually refused to listen to it because I knew with every fiber of my body that things were irrevocably different.

And I wanted to stick my head in the sand.

You know, like,

not because I was scared, but because getting prepared is overwhelming and I didn't have any clue where to begin.

Like, I was a scrappy punk.

I didn't have like thousands of dollars to spend on gear and stockpiling food and guns and shit, you know?

Yeah.

And so it felt for a while like preparedness was only for people who had a lot of money and that I'd be left behind.

But I did eventually listen to the show because Margaret's my friend and I trusted she had good things to say.

And because it was a show about beginnings and I needed one.

And so as I listened, I slowly started to warm up to the idea that preparedness wasn't just necessary, but that it was also very much within my reach, especially in the framework of community preparedness.

Yeah.

And you know, who can tell you a lot about community preparedness?

Who's that?

I mean, I think these lovely sponsors or advertisements or products that we're about to hear about.

I sure hope so.

We are back.

That was a fantastic ad transition.

First of many.

Hopefully, it wasn't like apparently beginning ads for like some kind of gold company that is also sanctioned by God.

God.

That is just, just to be clear, not the way to go in terms of community preparedness.

The precious metals route is one we're not advising here.

Can you like explain the difference between those two modalities?

Because I think

I still,

when Margaret was asking me if I wanted to do Live Like the World is Dying, she was like, oh, because James is like a, when we did an episode together on Go Back, she's like, oh, yeah, James is a big, like, like at lefty prepper, a community prepared.

And I was like, whoa, like, that's not me.

I'm not going to be on the Discovery Channel show, you know, like where the people shoot themselves on camera.

They don't to clear kill themselves.

They handle their firearms in an unsafe manner and hurt themselves.

Totally.

So let's explain.

Like, let's break down the good and the bad.

Yeah.

And there's kind of a tension between them.

Yeah.

And between like what I'll call community preparedness and like bunker syndrome prepping.

Yeah.

So the image that prepping brings to mind for a lot of people is like a right-wing alpha dude in a bunker with a dragon horde of preserved food and more guns than anyone could ever use.

It's like an image of one person against the world.

And I'm kind of like, okay, your fantasy apocalypse happens.

You survive the nuclear apocalypse.

Armed gangs rove the wastelands.

Food is hoarded and fought over and you're protecting your bunker.

And then what?

You know, what happens next?

How do you build back a world alone?

What is the world if you're alone?

Yeah.

And not only, like, we've talked about that, we've mentioned this earlier, but like, I don't, I think this is not only like a fantasy, but I...

It's not what happens, I think, historically in disasters.

And the way that we can make it through disasters, I think, is not based on how many resources we have hoarded, but based on our abilities to make and maintain community, friendship, and connections.

You know, it's a trope, but the real hoard in the bunker was the friendship all along.

You know, I don't know.

Yeah.

But, you know, we do need to learn how to produce and preserve food and build stuff.

We just.

don't have to do it alone.

In a disaster, our greatest resource is help from people that we care about and potential new friends.

And it's sort of the overwhelming amount of skills that come with the bunker syndrome that I think causes a lot of people to become overwhelmed by starting to prepare.

And the traditional prepper community, it's very right-wing conservative and it really makes it seem like every single person has to learn every skill they could possibly need in order to get prepared.

Yeah.

And I...

think part of that kind of bunker syndrome is also maybe that you have to learn all that stuff on your own because you low-key think that everyone you know is going to turn on you, you know, right?

Yeah, because you've been an odious piece of shit for your entire life.

Yeah.

And again, make better friends, you know?

Yeah.

Like, I used to think that like preparedness was a lot of people who'd never really experienced genuine hardship, wondering what it might be like.

Probably is.

Yeah.

A lot of it is, right?

Because like

if you've been just like poor or

otherwise facing like trans folks right now, right?

Even like anyone really in the LGBTQIA area, like it's scary right now.

And you've probably found that the things are keeping you going are other people,

not your pile of beans.

And like, I certainly have not experienced what trans folks are experiencing, but like I've had some difficult times and I've been poor.

And like, it's always been like other people who have come through for me, not stuff I had or even skills I have, really.

Yeah.

And And I think there's this real divide between like, there's people who are in fantasy bunker land and then there's people who are like, yeah, either too afraid to think about preparedness or feel too overwhelmed to think about it or think that they can't possibly do it because it's too far gone already.

And I think preparedness is for everyone.

You know, like we say,

start small, put food away every week, start to get your go bag together.

Just start.

Yeah.

And so to maybe now define like what community preparedness is, is, I think that it's what we get when we take a lot of different principles and mash them together.

You know, there's like, it's like part mutual aid, it's part individual preparedness, it's principles of autonomy, solidarity, direct action, and collective decision making.

And it's all synthesized into a kind of a beautiful little alchemy.

Yeah.

It's kind of the most like anarchistic thing you can do, which is really fun to me.

Yeah.

And I think it really means investing in the people around you so that you can all invest in collective survival.

I don't know.

We mentioned this earlier, but like there's this thing that happens during disasters that gets referred to as disaster communism.

Yeah.

Have you heard that one?

Yeah, yeah.

This doesn't mean that like Lenin emerges and leads a vanguard group to show you where the pursuit kitchens at.

No, no, no, no.

No, it means that the logic of capital is kind of temporarily suspended and people just help each other for free, not even for barter, for free.

And like people like go out and just give out stuff they have in excess, even if they purchased it.

And even if they're like, you don't look like the kind of people I like, just give it out.

Yeah, 100%.

Like, yeah.

I think like I can think of a few.

Like I can remember right when thousands of people were being.

housed outside in the cold and when wet at the border.

Housed is not the word I would use.

Yeah.

Corraled in the desert i was out there with my friends and like we look like dirty crust punk people right like we we're not like clean and well put together in that sense right like we're just scruff totally um and that's fine i i like being scruffy yeah um that's nice but like yeah it was amazing to see like folks who 100 do not have the same politics as me like roll out in whatever like setups you know they had and like be like yo this is uh luckily like i have some stuff that I was going to use for a barbecue next week, so I'm going to drag my barbecue out here and cook for people.

Or, like, yeah, you know, people who cook for their church's bake sale, being like, Yeah, I have a giant ass pot, like, let me make some beans for you guys.

You know, like, yeah, I think people will be so surprised, and it's great that people have not experienced that, like, because I think it's quite a traumatic thing to experience.

But, like, yeah, you'd be so surprised how

much, or like, I remember one time just building shelters with a bunch of people, and like everyone was pretty miserable, right?

