It Could Happen Here Weekly 206

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 4 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culture Resistance with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 What if you could boost your Wi-Fi to one of your devices when you need it most? Because Xfinity Wi-Fi can. Like when you need to upload 200 photos of your cat in a Santa hat to post online.

Speaker 3 We've all been there.

Speaker 6 And what if your Wi-Fi could proactively fix issues before they even happen?

Speaker 2 Xfinity Wi-Fi does that too.

Speaker 3 It's like having a little holiday helper.

Speaker 4 And what if your Wi-Fi had parental instincts built right in so your kids are always protected online?

Speaker 2 It's Wi-Fi that's not just smart, it's brilliant. And during the holidays, that's a gift we all could use.

Speaker 3 Xfiniti, imagine that.

Speaker 7 Life gets messy. Spills, stains, and kid chaos.
But with Anime, cleaning up is easy. Our sofas are fully machine washable, inside and out, so you never have to stress about messes again.

Speaker 7 Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind.

Speaker 7 Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Speaker 3 Need flexibility?

Speaker 7 Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly. Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.
Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

Speaker 7 That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch. Get early access to Black Friday pricing right now.
Sofas started just $699.

Speaker 7 Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washable sofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 8 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 9 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 11 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 12 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 13 If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 16 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 17 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 16 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 15 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 19 Hey guys, it's Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa. So as a sideline reporter, game day is extra busy for me, but I know it can be busy for parents everywhere.

Speaker 19 You're juggling snacks, nap time, and everything else.

Speaker 19 Well, Gerber can help create a more parent-friendly game day because they have the most clean label project certifications of any baby food brand.

Speaker 19 So you can feel good about what you're feeding your little ones. I mean, Mac loves them.
You can't go wrong with the little crunchies.

Speaker 19 You just put him in a little bag or you put him in a little container and he's good to go. Make sure to pick up your little ones' favorite Gerber products at a store near you.

Speaker 3 Coolzone Media.

Speaker 20 Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode.

Speaker 20 So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 2 Hi everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's a very special roundtable podcast today where we're going to discuss the United States ongoing campaign of bombing small boats in the Caribbean.

Speaker 2 I'm joined by Michael Pahlberg, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and a fellow at the Center for National Policy. Hi Michael, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3 Hi, thanks for having me. And Andrew is also here.

Speaker 2 Listeners of the show will be familiar with Andrew's work. He joins us very often.
But

Speaker 2 in this instance, Andrew is talking as someone who is from Trinidad and Tobago, which of course is very much being impacted by this. Hey, Andrew.

Speaker 6 Hey, what's going on?

Speaker 2 Not much. Well, let's talk about what's going on.

Speaker 2 Because something quite substantial is going on. What's going on is that the United States is carrying out a campaign of drone strikes against small vessels in the Caribbean.

Speaker 2 As far as we know, there have been seven strikes. At least 32 people have been killed.
Two people have been detained and then repatriated. And a a number of vessels have been struck.

Speaker 2 The US, it's bringing its war on terrorism logic to the Western Hemisphere, right?

Speaker 2 It's claiming that it's fighting narco-terrorism and it's claiming that these boats are, for the most part, carrying Venezuelan nationals coming out of Venezuela.

Speaker 2 We've heard from Colombia that one Colombian national has been killed. The two people who were detained were Ecuadorian and Colombian.

Speaker 2 Two Trinidadian or Trinidad and Tobago nationals have been killed as well. And this has sparked something of a,

Speaker 2 well, it was a war of words. Now it seems to be a war of

Speaker 2 more than that, like tariffs and sanctions. And I believe Colombia has withdrawn their diplomats from DC as of today or yesterday.

Speaker 2 So it sparked significant political turmoil in the Western Hemisphere. I think we have a really good panel to talk about that.

Speaker 3 So to begin with, I guess we should start.

Speaker 2 Michael, can you explain the accusation here, right, is that these people are members of Trender Aragua or potentially some other cartels that the Trump administration likes to talk about.

Speaker 2 We've talked about the prevalence of those groups, but can you explain very briefly what they are? And I suppose

Speaker 2 the function that they have in Venezuela or what they're doing there versus what's being claimed that they're doing.

Speaker 3 Sure. I do research on organized crime in Latin America.

Speaker 3 Trend Aragua is a real organized criminal group in Venezuela. Now, all over Latin America, it is a street gang that started out as a prison gang.

Speaker 3 It does not primarily engage in international drug trafficking, moving large quantities of drugs across national borders or across oceans.

Speaker 3 It is primarily engaged in human trafficking and extortion rackets, and it primarily follows the Venezuelan diaspora people who have left Venezuela.

Speaker 3 And at this point, it's an incredible 20% of the population over the last 10 years of Maduro's presidency. So nearly 8 million people.
Wherever they go,

Speaker 3 they take advantage of them. They extort them for money.
They will also take money to move them across borders.

Speaker 3 But they're not a cartel in the way that we traditionally think about cartels like the Sinaloa cartel or some of the Colombian cartels that are engaged in international.

Speaker 3 uh cocaine trafficking um and so it's highly unlikely that if the trump administration is striking boats that they claim to be vessels transporting cocaine or fentanyl, which is not made in Venezuela, it's primarily made in Mexico using precursor chemicals from China.

Speaker 3 And recently it's actually made in the United States, even though it's a entirely synthetic drug. That's possible.

Speaker 3 And Venezuela, of course, is not one of the countries where coca is grown and therefore cocaine comes from. If they are indeed striking drug boats, then they probably wouldn't be Trande Diagua.

Speaker 3 And if they're striking boats boats with Trinidad Agua, they would be most likely striking migrant smuggling vessels, in which case the death count would likely be much higher. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So we should talk about the other Caribbean nations now, I guess. Want to talk about Trinidad and Tobago, but we should probably cover Colombia first, right?

Speaker 2 Because we've seen significant pushback from Petro, President of Colombia.

Speaker 2 And then we've recently seen the President of the United States accuse Petro, who is again president of Colombia, of being a drug trafficker himself, which is a fairly ludicrous claim on the face of it.

Speaker 2 But let's talk about Petro because he has some background in opposition to organized crime and drug smuggling, actually, right? Like he's been in this for a while.

Speaker 2 Can you explain a little bit of his career and then his recent stances?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so Petro is a mercurial figure in Colombian politics, has been for a long time.

Speaker 3 He is known for starting his career as a guerrilla with a minor anti-government guerrilla movement called the M19 movement.

Speaker 3 Now, this is the movement which, I don't know, maybe Western audiences are familiar with from the Netflix series Narcos for having participated, carried out the Palace of Justice siege at the Colombian Supreme Court, which was a major disaster in which the Colombian military went in guns blazing to rescue hostages, Supreme Court justices and other

Speaker 3 people just employed in the Palace of Justice, and most everyone died in a fire as a result. Petro was not involved in that operation.

Speaker 3 As far as anyone knows, he was not involved in any violent confrontations.

Speaker 3 And this organization, unlike the FARC and the ELN, never really got on the cocaine money train and therefore didn't last as long as those other organizations did. They did demobilize.

Speaker 3 They did turn to peaceful politics. And Petro began his political career at the local level, became mayor of Bogotá, and then eventually reached the presidency.

Speaker 3 So he is someone with a long political career and does have a constituency, does have a base, and he is the first truly left-wing leader of Colombia, a country that has been famously both ruled by the right and also very closely allied to the U.S.

Speaker 3 It's really the U.S.'s top ally in Latin America, well, in South America, at least, specifically on security, given Plan Colombia and a long history of the U.S. giving as much as $10 billion

Speaker 3 over time to beef up Colombia's counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics fights on our behalf.

Speaker 2 Yeah, to accuse the president of being a drug crafter is fairly ludicrous. Like he's been like even in his time as a senator, right? He was like...

Speaker 2 I think he was chairing some like investigations or committees that looked at drug smuggling, if I remember correctly.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And so I would say Petro has been very critical of the war on drugs approach generally, but he does still inherit this long-standing deep relationship with the United States.

Speaker 3 And he's not exactly a full-on peacenick when it comes to his own internal security. He did come at office promising what he called total peace, paspopar,

Speaker 3 a platform that was meant to put an end to all armed insurgencies in the country by making a deal with the remaining combatant groups, namely the ELN, the dissident farmed guerrillas, those who did not agree to the peace deal signed by Santos in 2016, and what's in different terms called the Clan del Gorfo or the AGC, the Gaetanist Self-Defense Forces, but one of the largest national narco-paramilitary group that descends from the old AUC.

Speaker 3 And he has failed in that and talks have broken off with those other armed groups. Colombia has kind of gone back to war against them.

Speaker 3 The ELN has engaged in some pretty horrific violence, including a suicide car bombing, police barracks and the distant FARC as well, taking down a helicopter and a drone attack.

Speaker 3 So there has been a return to fairly high-level

Speaker 3 armed insurgency in Colombia, even if it's nowhere near the level it was from the late 90s and early 2000s.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And all of this is happening in the Caribbean, which is not a not a vast ocean, right? Like it's not a massive area of space.

Speaker 2 And as Andrew and I were talking about before we recorded, this has impacted other Caribbean nations, nations which are not the target of the Trump administration's aggression, but nonetheless are being subjected to it.

Speaker 2 Do you want to talk, Andrew? Trinidad and Tobago is in a particularly, I don't know if interesting is the right word. It's not a great situation, right?

Speaker 2 Because Trinidadian people are being killed, at least two.

Speaker 3 Indeed.

Speaker 2 And the government is apparently completely unconcerned with this.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 6 I suppose I should provide some context. So there have been seven strikes to date, and the fifth strike resulted in the deaths of two fishermen from the village of Las Cuevas in Trino Tobago.

Speaker 6 being claimed among the victims. The government's Trino Tobago has not made a statement about it and

Speaker 6 the families have not really been contacted or provided any sort of support.

Speaker 6 Now, for those who are listening who may not know where Trina and Tobago is, it is an independent twin island republic in the Caribbean, and it's actually geographically an extension of South America.

Speaker 6 There's a gulf that separates it, but it's about 11 kilometers away from Venezuela itself.

Speaker 6 And our elections that took place this year led to the removal of the incumbent party and the return of the United National Congress, the political party led by Kamala Pasad Brasasa, claiming the government in a sweep, a landslide really.

Speaker 6 But despite that landslide, it wasn't really the result of popular support for the United National Congress.

Speaker 6 It was more so the lack of support for the previous party, the People's National Movement, which lost, I believe, 200,000 or so of their usual voters, just didn't show up to vote for them this election.

Speaker 6 So the opposition party came into power. When the opposition party was in the opposition, they in many ways appeared to just oppose for opposing sake.

Speaker 6 They were in power previously from 2010 to 2015, but they were voted out due to, among other things, corruption.

Speaker 6 And since then, the party has further evolved into a sort of personality cult centered around Karl Carlopassa Besessa, and her politics have also evolved in that time to align further and further toward the United States position.

Speaker 6 She's become something of a Trump stan. You know, she was kind of towing his line on a lot of issues.

Speaker 6 She supported Guaido, Juan Guaido, as the president of Venezuela and actually went so far while she was an opposition leader to call on the United States to sanction Trinidad and Tobago after the vice president of Venezuela had made a visit to the country to meet with the then Prime Minister Keith Rowley.

Speaker 6 So she has made her pro-Washington stance clear for a very long time. And as she's coming to power, she has

Speaker 6 diverted our alignment with our regional bloc, the Caribbean community, CARICOM, and their call for the Caribbean to remain a zone of peace. and

Speaker 6 emphasized her continued endorsement for the U.S. military's deployment outside of Venezuela's territorial waters, but still

Speaker 6 very much belligerent in her approach to this issue.

Speaker 6 You know, we have gone from a state that was respected as a non-aligned entity that was able to approach various diplomatic partners from the US to China to the EU to India to Venezuela as well.

Speaker 6 And we've gone from that sort of diplomatic approach to a very clear pro-West stance

Speaker 6 that has really alienated us from the rest of the region and really

Speaker 6 placed us almost in the position of being a satellite state for U.S. policy.
You know, she's been inviting the U.S. military if they want to base their operations out of Trinidad.

Speaker 6 She has opened our doors to that. She has called for the U.S.

Speaker 6 to kill them all violently, extrajudicially, and stated that she is perfectly aligned with what the US is doing in the region despite its flagrant violations of international law.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 2 as you said earlier, the them in this instance includes at least two of her own citizens.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And I will say that this sort of zone of peace designation for the Caribbean, it is something that I would, and this is my personal opinion, consider more of a hopeful ideal rather than a reality.

Speaker 6 You know, the trafficking that takes place in the region does visit a lot of violence upon people.

Speaker 6 It is, you know, by no means in reality a zone of peace, even before the U.S.'s actions in the region.

Speaker 6 However, though we may not fit that postcard perfect perception of, you know, tropical paradise, It is still necessary, I think, for us to stand in solidarity as a region to speak with one voice when it comes to these issues especially as our continued existence depends on the observation of international law the respect for the un charter as small islands our safety is really in numbers and for the prime minister to deviate from that solidarity in such a blatant way it's it's really quite sad.

Speaker 6 But it shouldn't come as a surprise because there have been efforts by the US to divide CARICON in the past.

Speaker 6 During his first term, Trump had pulled some CARICON countries into the Lima Group, which was a US-promoted coalition of right-wing governments that was pushing for regime change in Venezuela.

Speaker 6 And he's now doing the same thing with trying to get some CARICOM governments to facilitate his actions toward Venezuela.

Speaker 6 They approached Grenada recently to try and get Grenada's assistance in basing a satellite there on the island.

Speaker 6 And it's really ironic that they would approach Grenada, which is also quite close to Venezuela, because Grenada is famously one of the countries that the United States invaded in October of 1983.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think...

Speaker 2 I know I say this a lot, but if you've listened to the song Washington Bullets by the Clash and then you go to the border, you can kind of join up all the people from all the countries mentioned there and the uh the outcome of us policy and what that does to migration over time

Speaker 2 we should talk about the venezuelan opposition a bit i guess michael would you give

Speaker 2 i've done a pretty in-depth discussion of Venezuela, a place where I have spent a decent amount of time.

Speaker 2 Like I wanted to see that revolution myself when I was like 19 and I was studying political science. I wanted to see what this like pink tide was about.

Speaker 2 And I have reported a lot on Venezuelan migrants. People who are new to the show,

Speaker 2 I guess the series I did from the Darien Gap would be where I would point you for my discussion of Venezuela and Venezuelan people. I still speak to people of Venezuela almost every day.

Speaker 2 But I think people could do Michael with like a

Speaker 2 high-level overview of the Venezuelan opposition. I guess we can talk about the Nobel Prize as well, which despite what Donald Trump is saying was not awarded to him this year.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so the big news is that Maria Corinne Machado, who is the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, as we know it today, was awarded the Nobel Prize, which was a bit of a surprise.

Speaker 3 And from a very U.S.-centric analysis, one idea that has been floated is that the Nobel Committee didn't want to award Trump the prize, but thought that maybe awarding it to an ally of Trump would be a way to mollify Trump, also possibly to encourage him to take a more peaceful approach at a time that the U.S.

Speaker 3 is threatening armed intervention in some way in Venezuela, whether that is a counter-narcotics operation or more likely a regime change operation of some kind, even though it's very unclear how they would get to regime change from blowing up boats or even blowing up people.

Speaker 2 Maybe we should pause and talk about regime change, actually, because I like, it's such a problematic idea, right? Like we have attempted regime changes.

Speaker 2 My career for the last several years has been reporting on the United States' failed attempts to facilitate regime change all over the world, right? Like it's not something we're very good at.

Speaker 2 I don't think that the United States is going to invade Venezuela. Maybe you...

Speaker 2 you think differently, but I think we probably agree that the United States is unlikely to do like an Iraq-style invasion of Venezuela. Could you explain

Speaker 2 why, I suppose, just for people who

Speaker 2 think that that's what's happening in the Caribbean at the moment with this concentration of forces?

Speaker 3 Well, it's unlikely to happen because Venezuela is a very large country and it would take a lot more troops than what are currently deployed, which is...

Speaker 3 approaching 10,000 now, but that's actually that includes all sorts of logistical support. The actual fighting force, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, is actually much smaller.

Speaker 3 I lived in Panama as a kid, and I was not old enough to be there for the invasion, but I lived there some years after that.

Speaker 3 That's probably the closest analog to this, at least the way that the Trump administration is promoting this, which is to say a regime change operation that is disguised as a counter-narcotics operation.

Speaker 3 Famously, Noriega was, it was not a war,

Speaker 3 it was an arrest of a foreign leader who was indeed involved in drug trafficking.

Speaker 3 And we knew that because he was literally a CIA asset whose drug trafficking was being protected as long as he was allied with the US against Cuban-backed rebel groups in Central America.

Speaker 3 But at some point later, he became too much of embarrassment for the US,

Speaker 3 was genuinely a brutal guy, pulled off the torture murder of Hugo Spadapora, all sorts of nasty things. But the big difference is at that time, and when I lived there, the U.S.

Speaker 3 had multiple military bases in Panama. Panama was the headquarters of the U.S.
Southern Command, the Western Hemisphere headquarters of the Pentagon. We had 13,000 troops already there, ready to go.

Speaker 3 I think they doubled that for the invasion, which was officially termed Operation Just Cause, originally called Operation Blue Spoon, but they had to color with a sexier name.

Speaker 3 And of course, Panama is a tiny country.

Speaker 3 And Venezuela is... 20 times larger than Panama.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's fast.

Speaker 3 So it's very odd. It's obviously, they have deployed many more troops and a much larger fleet than is necessary for a counter-narcotics operation.
Incidentally, it's the U.S.

Speaker 3 Coast Guard that carries out counter-narcotics interdictions and does it very effectively.

Speaker 3 And incidentally, it does it with the cooperation of other countries, which coordinate intelligence or just simply surveillance of suspicious ships or boats or planes and tip off the U.S. Coast Guard.

Speaker 3 Even the Cuban government does that. In fact, it's the Coast Guard that is the U.S.
agency that has the best relationships with Cuba.