Because it was cold and windy, and like there were some Kurdish guys, some Uzbek guys, some Chinese guys, and we were building these shelters together, and like all of these people who didn't even share a language and were going through very difficult times were just like nerding out on knots together, right?

And just helping each other, and then not doing that so they could sleep inside, doing that so little children wouldn't have to sleep in the cold.

But

it's that it's the way humans behave in these situations, and capitalism or YouTube might have convinced you it's not but like it it is yeah and i think like more traditional preppers really like get into it too like they'll show up they're like i got 40 chainsaws or like like it's like every like chud truck's time to shine to like haul away wreckage and like i don't know you know it's like i'm making it sound exciting but what's exciting is when people collaborate autonomously and collectively for like more good than their own.

And then kind of the problem is that like capitalism comes back in, the initial fallout fades from sight.

And

just because the disaster kind of fades doesn't mean it's gone.

And there's a lot of people who kind of still have to deal with it for potentially ever.

Yeah.

And that's kind of like the disaster of late stage capitalism is similar.

We have people who are constantly invisibilized, even though it's part of their regular lives.

Yeah.

Can I maybe break down some of these terms that are maybe...

It can be good for people.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I think they get thrown around a lot, right?

Totally.

So mutual aid is knowing that any help that we give our community helps us by

strengthening our community.

Autonomy is deciding what's best for us based on what we know about ourselves and our needs.

Solidarity is unity through action and knowing that like, it's like the, you know, I got your back even if you don't got mine, you know?

Yeah.

Direct action is working directly to achieve our goals instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

You know, we see this in disasters, like don't wait for FEMA.

There's like so many people who are just out there doing autonomous relief efforts and it's incredible.

Yeah.

Collective decision making, finding ways to make decisions together in ways where power isn't being like abused or accumulated.

And then there's individual preparedness, which is kind of the last little thing that I want to talk about.

So individual preparedness is kind of like the ways that we prepare individually so that when a disaster strikes, we have our basic needs met.

And, you know, there's a lot to learn.

So it's like we, it's easy to get lost back in that overwhelm mentality.

Yeah.

But I think we can really think about it in terms of disaster since we're on that track.

Like if there's a disaster and power goes out, then the roads are less traversable.

If you have all of your needs met through individual preparedness, then you're in a really good position to go help others.

And if everyone in your community already has prepared for their basic needs, then your whole community is prepared to take kind of the next step towards recovery.

And it means that your community can now help other communities that were less prepared or more impacted by a disaster, even if they thought they were prepared.

Community preparedness is like what happens when we kind of mash all of these ideas together and start doing it, not just as an individual, but as a community.

And this can look small or it can look big, you know?

And I think a lot of people's biggest hurdle is just like kind of making a plan.

And

like, I don't know, your disaster plan might include you and the people you live with.

It might include you and your polycule.

It might include you and your whole block.

And it might include your whole neighborhood.

And I think there's just this like big, beautiful spectrum.

And to kind of carry an example through like some interviews that we've done on Live Like the World is Dying, someone's measure of individual preparedness might include having a radio when cell networks go down.

And another's might include building communication infrastructure that they can distribute.

And another

maybe smaller group's idea might be agreeing on a place to meet up because they don't have radios, can't afford them, don't know how they work.

And they've just said, when shit hits the fan, we're meeting at the library.

Yeah.

That's still a whole lot better than like dashing around town wondering where the people you love are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's that easy.

You know, we get overwhelmed by tech, but there's so many low-tech solutions to a lot of these problems.

Yep.

Yeah.

That's why we're doing an episode on carrier pigeons.

Yeah.

Carrier pigeons.

Aren't they extinct?

That's passenger pigeons.

Different pigeon.

Passenger pigeons.

Yeah, yeah.

So like, what are some basic ways we can, we can think about preparedness?

And we're going to cover these in more detail, right?

We'll do episodes on each of these, but maybe someone's like, well, shit, I would like to get on that.

What are some things people can work on?

Yeah, I think it does start with...

kind of individual preparedness.

And when I say individual, I mean like, you know, for ourselves.

But that doesn't mean we can't do individual preparedness parallel and like with other people.

So don't think of individual as being alone.

It's just we're thinking about your specific basic needs.

And so here's kind of a checklist that we put out in a zine for Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness called Ready for Anything.

There's documentation, you know, get or renew documentation like passports,

DACA, other status cards, whatever.

Get a driver's license from your state if you are undocumented.

If you have other kinds of permits like concealed carry permits or medical documentation for you and your pets, get all of those together.

And you want to think about having both physical and digital backups of those things.

Yeah.

Because digital might not work.

You want to do some kind of basic, just supply preparedness, which is

store three days or three weeks of food, store three days or three weeks of water, store enough portable power to keep your phone and other essentials charged for three days or three weeks, build yourself a go bag, stockpile prescription medication you need, keep your vehicle in good running condition with at least half a tank of gas, and get kind of any equipment stuff that you might want now because it's going to be wildly unavailable when a disaster does come.

Yeah.

And then

on the community side, get to know your neighbors, plan with them, help them with documentation and preparedness components.

Make sure vulnerable neighbors know that you are a potential resource.

Connect with activist groups locally.

Build an affinity group.

Maybe you and your friends are really into communication infrastructure.

And when a disaster does strike, you just have that ready to go while some other affinity group is making sure that everyone's fed yeah divide and conquer i don't like that phrase but it it works right now um yeah make a plan for securely communicating and make plans for meeting up when things go wrong and even when things kind of go wrong with your plan you know have a backup plan yeah

Primary alternate contingency and emergency plan, if you want to use the cringe military acronym.

Yeah.

And then these are some kind of questions that I think you can ask your community when you're trying to think about building resiliency.

What disasters or dangers do you feel like you're likely to face?

How can you maintain access to food, water, and communication?

How will you interact with other groups?

What skills do you currently have?

What skills do you wish you had?

Can you learn those skills?

How will you foster care and address specific needs of individuals in your community?

How will your community defend itself?

And how can we resist despair and maintain access to joy?

Which I think that last one really gets lost a lot.

Yeah, people forget about that one, but it's important.

Even in like really dark places, like I've attended civil wars, right?

Like

maintaining access to joy is important.

Like I've sat with people in Kurdistan and sung songs and played tambour, which is like, I think the English word is ood.

It's an instrument and

wild drones were bombing.