Speaker 3 It's oftentimes diplomacy kind of starts with the Coast Guard's ties with Cuba.

Speaker 3 But anyway, that aside, it doesn't make sense from a counter-narcotics standpoint because, look, if you actually wanted to break up a cartel, what do you do?

Speaker 3 I mean, if you are a prosecutor, investigator, right? You capture.

Speaker 3 the smugglers, you seize the cargo, the contraband, which is evidence, then you try to flip them up for immunity for whoever your real targets are.

Speaker 3 Maybe your target is Maduro or someone else in the regime, but you can't do that when you kill everyone on the boat.

Speaker 3 And I think the fact that in, I think, the latest boat strike, they didn't manage to kill everyone, and a couple of them got away.

Speaker 3 And then the U.S., rather than charge them with a crime, they just turned them back around.

Speaker 3 And you would think that if the U.S.

Speaker 3 is so certain that the people on those boats are drug trafficking terrorists that they want to kill them, then you'd think they would have enough evidence to charge them, to prosecute them, but apparently not.

Speaker 3 So this is all to say the idea that this is a counter-narcotics operation doesn't hold up.

Speaker 3 Clearly, it is meant to be more of a regime change operation, but again, I don't see how the one leads to the other.

Speaker 3 I believe that Trump thinks that if he just saber-rabbles a little bit and possibly tries some decapitation strikes the way that the US did on Soleimani and Iran, that somehow the regime is going to collapse.

Speaker 3 And that does not make any sense. Maruro has surrounded himself with security, a lot of it, including through Cuban advisors.
He keeps his whereabouts very secret.

Speaker 3 Even if somehow they were to drone strike him, it's not as if the regime as a whole would fall because it is an extremely militarized regime that is upheld by the armed forces, who are not going to break with him because they have a hand in every lucrative business, both legal and illegal in Venezuela.

Speaker 3 They're not going to be paid off or not be swayed by a bounty that is currently, what, something like $50 million.

Speaker 3 I mean, there are people around Maduro that have made upwards of a billion dollars in oil rents. So it's not like you can pay off people to betray him either.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it's not, nor is it like a cult of personality situation, like certainly not now.

Speaker 2 Chavez had something of a sort of charismatic leadership role, but uh maduro is not that so let's talk about the opposition in venezuela in in so much as like uh i guess if we go back to the election last year right that let's start with the election uh and explain to people what happened there and then the subsequent sort of uh avenues that are now open or the avenues that that opposition is now exploring if that's okay There was an election, quote unquote, that took place last year.

Speaker 3 It was brokered largely by the U.S. The US under the Biden administration was pushing for some kind of negotiations between the opposition and the Venezuelan government.

Speaker 3 They convinced enough people in the opposition to stand for elections under what was called the Barbados Agreement in 2023.

Speaker 3 And this was meant to be in exchange of partial lifting of the sectoral sanctions that have been in place on Venezuela for a long time, which the Trump administration, the first Trump administration really tightened, in exchange for the Maduro government agreeing to stand for elections.

Speaker 3 And those elections happened last year.

Speaker 3 It was pretty clear from pre-electoral surveys and from exit polls and from the vote returns that were coming in at the time that the opposition candidate was going to win by an enormous march, about a 35-point margin.

Speaker 3 The candidate was officially Edmundo Gonzalez, but he was candidate mostly because Muria Cornelia Machado, the now Nobel Prize laureate, was barred from running.

Speaker 3 So she gave her blessing to Gonzalez to be basically her proxy and people were more or less voting for both of them, so to speak. But both he and her are much more popular.

Speaker 3 Maduro, who by all accounts is an extremely unpopular leader, especially in contrast to, as you said, Hugo Chavez, who, for all his faults, was a genuinely charismatic leader.

Speaker 3 you know he did stand for elections and win them you know pretty convincingly incidentally oil oil the price of oil was about a hundred dollars a barrel when he was president and uh he was able to spend a lot on social programs but that aside yeah that helps laduro is pretty uh pretty unpopular at this point he is pretty widely seen as uh both a tyrant and also quite incompetent at uh at managing basic state services so he was going to lose uh unless he stole the election which he did the uh the cne the uh the venue election board announced that he had won with just 51 of the vote which is i have to say i give him credit for being subtle I expected them to announce that he won with like 99% of the vote.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and a sad margin.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
No one believed it. And I have to say, one of my critiques of the Biden administration is that I think the whole thing was rather naive.

Speaker 3 I think they calculated that somehow Maduro would let himself be voted out of office. Maduro is, he talked about under a bounty, has a bounty on his head.

Speaker 3 Many people in the U.S., politics in the US, Republicans in particular, have promised that they're going to send him to jail. So why would someone in that position, you know, give up power?

Speaker 3 I think, you you know, he saw what happened to Gaddafi, and he's, you know, he doesn't want to be jailed or killed.

Speaker 3 And at the same time, the stick part of the careton stick mechanism was that they would simply go back to the sanctions that existed before, which was called a snapback.

Speaker 3 And these are sanctions that the Venezuelan government has weathered for many, many years. So it's not really that much of a disincentive.

Speaker 3 So, anyway, everyone basically admits at this point that he stole the election, but what are you going to do about it?

Speaker 3 The opposition, for its part, has taken different approaches to how to confront him um and is famously very divided uh the venezuelan opposition has never really been on the same page they've never really had an uncontested leader uh maria cornemachado is about the closest they have had but she herself really represents more one wing of the opposition the more you might say hardline wing uh for a long time there was a hardline wing uh personified by lopez and there was a more i don't know if you call it uh

Speaker 3 line or liberal or just more willing to talk to the regime wing uh led by cabriles who ran against maluro in the in the first election and it's even within those factions there are there are competing personalities a lot of it really is more personal than ideological but maria corner machado she is on the right politically um she you know styles herself after margaret thatcher she is also i i will give her credit for this a very good organizer she has famously kind of gone into communities that have historically voted with the Chavista left and convinced many people to leave that coalition.

Speaker 3 And also to her credit, you know, I would say she is a very brave person.

Speaker 3 She has remained into the country at a time that many, most opposition leaders, including Emeraldo Gonzalez, have fled the country. And she's been in hiding.

Speaker 3 She knows that the regime would arrest, if not kill her, at its soonest opportunity, yet she still shows up unannounced at events, at rallies, and makes speeches.

Speaker 3 So she has achieved this kind of mythic figure. And this is something that obviously is only going to grow with the Nobel Prize.
So then the question is, what will this Nobel do?

Speaker 3 I think that one calculation is that it'll simply keep her alive. You know, it'll be much harder for the Maduro government to kill her

Speaker 3 if

Speaker 3 they would be killing a Nobel laureate. So that may buy her a little bit more time.

Speaker 2 Devon Trimiyama is trying to best them on the first one to kill a Nobel laureate, I guess.

Speaker 3 Right, right, yeah. But, you know, will it bring peace? I'm not so sure, because Mary Cordo Machallo has also been very closely allied and supportive of the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 And her side of the opposition has been encouraging the military strikes, backing sanctions, even though the sanctions both have done nothing to dislodge Maduro and also contribute to a great deal of suffering for the Venezuelan people.

Speaker 3 And I have to say, look, I'm not Venezuelan. I have no right to give the Venezuelan opposition advice.

Speaker 3 I would say that if they have tried multiple elections, you know, at least two of which have been stolen, if they have tried, you know, you know, I'd say more democratic means and nothing has happened, I can understand why many people would think that a more radical approach is the only option left on the table.

Speaker 3 However, that approach hasn't done anything either. You know, sanctions have not dislodged Maduro.
Blowing up boats of possible drug traffickers, maybe just fishermen, has not done anything.

Speaker 3 I think that nothing appears likely to lead lead to regime change, but I can understand the desperation of people living under what is broadly acknowledged to be an extremely repressive regime. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And just the grinding poverty of everyday life in Venezuela is so like I've heard so many stories from so many people of such a difficult existence there. I can understand people's desperation.

Speaker 2 Andrew, you and I had spoken about

Speaker 2 the gulf between the government of Trinidad and Tobago and the people of Trinidad and Tobago right now. And obviously, the same is true in Venezuela, right? Like,

Speaker 2 it's not the opposition figures living in Spain who suffer when we have these sanctions, right? It's not opposition candidates who get blown up when they go fishing.

Speaker 2 It's regular working-class Venezuelan people.

Speaker 2 So, do you want to talk about like, I'm not even sure sure what we can do in

Speaker 2 by way of solidarity with either of these nations, but maybe you have some thoughts on that.

Speaker 6 I'm honestly at something of a loss myself. Speaking from a small island, I think the US's superpower status is almost akin to an eldritch horror.

Speaker 6 It feels like it's unfathomable how you could even go about approaching that at times. You know, I try to remind myself that people have fought and won.
You know, people have resisted and won.

Speaker 6 You know, currently, there isn't that much going on. There are murmurs, there are murmurs of fear, of disdain, of disagreement, of distrust.
In terms of grassroots effort,

Speaker 6 there's a lot still to be done. The leader of the Movement for Social Justice, which is a small

Speaker 6 progressive political party in Tran Tobago, it's a guy named David Abdullah.

Speaker 6 And he has been part of this assembly of Caribbean people who have been signing and issuing a declaration reasserting our desire for peace.

Speaker 6 And that has been signed by various progressive organizations, social movements, and figures across the Caribbean. And there was also an effort last week, Thursday, that's October 16th, to organize a

Speaker 6 region-wide day of action in defense of the Caribbean. And so different actions were taking place all over in 15 countries.

Speaker 6 We had press conferences, we had statements, and we had pickets at certain U.S. embassies and public demonstrations.

Speaker 6 It was kind of in the middle of the day on a Thursday, so there wasn't that big of a turnout from what I saw when I had gone. But it shows that there is,

Speaker 6 and from the at least anecdotal experience, there is a desire to keep the U.S.

Speaker 6 out of the situation. You know, despite the issues with the Venezuelan government, despite the issues with our own governments, we don't want intervention, you know, and

Speaker 6 right now,

Speaker 6 all we can really levy is our voices, you know, our words.

Speaker 6 And all we can really do, I think, besides protest what is going on is prepare for the worst to ensure that we have, you know, certain support systems in place in case, you know, push comes to shove.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's pretty bleak.

Speaker 2 Michael, do you have anything to add on like how people can be in solidarity with the people of Venezuela currently?

Speaker 3 Well, I've been calling for people broadly throughout the world to have solidarity more with people than with states,

Speaker 3 and certainly with the Venezuelan people as opposed to the Venezuelan state. I wrote something for the Center for International Policy about this.

Speaker 3 And listen, it's not my place to police the left, so to speak. But as someone...
speaking personally who comes from the labor movement, you know, comes from the Bernie allied left, so to speak.

Speaker 3 You know, I do think it's been a little bit uncomfortable to observe how certain elements of the global left have stood up for the Maduro regime, or at the very least been the criticism of it has been taboo.

Speaker 3 And I think a lot of that is the legacy of Chavez, Chavez having this strong personal charisma, but also that he was willing to confront the United States, the Bush administration at a time of the Iraq War, you know, especially low point in the U.S.'s global reputation.

Speaker 3 Also, Venezuela's oil rents at the time, which were financing a lot of, not just social programs in Venezuela, but a lot of financial largesse to allied states and movements around

Speaker 3 the region.

Speaker 3 So a lot of left parties kind of reflexively defended Maduro,

Speaker 3 even as his repression and mismanagement just ramped up. I will say that's fading.
You know, we were seeing this within Latin America.

Speaker 3 First of all, there's kind of a generational divide, and some of the older generation latin american left like lula or like petro have not been overwhelmingly anti-maduro but have expressed skepticism about the electoral results but then there's a younger generation such as borich chile uh chile and arebolo in guatemalo who have been openly very critical uh of maduro and want to just not let him or his camp so to speak define what it means to be on the left.

Speaker 3 And really the only countries that have unquestionably backed him at this point are Bolivia and Cuba, but also outside of the region, Russia, Iran, China.

Speaker 3 So I think that we should ask ourselves, like, who do we think is a more credible arbiter of progressive values? Is it Borich and Chile or is it Putin? You know, even,

Speaker 3 even the Communist Party of Venezuela no longer passes.

Speaker 2 That's one of my favorite facts.

Speaker 3 He has had their militants killed, you know, allegedly as well.

Speaker 3 So it's just, it's not helpful to view the world in this campus lens. You know, I think that if people, whether they identify as on the left or

Speaker 3 whatever, want to show solidarity, I think it should be with the Venezuelan people, which means listening to voices within civil society in Venezuela.

Speaker 3 There are a lot of NGOs, there are a lot of labor unions, there are a lot of human rights advocates that are not opposition parties, that are not running for office.

Speaker 3 They're not necessarily calling for regime change.

Speaker 3 Many of them are very critical of sanctions, but they have tried to push for better changes, you know, quality of life, you know, reforms that might lead to less repression, open up more space for civil society.

Speaker 3 And, you know, those things are necessary when people are really living day by day.

Speaker 3 You know, and I think that if people on the left want to play the long game and understand, care about their prospects for the future, they need to understand that the Maduro regime is the worst model for them to be associated with.

Speaker 3 And this has already been taking place with campaigns, electoral campaigns around Latin America, where candidates on the right run against the boogeyman of Chavismo, of like a Maduro model.

Speaker 3 And it makes sense. And a lot of people on the left are very skeptical of Maria Corina Machado.
I have skepticism about some of her policy platforms of privatization and other neoliberal ideas.

Speaker 3 They also shouldn't be surprised if there's been a decade of people being told that this model of corruption, authoritarianism, state terror, criminal insecurity, that's what socialism is, then people are going to believe that.

Speaker 3 And then they're going to, then they're going to vote against whatever that is. And this model has provoked the greatest refugee crisis, certainly in the region, 8 million people.

Speaker 3 They're all carrying with them stories about why they left.

Speaker 3 And so if there ever were to be democratic elections in Venezuela, it's pretty clear the country would turn to the right. And I don't think we should be surprised by that.

Speaker 3 And I think we should also recognize that many of the things that Maluto embodies, these strongman politics, are things that are embodied by other strong men, not just on the left, too.

Speaker 3 I would just point out that, at least according to some, Trump has privately expressed a lot of admiration for Maluto. I read John Bolton's book, and the former national security advisor.

Speaker 3 Maybe he has a lot of reasons to lie, but he did say that Trump privately expressed a lot of admiration for Maluto being, in his words, too smart and too tough to be overthrown.

Speaker 3 You know, was really happy to see him surrounded by what he called all these good-looking generals. He disparaged Juan Guaido, calling him the beto O'Rourke of Venezuela.

Speaker 3 So I think that there's something to be said about strong men recognizing strong men. And a lot of these authoritarian lessons are not limited to one side of the ideological spectrum.

Speaker 2 Yeah, definitely. I find that tendency on the American left, on the sort of internet left, to be massively frustrating.

Speaker 2 Like as someone who went there to see the revolution, who like went there to understand it, and who spent masses of time with Venezuelan people in the Darien Gap, at the border in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm very fond of Venezuelan people. And I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, our solidarity should be with them, not with some strong man state. We saw this in Syria as well, right?

Speaker 2 Like it is heartbreaking, genuinely heartbreaking, to explain to people how someone who identifies as a leftist is also denying that their children were gassed by chemical weapons in Syria, right?

Speaker 2 This campus gray zone tendency on the American left specifically is incredibly toxic. And anybody who

Speaker 2 seriously considers themselves to be a leftist is massively undermining any credibility they have when they associate themselves with regimes which willingly murder their own people.

Speaker 2 I would like to see people stop doing that. Perhaps both of you could finish up by suggesting

Speaker 2 US coverage of this has not been great, right? Like it tends to focus on the United States very much. And Venezuela kind of appears as a monolithic entity.

Speaker 2 Trinidad and Tobago rarely gets any coverage in the US media. I did see, I think, Reuters or AP had done a piece about how fishermen are reluctant to go out.

Speaker 2 I would like to see more of that kind of reporting. Perhaps both of you could suggest a couple of sources where people could

Speaker 2 read about this.

Speaker 6 Sure, at least on my end, I suggest looking into our local news. Now, it's not the best source in terms of actual interrogation of the issues and the ways in which

Speaker 6 some of the narratives just kind of get repeated uncritically. But you do get at least the occasional interview, the occasional quote from a non-US State Department source.

Speaker 6 I would also suggest on Instagram, there are a couple of pages that bring a more radical, progressive voice from the Caribbean.

Speaker 6 There's a page called Vintage Caribbean, and there's another page called Trinbago for Palestine, and both of those have been doing a lot of coverage on this particular incident lately.

Speaker 6 So you can look to those as well if you want to get a sort of a grassroots take on the situation.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't really have any go-to sources on this. I would say that it's it's enough of an international incident that all the major news sources are covering it.

Speaker 3 So you can read really any news source in Latin America if you speak Spanish, Portuguese, and see how that reporting is different.

Speaker 3 Also, incidentally, El País in Spain, you know, Colonos on the side, they do pretty good reporting. Yeah.
And they've been doing pretty good reporting.

Speaker 3 And there's lots of blogs as well and, you know, newsletters that you can check out. I will say, just made this unbiased because I focus a lot on crime.

Speaker 3 The site, InSight Crime, is pretty good in terms of looking into specific criminal groups like Rein Deragua and calling to question if, you know, if this really is a, you know, it's something that is controlled by the puppet master from Yina Flores, you know, like Luduro, and some of these narratives that are justifying this.

Speaker 3 I would also, just as a recommendation, I would say, you know, maybe we should be a little bit skeptical too about the timing and the purposes of these things.

Speaker 3 I did point out in a piece that I wrote for the Center for International Policy that the first boat strike happened on the same day the House Judiciary Committee was releasing a redacted number of files related to the Jeopardy Epstein case.

Speaker 3 And I think that there are many reasons why this administration

Speaker 3 would like to use this confrontation as a convenient distraction from other things that they would rather not be talking about. Yeah.
Leak.

Speaker 3 I think it's probably a reasonable conclusion given where we're at.

Speaker 2 Where can people find both of you on, if they want to follow you online on social media or find more of your writing? We'll start with you, Andrew.

Speaker 6 Sure. Well, you can find me on my YouTube channel, youtube.com/slash andrew as home, or you can just go to my website for all my other links, andrewsage.org.

Speaker 2 How about you, Michael?

Speaker 3 I do have a website. You can look up my name, and that should come up.
I haven't updated it recently. I probably should.
I'm also on Twitter X, Blue Sky, as my name, M-P-A-A-R-L-B-E-R-G.

Speaker 3 So you can look me up there.

Speaker 2 Great. Thank you very much, Matthew.

Speaker 3 Save over $200 when you book weekly stays with Virbo this winter.

Speaker 1 If you haven't seen your college besties since, well, college.

Speaker 3 You need a week to catch up in a snowy cabin. Take a week-long vacation and save over $200.
Book now at Verbo.com.

Speaker 7 Time for a sofa upgrade. Introducing Anibay sofas, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.
Every Anibay sofa is modular, allowing you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 7 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 7 Liquids simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-and-feel or a a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 7 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price.
Visit washablefas.com to upgrade your living space today.

Speaker 7 Sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get early access to Black Friday now.
The biggest sale of the year can save you up to 60% off.

Speaker 7 Plus, free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washablesofas.com.
Offers are subject to to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 8 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 9 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 11 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 12 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 13 We got clear facts.

Speaker 14 Maybe we can calm down a little.

Speaker 16 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 17 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 16 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 15 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 23 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 5 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 29 Season Zero of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 30 Head over to globalgaming league.com.

Speaker 3 Welcome to Ichadapic Here, a podcast where union good and not everything that is called co-op is good.

Speaker 3 Sometimes they're not actually really co-ops.

Speaker 3 I am your host, Mia Wong, and today we are joined by the people struggling under the tyrannical fist of a co-op, a thing that shouldn't be possible, and yet somehow.

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 yeah so we are we're talking today with ez and finley who are booksellers at the seminary co-op in chicago and yeah we are welcoming the union back to the show and dear god what a disaster

Speaker 3 what a year it has been well it's really great to meet fam

Speaker 3 I wish we were back with slightly better news or more movement since we were last here, certainly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because when we last spoke, we had just sort of theatrically announced to our management that we were in organized shop with the IWW and we were going to be bargaining with them for better wages and humane working conditions for us all.

Speaker 3 And they were like, yeah, you're a union. We so recognize that.
And then they have sat on their hands ever since. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So let's roll back all the way to the beginning and explain a little bit about what the seminary co-op is for people who weren't here. How many years ago was that now?

Speaker 3 That was must have been last year. Yeah.
Yeah. It was a while ago.
I don't know. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So the seminary co-op is a set of two bookstores in Hyde Park.
The seminary co-op bookstore, which is a misnomer on two out of three counts. It's not a seminary anymore.

Speaker 3 It's not a co-op anymore. It is still a bookstore, although it is a not-for-profit bookstore, which is a mysterious category of business that doesn't exist anywhere else.

Speaker 3 Baffling. Yeah.
Briefly, just to interject.

Speaker 3 I do think when I would announce events and sort of give this exact breakdown for audiences, like I said, not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling, right?

Speaker 3 And when I was hired, like about three months before we announced we were unionizing, the way it was put to me was other not-for-profit bookstores, they do a lot with like family literacy or like specifically around women's issues.

Speaker 3 But that was just like acknowledgement of the reality that bookstores don't make a whole lot of money. And what we are providing as a not-for-profit bookstore is

Speaker 3 just the browsing experience. We kept books on shelves for too long.

Speaker 3 It just, it seemed like a like a really romantic idea of bookselling that didn't have like a whole lot of legs underneath it, so to speak.

Speaker 3 So it is nonsense, I would say. but that's me you should just be a library like i

Speaker 3 we have this it's called libraries say you're a really big bookstore just i don't know it's yeah it was vague yeah

Speaker 3 baffling baffling yes yeah and then i guess like yeah the second second part of it is like when they say it's a co-op what does that mean it means truly and as can speak to this more that it was founded by Chicago Theological Seminary students.

Speaker 3 And there was a reason for that. Yeah, like they did want to buy coursebooks at the um at the prices that retailers got them wholesale.

Speaker 3 And so the thought was, um, I forget their names, but um, we have the pictures of them. It was like A.
Kavanaugh or something.

Speaker 3 Um, but these two guys, uh, just, you know, if you were a student at Chicago Theological Seminary, um, or even like a student at one of the other divinity seminaries nearby, you just put an amount of money and you were part of like you got your coursebook cheaper, you know, and uh under like a specific manager who came like a couple decades after that, like then it really became like, this is the neighborhood bookstore.

Speaker 3 This is part of like, as they say, like the intellectual and sort of cultural life of the university.

Speaker 3 But yeah, at one point it was a cooperative because like you, you were a member and you got your coursebooks cheaper because you, you know, had a certain amount of shares in the books.

Speaker 3 But yeah, it was a think smarter, not harder kind of scheme. And then when they dissolved the like ownership shares and stopped being a co-op, that was 2019 when they organized as this not-for-profit.

Speaker 3 It's not a 501c3. They don't have non-profit status.
It's this slightly different thing.

Speaker 3 And so one of the one things that has happened in the past year is we had an interim director who got us like basically a non-profit sponsor who lends its 501c3 status to other organizations and allows you to take tax deductible donations.

Speaker 3 But like up to that point, we couldn't do that because we were not a legitimate non-profit. We were this other thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So since 2019, it's been that. And then since 2024, it's been that plus Chicago's standalone unionized bookstore.
For now, we're hoping that others follow. Inshallah, they will.
Yes.

Speaker 3 I feel like it is not a great sign of your business. being well run when you are you are doing a thing that like

Speaker 3 rookie activist campaigns do when they're like oh shit we got a bunch of money we need to borrow someone else's 501c3 status like yeah

Speaker 3 great great job management like

Speaker 3 incredible stuff

Speaker 3 and like for me part of what's been so like just mind-boggling is like they the not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is book selling does sort of give this you know um if we're like a 501c3 who often doesn't they don't turn a profit or they do they reinvest it back into the operations they're doing but like part of and we can talk more about this as we get into like the bargaining, but like, store financials have been so obscured.

Speaker 3 And I hate from like, truly, truly hate from a linguistic standpoint, just sort of the subtle, like, oh, we must not be doing well.

Speaker 3 Because to me, that feels like the rhetoric that really justifies the fact that I'm paid $16.90 an hour and I have a master's of divinity from the seminary of the seminary co-op. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, and I think it's also worth noting that, like, even from the perspective of capital, like, all of the giant tech companies didn't make money for like decades.

Speaker 3 And all those motherfuckers were walking off with like a hundred million dollar payouts, you know, like they only ever started making money when they started like reeling in a bunch of government contracts for like web services and like defense contracts and shit.

Speaker 3 And it's like, I don't know, like this is, this is, I guess, on topic, but it's just something that makes you really mad where people talk about like.

Speaker 3 Running the government like a business and then like, you know, you get like the post office where it's like, oh, the post office doesn't run a profit.

Speaker 3 It's like, do you know doesn't run a fucking profit. Uber literally has never run a profit ever.
Not once.

Speaker 3 Not once. Right.
Like, it's like, no, like, like, I'm sorry. Welcome, welcome to, welcome, welcome to fucking 2025 capitalism.
Like, companies don't make profits.

Speaker 3 They either get contacts from the government or their entire existence is either conning some venture capitalist dipshits out of all of their money or it's like

Speaker 3 Peter Thiel has decided that your like surveillance camera company is ideologically important to him taking over the world, so he's going to give you one billion dollars.

Speaker 3 And it's like, oh no, I'm sorry, like our financials aren't good enough for you to pay you. It's like, motherfucker, like, have you seen the rest of capitalism? Like, eat shit, pay your workers.

Speaker 3 Like, yeah, oh, yeah. God damn it.
Well, we keep using that one meme over and over that is true. Like, we're trying to balance the budget.
It's the drill, the candles. Drill, thank you.

Speaker 3 Oh, the candles. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 our management is so infuriating. And they also, in the year since we've been bargaining, had an interim director and spent most of his tenure searching for an executive director to take over.

Speaker 3 That person is being paid $160,000 a year to our knowledge. Jesus Christ.
And that's the offer that we know of.

Speaker 3 We have yet to get his contract, even though we did make a formal information request for it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Which is fucked. And it's also like, yeah, like every time these companies are like, oh, we don't have money.
And it's like, okay,

Speaker 3 I can find like an unbelievable amount of money that you have given to someone to like to give a random, nonspecific example that has nothing to do with any company that is in any way related to this show.

Speaker 3 Alive or dead

Speaker 3 by a board ape yacht club NFT.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 this is like, they spent $300

Speaker 3 on Google Home Speakers for 57th Street Books. And I'm like, wow, my having that $300 would change my life.

Speaker 3 But also, like, you're paying that union busting lawyer thousands of dollars that you could be paying workers. Yep.
But that's, that's capitalism.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they have enough money to make your lives miserable, but they apparently never have enough money to, you know, like make your lives not miserable because they have to spend that money on making your lives miserable.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's so intentional because making us miserable means that they are wearing down the number of people that they have to deal with and making the people who are left so tired and so frustrated and so much less capable of fighting them.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And that feels like just,

Speaker 3 you know, things leaving.

Speaker 3 We've also had a number of folks like our bargaining unit, like last time y'all spoke last year was like 25 people now we're down to 11 and it's they've refused to hire anybody part-time or full-time yeah of course because but they've been giving seasonal workers sort of like extra hours and that is someone's got to start counting they have like if unless they work for 90 days they don't have to and because they're seasonal you know yada yada they don't really join our union is kind of what i understand why they

Speaker 3 are not considered eligible but it's like the booksellers are the heart of the store.

Speaker 3 The classification of seasonal workers and particularly of event runners has been a point of contention throughout negotiations this whole time, because obviously, from our perspective, we want anyone who's working in the store in any capacity to be involved in the union.

Speaker 3 We want them to not have this random scab force that they can deploy at will. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And that. has always been the point that gets revisited over and over again.
Just when we think we've gotten them locked into being union members, they'll come back with their latest count.

Speaker 3 And that's like, actually, I think because of X, Y, and D Z that we just changed, they're no longer eligible to join your union.

Speaker 3 But they did just hire, I think, three people that they were training at 57th Street last week, but they've made no formal announcement to anyone that these people have been hired. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I only know that they were like in the stores because one of them came to the co-op by mistake instead of 57th Street and was like, oh, I'm one of the new hires.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 3 And so it's unclear if those are the seasonal workers or if those are new hires.

Speaker 3 Those are, I'll say, the most recent member, like part-time, full-time member of our staff, who's not me, none of us knew she was hired. And she just came up, took a book right off my cart.

Speaker 3 And I was like, bitch, what? But

Speaker 3 she, but those, those were event, those were the seasonal workers at the store the other day. Like I worked one of the Chicago humanities events with them.

Speaker 3 And it is like, yeah, then they just changed the qualification of who can be in the union yeah

Speaker 3 it's been very intentional and it's been just like over and over they revisit and reclassify and whittle us down

Speaker 3 yeah we've done um i think two since you last spoke uh like a couple of work stoppages and then picketed outside of our store as well um but that i don't know in terms of like sort of regressive bargaining through attrition that we're seeing and that like they refuse to hire other people, even though they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot.

Speaker 3 But just like our direct action has, I think, worked against what they're thinking, which is that we're tired and that we're not going to fight back and that we are overwhelmed and we don't know what we're doing.

Speaker 3 But there are a lot of folks who do have, you know, experience with these sort of direct actions, like a work stoppage.

Speaker 3 And I think it's great that we're wobblies, but also like, I do kind of like on the work stoppage, how flustered and upset, not like upset, but just how flustered and yeah, just awkward management feels.

Speaker 3 It's, it's empowering for me. Um,

Speaker 3 yeah, but it's very much on purpose. Well, and I think that's one of the things that it's

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 just like a campaign in the broad sense of continuing direct actions during negotiations is it is that chance to connect with your coworkers and re-solidify that you're fighting for something intentional in the face of the fact that you will probably start being scheduled more sparsely.

Speaker 3 You will have fewer opportunities during the workday to talk to people. And like, that's just stuff that's going to happen while negotiations go on.

Speaker 3 But like making sure that you stay in touch with your union as best you can and like show up for all the direct things that you can helps you internally combat that, which is really helpful.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I mean, like, you know, like, that's something we ran into organizing here was we spent like, God, I think it was two years bargaining for our contract and they didn't have the capacity to literally force half the workforce to quit but like whoa don't worry they don't have the capacity to lose this many people these are falling

Speaker 3 and they are fooling how few people they have yep this whole thing is a it's just like a really really common managerial tactic yeah which is just like we're gonna make everything unlivable and try to get as many people as we can to quit and then just make everyone else's lives a living hell which is like this is

Speaker 3 i i think i've said this before but it's it's like the the extent to which the strategy is just the the deliberate infliction of terror

Speaker 3 yeah well and the strategy is just tank your business which seems like incredibly counterintuitive from their perspective

Speaker 3 and like i there have been events where like it's been a book about like karl marx labor organizing whether it's a history or like a like sociology book and folks are like i waited to buy this book here because it's the union bookstore and like there is a way that us being a union bookstore could look given like that folks on our board are really progressive people like Adam Gedichu, like state senator Robert Peters, who's like running on a pretty pro-labor background.

Speaker 3 Like us being unionized could be like, we are already a tourist bookstore. Like folks come from everywhere.
And they're like, this is such a famous bookstore.

Speaker 3 But like, it does baffle me.

Speaker 3 It does make sense that it's a common tactic, but also there's so much that could work in their favor if they were not just like so committed to busting this union wait hold on sidebar eta grit

Speaker 3 she was my professor yeah i talked to her today wait she's just part of the management team now no no no there's okay so this is part of is this like a different thing okay sorry sorry this is okay no no no this is this is where like us being a not-for-profit bookstore but not actually like having any legal standing as a not-for-profit gets a little confusing and like finn you can probably speak more to how this has come up in the bargaining meeting but when we i don't know if this was around before the cooperative was dissolved and shares were basically like worthless at that point.

Speaker 3 But there is a board of directors, one of whom like is very, very famous, and at least among the folks I know, for effectively union busting employees at Experimental Station on 61st and Blackstone when they try to unionize, right?

Speaker 3 Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 3 And also.

Speaker 3 There are so many like Hyde Park progressives like RJP, like Adam Gedichu, Eve Ewing as well.

Speaker 3 And these are people I really respect, but like, because there's like this four cabinet, I think, of folks who have been in and out of bargaining meetings,

Speaker 3 when we've had employees at other labor unions who do have a connection to, like, for example, Robert Peters, it is very clear that like this governing board, which does govern, they have terms, but we're also a retail outfit.

Speaker 3 You know, usually like a not-for-profit, the board of a not-for-profit would be helping with like an annual fundraising campaign.

Speaker 3 It's unclear entirely what the board does in a retail outfit, other than, at least in my experience, like giving advice, writing emails to try to bust this union.

Speaker 3 You know, before we unionized, albeit I had a very short tenure before we had unionized, none of these people, none of their names matter to me, but because like there's so much confusion about is management going to be representing folks in the bargaining meeting or is it going to be a board member representative?

Speaker 3 And just who is accountable to disclose what financial information and when or just any information and when. Like,

Speaker 3 Adam Yedichu is not one of our bosses, but like, there is just a lot of confusion that I feel about what the board is responsible for in bargaining and

Speaker 3 what management feels they're responsible for. And I can clear up a little bit of that

Speaker 3 because what we were told when we first unionized and when the management team was kind of shifting and reorganizing itself around the board was the board is there primarily to advise and supervise and hire the executive director for the stores.

Speaker 3 And so there is a financial contribution, like they're all significant donors. That's part of the way that they secure their seats is making a large donation to the stores.

Speaker 3 But then at least according to them, From that point forward, they have no

Speaker 3 managerial oversight over the operations of the store whatsoever. It is not their responsibility.
They don't make any decisions about the budget. They don't get involved.

Speaker 3 They don't want to be involved.

Speaker 3 And they were embarrassed by having this attitude when previous management went off the rails and nearly drove the store into the ground by buying stock on credit cards.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it's a whole thing that we do not have to push into.

Speaker 3 But that's what's in the store.

Speaker 3 This is bonkers.

Speaker 3 yeah oh yeah that is to say that somehow that experience did not act as a wake-up call for this board of directors and they said what we will do is hire the next white man we can find and take our hands back off the wheel jesus christ is this an institution that people like it would be helpful to put pressure on or

Speaker 3 that's what it's hard to say

Speaker 3 Because there's this, and I think I talked about it the last time we were on the podcast, but there's this responsibility carousel between management who will in a bargaining session.

Speaker 3 Because the other thing is, because we can't tell how involved the board is, because they tell us that they're not involved at all, and then they make decisions, and we hear about the decisions that they're making.

Speaker 3 We have asked repeatedly that they be involved in bargaining and that they send someone to represent them, or they like participate and have an opinion on the way that the stores are run.

Speaker 3 And they have repeatedly refused those invitations, requests, demands, etc. Yeah.
It seems their involvement has been to recommend that our management hire Jenny Goltz to be their lawyer.

Speaker 3 And that is about as much as they want to do. Jesus Christ.
Like two things too, Finn.

Speaker 3 I think there was supposed to be a board member present at the next bargaining meeting, but because our meeting was contingent on having the full financial information that we requested literally a month ago.

Speaker 3 And when we requested that information, the next day a board member, the president of the board said, okay, we'll get this to you.

Speaker 3 We got it. I think you might know more about the timing of this, Finn, like at the last possible minute.
We got it the day before the meeting. Oh my gosh.
Yeah. And it was half of what we asked for.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And then when we said, this is not what we requested, and we cannot meet because we said we couldn't eat without this full information.
They were like, we're disappointed that you can't do that.

Speaker 3 And we were like, yeah, shocking.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We are back.

Speaker 3 Let's get more formally into

Speaker 3 what the bargaining process has looked like. It sounds like it's been extremely chaotic.
They've been not turning over information.