And so we didn't want to go outside at night.

golly and like let me tell you it's a lot better if you have people to sing songs with and sitting on your own yeah i'm putting a songbook in my go bag now that's that's happening yeah

yeah these people had a folder like they came equipped with like laminated shit like they were ready to rock golly yeah that's kind of what i got you know yeah that's a great place for people to start and we're going to be covering a lot more of this stuff so like you will hear more about water and food and all the other things that we spoke about.

We'll try and do at least one of these episodes a month.

And then where can people find you if they have questions?

If they want to listen to other episodes, maybe of Live Like the World is Dying or otherwise reach out.

Yeah.

If you want to hear more about anything that I've talked about, then you can listen to Live Like the World is Dying, wherever you get podcasts.

We're an entirely listener-supported podcast with zero ad breaks.

And you can find more of what our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, does,

including books and other podcasts we put out at tangledwilderness.org, or you can support us on patreon.com/slash strangers in a tangled wilderness.

And if you want to ask me personally about things, you can find me on Instagram at Shadowtale Artificery, where you can see other stuff that I do that isn't this beautiful.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks.

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Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.

There was the six-foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain.

It actually really matters that driverless cars are going to to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

Should I be telling this thing all about my loved life?

I think we will see a Twitch streamer president maybe within our lifetimes.

You can find Close All Tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.

Holy balls, it's executive dysfunction.

That's what we call this, right?

That's

right.

Executive disorder, erectile dysfunction.

What do we do?

Who are we?

This is it could happen here, executive disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you, Robert Evans.

I'm sorry, Garrison.

I thought we were anarchists, and being an anarchist means never knowing what you're doing or why.

Yes.

Cancer phone.

I'm Garrison Davis.

I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans and Sophie Lichterman.

I wasn't planning on being in Mike, but I was very abalt.

Well, it happens.

Very abold.

appalled.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can't plan for shit, Sophie.

It's always chaos here.

This week, we are covering the week of July 23rd to July 30th.

Robert Evans, how are you doing?

You know what?

I'm chilling like Gillen.

I'm not, because I am not in a maximum security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, a federal prison.

It's actually not maximum security.

So let's talk about friend of the pod, Gillen Maxwell.

We all love Gillen.

you speak for yourself there mate you love her i love her jeffrey epstein loved her uh what i i don't love her so gillen maxwell is the daughter of a guy named robert maxwell we've done a behind the bastards on him it was a fun one partly amazing character basically a guy who in his early life was a character from Inglorious Bastards, like a Jewish refugee who signed up to fight the Nazis for the Brits and killed his way across Western Europe, murdering dozens of SS men.

And then after the war, he became a financier and destroyed scientific publishing and also tried to ignite a rivalry with Rupert Murdoch and failed so badly at it that he stole a billion dollars from his company's own pensions funds and then killed himself when all of that was coming out.

So he really is like the average Quentin Tarantino character.

Yeah.

Let it.

What I would describe him as, if Quentin for some reason did a sequel to Inglorious Bastards and it was just based on Brad Pitt's character becoming like a crooked finance executive in the 70s.

Becoming like the Wolf of Wall Street type guy.

Yes, exactly.

Like that, that's that's his backstory.

Didn't you used to murder Nazis?

Yeah, but now I'm like foreclosing a children's hospital.

Anyways.

So Gillen had a rough upbringing because like her older brother had a car accident when she was very young and he was in a coma for years.

Her mom basically spent a whole year just at the hospital with him.

She was ignored for a period of time and then her parents tried to overcompensate.

And massively, anyway,

she has the kind of upbringing you would kind of expect for a socialite who winds up both poor as a young adult when her dad dies, not real person poor, but rich person poor when her dad dies and the family is disgraced and all their businesses fail.

And she flees to New York to try to start a new life.

And the thing that makes sense to her, based on her background, being the kind of person that she is, is to find a rich man and cling to him.

And that rich man happens to be Jeffrey Epstein, who starts off by kind of renting her a luxury apartment.

They begin dating.

At some point, they stop dating.

It's unclear to me how they would have defined their relationship at any point internally.

The way they would always say it is they dated for a while.

And then Jeffrey had a thing where he would say, like, he never, he doesn't have exes.

He promotes his exes to friends, right?

And Gillen Maxwell was like his best friend and his business partner.

She helped him run not his actual businesses that made money, the finance stuff, but his life, right?

Like she ordered his houses, she managed his housekeepers, and she helped recruit girls and women because they recruited both for the stuff that Jeffrey is famous for, right?

Both to give him massages, and in the context of Epstein, a massage always means sex, and also recruit the girls that they flew around on the Lolita Express and, you know, handed off to different prominent men who wanted to have sex with teenagers or very young women, right?

Gillen was intimately involved in all of this.

She was convicted in 2022 after Epstein's suicide and sentenced to 20 years in prison for all of

the sex crimes that she had a part in.

She was transferred to a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida in July of 2022.

She was initially held in the normal dorm, like in general population, right?

And the prison wing that she was in is kind of colloquially known as the snake pit because it was a very nasty place with quite a lot of violence.

To quote from an article in the Tallahassee Democrat, quote: Maxwell created a ruckus when she had a falling out with several women after Maxwell reported two other inmates known as Las Cubanas for trying to extort her.

Epstein's partner in crime refused to use the shower stalls where violent attacks are more common and was escorted by a guard to and from her prison library job.

So she has a kind of rough early time in prison because she's in general pop.

She rolls on these other inmates, and that starts the process of her getting special treatment.

She has since been moved because of her good behavior to an honor dorm where there are 30 or 40 quarters for the best-behaved inmates.

She's, we don't really know for sure, but it's very likely that she has a private room with like storage.

She's teaching yoga classes at the prison.

She has at some period of time volunteered at the library.

She also teaches etiquette classes.

And I want to make it clear, I don't have an issue actually with the fact that she's teaching yoga or doing etiquette classes.

I think if we're going to have prisons, prisoners should have access to stuff like that.

I think that's all perfectly fine.

I think her getting special treatment for good behavior, I don't really love, but I also don't think we should have prisons that can be described as a snake pit.

So I'm kind of on the mixed end here.

Another thing that's kind of come out during her time in prison is that she has become a vegan.

She was not for most of her life, but she did when she came to prison.

She's complained a lot about the quality of the food, which is never spiced and it's just kind of like unflavored tofu.

And PETA has advocated on her behalf, which is pretty consistent for PETA.

She's also said, and there's significant evidence that this prison regularly serves rotten food that is bad for inmate health.

It is a Florida prison.

When Gillen talks about it, she has in several interviews the bad conditions in her prison.

She's not lying or or whining.

These prisons are not acceptable quality, right?

Like the Florida Department of Corrections and the Federal Department of Corrections are horrible and they're doing a horrible job of running these places.

The fact that I don't feel specifically compassion for Gillen Maxwell doesn't mean I want to like minimize the reality of the conditions in these prisons because most of the prisoners there were not massive sex child sex traffickers, you know?

Yeah.

Sure.

So anyway, FCI Tallahassee, which is where she's at.

She's now in the prison's honor dorm and is still trying to get out of prison.

So she's made a couple of claims prior to the most recent stuff that is in the news right now that we're talking about.

One of the things she's tried to argue is that the terms of Jeffrey Epstein's, when he was initially prosecuted back in like 2007, 2008, the terms of his plea bargain should apply to her.

Basically, like she was included in that.

And so she shouldn't be liable for the things that she got sentenced for more recently.

I am not familiar with the exact legalese her lawyer is using to make that argument, but that is the gist of the argument her lawyer is trying to make.

It's not going to work.

What might work is her getting a pardon.

So that's probably the thing you've seen about Gillen in the news most recently is that she is basically asking Congress if you want me to testify about Epstein and about the client list and everything.

I can't talk openly if I'm in prison.

And there's a degree to to which, like, again, I don't support this at all, but she's not wrong that, like, well, yeah, you, you really couldn't talk to, like, it really isn't reasonable, unreasonable to say, yeah, someone's probably not going to be able to talk openly about all of the wealthy, powerful people they saw committing sex crimes while they're locked up in prison, right?

Not that freeing her is the right thing to do either.

I'm just like, yeah, I mean, I bet someone could have you killed.

I bet there are people that you have dirt on that could have you killed in that prison.

Yeah.

Well, and she's currently appealing her conviction to the the Supreme Court, and she's arguing that if she were to testify in front of Congress, she would need immunity for anything that she says.

Yeah.

Right.

So that's what she's asking for.

Now, that said, she has already very recently been talking with the Department of Justice.

Yes.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Yes.

Todd Blanche had nine hours of meetings over two days.

Wow.

Okay.

Yes.

Now.

There are no public statements about what she said during this.

Like, we don't know what this was about.

We We do know there was some sort of immunity agreement.

A limited immunity agreement for those meetings and what she was saying in those meetings.

Okay.

And we don't know precisely what it covered, but it probably means that basically you're already in for 20 years.

If you talk to us about stuff that may implicate you in crimes you haven't been charged for yet,

you get immunity on that, is what I would guess, right?

But we don't actually know precisely like what was happening here.

And yeah, there's Barrett Berger a former federal prosecutor in New York told NBC News that he thinks that the interviews Blanche did were probably performative quote it may just be a way of being able to say look we dotted every I and crossed every T.

There's value in being able to say that we've tried to speak to everyone that we possibly could, including the co-defendant, right?

So that's her argument is basically, yeah, Blanche met with Gillen so that they could say they're talking with her because she's not going to talk to Congress and they're probably not going to offer her immunity.

And it's hard to imagine that Donald Trump's own Department of Justice is going to be investigating Donald Trump's connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

So whatever comes of these meetings, I

do not think that through these meetings, she's going to incriminate Donald Trump and that's going to be handled in any serious way.

If anything,

something like the opposite is happening, where she's talking about people who are not Donald Trump.

Yes.

And in doing so, trying to gain some sort of favor with the president, as Trump has said like last week, that he's quote unquote allowed to pardon her.

Yeah.

Not saying that he will, not saying that he plans to, but that he's quote unquote allowed to.

I can play that clip here for the audience.

Yeah, let's do that.

Would you consider a pardon or a commutation for Keelane Maxwell?

It's something I haven't thought about.

It's really something.

I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I have not thought about.

But you wouldn't rule it out to the very president of the audience.

And in addition to that, he's made a couple of weird comments about Gillen over the years.

When he's asked about Jeffrey now,

he's pretty negative about him.

He tends to be like, look, we knew for a while, like we were never close and we had a falling out.

He's a bad guy, right?

That's what he said more recently.

He's never really been negative about Gillen more recently.

The thing that I recall him saying is that like he wishes her well when she was sentenced,

which is kind of weird, right?

And I don't know if it's kind of a result of the fact that she has something on him and he's trying to, you know, I don't know.

That seems unlikely.

That seems less likely to me than like, maybe he actually just kind of liked Gillen Maxwell, but I don't actually know.

And anyway, that's the situation.

We don't know, is Trump going to pardon her?

He hasn't said he's going to, but as Garrison noted, it's weird of him to insist that he has the right to, just kind of.

Randomly.

Yeah.

Why would you do that if you weren't thinking about it?

Yeah.

You can just say no.

You can just say no.

I'm not going to, like, I'm not going to pardon her.

Yeah.

Well, and Trump has continued to make weird comments about Epstein and has elaborated on his falling out with Epstein the past week, first stating that they broke up their friendship because Epstein was just poaching hotel staff, which contradicts earlier statements Trump made.

And then on July 29th, he had this much more elaborate conversation on Air Force One about how Epstein was taking employees from his spa and specifically naming known victims of sex trafficking.

Yeah, he specifically named Virginia Juffree fairly recently, too, when talking about people.

This was, yeah, on the 29th.

I think a reporter asked if she was one of the people and he said, yes, I believe she was, right?

Yeah.

He says, I think so.

He stole her is the quote.

Yeah.

There was a reporter who introduced the name into the conversation just to be clear.

So, you know, do I think she's going to get pardoned?

It seems really unlikely to me.

And it seems really unlikely to me in part because

how would that, like, I have trouble imagining even that not causing huge problems for him.

Right.

I'm not one of these.

This is guys who's constantly like, ah, Trump's, Trump's finally, you know, we've got Donnie on the ropes.

Finally got him.

But this is, this is a big one, right?

This is a big one to his followers, to just Americans in general.

Something like 70% of the country or more is following this story actively and has a strong opinion on it.

And there's zero electoral gain in pardoning Gillen fucking Maxwell, right?

Like it's a, it's a, it, it strikes me as unlikely because it seems like a serious damaging risk.

The only thing they might try to do is if they try to paint like her herself as like a victim of Epstein.

Right, right.

There's been like a Newsmax segment trying to argue this.

So like you can see some sectors of the right who are trying to like create room for Trump to maneuver here, but I don't know if that will be a compelling narrative nationwide.

He's going to lose some people if he does that.

It seems unlikely.

And I know he seems annoyed that this is still a news story.

He had this little Scotland vacation to finish a trade deal with the EU, which we'll talk more about next week.

But throughout this Scotland vacation, he was quite upset that reporters there were still asking him about one Jeffrey Epstein.