Speaker 3 It's deeply unclear who's making decisions, which all seem, and I say this is my professional opinion, not good.

Speaker 3 It's a technical analysis. Life assessment.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 This is why they pay me the mediocre bucks. Wow.
I think you are so well informed. Yes.

Speaker 3 Journalistic insight. Yeah.
So

Speaker 3 the way that we set it up on our end when we entered into negotiations was we had a core team of three people who were going to be our like core bargaining unit who would attend every meeting.

Speaker 3 And then we had a small team of like three more people, including myself, that were like alternates in case something got scheduled on a day that one of the core team couldn't be there.

Speaker 3 And we made sure that we would always schedule one person who was not negotiating to be at the meeting and take notes so that like none of the people who were negotiating had to do that at the same time.

Speaker 3 And when we first started negotiating, the management team was sending Dan Meyer, the interim director, and Naeem Kano, who's our deputy director, who is basically the like one person on the management team who is not,

Speaker 3 she's not supposed to be a direct supervisor.

Speaker 3 She has not actually let go of the people that she was supervising, but she's like in that middle space between like supervising management and like director management.

Speaker 3 But she has since stepped down from negotiations because of the way that she's been involved in the rest of SOR operations. She was like, I can't come to the table anymore.

Speaker 3 And so the latest meeting that has been rescheduled is going to be with Kevin Bendel, who's the new executive director.

Speaker 3 And then one other name that I forget, who is either a board member as thanks, or I'm not sure well, she would be.

Speaker 3 But it is, it is a board member. I think it it is Tira Goldstein, is her name.
Tiara Goldstein. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Every so often in negotiating sessions, Dan or Naid would make some reference to like a financial decision that we were trying to bargain about being like not their choice and being something that would be up to the board.

Speaker 3 And we'd be like, so take it to the board. And they would be like, okay.
And then we would never hear anything about it ever again.

Speaker 3 Incredible, incredible work. Seems like a great tactic to never address anything you're supposed to be addressing.

Speaker 3 And so the way that we were negotiating, we were trying to come to terms on things that didn't affect the finances of the store first so that we could land some easy wins and like feel like we were making progress and then address the stuff that we expected to be thornier later.

Speaker 3 But then what that ended up being as meetings went on and on was them asking asking us constantly like but what is it that you guys really are like prioritizing like what is the thing that matters the most to you that like you have the least give on and we're like it's wages you know it's wages it's been wages this whole time and they're like but like what if we were like asking you to give up all your benefits to get wages that you want and we were like okay that's not how negotiating works

Speaker 3 And then in an email that labeled it their best and final offer, which is language that they have yet to take back, they sent us a version of the contract bargaining agreement that we, A, let me just back up for a second.

Speaker 3 When we first started negotiating, they asked us to draft the entire first draft of the collective bargaining agreement ourselves. What? Which is incredibly non-standard.

Speaker 3 And we were like, that's fine because that gives us a leg up in terms of like setting the initial terms. I guess we'll do it.
But like, yeah, incredibly non-standard, super stupid.

Speaker 3 Not a thing that we should have have had to do. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I've never heard of that before.

Speaker 3 But so when we drafted it, we drafted a three-year term collective bargaining agreement with a bunch of stuff about procedure and wages and benefits that we wanted done.

Speaker 3 And so zooming back forward to that best and final offer, suddenly the draft that they've sent us back of the collective bargaining agreement is a two-year term.

Speaker 3 And up to this point, all of the offers that had gotten anything close to our ask on wages were in year three. And everything in year one and two was still like 25 cent, 50 cent increases.

Speaker 3 And so suddenly year three, which was always the only year that made any improvements for us, is gone. And you did not improve any other parts of the contract to make up for that unilateral decision.

Speaker 3 So that's just regressive bargaining. Yeah.
It is. It is.

Speaker 3 Which, by the way, okay, do you want to explain to our dear listeners what regressive bargaining is and why you're not allowed to do it?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Regressive bargaining is a dirty negotiation tactic where one side, without making any sort of give and take concessions like they should to balance a big move, just unilaterally decides to change.

Speaker 3 a term, especially a large term like wages, contract term, etc.

Speaker 3 And so it is taking something that has been tentatively agreed upon and like in good faith taken as a part of the contract that will stand and axing it

Speaker 3 yeah and you are not allowed to do this

Speaker 3 this is this is under the under the terms under the terms of the national labor relations act which you know who knows but by the time this episode goes out there is a small chance it won't exist anymore a bunch of provisions of it are under attack right now

Speaker 3 but like that is

Speaker 3 like.

Speaker 3 We have two unfair labor practices filed with the NLRB

Speaker 3 since the terms of negotiation have been in effect.

Speaker 3 And they are not, in fact, progressive bargaining charges, but issues of status quo, where they're trying to change the way that they do scheduling, change the way that they do like abstinence discipline, which are topics that are covered in bargaining and should only be changed in bargaining while bargaining is active.

Speaker 3 But they're trying to change them and then say that these have been the policies all along and so

Speaker 3 god literally gaslighting yeah

Speaker 3 like actual actual straight up you could pick up the gat the psycholog the psychology textbook point to it like oh yeah just pick up that whole lamp and we have their their words in writing of every step of the way where you can see the language change and be like, no, you are the person who said before that it was this other thing that was you.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 we filed unfair labor practice about those things.

Speaker 3 And you can, in fact, not track them anymore because since the government shut down, you can find a little PDF that explains that all ULPs are going to be pending indefinitely.

Speaker 3 And that is all you can find. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's also fun because Trump illegally fired. one of the Democratic people on it.
So they don't have a quorum anymore on the board of the National Labor Relations Board.

Speaker 3 They don't have a quorum anymore, which is a shit show.

Speaker 3 And making any NLRB, like attempt to get anything done through the NLRB really annoying. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think the direct action has been helpful where like just that reality would just, I think just, it would drive me crazy. I mean, it is, it is gaslighting.
This is traumatizing.

Speaker 3 If a boyfriend does it to you, it's a red flag. But when your boss does it to you, you know, it's like.

Speaker 3 Yeah. The public's fine with it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's the cost of business.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It is just the continuous non-stop onslaught of regressive marketing tactics that like yeah from the minute we started despite the fact that like i was sitting next to the director when we said we're unionizing it was a like a split second before she said yep we recognize it and so our our direct action at the workstoppage i remember our first workstop if you sat for half an hour management was very cool with that the second time we did it we did it for an hour we should have done our homework better because we didn't know that you can't like just like leaflet on store property because use chicago as our landlord i'm kind of like like

Speaker 3 store property um but i i put on my clerical collar i put on a t-shirt that had like give unto caesar what is caesar's and also like a little footnote about you know run me my money you know um there's a more obvious instruction from jesus out of luke that's like pay the worker their wages but um i was wearing my clerical i set up the pa and i and i was loud there was a hyde park herald reporter who you know took my comment who uh i remember him walking over to naeen and i think asking her for her comment.

Speaker 3 Um, I had a Bluetooth speaker that was Dan's, right? Um, playing never fight a man with a perm by idols. And I will not forget, I will not forget the way our the deputy director approached me.

Speaker 3 She was like, Okay, this is fine. This is all fine.
I just want to let you know this is fine, but can you please turn the music off?

Speaker 3 Um, and it took me about 20 minutes to just turn the buttons down slowly. But, um, like that,

Speaker 3 we were reprimanded. Yeah, we got a very, very angry email the next day

Speaker 3 illustrating what the consequences would be if we tried to do a similar action again in that manner and so we picketed outside their store that was the next direct action that we did but like i do think our most impactful direct actions have been the ones that have been noisy that have been incredibly visible yeah when we picketed last it was on the first day of classes we sell um like a lot of core uh core course books for the college at the university and so there were students like that we were like, hey, do you have the bookseller who sold you that book to have a living wage?

Speaker 3 And students like 19 year olds are so outraged by the amount of money I make as a grown person.

Speaker 3 I heard so much eat the rich that day from Zelennials. Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 But it's, it is clear that when the public is made aware of what's happening at a store that a lot of people love just so much, like it is a part of the community.

Speaker 3 And I think so much a part of people's, and even like my own before I worked there, our experience of being in this like tight-knit bizarre community um yeah and folks are upset like they and i think rightfully so and that's just i i think really the beauty of direct action is not just that it empowers us but it really just like in a sort of spectacle way says this is what this is what they're doing you want a place that you love to run this way and to treat people like this yeah so And I think they're really effective for that reason, especially because people are really

Speaker 3 like on our side when they talk to us, but they're also really surprised because like part of the instant recognition thing, part of the being cool with us having union buttons on the register, part of all of that is the fact that management is benefiting from the illusion that they're on good terms with us.

Speaker 3 And so like one of the reasons that we held that picket was to be like, hey, just because they are not stopping us does not mean they have done anything to improve the material conditions that we have been organizing around this whole time.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, and also to be incredibly clear about this, like

Speaker 3 it's so obvious it has to actually directly be stated, which is that all of the things they are doing are union busting tactics because their strategy here is to do a recognition and then go for the second place where unions most commonly collapse, which is once you're recognized as a bargaining unit, the second place they fail is getting the first contract.

Speaker 3 And that's what they're really obviously trying to do.

Speaker 3 And yeah, the fact that people don't understand that they're just running a thing that, like,

Speaker 3 I'm trying to think of how to even describe it. It was like, like, that bookstore was like, like, it was treated as like something that was as an institution that was like part of the university.

Speaker 3 That's like the way it was like treated culturally: this is like our thing, and these people are running it into the ground because they don't want to pay their workers like enough money to survive.

Speaker 3 It's just hideous.

Speaker 3 And that's really all it it comes down to when you look at what the facts on the ground are is the decisions that they are making are directly tied to the fact that they feel like they have no money, which is directly to the fact that they are paying the executive director too much, which is directly tied to the fact that they want to have an excuse to not pay us anything.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
It's like, oh, wow, we don't have enough money because we're spending like $160,000 on an executive director.

Speaker 3 Have you considered you can simply eliminate this entire expense by turning this into an actual co-op you could do it in like one day and you suddenly would not have the administration expenses because those people wouldn't be there you could do this really easily

Speaker 3 well and as the like movement in and out of that position over the past year demonstrates it has no effect on the operations of the bookstore the thing that has any effect on the operations of the bookstore is the fact that seven people have left not been replaced and all of their work has been redistributed across like increasingly siloed positions to the people who are left so that you have no help on your particular assigned task that is now yours and yours alone, and you just feel terrible in your little hole by yourself.

Speaker 3 Yeah, which this is something like, I know for a fact that like multiple people on that board know what a speed up is. Like, that's that's a speed up.
I know for a fact that you know what this is.

Speaker 3 and most of them who know what it is have written against them

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 just kind of like expanding a bit larger the um the staff at the museum of science and industry has also unionized um and they were outside of their store you know threatening to strike um and so like i loved on the picket line like i had a sign that said fire jenny and i went to explain to the you yeah i went to explain to the ue employee who jenny was um the ue employee who worked at the graduate students united at you chicago and And she went, oh, I know who Jenny is.

Speaker 3 And that's, I don't know, just,

Speaker 3 it's sick that like somebody can make their living making my life worse. But A, that's, that's capitalism.

Speaker 3 And also B, like I, she has been involved, that lawyer, and like a number of, like she busting you, trying to bust unions at U Chicago unsuccessfully.

Speaker 3 And also representing Northwestern in a case where one of their employees accused them of sexual harassment and discrimination, you know? So it's like,

Speaker 3 you're, you're really,

Speaker 3 this is the, the person that you're working with. This is the tool that you're using, you know? This is who you would rather pay.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's also, it's like, that, that, that's the thing where this, this whole metaphor of like the boss acting as an abusive partner is suddenly getting very literal in terms of who they're, who the people that they are employing do for their other shit, which is defending those people.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's almost like there's a structural connection between management and patriarchy. Wow, who could possibly, who could possibly have done this? Between systems of abuse.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, who could possibly have written about this? Checks notes, looks at the books that were written by the members of the board. Yeah.
Like, yeah. I'm so mad about this.

Speaker 3 Like, Will Making After Empire is really good.

Speaker 3 It is. Yeah.
And I, like, I don't know how much I can like hold those individual board members responsible when it seems like so many of them are like just now finding out about it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's some abuse 101 is to make sure that the person that you are exploiting, that you are, you know, taking advantage of, that they don't feel like they can say to people who could help them, this is what's happening to me.

Speaker 3 And that like the people who would be sympathetic could, you know, go and take the initiative to help folks. And I'm grateful that.

Speaker 3 We have a meeting with Robert Peters coming up soon.

Speaker 3 It was supposed to happen. It has not yet.
And I appreciate how dedicated he is and his staff is to making sure that our union sits down and talks with him. But it is also like...

Speaker 3 There's a deep irony for him accepting an award from another union and rescheduling a meeting with ours to do it. No, no, no, no, no.
It's because we have Jacob. I always say it incorrectly.
Asks me.

Speaker 3 Asks me. Yeah.
Yeah. The big end.
But that's also like. part of the other great community support.

Speaker 3 Like I mentioned that UE employee, but you know, there are other union employees who just because they love the bookstore so much will show up to every outreach event that we have.

Speaker 3 He was one of the first people to have a yard sign. And it's funny, he lives right next to this guy from my church who also has a window sign.
And that's how I found out they were neighbors.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really cute. But like,

Speaker 3 I'm proud that we're Wobblies because there is.

Speaker 3 a really long tradition of, you know, being in Chicago, a lot of radical organizing that I think fits our spirit and also like the seminary co-op spirit.

Speaker 3 It has been hard that we don't have a lot of resources towards bargaining. Yeah.
But like, we're good at direct action. And we also have, I'll give the Ask Me Award.

Speaker 3 I'll give it a pass because Jacob's been so, and other community members have been so helpful in just giving their time and their skills and their expertise. So, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 The MSI union, the grad students' union in particular, have been incredible allies to us and have been, they were huge like presences on our picket because like, because we did an open store running picket, we had only about half of our actual union members available because everyone else had to be on desks in the stores keeping them running and so the majority of the people who were like collecting signatures to get jenny goltz fired and otherwise improve our warden conditions were people from other unions who were just out there being yeah wonderful awesome solidarity with us yeah so my first picket line i may i think i may have said this last episode but My first picket line ever was the grad student picket line in 2019.

Speaker 3 That was the first time I was ever on a picket and it rocked.

Speaker 3 And yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it makes me really happy to see that the whole base of sort of union organizing from that has like, you know, it's this thing that like I remember when this was like, you know, like I was there in like one of the big pushes and everyone, they finally won.

Speaker 3 And it's like, they're still around helping people because workers, workers fucking fight together.

Speaker 3 And well, and then they'll always be like, hey, one thing that we know about Jenny Gals is she likes to lose. And we're like, thank you.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Finn, it's not that she likes to use the quote is she's very good at losing, which that's true.

Speaker 3 Even better, even better.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And like what you were saying about GSU, I don't remember what, I think like 2008, 2007 was like when they said we started organizing for unionizing the graduate students.

Speaker 3 I had a roommate who was like a 12-year PhD student who was around when that shit started.

Speaker 3 Yep, yep, yep. You can just count hanging out with your wife in Australia as a field research, I guess.

Speaker 3 But love this. Love this.
Well, she's just doing postdocs. You're just hanging out.
But

Speaker 3 we had a baby yesterday. Anyway,

Speaker 3 yeah, like I, I was around. He came back to finish his PhD

Speaker 3 like about the time, like when the contract was ratified. And I just with, what is it, 16, 17 months of bargaining, no contract.

Speaker 3 In the name of my blessed Lord Jesus Christ, like Jesus Christ, GSU has had, like, has such a wealth of knowledge because they've been through just like heaps of bullshit. And it's

Speaker 3 years. It's like, okay, I, I want to, I won't like the fucking GSU thing.
They had a whole thing.

Speaker 3 When I was there, like, in like 2019, the whole, the whole thing was that, and like, Jenny, this is like one of the most admirable things I've ever seen a union do, which was they refused to take their

Speaker 3 case because the university was refusing to recognize them.

Speaker 3 And they refused to take their case to the NLRB because they knew that if they did it there was there was a pretty good chance that the old trump nlrb was going to like bust every single graduate school union in the country so instead of trying to win for themselves they didn't do it and just like fought on picket lines instead and it

Speaker 3 rocked it was

Speaker 3 like that's radis they're they're they they rock they're they're great like yeah yeah shout out shout out shout outs to gsu yeah shout out to gsu well and they are a great great great example to us all in terms of like how to persist on a fight through attrition.

Speaker 3 Because one of the things that like

Speaker 3 you try so hard as a management team to do is just wait until everyone gets tired and leaves.

Speaker 3 And like, it seems like grad students would be the perfect population to just wait out because they rotate out constantly. But like.

Speaker 3 just the way that they have managed to maintain energy through generations and generations of organizers and get it over the line at long last is so encouraging.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 There's a thing I remember from, I think the last place I read into it was like one of Mike Duncan's things about the French Revolution.

Speaker 3 But like one of the things he talked about was like the ways in which part of what caused the French Revolution was that like they spent a whole bunch of time teaching all of these kids these like incredibly radical Enlightenment ideas.

Speaker 3 And then they were like, Wait, we live in like the most absolute monarchy that has ever existed. What the fuck?

Speaker 3 We hate this.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Like, wait, hold on.
And it's like, there is obviously always sort of contradictions between like the

Speaker 3 number of people I have seen write books about labor resistance and then like go bust unions is pretty large.

Speaker 3 But there's a reason why everyone from like

Speaker 3 Pinot Shea through like the Trump administration, I mean, back through like the original Nazis, it's like one of the first places, you know, I mean, like the Greek riot police had this thing where it was like the first place you go when there's discontent is like, you must stop the workers from allying with the students.

Speaker 3 Like, you must do this or you're fucked.

Speaker 3 Yeah. But the workers and the students love each other.
They're all kissing.

Speaker 3 And we're the same person sometimes, you know? Yeah. So often.

Speaker 3 Yep, yep, yep. Give all my comrades a kiss on the forehead.
Yep. Aw.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And I think like, that is, I think, like the positive element of all of this is like the way that one campaign winning can transform the lives of everyone else around you is

Speaker 3 so astonishing. And I've seen it happen in so many places where like one shop wins and suddenly everyone else is like, It could be us.
Could be us. Yes.
It's possible. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, and I think that we're trying to capitalize on that and trying to make sure that we can be the next person to like capitalize on GSU's win and help MSI do the same.

Speaker 3 But like, as much as we have

Speaker 3 really

Speaker 3 suffered from the at the table bargaining negotiating process and been really sort of beaten down.

Speaker 3 in the past year on that battleground, I think we have learned so much about the allies that surround us and the people who like want to do more than just email our board members.

Speaker 3 And we're like, we don't know what else you can do because we don't know who makes these decisions for you to yell at.

Speaker 3 But we have so many people who have like signed up for an email list with us, so many people who are like ready to go as soon as we figure out what we need them to do. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And that's been really encouraging and bolstering while management continues to like just not acknowledge us when they feel two cornered.

Speaker 3 Like they simply never spoke of the picket because it happened outside. And so they couldn't be mad about it.
So they didn't have to tell us off about it, but they also just didn't speak of it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 This is, Chicago is a motherfucking union town.

Speaker 3 And that's what, yeah, I'll admit, I'm angry when I go into work. They don't care enough to get the mold and the dust remediated, you know, and the ducts.

Speaker 3 And I can't really breathe when I go into work um and i also don't have health insurance right oh my god

Speaker 3 well i do have health insurance but i have to pay for like you know i have to pay for my own premiums for a marketplace thing yeah um and that's that it's not really affordable and um yeah like as as as frustrated as i am like coming into work it is it's the people you know and i think that's for a lot of folks who have stayed at the bookstore.

Speaker 3 I don't know how much you relate to this, Finn.

Speaker 3 Like it has been like other booksellers, the folks that we've gotten to know through the community who like who do make a difference, at least for me, in whether or not I stay.

Speaker 3 Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
This is a good fight. The union crew that we have is a incredibly worthwhile team to be on.
It is a group of people that I feel very solid standing shoulder to shoulder with.

Speaker 3 I think that is like without question, one of the things that like. keeps the stores a place that you can work, even if it's not a good place to work right now.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And honestly, I think that would have sustained me a lot longer if my compute were different, you know?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wait, okay, sorry.

Speaker 3 Could we roll back to the part where you can't breathe because there's, I feel like, because there's mold, I feel like you just dropped that very quickly.

Speaker 3 It was like, oh yeah, that's like a normal part of the work. What the fuck?

Speaker 3 Well, so for a very long time, you've been allowed to request that you only work at the co-op because there is a known mold problem at 57th Street that they can't afford to or can't get the landlord to ameliorate.

Speaker 3 But there is also, at least in our long experience,

Speaker 3 some sort of growth issue in the venting at the seminary co-op.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's very dusty at least. And like I, when I wear like it, like a KN95 for a little bit, like that

Speaker 3 helps a little. I take like five Benadryl usually.
And then that

Speaker 3 kind of, that kind of helps. And that's more just, I think, like, I mean, not more.
That is in part like my own health.

Speaker 3 But if I had the resources to be able to take care of my health and get what I need, maybe I could withstand the mold and the dust and the ducks a little bit easier. But like that.

Speaker 3 Well, but also like, like as an employer, it is your responsibility to not have your workplace poison your employees. Like, I'm sorry.
Like. That part.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then also make them pay for the medical care to treat medical problems that they're having because you poisoned them with mold. Like, what? That's.
yeah. What?

Speaker 3 Jesus Christ. It's so evil.

Speaker 3 Well, and we had a couple of clauses in our first draft of the collective bargaining agreement that included demands regarding mold remediation at 57th Street.

Speaker 3 And I do believe those clauses have been struck in subsequent rounds.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, I guess that's a thing that you could ask people to do, which is go ask people to complain about the f ⁇ ing mold.

Speaker 3 Like, it seems like a thing you could do yeah it's that might be a worth another direct action i also notice like people in the store like they cough when they enter yeah you know and like oh gosh this is where the like the snake eats its own tail the wheel turns inside the wheel right because like maybe like if i'm giving them good faith benefit of the doubt management would have if they weren't overloaded with so many tasks that they have to take on you know sort of more supervisory management um if y'all didn't have to do do all these tasks maybe you would have time to if there are more people hired in the bargaining unit perhaps you could yourself have more time to improve the conditions for the store not just for your workers but also for the people who enter the stores but because you don't hire new workers until there's a contract you are just so overworked and you can't and it's just like this this turns until um the boss decides that it doesn't and it's like this this is their responsibility to to bargain in good faith and to treat their workers correctly like this is an active decision that they could make that they are not making.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 yeah. I gotta say that that might be the single wildest thing I've ever heard like an hour into an interview is, oh yeah, they're poisoning us.
What?

Speaker 3 And then the mold, the mold, just the mold.

Speaker 3 And just also proof that this is the craziest place to work because like that doesn't even land on our radar anymore because we've been just like banging our head against walls for a year. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, I keep going back to the abusive relationship metaphor, but like that is one of the big things about abusive relationships is that because of the information control and because of the way that your world gets condensed down into a really, really tiny, narrow set of experiences where you're isolated and you're only interacting with like

Speaker 3 one person who is controlling everything about your life.

Speaker 3 it becomes really difficult to see things that are very, very obviously wrong the moment you step out of it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I don't know, maybe it turns out having absolute hierarchical relationships with control is an extremely bad way to run literally anything, especially the thing that your livelihood depends on that you do most of your time.

Speaker 3 Just a thought. Wow.

Speaker 3 Well, and it also just like means that you are too busy to actually

Speaker 3 interface in any meaningful way with your workers. Like,

Speaker 3 if I tell you that it took me two-thirds of the day to schedule a 15-minute conversation with any of four managers who were on site to quit, quit.

Speaker 4 I would not be lying.

Speaker 3 Jesus Christ. They can't even take your resignation.

Speaker 3 They at one point tried to reschedule that conversation, which I was attempting to have on Friday to Monday. And I was like, I think you want to know this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's like, managers,

Speaker 3 you two are getting screwed over

Speaker 3 by understaffing. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 I do think that's starting to take a toll, too, on management, which is a little encouraging. They're losing it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 They are not feeling well.

Speaker 3 And because like for me, I don't know, I'm not going to trust a boss. Like I just stated for three months in the 1997 UAW strike.
Like that's, oh, yeah. Bosses are canceled.
Yeah. You know,

Speaker 3 I know how that ended. But I remember one of the supervisors who

Speaker 3 who at one point in her like her previous career had been on a picket line for a very long time, had been on strike.

Speaker 3 And she like immediately took one of our little sabo cat reed pens, put it on her backpack and is otherwise like, as far as I can tell, generally supportive of the union, but also, man, lady, I wish she would make us stink.

Speaker 3 Cause here's the thing. I think she only talks to us.
I feel like the other managers do not speak to her.

Speaker 3 I, yeah. Am I crazy?

Speaker 3 I could just talk about that. for a very long time and I don't think we have the time.
So yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Before we get into what can people do to help, is there anything else that you want to make sure that you get to?

Speaker 3 I think the big thing that we should emphasize too is as much as we are complaining and frustrated about the process, we know that this is not impasse and that we are so sure that like there is still negotiating to be done, there is still conversation to be had and that like we have been emphasizing that at every opportunity to management as we have to.

Speaker 3 But like just because we are tired and frustrated means nothing in terms of us giving up because this is a fight that is going to continue. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And like to that point, Finn, we're doing this because we love the stores. Like I, the, the stores were a really important place for me, just putting down roots in the neighborhood.

Speaker 3 And I think when you love something a lot, like you got to be brave enough to wrestle with it.

Speaker 3 And that our unionizing is the right thing. It is the thing that will like hopefully create an environment where the people who make that bookstore run,

Speaker 3 who sell the books,

Speaker 3 in the long run, it will make the institution healthier. I really do believe.

Speaker 3 And just that we've been talking about like this metaphor as the boss of like, you know, as an abusive partner, I think for so many folks, when they are,

Speaker 3 whether it's something like domestic violence or it's in a union campaign, or you're speaking out against, you know, your neighbors being abducted and shot and killed in the street, there is such an expectation that I have to sit by and be quiet while this happens.

Speaker 3 And part of that, I think, what does prevent, and at least in my experience as someone who survived, you know, particular kinds of violence, that, yeah, I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing, but us unionizing is absolutely the right thing.

Speaker 3 It is the right thing for the stores. It is the right thing for the community and for the workers.
And I just, as much as I'm frustrated, like,

Speaker 3 I know myself and my fellow booksellers are doing this out of love. Like, it is absolutely love for the stores and the community we serve.
So,

Speaker 3 yeah. We're never going to feel bad for continuing to fight for what is the right thing to do.
Yeah. I'm too broke to feel bad.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Don't don't be poisoned by mold every time you go to the bookstore to support the union. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wear your mask at seminary co-op. Yeah.
Take a Saba cat pin.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Ask to talk to a manager.
Make it a long talk. Yeah, honestly, see if you can get one on the floor.
We'll help you. Yeah.
So how can people help support y'all?

Speaker 3 And do you have places where people can find more information about the campaign and follow updates? We have a change.org petition

Speaker 3 that I think if you can link it somewhere in the description.

Speaker 3 Yep. Yeah, we will link it in the description.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so that does ask folks to sign off in support of the termination of Jenny Goltz, their union busting lawyer, as well as releasing like the full slate of financial information too.

Speaker 3 So there's a change.org petition. You can also follow us on Instagram at Suncoop Booksellers Union.
We've got the little icon with the Sabbo cat.

Speaker 3 Sign the petition.

Speaker 3 There are also some action items on some of the posts, such as emailing the board and management about the release of financial information and also the termination of Jenny Goltz's employment.

Speaker 3 You can also email those emails on that post about the mold, too, if you want me to breathe at work.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I'm so mad about this. This is, I am going to lead the description with your bear poisoning you because like I'm so angry about this.

Speaker 3 Thank you. I'm too tired to be angry about it.
I'm so glad that someone with a French perspective has remembered that the mold is totally bogus because I had forgotten.

Speaker 3 It's crazy. Yeah.
It's so bogus.

Speaker 3 It's also like, it's in such plain sight. Like if you're in 57th Street Books and you look to the right of the air conditioning unit and room one, you can see that shit growing on the wall

Speaker 3 and it's like but i also feel like if i talk to management which i i've tried about this it just is not a priority my breathing not a priority um yeah it is wild thank you for reminding me that

Speaker 3 someone one day when you win someone's going to write a paper about necropolitics in this or something like good lord geez

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 some shit. But yeah, sign the petition.
Follow us on Instagram. Help us make our ruckus.

Speaker 3 And come talk to us and our managers at the bookstore because we love to talk to people while we sell them books. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 We'll take any goodwill we can get. So.
Very much so. Hell yeah.
Well, thank you to both so much for coming on and just for doing this.

Speaker 3 And I don't know, like a place that was really special to me when I was,

Speaker 3 yeah, when I was there for a long time. Thanks for your help.
Thank you for following up with us. Of course.
It's really nice to have this platform every so often. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 For sure. Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, hopefully we will have you back on when you fucking win. And yeah.
Yes. Celebratory

Speaker 3 round.

Speaker 3 I'm buying, I'm personally buying the CoolZone Media Team around at Jenny's when we win our contract.

Speaker 3 How we do, y'all. I will come back down to Hyde Park just for the celebration.

Speaker 3 Change everyone's oil while you're down, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, don't take that long.
I won't be ready for a second.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is big, it could happen here, and you too can resist both your abuser and your boss, even when they're the same person. And you should.

Speaker 3 Amen.

Speaker 3 Get him.

Speaker 7 Time for a sofa upgrade? Introducing Anibay sofas, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices. Every Anibay sofa is modular, allowing you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 7 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 7 Liquid simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 7 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price.
Visit washablefas.com to upgrade your living space today.

Speaker 7 Sofas start at just $699 with no-risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get early access to Black Friday now.
The biggest sale of the year can save you up to 60% off.

Speaker 7 Plus, free shipping and free returns. returns.
Shop now at washable sofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 8 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 9 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 11 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 12 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 13 We got clear facts.

Speaker 14 Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 16 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 17 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 16 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 15 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 23 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 5 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 29 Season Zero of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 30 Head over to GlobalGamingLeague.com.

Speaker 31 Com, com. Global, double, double, double, double, double, double.
Double, double, double, double, double, double, double.

Speaker 1 Let's unpack the myths behind GLP-1 drugs. Myth number one, GLP-1 can be a long-term solution for weight loss.
True, they can. If you want to be on a drug that changes your body's natural instincts.

Speaker 1 Myth number two, GLP-1 can fix your metabolism. False.
GLP-1s fix hunger and this leads to weight loss. Try the natural GLP-1 therapy, Metabolism Ignite.

Speaker 1 Get 15% off your first order with promo code iHeart at VeracitySelfcare.com. V-E-R-A-C-I-T-Y Selfcare.com.

Speaker 6 Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage.
I run Andrewism over on YouTube, but I'm here on this podcast with the one and only Mia Wong, who does this podcast most of the time.

Speaker 6 Exactly, exactly. And I think you and I both have something in common, which is that we are people.

Speaker 6 And we are two people, but the world has a lot more than just two people. This is a really convoluted way of saying that for this episode, we're going to be talking about population.

Speaker 6 You know, how many of people there are and how many of them there will or will not be in the future and all the different conversations that end up happening around that.

Speaker 3 Most of which suck. So it's a time.
True. True, true, true.

Speaker 6 Yeah. I mean, every single one of us humans is a product of billions of years of reproduction.
But for most of that reproduction, population growth was pretty slow.

Speaker 6 You know, the world's population is estimated at around 5 million in the year 8000 BC.

Speaker 6 So 5 million is like...

Speaker 6 the population of New Zealand right now or Costa Rica or Ireland or Norway, but spread across the entire planet. Can you guess how many people were alive in the year 1 CE, though?

Speaker 3 30 million?

Speaker 6 That's actually an underestimate. It's 188 million.

Speaker 3 Jeez.

Speaker 6 Right? So that's between the current population of Bangladesh and the current population of Brazil, which are at 169 million and 230 million, respectively. But that's spread across the entire planet.

Speaker 6 So, I mean, imagine that, you know, a whole world of people

Speaker 6 so spread out. I mean, they were concentrated in Sydney areas, of course, but you had all this vast forest land and plains and entire continents

Speaker 6 that barely had people compared to today.

Speaker 6 And the reason population grew so slowly was really because, I mean, humans have always been doing the do, you know, but death was kind of a very present phenomenon.

Speaker 6 You know, you had famines, you had plagues, you had the occasional war, and you especially had a lot of infant mortality.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And that's what really kept populations in check. You know, I remember hearing, I don't even remember who it was, but this one person had like 19 children and only eight of them survived to adulthood.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they honestly did pretty good. Like by those metrics, like, yeah, the infant infant mortality rate was unbelievably high.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah. So families had a lot of children, but only a few of them made it to adulthood.
Now, thanks to early industrialization, things were able to change a bit.

Speaker 6 You know, we improved our agriculture, we invented refrigeration, we got better fertilizer, and most importantly, we developed advancements in sanitation.

Speaker 6 You know, doctors were actually washing their hands. You know, we developed vaccines so children weren't dying of measles and mumps.

Speaker 6 Imagine that.

Speaker 3 Oh, good lord.

Speaker 6 And we also had an overall improvement in medicine. You know, one of the greatest inventions of humanity, I think, is the vaccine.
And it's

Speaker 6 such a wonderful thing that there's not this massive movement of people who

Speaker 6 challenge its very legitimacy. in this day and age and threaten all of our lives as a result.
You know, imagine being in that world.

Speaker 3 Oh, God.

Speaker 6 So we eventually hit 1 billion in the year 1804, which is just below the current population of China. And things really began to accelerate from there.

Speaker 6 We ended up creating something called a J-curve of exponential population growth. Thanks to, like I said, the decline in infant mortality and improvements in fertility and food production.

Speaker 6 And then the other billionaire milestones started rolling.

Speaker 6 By 1804, Haiti had just gained its independence. Napoleon I was crowned Emperor of France.
And Lewis and Clark had begun their expedition across America.

Speaker 6 In 1927, that's 123 years later, we hit 2 billion people. You know, by then, we had Trotsky being expelled from the USSR, which had just been founded.

Speaker 6 We had Charles Lindenberg completing the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Speaker 6 And then also in 1927, we had the release of the first feature-length film to feature synchronized sound for dialogue. Quite the time to be alive.

Speaker 6 We fast forward to 33 years later, 1960, and we hit 3 billion people.

Speaker 6 By then, Nigeria had just gained its independence, JFK was in the White House, Ham the chimpanzee went to space, and the FDA approved the first ever birth control pill.

Speaker 6 But the birth control pill didn't really kick in in terms of you know hampering our growth for some time by 1974 14 years later we hit 4 billion people by then nixon had resigned turkey had invaded cyprus portugal overthrew its dictatorship the godfather part two came out and abba was still at the top of the charts 1987 13 years later is when we got five billion people that's when we had most of the major colonies around the world gaining their independence or having already yet gained their independence.

Speaker 6 You know, Thatcher was beginning her third term and The Simpsons first appeared on TV.

Speaker 6 12 years later, in 1999, we had the Y2K panic, the Clinton impeachment, the SpongeBob premiere, the introduction of the Euro, and 6 billion people made their debut on planet Earth.

Speaker 6 2011, 12 years later, we hit 7 billion people.

Speaker 6 And that was in the midst of the Arab Spring, a tsunami hit in Japan, the Occupy movement, the premiere of Game of Thrones, and really the beginning of smartphones and social media taking over the world.

Speaker 6 Finally, by 2022, which is 11 years after 2011, we hit 8 billion people amidst Russia invading Ukraine, the growing popularity of TikTok, and Elon's purchase of Twitter.

Speaker 6 So, from 1804 to 2022, we went from 1 billion people to 8 billion people.