Yeah.

Oh, you got to be kidding me.

No, it had nothing to do with it.

Only you would think that.

That had nothing to do with it.

Is that why he cheated at golf?

You know, that's a good, a good call, Sophie.

Maybe he was off his game because of all of these Epstein questions.

And that's the only reason why he cheated at golf this one time and definitely no other times ever.

Truly his most heinous crime.

Yeah, I guess that's kind of where we end off.

I'm not going to say he wouldn't, right?

I'll never say there's no way Gillen Maxwell gets pardoned because this is 2025.

That would be crazy.

It's like there's credible evidence that he is considering a pardon for fucking P.

Diddy.

Yeah, Deadline reported that yesterday.

And again,

if it is, right?

It's if he does, we know why.

It's because P.

Diddy probably has some shit on Trump, right?

And P.

Diddy has the kind of resources that he could have, like a deadfall system set up, right?

That like if something happens to him, the info gets out.

Like he, that, that is not beyond the kind of guy that P.

Diddy is.

Whereas I don't know that Epstein ever really prepared for that eventuality.

No, I don't think so.

Like Mark Epstein, Jeffrey's brother, was interviewed by the BBC last week and mentioned how Jeffrey was talking about possible information he has regarding to the 2016 election.

But

it does not sound like there was any kind of system for this information or that even any other people knew besides Jeffrey.

I can play that clip here too.

Did he tell you who he knew things about?

Well, in the 2016 election, We were talking about the election, and Jeffrey told me that if he said what he knew about the candidates, they would have to cancel the election.

That's a quote.

It's exactly what he told me.

He said, if I said what I knew about the candidates, they'd have to cancel the election.

He didn't tell me what he knew, but that's what he said.

Yeah, in general, Epstein was like a very compartmentalized guy.

And I don't know.

We'll see what happens with all of these cases.

It's going to be worth following, but it doesn't seem to be going away the way that a lot of Trump stuff does because, I mean, it's Epstein, right?

You've gotten too much of your base hooked on this story for them to just give it up because it's inconvenient now.

So I don't know what's going to happen, but we'll keep watching.

And you keep listening to these ads.

Beautiful.

Oh, my God.

Those ads were so good.

I feel like that picture of Bill Clinton getting a back massage from...

nope.

Oh, I don't know if we should do that in this episode, Robert.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway,

what's next?

What are we talking about next?

Speaking of pardons and Epstein,

I'm going to play one other clip from Trump's Scotland vacation where he's trying to reiterate his whole Epstein hoax narrative.

And in doing so, invokes something that relates to our next topic.

But

I'll play this clip here.

It's a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion.

I can say this.

Those files were run by the worst scum on earth.

They were run by

Comey.

They were run by Garland.

They were run by Biden and all of the people that actually ran the government, including the Autopen.

Those files were run for four years by those people.

If they had anything, I assume they would have released it.

The whole thing is a hoax.

They ran the files.

I was running against somebody that ran the files.

The auto pen.

That's going to be our first

mini story this episode.

So the auto pen is this tool that helps with the signing of documents.

It automates the process by replicating a signature.

And this is a machine long used in the White House.

It's for like hundreds of years.

Barack Obama was the first one to officially use it to sign legislation, but this is a regular tool.

Right.

And the past few months, Trump has been increasingly obsessed with the auto pen in trying to attack Biden's administration and somehow like take some of the blame away from Biden and onto the people who Biden was surrounded by.

In June, Trump ordered an investigation into Biden's alleged use of the auto pen and if other figures in Biden's White House were using the Auto Pen without Biden's knowledge, acting as shadow president.

I'm going to play a clip here from Fox News discussing the possible ramifications of the auto pen's use.

Mr.

Chairman, you mentioned that you're looking at some of the pardons that were done under President Biden and the use of the AutoPen, Dr.

Fauci being one of them, talking about whether they were legitimate or not.

Are you also looking into Biden's judicial appointments as well?

Absolutely.

Everything that was signed with the AutoPen, especially in the last year of the Biden presidency, this is when all the books that are being written, all the tell-all interviews that are being recorded from his former disgruntled staffers and staffers who are trying to preserve their reputation for future employment, they're all saying that Joe Biden was in a deep mental decline.

This raises an issue whether these pardons, whether these judicial appointments, and whether these executive orders are legal.

I believe that if this investigation keeps going in the way that it's going, that's going to raise serious concerns about whether or not Joe Biden even knew what was going on around him, much less whether he authorized the use of his signature on all of this stuff.

I think all of these are in jeopardy of being declared null and void in a court of law.

And that's a big deal for the Trump administration because so much of what Trump is up against in court now with these liberal-biased Biden-appointed judges is the fact that they're using and citing some of these executive orders as a reason to

throw out President Trump's agenda and President Trump's executive orders.

So that gets into this the scope of things that we're dealing with here.

It's not just pardons.

This started by talking about Biden's pardons.

This past March on a truth, on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Biden's preemptive pardons of members of the January 6th Investigation House Committee are, quote, hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force of effect because of the fact that they were done by Autopen, unquote.

And like, this just isn't true.

There is no constitutional requirement that pardons even be signed.

He cannot void pardons like this, allegedly, right?

Who knows what they'll try to like do by like enforcement?

But

according to like the legal, the legal systems currently in place, this like isn't real.

But if they do try to legitimately go after like judicial appointments and try to create this conspiracy of this like shadow cabinet that was secretly running the government, I will be interested to see where that goes and the extent to which they think they can pull that off, especially as a way to like bypass judges who are blocking various Trump policies from being put into effect.

Yeah.

I mean, I've just always been of the opinion that we shouldn't even be allowing these people to use pens.

You know, cuneiform,

we already had the perfect way of putting law on the books, and we need to go back.

We need to returben.

Yeah.

Then did books exist then or was it all in the clay tablets as God intended?

All clay tablets.

James, all that's where we've got him, Robert.

The whole internet, clay tablets.

Yeah, because none of these laws are actually written on clay, and therefore I, for one, believe that they do not apply to me.

They're not valid, you know?

You've heard of e-ink screens.

We need e-klay.

That is the only way that a law can be passed in these United States.

Otherwise, I retain my sovereignty as a citizen.

That's what it's about.

Trump does pride himself on always using the pen to sign things himself, except for like fan mail and like thank you cards, in which he gets his staff to use the auto pen to sign those to get mail on his supporters.

But for all serious matters, he prides himself on only using the pen.

And not just the pen, Garrison.

I believe he has a special Trump Edition Sharpie.