Speaker 6 And the UN expects it to grow by about 1.9 billion between now and 2100. So we'll end up reaching from 8.2 billion people to 10.2 billion people.

Speaker 6 And population is projected to peak at 10.3 billion in 2084 and then decline to 10.2 billion. through the end of the century.

Speaker 6 So with this rapid population growth, there has been a lot of fears surrounding overpopulation.

Speaker 6 Particularly in the late 20th century and early 2000s, there was a lot of conversation around, you know, this population bomb, this worry that there were too many people.

Speaker 6 Now, at least early on in the population boom, I think it makes some sense to have concerns. You know, there had never been this many people on the earth at any point in time prior.

Speaker 6 You know, if you're watching the numbers climb and climb and climb, you might have thought we were headed straight for a planet covered in cities and some kind of collapse.

Speaker 6 But even before we even hit a billion people, the idea of overpopulation being a significant problem wasn't new.

Speaker 6 In the late 1700s, Thomas Malthus argued that population would always outpace food supply.

Speaker 6 And his prediction was that there'd be too many people, not enough resources, and a decline into famine, disease, and mass death.

Speaker 6 Now, he was obviously proven wrong, but in the 19th century, Britain, Malthus' ideas helped justify the harsh welfare policies that that government ended up implementing, like the spread of workhouses around the country.

Speaker 6 Also, we speak about famine as if it's this natural phenomenon that can't be helped, that is just almost like a hurricane or a tornado.

Speaker 6 But famines are usually not actually the result of not having enough food. You know, Amr T Sen found that famines usually happen despite food surpluses.

Speaker 6 The issue is usually distribution and not scarcity. You know, a famous example being, you know, during the Irish famine, Ireland was still exporting tons of food to feed its colonial overlord.

Speaker 6 So we fast forward to 1968 and the biologist Paul Ehrlich publishes The Population Bomb.

Speaker 6 He describes visiting Delhi and feeling the crush of overpopulation, convinced that mass starvation was imminent in the 1970s.

Speaker 6 Now, I think that book that he published was one of the main influences in the widespread panic around

Speaker 6 overpopulation. You know, governments started to scramble about it.
A lot of policies were born likely from people reading that very book. You know, some of these policies were fairly benign.

Speaker 6 You know, you promote family planning, you improve access to contraceptives, you improve education for women, especially. But other approaches were very harsh and brutal.

Speaker 6 You know, you had sterilization campaigns, forced sterilization campaigns taking place in India and Puerto Rico and in the United States.

Speaker 6 China's one-child policy also gets a lot of attention, but it was only one example of a widespread brutality around the impositions placed on women, especially in that time.

Speaker 6 The fear of too many people and that anxiety leading to the control of women and their bodies.

Speaker 6 And it's a scary prospect, especially if you were a minority in this time, if you were a cultural, racial, religious minority.

Speaker 6 because it made very ordinary human activity, things like moving around, having children, just existing.

Speaker 6 I mean, it seemed like an existential threat to civilization, to humanity that needed to be dealt with by any means necessary.

Speaker 6 So they had some positive outcomes of couldn't quote positive outcomes of the overpopulation concern.

Speaker 6 You know, you had pushes for women's empowerment, you had the proposal of improved urbanization to reduce the sprawl of human activity.

Speaker 6 You also had people proposing things like extraterrestrial settlement, which, you know, is not really realistic as a solution for a multitude of valid reasons. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I think it's really funny, you know, whenever people push that sort of, yeah, humans are destined for the stars kind of narrative.

Speaker 6 You know, it's a story, a really powerful story coming out of science fiction.

Speaker 6 And it's good that it has inspired people to learn more about space and, you know, dedicate their lives to the study of the stars and that kind of thing.

Speaker 6 But this idea that we're going to be shipping off like millions of people off planet to settle on other planets, I think is

Speaker 6 pretty safely in the realm of science fiction.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a full like, get back to me in a thousand years. And we could maybe start talking about moving like thousands of people.
Yeah, even thousands or hundreds of people.

Speaker 6 I mean, we don't have those massive generation ships. We can't even get those off the ground at this stage in our spacecraft.

Speaker 6 And we also have a lot of issues to resolve on Earth before we spread our problems across the galaxy, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 6 But beyond these solutions, the ideas and public discourses around overpopulation have also birthed a lot of conspiracy theories. You know, I'm sure you might have heard a few of them in your time.

Speaker 3 Oh, boy.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 3 This is one of the big Alex Jones things, for example.

Speaker 3 So he's convinced that there's like a giant plot by the globalists to kill off an enormous part of the QM population to like stop overpopulation or something. It's.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Honestly, any combination of conspiracies can somehow be... smushed together to fit that kind of narrative.
And they could talk about, oh, the vaccines are sterilizing people, the chemtrails,

Speaker 6 the 5G towers, the Bill Gates microchips,

Speaker 6 even the food supply, all these things allegedly being used to sterilize people. Not to say that there isn't validity to any claims of the things that we consume contributing to lower fertility.

Speaker 6 The fact that we clothe ourselves in like polyester, you know, we still don't have a full idea of the impact of microplastics on our bodies.

Speaker 6 You know, there's valid concerns about some of the consequences of the ultra-processed foods that, you know, fill our grocery shelves. But that's the sad thing about conspiracy theories.

Speaker 6 You know, they have some kernels of truth mixed in to bolster their validity. But then they mix it up with a bunch of garbage about, you know, utter nonsense.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And then, of course, I mean, some of these conspiracy theories are kind of benign. You know, like if you think it's 5G towers, I guess you put a, I don't know, a tinfoil hat on your, on your junk.

Speaker 3 But.

Speaker 3 I mean, to be fair, there was one of the 5G guys who did, like, blow himself up at a giant car bomb.

Speaker 6 I did not hear about that.

Speaker 3 A couple of years ago. Down.
Oh, yeah. Luckily, he only killed himself, but giant, giant car bomb in the middle of,

Speaker 3 I want to

Speaker 3 say memphis or something down yeah but yeah so like every once in a while you get some real oh boy stuff from that

Speaker 6 yeah yeah i mean

Speaker 6 honestly people could take even the simplest things and turn it into a threat to themselves and others if they're not in the right headspace or they haven't been given the right support

Speaker 6 sad really and obviously like none of the conspiracies are benign i mean if you have people rejecting vaccines,

Speaker 6 you know, it's almost like we're in the world that I alluded to earlier, you know,

Speaker 6 where we have a resurgence and measles, for example.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Jim O'Neill, who's the deputy secretary of health and human services and the acting director for the CDC, literally on Monday called

Speaker 3 for

Speaker 3 splitting the MMR vaccine into multiple vaccines, like which is basically, which is just straight up the Andrew Wakefield.

Speaker 3 I think I've said this on seven podcasts on this show now, but this is literally just straight up the Andrew Wakefield anti-vaccine thing from the original giant anti-vaccine panic in the 90s.

Speaker 6 That was the autism vaccine thing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. Like, and this is, this is, this is the guy who's currently running the CDC.
It's just being like, no, yeah, you should do this thing. That's.
Yeah, yeah, you guys are cooked.

Speaker 3 Yeah, again, this thing that was developed specifically so that Andrew Wakefield could sell his own vaccine.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, that's the thing.

Speaker 6 If I was conspiracy-brained, I would say that actually the popularization of vaccine conspiracies on social media sites contributes to exactly that kind of population control that those same conspiracy theorists fear monger about.

Speaker 6 But that's if I was conspiracy-brained, which I'm not.

Speaker 3 God,

Speaker 3 someone believes that somewhere. Absolutely, there is someone who's like the anti-vaxis are a conspiracy to kill the whole population or something like that.
Oh, Oh, God.

Speaker 6 No, because I mean, we have this very straightforwardly effective human invention, one of the best in the history of humankind.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 you're telling me that a couple people on Facebook are now responsible for

Speaker 6 the entire government rejecting the effectiveness of vaccines and

Speaker 6 you know, jeopardizing the health of the entire population.

Speaker 3 Come on. Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 unfortunately the true believers are in charge now

Speaker 6 indeed indeed they are true believers and of course people who stand to profit from the dip in the sales of paracetamol and whatever else

Speaker 6 so there are those conspiracies about population and then there's the typical far-right nazi conspiracies about great replacement right the idea that shadowy elites are orchestrating falling booth rates among white populations while encouraging immigration from the population booming global south.

Speaker 6 I mean, of course, not all the global south is booming population-wise. A lot of places are also experiencing decline.
It's a global problem, but we're going to get to that.

Speaker 6 And connected, of course, to those great replacement types, we have the eco-fash with their worries about the environmental impact of population and their twisted belief that environmental collapse could be solved by reducing the number of people, which usually ends up targeting marginalized groups, which is exactly the kind of thinking that inspired real violence, like with the Christchurch shooter in 2019.

Speaker 6 And of course, the actual drivers of ecological collapse are not poor families in India or Africa having too many kids, it's the overconsumption of the global north.

Speaker 6 You know, if you actually wanted to reduce consumption, reduce the impact of population on the planet, are you going to start with fewer people or are are you going to start with fewer billionaires flying private jets?

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 It's not about the number of people, the headcount. It's about the lifestyles and the systems that support those lifestyles.

Speaker 6 You know, believe in population is a very cheap, simplistic, and cowardly get-out-of-jail free card for the rich minority that drive this systemic crisis. Yep.

Speaker 3 The thing about this, obviously, is that if you believe that you need to reduce the human population, that it's your obligation to go first.

Speaker 6 Yes, but we are going to talk about those types of people in the next episode.

Speaker 6 But, you know, speaking of the overpopulation, I think there's nowadays at least an opposite concern that is dominating the headlines.

Speaker 6 You know, in wealthier, more developed countries, fertility tends to be lower.

Speaker 6 And that's tied to things like back to education, more women working, urban living, greater choices, greater access to contraception, etc.

Speaker 6 But in less developed countries, fertility is usually higher because children are often seen as both helping hands and future caregivers, and education and access to birth control are more limited.

Speaker 6 But the global fertility rate is now steadily dropping due to that increase in development, greater access to birth control, greater education, and women's rights.

Speaker 6 And there's a fear nowadays that there won't be enough people to support the system as it has been built. Remember, capitalism is predicated on endless growth.

Speaker 6 When if the population starts to decline, naturally, everything that it's building towards, in terms of the amount of consumers, the amount of infrastructure, the amount of workers, those are not going to be there anymore, especially as more and more people end up dipping out of the workforce as they age.

Speaker 6 So in 2023, the global average had dropped to just 2.3 children per woman, which is less than half of what it was 60 years ago.

Speaker 6 According to the United Nations, fertility will keep falling throughout the century.

Speaker 6 And by the year 2100, the global average is expected to dip below replacement level of 2.1 to about 1.8 children per woman. Now, some countries are already there.
Japan sits at 1.2 children per woman.

Speaker 6 Italy, Spain, and much of Eastern Europe are well below 1.5.

Speaker 6 South Korea is famously a demographic outlier at 0.7 children per woman, which is the lowest fertility rate in the world.

Speaker 6 And that means, obviously, that on average, Korean women are having less than one child each. For very valid reasons, I might add, considering the economic and cultural conditions in that country.

Speaker 6 Now, I don't live in Eastern Europe or Southern Europe or East Asia. I live in the Caribbean.
I live in Trinidad and Tobago.

Speaker 6 But speaking anecdotally, at least, which obviously is not representative of the full picture, I can count maybe in one hand the number of people I know my age who think that they'll be able to bring children into the world, whether they want to or not.

Speaker 6 You know, very few people I know actually want children, or if they do want children, they don't think they'll be able to afford to have children. But maybe that's her selfishness.
What do you think?

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I don't know. Like,

Speaker 3 I am not interacting with a representative sample of the population.

Speaker 3 But no, yeah. I mean,

Speaker 3 it's a lot of people who are like,

Speaker 3 no.

Speaker 3 And it's too expensive. It sucks.
I don't want to deal with this. But again, like, not a representative sample here.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, you could just look at the economy. Things have been getting worse for my entire life.

Speaker 6 You know, there hasn't been any point in my life where anyone in my generation could look around honestly and say, yeah, you know, this is, we'll be cooking, you know, it's time to double, double it.

Speaker 6 You know, let's have a child. You know, the housing situation has gotten worse.
The cost of living as a whole has gotten worse. Childcare costs have gotten worse.

Speaker 6 And of course, outside of that economic stuff, there's also cultural attitude shifts. You know, people realizing I don't need to have a child to be fulfilled, to find meaning.

Speaker 6 You know, people are able to pursue higher education. And also, they're more educated about the process of childbearing in general, including the very valid medical concerns.

Speaker 6 surrounding that whole process. I mean, if I were a woman, I would not want to have a a child.

Speaker 6 You know, the consequences on their bodies, on their minds, on their health, the risks to their very life are not something that can be swept aside as it was previously. People are aware of it now.

Speaker 6 People are talking about it now, and they are empowered to make decisions that feel right for them.

Speaker 6 You know, a lot of people are also very much focused on their careers, either by choice or because they don't have any other choice but to focus on putting food on the table.

Speaker 6 You know, people are also getting married later. And as a whole, we have shifted toward a more individual society.

Speaker 6 So, you know, in the past, you did have the extended families, the close-knit communities that made raising children a bit more manageable. But today, it's a bit rarer to find.

Speaker 6 And you tend to see a lot more nuclear families, even just individuals, going at it alone. you know, with less support and more isolation.
And so it makes it very difficult.

Speaker 6 And then there's the existential angst of it all. You know, I can't forget the fact that there are multiple wars waging around the world.

Speaker 6 You know, there's a lot of political instability in much of the world.

Speaker 6 And of course, the biggest issue of all, climate change, which makes it, honestly, it makes it feel irresponsible to even think about bringing a child into this mess.

Speaker 6 So a declining fertility, a decline in population. It has the governments panicking.

Speaker 6 You know, China went from having decades of a one-child policy to now desperately trying to encourage people to have more babies.

Speaker 6 They're offering cash bonuses and housing books and extended parental leave, but it's not really working.

Speaker 6 You know, as populations are aging, there's a lot more elderly people to care for and fewer working-age people to support them.

Speaker 6 So that is, you know, a recipe for pension crises and labor shortages and spiraling healthcare costs. So some governments are even trying to raise the retirement age,

Speaker 6 which, as France and their protests have shown, is not going to go over well with much of the population.

Speaker 6 Nobody wants to work an extra five years, an extra 10 years more when they've already put so much of their lives to these dead-end, pointless, and

Speaker 6 mentally and physically draining tasks that really just line the pockets of their bosses.

Speaker 3 It is worth pointing out that last year there was a

Speaker 3 pretty massive raise in the retirement age people in China that's being phased in a way where it's going to take over the course of 15 years.

Speaker 3 It goes up gradually to sort of like spread out the anger over it.

Speaker 3 But yeah, it is worth noting that China's is like significantly increased or is going to significantly increase over the course of the next 15 years.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And then on the other side of things, there is in the retirement age now, now, but the young people who are working today are more than likely not going to get any kind of pension.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 6 I'd rather the world of my 60s don't look like the world of my 20s.

Speaker 6 That would be my preference. So I would rather that we've reached a point as a society where pensions are not the necessary band-aid that they are right now.

Speaker 6 But until then, you know, there's quite the powder keg.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 We also have in Eastern Europe, you know, you have countries rolling out pro-natalist policies that tie financial support directly to family size.

Speaker 6 And we're going to get a bit more into pro-natalism in the next episode. But there's also the darker side of that pro-natalist push in terms of the policies.
meant to reverse the population decline.

Speaker 6 Some governments, instead of making life better for potential parents, are criminalizing. They're turning to anti-choice policies.
They're restricting abortion. They're limiting reproductive rights.

Speaker 6 They're demonizing child-free lifestyles. Russia actually recently criminalized what they called child-free propaganda, you know?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And then this is also part of a broader conversation about population where you have the immigration concerns as a political flashpoint.

Speaker 6 You know, because a lot of wealthy countries, because of their population decline, are starting to rely more on immigrants to keep their economies going.

Speaker 6 But as a flip side, that tends to fuel backlash from the far-right groups who are able to frame it as a threat to national identity.

Speaker 6 And because the system of the state and capitalism is not interested in actually taking care of people, those immigrants become a very useful scapegoat.

Speaker 6 You know, obviously, I'm... in support of people moving and living wherever they want to move and live as they please.

Speaker 6 I don't believe in borders, especially as the climate consequences are hitting those of us in the global south first.

Speaker 6 But I also am not a fan of the way that some progressives end up talking about immigration, where they act as if, you know, the global south is like a population bank that wealthy countries could tap into and

Speaker 6 pull population from regardless of the consequences on the home countries. of these people.
You know, it's like, let immigrants come. And I'm all for that.

Speaker 6 But then it's also like your government is destabilizing their governments,

Speaker 6 your system, your economic system, and the global economic system is making life in those countries unlivable.

Speaker 6 And I think the priority also needs to be on dealing with that issue and not just shrugging and saying, well, you know, at least immigrants are able to help our economy stay afloat.

Speaker 6 even as their countries languish and suffer.

Speaker 6 So to kind of wrap things up, where does this all leave us?

Speaker 6 You know, for centuries we feared having too many people and now we're starting to fear having too few people and both anxieties are shaping policy, fueling conspiracy theories and sparking culture wars.

Speaker 6 And whether the future holds overcrowded cities or ghost towns really depends on the direction our politics, economy, culture and urban designs take.

Speaker 6 On the next episode, I'm going to be talking about the ideas around population, the pro-natalists and the the antinatalists.

Speaker 6 But until then, I've been Andrew Sage here with Mia Wong on It Could Happen Here.

Speaker 3 Peace.

Speaker 7 There's nothing like sinking into luxury. Anibay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

Speaker 7 Anibay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom. The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Speaker 7 Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Speaker 7 Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered. Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Speaker 7 Sofas start at just $699 and right now, get early access to Black Friday savings, up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Speaker 3 Add a little

Speaker 7 to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 8 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 9 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 11 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 12 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 13 We got clear facts.

Speaker 14 Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 16 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 17 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 16 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 15 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 23 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 5 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 29 Season 0 of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 30 Head over to GlobalGamingLeague.com.

Speaker 31 Com.

Speaker 1 Let's take a minute to unpack the myths behind GLP-1 drugs. Myth number one, GLP-1 is a long-term solution for weight loss.

Speaker 1 True, GLP-1 can potentially be a long-term solution for weight loss if you want to be on a drug that changes your body's natural instincts. Myth number two, GLP-1 can fix your metabolism.
False.

Speaker 1 GLP-1s fix hunger, and this leads to weight loss. But the GLP-1s may actually slow down your metabolic rate as your body adjusts to consuming fewer calories.

Speaker 1 Myth number three, GLP-1 leads to a loss of muscle mass. True.

Speaker 1 GLP-1 can lead to a loss of muscle mass due to losing weight so rapidly that your body is pulling from both fat and muscle to make up for the energy gap from consuming so few calories.

Speaker 1 If you're looking for a natural GLP-1 therapy without the needles, consider Metabolism Ignite.

Speaker 1 Metabolism Ignite is powered by plants and can help boost your natural GLP-1, helping you burn fat instead of muscle. Clinically proven to help you lose nine pounds in 90 days.

Speaker 1 Visit VeracitySelfcare.com and receive 15% off your first purchase with promo code iHeart.

Speaker 3 Trick-or-treater, I heard.

Speaker 4 Ah, hello, welcome to It Could Happen Here, the Spooky Special. I'm your host, Garrison Davis.

Speaker 4 Once again, there has been far too many important world events taking precedence that we here at the show are unable to provide listeners with an entire spooky week's worth of themed episodes.

Speaker 4 But I know how important Halloween is for many millennials, so I've taken it upon myself to produce two spooky episodes to bookend the holiday.

Speaker 4 This episode that you're listening to right now, as well as another that will release Monday morning or Sunday night. As the world is becoming an increasingly spooky, scary place,

Speaker 4 I needed to up the ante. to exceed the weird and eerie fright that comes from living in America and the world in general in 2025.

Speaker 4 So, last week, I traveled from New York to Brussels, briefly caught up with my close personal friend and colleague Tintin, and then took the train to Germany. Very scary indeed.

Speaker 4 Once in Germany, I was confronted with seemingly occult words and symbols. People spoke in odd incantations.
I came across a map.

Speaker 4 that appeared via my black scrying mirror, the iPhone, which, upon deciphering, led me to an old power plant warehouse in East Berlin.

Speaker 4 I entered this dark, looming building, and inside the air was thick with smoke and incense. Figures dressed in all black emerged from the fog, witches, wizards, and magicians.

Speaker 4 I followed them into a candle-lit room where hooded occultists conducted a ritual welcoming us to the 2025 Acculture Conference.

Speaker 4 Acculture is a bi-yearly conference that's once every two years focusing on the intersection of occultism and culture, pop or otherwise.

Speaker 4 This is arguably the most prestigious occultism conference in the world. I have been wanting to attend for years,

Speaker 4 and I was finally able to go this go-round on the condition that I make four podcast episodes.

Speaker 4 The two that I'm releasing this week and next will cover some of the core, magical, and topical currents throughout the conference, mostly via a panel discussion between myself and three other attendees.

Speaker 4 And then before Christmas, I'll have two fully scripted episodes interrogating these concepts further and discussing the use of occult practice in 2025.

Speaker 4 So to start, let's meet our panelists. I should introduce my

Speaker 4 magical travel team for this conference. Let's start with Delta, a Belgian magician and artist which I recruited to join me in this wacky adventure.
Delta, say hi.

Speaker 3 Hello.

Speaker 4 What do you do, Delta? What's your magical specialty, I suppose?

Speaker 32 Well, it's kind of a mix of things.

Speaker 4 Into the microphone.

Speaker 34 It's kind of a mix of things where

Speaker 34 part of it is just.

Speaker 4 Into the microphone.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 You can get pretty close to it.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 34 It's kind of a mix of things, really, between conventional chaos magic and

Speaker 34 more theoretical, like weird theory stuff, like Mark Fisher and the CCRU, adjacent things.

Speaker 4 We talk a lot about Mark Fisher, some land stuff, metafiction, theory fiction, hyperstition. Delta and myself talk about...

Speaker 4 magic through the internet quite a bit and how it combines with cultural theory, which is relevant to this conference. Let's move over to my left.

Speaker 32 I've been recruited along on this magical journey. I'm Ryan.
I practice the Vajriana, a Greco-Egyptian magical practice, and also am involved in a Haitian voodoo house.

Speaker 32 Prior to that, I was also an academic for a good period of time where I studied Renaissance rhetoric and political theory, philosophy, and economics.

Speaker 32 So my contributions are going to be wide and varied.

Speaker 4 We've been making a lot of Hegel jokes this weekend.

Speaker 2 So many Hegel jokes.

Speaker 4 Our last crew member, which people may have heard before on various shows.

Speaker 35 Hi, my name is Elaine, and

Speaker 35 I make art and

Speaker 35 research

Speaker 35 a lot of Renaissance script moric magic. And though most of the things I do are a lot of idiosyncratic practices and based on various folk magic and chaos magic and Falkin folk magic.

Speaker 4 Before we continue the conversation between myself and my three guests, let's start by discussing the word occulture, the namesake of the conference.

Speaker 4 Obviously, this is a combination of the word occult and culture, and it describes how the two influence and possibly undermine one another.

Speaker 4 I'm going to read a quote from the person who originated the term. Quote, a culture is a word that was inevitable.

Speaker 4 During the hyperactive phase of the Temple of Psychic Youth in the 1980s, we were casting around for an all-embracing term to describe an approach to combining a unique, demystified spiritual philosophy with a fervent insistence that all life and art are indivisible.

Speaker 4 At any given moment, our sensory environment is whispering to us, telling us hidden stories, revealing subliminal connections.

Speaker 4 This concealed dialogue between every level of popular cultural forms and magical conclusions is what we named a culture.

Speaker 4 Unquote. That is from Genesis B.
Peoridge, a musician, magician, artist, cult leader, and hashtag slightly problematic queer icon.

Speaker 4 In the 70s, they started the band Throbbing Gristle, pioneered industrial music, and later started the chaos magic organization The Temple of Psychic Youth and its associated band Psychic TV.

Speaker 4 Though a culture did not just describe this sort of personal spiritual movement, it carried a strong offensive element targeted against society and perceived systems of control.

Speaker 4 Through their many projects, including Thropping Gristle, Psychic TV, and the Temple of Psychic Youth, Peoridge utilized art and magical practice to conduct a quote-unquote war on culture, similar to another figure that we'll soon get to, William S.

Speaker 4 Burroughs. A culture describes a process of cultural osmosis.

Speaker 4 The occult bleeds into and morphs culture, affecting everything from pop culture to politics and philosophy.

Speaker 4 But as a part of this osmosis, the occult becomes increasingly commodified, knowable, safe territory, marketable. The hidden occult loses its very essence of being hidden.

Speaker 4 Despite its use as a tool of attack against mainstream culture, like most countercultural forms, the occult has been largely recuperated.

Speaker 4 Even creative works, which are genuine explorations into the occult, fall into this recuperation paradigm.

Speaker 4 They get turned into products, consumed by a mostly secular audience, like the works of dueling wizards Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

Speaker 4 Now, some occultists rejoice knowing that this wide exposure will influence more people to become interested in or adopt occult practices of their own, while others bemoan this dilution and commodification of what to them is an important spiritual practice.

Speaker 4 As the modern occult revival, along with a heavy helping hand of scientific advancement, deterritorialized Christian hegemonic religion, now the occult itself has been re-territorialized, which is not to say that the occult is no longer a field of play, which is what this conference attempts to assert.

Speaker 4 Let's go back to the panel.

Speaker 32 In terms of the conference itself, as we'll get into later, the term occulture very specifically seems to be

Speaker 32 focused on the study of the interrelation of magical practice and the material aspects of occult. culture and its influence and appropriation by wider society.
So

Speaker 32 in terms of political projects or social projects, you can probably relate this, I think that it would be fair to say that it's something like culture jamming.

Speaker 32 if we're looking for some familiar concepts for people to map onto.

Speaker 32 That is to say, a focus away from simply solitary practice and the ways in which occult elements influence broader aspects of our society or are appropriated, whether that's through consumerist forces or through various artistic practices or even the production of, for example, film, television, movies.

Speaker 32 So I think that's a fair assessment of the impacts of a culture.

Speaker 4 And relevant to our discussion later, its influence in the tech sector and the emergence of AI, which the current manifestation of has some heavily occult origins, regarding around a whole bunch of people in the 90s who were writing about AI as this occult project.

Speaker 4 And then that influenced many a AI engineer and coder who are now building this stuff. And it's becoming an ever-present part of our lives.

Speaker 4 And the occultists now are trying to incorporate it into their own practice, which we will discuss in a sec.

Speaker 4 Any other notes on a culture as a concept or what this conference is doing with the concept?

Speaker 35 I think a culture as a concept is something that's basically been around as long as there's been magical practices, just looking at

Speaker 35 so much of things like, you know, the concept of the British Empire being invented by John Dee because of conversations he was having with angels. So I think that

Speaker 35 naming it and calling it something is also very much felt like an attempt to sort of regain control over the ways that magical practice and greater society seem to influence each other as opposed to a more unintentional way that they have been going back and forth for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Speaker 32 There may also be one other aspect that's important for our American audiences, given that we're recording this in Deutschland.

Speaker 32 This conference varies significantly from other American equivalents, or something that might be an American equivalent.

Speaker 32 Formerly, Pantheicon in and around San Francisco and San Jose specifically, or Paganicon in the Twin Cities, which specifically has much more of a new age, neo-pagan, reconstructionist.

Speaker 32 And so, most

Speaker 32 academic discussion is viewed with some suspicion. And I'm hesitant to say that there's an anti-intellectual trend because I don't necessarily think that's true.

Speaker 32 However, there is a resistance to the kind of academic styling that we saw very prevalent at this conference to talk about the occult more generally as an area of study in addition to just idiosyncratic practice or part of a larger social neo-pagan movement, which is again very much the focus at most U.S.-based conferences.

Speaker 4 As an editorial note, when we're talking about magic, to clarify, we're not talking about stage magicians. We're referring to magic with a K.

Speaker 4 That is, rituals and practices based on occult knowledge that seeks to cause change in accordance with will, whether that's change within yourself or in our consensus reality.

Speaker 4 Occult magical practice can also serve as a form of spirituality, mysticism, an alternative religious practice, or an alternative to religion, with its beliefs and praxis largely influenced by historical esoteric orders, mystery traditions, paganism, witchcraft, herbalism, astrology, hermetic philosophy, and alchemy.

Speaker 4 And all these things are influences.

Speaker 4 I'm not saying that the actual historic manifestations of these things are the same as the modern occult practices that are influenced by these things, because often these can be wildly varying, especially when you talk about things like witchcraft and alchemy, which have been misinterpreted or reconstructed into completely new forms than what the historical manifestation of them actually contained.

Speaker 4 But a lot of modern-day occultism has manifested as an individually mediated spirituality.

Speaker 4 containing some of the group ritual or ritual aspects of something like Catholicism, but with the individuality of Protestantism.

Speaker 4 Many conferences have an opening ceremony, and as I previously mentioned, a culture had an opening ritual.

Speaker 4 This accomplishes a very similar goal to any opening ceremony, to get attendees in a certain headspace, prepare them for the rest of the conference, and set a certain mood in which the rest of the events will kind of follow suit.

Speaker 4 The Acculture opening ritual called upon the attendees' demiurgic capacity, how they are part part of creating the reality of what this conference is, and how it will continue for the next few days.

Speaker 4 Back to the panel.

Speaker 4 The framing of the ritual was a blindfolded woman holding the scales of balance, and each person put an intention for the week or for the conference or for themselves into a stone, which was handed out to each person who entered the ritual.

Speaker 4 And at a certain point, these stones were placed on to the scales of balance to create an equilibrium between the two sides of the scale, along with

Speaker 4 chanting, meditation, and a lot of incense.

Speaker 32 A significant deal of incense, given that we were in a former German forge warehouse, the billowing smoke that existed throughout the conference from fires to incense to various other inflammatory items was rather impressive.

Speaker 32 But in terms of actual ritual design, it met several elements that I found to be rather impressive.

Speaker 32 One, it was encompassing of all of those elements that we would later expect to see in the actual body of the conference itself, in terms of like the artistic performances, the musical, you know, metal goth, you know, music that was played.

Speaker 32 but also a very practical and open approach to ritual. It was highly inclusive.
Everyone who was there participated.

Speaker 32 It did an exceptional job, I felt, of actually bringing, setting intention and adding to, I don't know at risk of sounding too new age the vibrations that we all felt as we engaged and were present the theatrical quality I have to say was also very much dark and spooky dark and spooky but something to be admired they did they did a very good job definitely one of the more high effort rituals of the weekend in terms of the performative aspect with there being a little less than a dozen hooded cloaked figures stationed at different points either holding specific positions in in a meditative state for probably over half an hour, standing still in a position that would become uncomfortable, and

Speaker 4 swinging incense or holding torches or lights.

Speaker 4 Setting intention specifically is usually, if you talk to these people, the first step of any kind of magical working is setting your intention for what the work is supposed to do or accomplish in you or out into the world.

Speaker 4 Mirroring the opening ritual, the A Culture 2025 little booklet has a few paragraphs on the concept for this conference, talking about the cosmic craftsman as the demiurge who shapes matter and spirit alike, who embodies creation and transformation, revealing both the light and the hidden, the shadowed face of the divine,

Speaker 4 as well as having cosmic balance and balancing destruction with creation and order and chaos and the hidden and the seen.

Speaker 4 The last paragraph in which I will read, I think relates specifically to this show and the cultural political aspects.

Speaker 4 Quote, in the age of relentless acceleration, the craftsman becomes a figure of resistance.

Speaker 4 His patience and ritual discipline reclaim sacred time, restoring a rhythm beyond the acceleration of modern life.

Speaker 4 A culture 2025 invites us to dwell in this threshold where creation, intuition, and the hidden divine converge.

Speaker 4 And with that, we converge on an outbreak.

Speaker 4 Welcome back to the It Could Happen Here spooky special on the Acculture Conference.

Speaker 4 The figure name-dropped the most throughout this conference might surprise some people because I'm assuming most do not consider him to be an occultist or really a serious occult figure.

Speaker 4 The most discussed individual, at least in my experience of the conference, was not Alistair Crowley, John Dee, someone like Helena Blavatsky, but in fact, William S. Burroughs.

Speaker 4 And now we'll return to the panel to discuss the Burrowsian current. Let's talk about what I would argue was the strongest current throughout this conference.

Speaker 4 I'm going to call the Burroughsian current,

Speaker 4 relating to writer, beach, poet, and mystic and occultist in his own right, William S.

Speaker 4 Burroughs and the magical technology that he either invented or popularized in the second half of the 20th century and played a significant role in influencing successor movements such as Chaos Magic and even the work of the CCRU and Land and Fisher.

Speaker 4 The very first talk that we attended was specifically on Burroughs and Burroughs' ghost haunted the remainder of the conference thereafter and introduced a few of the key tensions

Speaker 4 throughout the rest of the conference, which we will discuss specifically technology and AI.

Speaker 32 So our first talk by Castor Obstrop,

Speaker 2 who I believe was Swedish?

Speaker 32 One of those. One of those.

Speaker 34 He was working at the University of Copenhagen.

Speaker 32 University of Copenhagen, certainly Scandinavian of some flavor of variety, focused on William S. Burroughs and Brian Geison.

Speaker 32 I think that it's important, and I appreciated this claim at the outset, that they argued that both Geison and Burroughs are actually closer to the late Surrealists rather than to the beat poets' generation, which we typically associate them with, which interestingly enough, I made both of these figures far more compelling to me.

Speaker 32 My understanding of them, I mean, despite my familiarity with the cut-up method and several of the the things that Burroughs had written, I always considered them far more beaten, therefore,

Speaker 32 less of interest to me specifically. But this proximity to the surrealists, especially the latter surrealists, I found particularly compelling.

Speaker 32 And I think that brings us to the real focus of this talk was Burroughs' cut-up method and another book that he published on the third mind, which gave way to the latter discussions on artificial intelligence and large language models.

Speaker 4 So Burroughs definitely popularized the cut-up method, which Geisen originated, but Burroughs changed its different forms and manifestations to various mediums of art, like the tape recorder and his own writings, and just words and language.

Speaker 4 And I guess the reason why I think talking about this current is important to start is also revolves around this idea of magic as this form of like resistance or this like culture jamming practice, which Burroughs framed his own work in his like, you know, work that

Speaker 4 we could describe as like esoteric or inspired by esotericism or achieving esoteric goals is specifically for this cultural infusion to to disrupt mainstream culture in some capacity to go against the one god universe sometimes in an anarchic way sometimes in a libertarian way sometimes

Speaker 4 there's a a mix of a mix of like uh motivations at play here same thing with like robert anton wilson which i'm sure you've heard robert evans talk about before these were contemporaries these guys were friends and operating under like similar goals of disrupting culture through these techniques, which they thought literally disrupted the linear flow of culture or mechanisms of control, such as language and linear time, which later gets developed on by land and fissure.

Speaker 35 Yeah, I think looking at some of my notes, Some of the things that stuck out to me, especially in view of the fact that the other classes going on at the time began with Alistair Crowley, but were diving into a lot of more classical and historical magical traditions, was that language can shape reality, which is something that would also be held up by a lot of the classical magical ideas.

Speaker 35 That sound and image have occult power, which is very true in a lot of magical traditions dating back to the Picatrix and more ancient texts.

Speaker 35 And that

Speaker 35 tech available at the time can be a magical instrument, which the tech available currently and for William Burroughs is very different than classical tech, but is something that has been done for a very long time as well.

Speaker 35 What really changes is stepping out of the idea of a linear representation of it and into something that could be edited, cut, and reprogrammed specifically using technology that allowed that as opposed to something that you're trying to control solely through, say, more spiritual magical acts.