He has a big bucket of them on his desk, if I recall correctly, that he then

did I sell them off afterwards?

By mistake, he uses his special Sharpie to sign all documents, including the next two topics, which are some executive orders.

Ah, shit.

So there's been a number of executive orders the past few weeks that are forming

what the White House is calling the AI action plan, which largely seeks to loosen restrictions and regulations on AI and accelerate the building of data centers to power AI training so that American companies can better compete in the global market.

But there was another AI executive order signed last week on July 23rd, which is titled Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government.

Wow.

Incredible.

I'm going to read the first two sentences, which are long sentences, of the AI executive order on woke AI.

Quote, In the AI context, DEI includes the suppression or distortion of factual information about race or sex, manipulation of racial or sexual representation in model outputs, incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism, and discrimination on the basis of race or sex.

DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI.

For example, one major AI model changed the race or sex of historical figures, including the Pope, the Founding Fathers, and Vikings.

When prompted for images, because it was trained to prioritize DEI requirements at the cost of accuracy, another AI model refused to produce images celebrating the achievements of white people, even while complying in the same request for people of other races.

In yet another case, an AI model asserted that a user should not, quote-unquote, misgender another person, even if necessary, to stop a nuclear apocalypse.

Unquote.

Official White House executive order document.

Sorry, the last one is one of the fucking funniest things I've ever heard.

Would you suck off 100 apes to save one human life

absolutely not absolutely not

but i would do the reverse

this is this is like this is crazy stuff right this is this is stuff that you would see like daily wire posters talking about like four years ago this is like debate me bro like blue tick twitter stuff now yeah but no but even even talking about you know like how like things like unconscious bias and systemic racism cannot be mentioned right those are things that that specifically ben shapiro has like led the charge on attacking in

mainstream like political disagreement for a while now, like arguing that systemic racism is not a thing.

And now you have orders specifically targeting systemic racism being used in AI outputs.

So part of what this executive order actually seeks to do is make it so that the government can only use large language models that are developed with the principles of quote-unquote truth seeking and ideological neutrality, requiring that these are non-partisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI.

In effect, the order seeks to use government contracts as bribes to make companies ensure that their AIs are not woke.

With the Trump administration serving as the judge of what is and isn't woke and threatening to pull contracts and force companies to pay cancellation fees if their AI language model is deemed to be too woke.

I never want to hear the word woke again.

Yeah, I'm so fucking tired.

That's exhausting.

Yeah, it's Jim Crow for the computer is what this is.

As a part of this AI action plan,

their third or fourth main principle is quote unquote, upholding free speech in frontier models, updating federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.

That's the opposite of free speech.

What do you

we will like make sure that they only do the specific thing that we want, and we're calling that upholding free speech.

Just say you want Mecca Hitler, Grok.

Just, just, just, just say that.

He has.

Grok has indeed said that.

I know.

I know.

So.

That's the first executive order that I want to talk about.

The next one is less brain rotty and more horrific.

Actually scary.

Like I'm sure the woke AI one will turn out to be bad.

But this next one is like extremely, extremely fascistic, and I don't use that word lightly.

This order is titled, Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets.

I'll start by quoting one paragraph.

Quote, Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.

Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.

The Attorney General shall prioritize available funding to support the expansion of drug courts and mental health courts for individuals for which such diversion serves public safety.

Unquote.

Yeah, this is bad.

This is

some.

Yeah, again, people like to like to use fascism a lot, but yeah, this is some Nazi shit.

Like, this, this is a thing that the Nazis did.

Yep.

Let's get more into what this order outlines.

So this executive order directs the Attorney General to reverse quote-unquote judicial precedents prohibiting involuntary institutionalization and to seek the quote termination of consent decrees that impede the United States policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illnesses who pose risks to themselves or the public or

are living on the streets.

Unquote.

It starts by, you know, if someone's at risk to themselves and then expands that to just include everybody.

If they're deemed to be at risk to the public or just happen to be living outside, you can now get put in what is essentially Trump's new version of assane asylums.

Yeah.

That's really scary.

Yeah.

I think like we shouldn't not mention that a lot of this shit is directly downstream from Democratic mayors in large cities and especially in California pushing for involuntary commitment to bundhaus.

No, this is like Gavin Newsom's wet dream.

Yes.

Yeah, this is Todd Gloria's shit.

Honestly, this is unfortunately very bipartisan when we are at least talking about the political elite and to a sizable extent when we're talking about the electorate, right?

Yeah.

This is an issue on which the left has catastrophically lost, just like immigration.

Unlike immigration, it is not an issue in which we're starting to see the pendulum swing back.

Because,

number one, I mean, I guess we have not yet seen the kind of violence deployed against the houseless by agents of the state at scale in public that we're seeing right now on migrants, right?

Like there's not a federal agency going to war on the houseless.

It's the same kind of violence that's existed previously.

But also, like there's a huge amount of propaganda against this.

Like every city business association, you know, is constantly complaining because they see this as like, oh, this is why people don't want to come into stores anymore.

It's the houseless, you know, it's not fucking Amazon or whatever.

Yeah, it's absolute bullshit.

Yeah.

I mean, some of that might change, though, because Trump is seeking to mobilize federal resources to start doing enforcement.

Yes.

The order directs Trump's cabinet to be giving grants to state and local governments to help enact civil commitment and institutional treatment, with the priority of grants being directed to states and municipalities that already have and enforce strong anti-homeless policies.

The order allows for emergency federal law enforcement assistance funds to be used for encampment removal and directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to remove federal funding from quote-unquote harm reduction or quote-unquote safe consumption programs.

as well as quote ending support for housing first policies that deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment recovery and self-sufficiency.

So not only are they increasing law enforcement capacity to apprehend mentally ill or houseless people and put them into institutional facilities, but they are cutting all federal funds from programs that are deemed to be harm reduction or safe consumption, which are programs that have been shown to work across the globe.

Yeah.

As well as ending housing-first policies, which is what most homeless advocates actually push for as a way to solve homelessness.

Yeah, because they're evidence-based and they work.

The order also also requires that recipients of federal housing and homelessness assistance to force participants who suffer from substance abuse disorder or serious mental illnesses into quote-unquote treatment or mental health services as a condition of participation, unquote.

And that the recipients of these federal funds are now required to collect quote unquote health-related information from everyone who has provided assistance and is required to share that data with law enforcement, quote, in circumstances permitted by law.

Don't love that.

That's horrible.

That's really just not a line we want to cross.

That's so scary.

Yep.

The weaponization of health data for law enforcement services.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And unfortunately, it's exactly the thing that like for years, advocates for mental health care have been trying to get across, like, hey, it's okay to go in to seek treatment.

Like this is stuff isn't going to be weaponized against you.

And that's not true anymore.

Like the degree to which, outside of the actual danger of law enforcement getting this data and using it, the setback to mental health care, to people feeling, having any chance of feeling safe to pursue it, is like incomprehensible.

It's so bad.

Yeah.

Well, not only are they seeking to go after users, the recipients of federal housing and homelessness assistance that operate drug injection sites or quote-unquote safe consumption sites will be reviewed by the Attorney General for a violation of federal law and bring civil or criminal action in appropriate cases.

Literally going after people who try to create environments where people who use drugs can do so in a method that will not kill them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

People who are handing out clean needles, you know, safe injection sites, that sort of thing, any kind of harm reduction.

Which will now be under investigation by the Attorney General.

Yeah.

Yeah.

which is going to get people killed.

It's going to imprison people who have been doing nothing but helping other people.

Like it's it's just comprehensively a nightmare.

It's going to lead to more communicable diseases spreading that we don't, like that some of these safe injection sites have prevented spreading, right?

Needle exchanges have prevented.

Like when we combine it with RFK stuff, like this is going to be a major public health issue on top of everything else.

So on top of expanding drug courts and mental health courts, I will end with one final quote from the order.

Quote, they will ensure that homeless individuals arrested for federal crimes are evaluated to determine whether they are sexually dangerous persons and certified accordingly for civil commitment.

And finally, Trump's cabinet is directed to, quote, assess federal resources to determine whether they may be directed towards ensuring that detainees with serious mental illnesses are not released into the public because of the lack of forensic bed capacity at appropriate local, state, and federal jails or hospitals, unquote.

It remains to be seen the scale in which this will be implemented.

Usually these orders have

a series of months in which the cabinet members will then propose actual implementation policies that then can be implemented across the country.

But certainly, what is in the order itself is incredibly worrying.

Yeah.

Yep.

We probably shouldn't have let this guy become president again.

Yeah.

Oh, well.

Do you know what we should do right now?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Ads.

Just go to ads.

Sure.

Have fun with that, everyone.

Talking of shouldn't have let that guy become president again.

One of the reasons that that guy did become president again is because the Democrats were incapable of fielding a candidate who could say genocide bad.

Yeah, that might have helped.

I mean,

it's a fucking low bar and they failed to clear it.

It might have helped.

It might have helped, according to new data from New York, where two-thirds or more of New York Democratic primary voters agree with Zora Momdani's positions on Israel and arresting Benjamin Netanyahu.

And 57% say that they might oppose Democrats who do not endorse Momdani for mayor.

Yeah, because fuck.

So it seems like, yeah, maybe the Democrats should have done something about that.

It seems like the majority of their base wants that.

Well, I'm not one of those.

I always hate it when people like try to reduce the loss to one thing because there's there's a number of reasons why they lost.

But

Michigan, we can probably

blame the loss of Michigan on

Kamala's failures to call Gaza a genocide or to take any kind of a stance separating her from Biden on that matter.

Right.

Like there's a decent amount of evidence to suggest that.

Maybe other states, you know, other things went wrong.

But like this, this, that was a significant.

reason why the Democrats failed.

Yeah, look at the way, as we're about to discuss, how the entirety, Canada, while we have been recording this, is announced that it is joining the UK and France in plans to conditionally recognize a Palestinian state.

Yeah.

And the reason that is happening is because Israel's genocide in Gaza is continuing.

Yeah.

July has been the deadliest month for the past year and a half.

One person has died every 12 minutes.

199 people have died every day.

401 of them have been injured.

We saw this week 19 people died of starvation.

None of these people are dying because of a famine that's caused by the weather or some other natural cause, right?

This is entirely a choice and it's made by people in the Israeli state, very chiefly by Benjamin Netanyahu.

To quote Netanyahu, Israel has been forced to allow some aid into the strip, but only a tiny fraction of the required aid has made its way in.

One in five children in Gaza is suffering from acute malnutrition.

That figure has tripled since last month, according to the World Health Organization.

Not only is there not enough food, but there are also not enough medical supplies to treat people with acute malnutrition, right?

When somebody is acutely malnourished, you can't just like hand them a sandwich and fix a problem.

This was a major problem when liberating the concentration camps at the end of World War II.

American soldiers would see these people who were just absolute.

I mean, you can, you've seen pictures of Auschwitz survivors and stuff and just act with immediate human compassion and give them whatever they wanted.

Right.

And then people got sick and died because you literally can't, you have to, there's a very specific way when someone is that far gone that you have to slowly re-nourish them, whatever.

Yeah.

Refeed them, ensure that they are maintaining adequate hydration levels, right?

Therapeutic formula for babies that are malnourished.

It's more it's I think there's this like misunderstanding that like, oh, starving people are just hungry.

So you just feed them.

And like past a certain point, no, they're not just hungry.

Something else is going on.

Their bodies are failing and beginning to die.

And that requires medical attention because they have a very serious medical condition.

Those medical supplies are not getting into Gaza.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, generally referred to as the IPC, issued an alert for what it calls, quote, the worst case scenario of famine in Gaza this week.

In their alert, they said, quote, over 20,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, with more than 3,000 severely malnourished.

Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since the 17th of July.

There's not really much that I think we can say about this other than that it's absolutely despicable and disgusting.

As a result of Israel carrying out a genocide in the open, the UK, France and Canada have indicated, as I said, said, their willingness to recognize a Palestinian state.

That was some conditions.

Statehood will not feed these children, right?

These people will be dead long before the state is recognized unless something changes.

Yeah.

The whole recognizing statehood for me is less meaningful because I care about states than it is as a symbol of the fact that France, you know, and the UK and an increasing number of nations who were not like

imagining them 10 years ago, like taking the stance of being as critical of Israel as they are would have been a stretch, right?

Would have been difficult to comprehend.

And I think what it really does showcase is how

rapidly international opinion has changed and the

very dangerous situation Israel has gotten itself into, where I don't think it is a matter of immediate danger because the weapons aren't going to stop flowing and no one is going to stop them militarily.

But

they are sabotaging the ground underneath themselves.

And I, I do think, I mean, maybe this is me being unreasonably hopeful here, but yeah, like this is, I think they're setting up their own downfall here, you know, not quick enough to save any of these lives, but like this is not a good position for them to be in, a country that's this dependent upon foreign trade, upon foreign weapons, upon foreign support for its survival.

Like

they're sabotaging themselves.

Yeah, they're becoming a pariah state far too slowly, given what's happened over the last couple of years, but it's happening.

I'll just finish, I guess, by saying that Israel has agreed to make tactical pauses, which is, I don't know what that really means, to allow aid to enter.

The IPC report suggests immediate actions to protect life.

But it concludes that, quote, none of this is possible unless there is a ceasefire.

And there is no sign of that in the immediate future.

Let's talk about immigration, shall we?

Something that is also pretty much a downer, I guess.

The State Department has rolled back its visa interview waiver.

This was a pandemic era thing, right?

The people didn't have to come into the consulate and actually do an interview with a physical human for their visa.

This will result in massive delays at consulates around the world and will mean that visas are inaccessible for some people entirely, right?

Because

getting to a consular alone is a barrier for them, right?

Or another expense.

And it's a risky expense if you think you might be turned down.

The government has been cancelling hearings, according to NBC Miami, of people in the Everglades Detention Facility, aka Alligator Alcatraz, right?

Inmates are also being denied the right to meet with their attorneys.

The government asserted that everyone there has a final removal order.

However, at least one attorney with two clients there that NBC Miami spoke to said that this was not the case for their clients.

They don't have final removal orders, but nonetheless, they are not able to access their due process rights.

There is a lawsuit challenging this and many other issues at the detention center that will be held on the 18th of August.

Talking of removals, we are beginning to see first-hand accounts from the Venezuelan people who were detained at Sekot.

230 Venezuelan detainees there were traded with Venezuela in a three-way trade for U.S.

citizens detained in Venezuela, right?

Three-way trade.

I mean, very clearly, the people in Secott were really under U.S.

custody.

Yes.

Right.

So it's just a workaround for a direct trade.

Well, or at least, I mean, they were under the custody of a U.S.

contractor, right?

Like, that's, I think, the accurate way to describe this.

Yeah.

Yes, I think that's probably, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, the U.S.

had control over their comings and goings, as is demonstrated by this prisoner exchange, right?

These reports indicate that the plane landed and immediately Salvadorian police entered and beat the men so severely that flight attendants on the plane cried.

An ICE agent told them in Spanish, quote, this will teach you to enter our country illegally.

Many of the men, I should point out, did not enter the country between ports of entry or without inspection.

They entered via CBP-1, the only legal way for them to claim asylum at that time.

The men said they were beaten, kicked, and shot with rubber pellets.

They were never allowed outside and guards would mock them and refuse to tell them the time when they asked.

Several of them mentioned a fellow detainee who began cutting himself, writing messages on the wall in his own blood.

Those messages include, stop hitting us, we are fathers, we are brothers, we are innocent people.

Shortly before their release, they say they were treated better, allowed to shower and shave and given medicine.

When one of the men returned, his neighbours clapped together to raise 20 bucks for his mother to decorate the house and make him a meal of chicken, rice, and plantains.

I don't know.

That one was particularly hard for me to read for some reason because, like, that specific meal is one I've eaten with the people I live with in Caracas, the people I was with in the Darien Gap, right?

It did just seem very personal to me.

They also noted that many of the men while detained prayed and read the Bible.

They used food packaging and even food to make dice and playing cards to play games.

The things that I read in this are actually like really heartbreaking because I've I've seen folks from Venezuela go through really horrific things, right?

They were in the Darien Gap when I was in a Darien Gap.

I've seen them in outdoor detention.

I've also spent time living in Venezuela.

And throughout that, like people, Venezuelan people have shown an incredible capacity to continue to smile and have joy and have a joke and have a laugh.

So like seeing these men so thoroughly beaten down by the Salvadoran state is really hard.

I would encourage you all to read the ProPublica piece, which I will link in the show notes.

But yeah, it's yeah,

it's as bad as we expected it to be, right?

Like I don't think for a minute that El Salvador expected them to leave.

So it treated them like I'm sure it treats everybody else there.

Yeah, right.

Like that's that's that's what you have to assume.

And that's why it's important not to limit the discussion or the anger to the case of, you know, the Garcia and, you know, this couple of people who are quote unquote, obviously innocent.

Individual people, yeah.

Like, nobody should be in Seacot.

And quite frankly, Hunter Biden's right.

You know, we should,

we should invade El Salvador if that's what it takes to close this place down.

Yeah.

Like, fuck them.

Like, it's, it's, I, I mean, or someone should invade us.

I don't fucking know, whatever it takes to stop this shit, but, like, it's unacceptable.

Yeah, it's inhumane.

Like, a world where this exists is not a world we should want.

No.

I guess maybe I'll end with some good news and a little fundraiser if people want to donate.

Good news is that a judge has ordered the release of Kilmar Abrego.

I guess he prefers to just use the first part of his last name, right?

Spanish last names come from your mother and father.

Some people use both, some people use one.

Oh, I hadn't caught that actually.

Thank you, James.

Yeah, you are welcome.

Judge Zinis ordered that he be returned to Maryland, not be immediately detained by ICE on his release, and that 72 hours notice be given if they try to remove him.

I I have seen reporting that says she has ordered that he can't be deported.

That's not true.

She ordered that he have his due process rights if they attempt to remove him, right?

I've also seen reporting that he's like out and about on the street.

That is not true.

A Tennessee judge did deny the government's attempts to detain him while he awaits criminal trial, but at the request of his legal team, his release has been stayed by 30 days.

I believe this is to prevent ice grabbing him and deporting him immediately when he's released or thereafter, right, until they got that clarification from Judge Zinis.

This comes after the Trump administration or the DOJ has failed to persuade any four federal judges that he was a leader of MS-13.

His lawyers have also asked the judge to stop DHS posting about this and prejudicing a potential jury pool.

So at least in this one case, right, this man is moving closer to being back with his family.

Let's talk about a fundraiser and then we can finish up.

Yeah.

So I want to talk about Jose Giron and I will just read here from the fundraiser page.

Jose was taken from his family and detained at Otai Mesa detention center over 13 months ago.

Like many friends, parents and siblings imprisoned at OMDC, Jose has received no medical care despite having concerning symptoms for colon cancer.

Visibly in pain during his previous hearing, Jose showed the judge a jar with 1.5 to 2 inches of blood that he reported had come out of his rectum.

No one should have to suffer these indignities.

If you would like to support Jose, you can go to givebutter.com/slash freejose giron.

That's F-R-E-E,

J-O-S-E-G-I-R-O-N.

I think that's all for us.

We reported the news.

Goodbye.

We reported the news.

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

It Could Happen Here is a production of CoolZone Media.

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