Speaker 35 It's something that you can do with a tape recorder.

Speaker 4 And this is like, you know, based on forms like social engineering and the manipulation of the reproduction of reality, which Burroughs believes language plays a key role in, even though I might disagree with him in a few ways on the nature of like a language as a human concept versus this like alien concept, which is like infected to human.

Speaker 4 Delta, you should explain what the cut-up method is.

Speaker 34 Yes.

Speaker 34 Well,

Speaker 34 the name itself kind of is self-explanatory, but the idea being

Speaker 34 essentially to take any form of texts or writing, cut up the words or pieces of sentences, jumble them up in a hat or a bucket or whatever, and then kind of like play a jigsaw puzzle with language, reshifting sentences into new ideas and new forms of poetry, especially, which I'm just looking at my own cut-ups right in front of me.

Speaker 4 To force like randomized combinations of words that you would not choose to combine on your own volition and seeing what sort of thought that generates, what kind of meaning can be constructed through that combination.

Speaker 20 Exactly.

Speaker 35 Weren't some of the first cut-ups done with books and just making holes, cutting out words and seeing the other words that would appear underneath and if new meaning would arise through the surprise combinations.

Speaker 4 Words from like the future or the past presenting themselves into a current present within the book.

Speaker 34 Yeah, I think one of the Burroughs quotes is when you cut into the present, the future leaks out.

Speaker 32 Which is related to the concept of time sorcery that was talked about towards the end of that discussion.

Speaker 32 I think another element to the cut-up method that's important, especially as it was framed in this culture context, is as we quoted from the, or as I wrote this quote down from the actual lecture itself, reality is made of words, images, and vibrations.

Speaker 32 And sounds and images have occult power. And therefore, these sounds and images and words can be marshaled or used, edited, cut through, rearranged for the purposes of reprogramming.

Speaker 32 It's fascinating because I think that this really is something that carries through to the whole conference.

Speaker 32 And not just the Burroughs method, but what this Burroughs Burroughs method or the Burroughsian current of the conference, it seems that there was a problematic, I mean, we started basically with Derrida and we ended with Derrida.

Speaker 32 With discussions of like critiques of the master narrative that we get from, you know, Deleuze and Leotard and Baudrillard and these people.

Speaker 32 But the goal of this cut-up method was to rewrite the master narrative.

Speaker 32 So again, back to that concept of culture jamming, as Gare said, this concept of the one God universe, this cut-up method is meant to interrupt the linearity of

Speaker 32 words, of language that is a process of control.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 I take issue with this concept of language as a virus because that implies that it's a foreign body. And I mean, as true post-structuralist, I guess, that I am, there is no outside to language.

Speaker 32 And I think that that's actually something that shines through in this third mind concept.

Speaker 4 As two people work together on something, there's a composite mind that emerges and affects the work, is the concept there.

Speaker 32 So, when two people collaborate, a third mind or intelligence communicates with you through the revelation of the new that was already present. And I think that that's really important to point out,

Speaker 32 because it's not as though that there's this outside thing. The implication is from this method is that the new reveals itself through this process that's already present in language.

Speaker 32 Because this is a question that I had throughout is that if language is this foreign entity that dominates us through control and the method itself is language, then how are we not just re,

Speaker 32 I mean, I guess it's a kind of inoculation if we have a you know a theory of language that is based in

Speaker 32 what do we call this? What is it that we all just got during COVID? Cabin fever? No, no, the things that we inject into our body that created the entire vaccines. There we go.
That's the ticket.

Speaker 32 Inoculations.

Speaker 4 Not all of us got vaccines, you know.

Speaker 33 Okay, Karen.

Speaker 3 You heard it here first.

Speaker 32 Vaccine denial. No.

Speaker 32 Yeah, where was I going with this? Okay.

Speaker 4 Speaking of methods of control,

Speaker 3 I mean, a lot of it. Hey, the new just came out there.

Speaker 32 Wait,

Speaker 32 just one moment.

Speaker 32 Sorry, Elaine. I likened this to this process of dialectics, but that's because I couldn't shut up about Hegel the entire time we were there.

Speaker 32 Because I don't think enough occultists are talking about Hegel. Why is no one talking about Hegel? Everyone should be talking about Hegel.

Speaker 4 I mean, as fun as it is to think about this like third mind as like an egregor figure, which we've mentioned before,

Speaker 4 is like a group thought form, like a being or a force. that is generated through

Speaker 4 multiple people believing in it.

Speaker 34 You make up an imaginary friend.

Speaker 4 In a way. That's more of a severator.

Speaker 3 True. Okay.

Speaker 4 In Egregor as this, as a, as, yeah, like a

Speaker 4 form of thought that gains its own like a autonomy and becomes kind of, you know, like a little tiny god, I guess. Or they also combine the third mind idea to like network consciousness.

Speaker 4 The one last thing I will say on this before we get to like the AI aspect, I guess, on this culture jamming, non-linearity is the concept of the circuit jump, which was playing back words from politicians in different contexts as a sort of like a uno reverso psychic attack, which I don't know if that actually works considering the current political situation, but this is certainly a tactic to which I have employed many such cases.

Speaker 4 And we see a lot of people

Speaker 4 attempt to do this.

Speaker 4 And I think there's certain figures who have their own very strong magical force field protecting them, which has been pretty evident through the past 10 years, including the president of the United States.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 as a circuit jump, as playing something from

Speaker 4 the wrong time in a different context

Speaker 4 as a form of attack.

Speaker 4 The most famous version of this, which isn't necessarily for political ends, so this was for personal ends. It's the Burroughs Cafe incident,

Speaker 4 which

Speaker 4 I've been a fan of for years,

Speaker 4 in which he was slighted by a cafe. So then he started recording.

Speaker 35 All that happened was they changed their menu and he couldn't order the one food that he ordered every day.

Speaker 4 There's been some menus that have changed that I would consider using this tactic where he recorded sounds from outside of like people talking or arguing or walking by or plates dropping and then played them back outside of the cafe for a series of months.

Speaker 4 uh until the cafe closed.

Speaker 4 And this is like the the funniest, the funniest form of this sort of magical obsession, because this really is just a crazy guy playing loud sounds in front of a cafe until they close.

Speaker 3 I mean, it worked.

Speaker 4 Yeah, playing back sounds of, you know, arguing, fighting, plates smashing, which would probably create a negative

Speaker 3 aura around

Speaker 4 this building. But that is the most funny of Burroughs, the circuit jump moment.
Although, I mean, Burroughs' life is full of these humorous and sometimes worrying anecdotes.

Speaker 35 There's one other thing that stuck out to me, given

Speaker 35 what a lot of the other talks in that space ended up dealing with, along with AI and stuff, was really the speaker talking a lot about the fact that for Burroughs and Geison, the reproduction of reality.

Speaker 35 is how control occurs. And so the goal was to manipulate the reproduction of reality, because if you can manipulate the reproduction of reality, you are also manipulating reality itself, which

Speaker 35 I don't think anyone went into nearly as much, but is something that we're seeing with, say, even the Republican Party releasing deep fake videos of Democratic politicians.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and this is something our

Speaker 4 materialist friend Mia does talk about is how there's a quote from some neocons about how

Speaker 4 like Democrats just have to kind of like, you know, like react to reality versus the Republicans who generate it. And they like decide what reality is.
And you can see this with all of the sort of

Speaker 4 moral panics which have spread across the United States and around the world the past few years, whether that's gender ideology, whether that's immigration, whether that's this non-existent crime wave, where it is a genuine creation of reality.

Speaker 4 And this goes into, you know, Burroughs' ideas later get developed by a group of academics and occultists that formed the CCRU.

Speaker 4 This included Sadie Plant, Nick Land, who then turned to the dark side, and

Speaker 4 the since past Mark Fisher, who put a name to some of this sort of phenomenon called the hyperstition, which is Robert has talked about before on the show, but it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Speaker 4 It is a fiction that becomes true through the creation of the fiction and the dissemination of this fiction. And this is part of how reality can get formed, is through these falsehoods that

Speaker 4 through repetition and dissemination become self-manifest.

Speaker 34 The thing about that though is like the hypersessional model itself requires

Speaker 34 the acceptance of the idea that everything is a fiction.

Speaker 20 Yes.

Speaker 4 Most things go through a process like this.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 doing such a thing intentionally and like offensively, right, which is which is the idea that we're discussing here in like a political context is this this offensive reality formation where you literally decide what is real and what isn't?

Speaker 4 And if you have hundreds of millions of dollars in like a news company at your disposal, this can become easier.

Speaker 35 Are you saying that media companies are currently cutting up reality to shape it in the image of the people who fund them?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, they are, they are much,

Speaker 4 it's funny because like occultists, I think, are the people who are often.

Speaker 35 What clips are you going to use from the conference?

Speaker 20 I will later in my written written work but i think

Speaker 4 on that note i think occultists are a class of people who are maybe the worst at doing magic

Speaker 4 um because the people that are really good at this sort of thing are uh perhaps way better at the occult element of of hiding their their you know awareness of what they are doing because they a lot of the a lot of them know what they're doing they just actually keep it more occultic whereas uh the magicians will not shut the fuck up um because there's always a there's always a new book to sell.

Speaker 32 That was an excellent segue to an ad break, Elaine. Thank you for that.
And now a word from our sponsors.

Speaker 32 On this note, though, Gary, I agree with you completely.

Speaker 32 As a former academic and just a healthy level of skepticism going into any magical conference, I sat down, I listened, and I've been to enough conferences listening to magicians attempt to map on rather poorly magic onto a cultural figure.

Speaker 32 And I think Burroughs is really unique here, but my academic pretense was to sit here and to listen and think about, you know, language as a pharmacon, think about Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrard, Léotard, when they're discussing the master narrative or rewriting the master narrative.

Speaker 32 But what's unique about Burroughs and why I gave up that, you know, academic mapping of philosophy and asking myself, why are we having this conversation? We could just go read these texts.

Speaker 32 They talk about similar things. But the point is, is that those texts talk about similar things.
And what's unique about Burroughs is that he's actually doing. He's a doer.

Speaker 4 He's a doer.

Speaker 32 This is fundamentally the difference between the Vita Activa and the Vita Contemplativa.

Speaker 32 Like, I'm thinking in terms of philosophers, and it took me half of this talk to be like, no, he's actually doing shit.

Speaker 32 As soon as we get out to him actually standing out in front of the cafe and doing this, he's not just developing a method, but by virtue of the fact that he's inviting other artists, like the slides upon slides that we saw of him, you know, working with new machines that he was creating and trying these things, he was actively involved in this practice, which again makes him far more magical than most occultists.

Speaker 32 Don't come for me.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 AI. Specifically, we'll be discussing debates and uses of generative AI in this conference.

Speaker 4 Because the last Acculture conference was in 2023 as these large language models and image generation platforms were just

Speaker 4 starting to gain popularity and now they have a stranglehold over the stock market and many people's imagination.

Speaker 4 The first, I guess, real debate around AI happened as the three of you stayed to listen to a panel after after the Willie Mesburos panel, as well as a Austin Osman Spear panel, a proto-chaos magician from the 20th century who's a contemporary of Aleister Crowley.

Speaker 4 I left to go listen to a mathematical thalamic ontology

Speaker 4 talk, which was probably less interesting than the panel. I'd like to hear you guys talk about the debates around AI and how they emerged in this panel.

Speaker 4 And then also juxtaposing that to the different forms of like AI and discussions around AI that dominated a large part of the rest of the conference.

Speaker 35 Well, actually, AI came up because the initial discussion question for the panel was, what does it mean to talk about art as magic in the digital era?

Speaker 35 So everyone was very specifically being asked to discuss the differences between

Speaker 35 the creation process as magic when you can use AI, when you can use large language models to just generate things. And if the generative method using AI was at all related to

Speaker 35 say, the cut up method or other things. So that was the initial conversation that began, that whole panel.

Speaker 32 Well, and that was certainly a topic that was begged by the other two talks that we didn't really discuss. The Austin Osman Spear

Speaker 32 was about automatic drawing.

Speaker 32 So this conception

Speaker 32 of, you know, this drawing that is coming from the outside, coming from the subconscious, coming from within.

Speaker 3 All within one line.

Speaker 32 All within one line.

Speaker 32 But more than that, it was a very traditional kind of European 1970s lecture.

Speaker 32 You know, you had our lovely Italian man who stood in the front that was ready to smoke a cigarette while trying to get through

Speaker 32 a very well-formulated, well-argued essay while a series of images presented to us behind him that covered an overview of artists that are doing very similar things, or he argued, exist in a similar kind of vein

Speaker 32 and the occurrences of not just magical tropes, but cultural influences that happen independently. So artists all over the world.
The third talk by, I believe, Kate Lady.

Speaker 32 Yeah, the ritual transformation and hybridity in Leonora Carrington's Judith, which was a stage production, which happened in Mexico City, I believe. So we had a few pictures of this, but

Speaker 32 Leonora Carrington's art very specifically has to do with this like hybrid of like animals and mythical figures and creatures. And the stage production was incredibly intense.

Speaker 32 I really appreciated this talk a lot. But then focus on talking about

Speaker 32 generative artificial intelligence and these large language models and the role of art or what it means to do art in this era was related to this idea of the third mind, of automatic drawing, of this concept of hybridity, of this transformative or this discovering of the new through a synthetic putting together of different elements or images, words, sounds, costumery, these kinds of things.

Speaker 32 So it was a natural question to lead, but the audience members took it in a very strange direction that I would like you all to talk about.

Speaker 35 I mean, the initial question was

Speaker 3 really

Speaker 35 that people started asking after the panel topic was proposed was,

Speaker 35 so what did the panelists think about AI art? Do the panelists think AI art is magic? Do the panelists think that AI art is channeling? Do the panelists think that

Speaker 35 putting a prompt in a language model is the same as doing some sort of trance state automatic writing.

Speaker 35 There was a lot of variations on functionally that. All of the panelists' reaction was, no, it's not.

Speaker 35 And a lot of them did not immediately really want to even dive into that topic and were very annoyed at the question.

Speaker 32 That's actually not true because I got triggered almost immediately because it was our first speaker that responded

Speaker 32 not to that first question, but to the second question.

Speaker 32 And the second question had to do with the role of technology and whether we see that there's a possibility for these tools, you know, as a technology, a techne, in magical practice.

Speaker 32 And our first speaker's reaction was to sit back and give us a tentative yes.

Speaker 3 To the tech. To the tech.
That's correct.

Speaker 35 To AI, they were like, their initial reaction was still also no.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 yes, they indeed got there, but it was unclear at first. And I was a little raw about it, given that seemed completely contrary to the talk that, you know, that he had mentioned before.

Speaker 32 There was a question about NFTs. Do you remember this question?

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 35 I tried to put it immediately out of my head.

Speaker 35 Yes, of the fact that it started with like, well, NFTs failed because people weren't ready to embrace the blockchain as a generative idea for making art, as opposed to the fact that, why would I own an NFT if I can screenshot the picture?

Speaker 32 Yeah, well, it was this idea that like NFTs themselves were part of this breaking up of the control process,

Speaker 32 the linearity of money and financial systems, that somehow it was related to the cut-up method.

Speaker 32 It was one of those questions that was a narrative before it finally got to your question that really just invited the readers to respond.

Speaker 32 There were others that talked about this too and related their own personal experience to the generative AI process, that they approach AI not with the expectation that it will provide sense, but it'll almost have this oracular, or again, this, they related it to the third mind.

Speaker 32 This idea that, again, you and the AI come together and somehow reveal the new, which I at this point was absolutely seething.

Speaker 35 Yeah, I think the closest actually that we had to some really like someone even trying to approach it was asking about if you're making this art, if you're generating these new things, does it matter that corporations are controlling the algorithm by which you're doing so?

Speaker 35 Which started to touch on some of the problems, but still was definitely relying on the base assumption that using a large language model to produce stories or art, that you're interacting with something else that's actually capable of creating at all.

Speaker 32 And to her credit, my girl, Kate Lady, who was talking about Leonora Carrington, the one that seemed to be kind of tangentially separate from the other two, but the hybridity really made it, was the one that just gave us a great straight Marxist answer of like, no, this is bullshit.

Speaker 32 Let's actually look at the material implications as to where this is coming from and the environmental costs of running these programs,

Speaker 32 of server farms, the destruction of space, of

Speaker 32 livable areas throughout the United States, that these are questions that we need to ask and are not separate from these questions of magic. So I really shout out to her.

Speaker 32 I I appreciated that response because it was instant and it was

Speaker 32 heated.

Speaker 34 It is also like a, I mean, from my perspective, it's also a labor issue, right?

Speaker 34 Because these large language models and generative AI just scrape like so much data that that's like writing from real artists and created by real like painters and whatever. And it is

Speaker 34 the appropriation of human labor to shit out some some advertising, essentially. That is like my main issue.

Speaker 34 Well, aside from all the ecological and the political issues with it, it's like very much that labor

Speaker 3 angle to it that frustrates me.

Speaker 32 Well, in the context of the talk, it's really important to then ground, and this is the comment that I made that...

Speaker 32 the panel broadly seemed to agree with, although I didn't really leave them much opportunity to disagree with me.

Speaker 4 I mean, you're right.

Speaker 32 Thank you. Go on.

Speaker 32 So this, Burroughs' concept of the third mind, this book that he wrote, right? When two minds collaborate, a third mind or intelligence communicates with you. Again,

Speaker 32 not

Speaker 32 about creating the new, but about revealing itself in

Speaker 32 what was already present. Yes.

Speaker 32 But the idea is that you have to have two minds in order to get to this dialectical third mind that was inherent in the conditions, the situation, the language of the two.

Speaker 32 When one interacts with

Speaker 32 any form of large language model or chat GBT, I and my mind and with what I carry sit in front of a computer and type my input.

Speaker 32 That's one mind. Can you tell me where the second is?

Speaker 35 Well, because even if you're cutting up a book, there's a mind in the book. There's a story.
There's an actual thing there.

Speaker 35 There's a thing that you are interacting with that were thoughts that were produced by someone that you are cutting up.

Speaker 35 You are not just scraping the toilet bowl of human production.

Speaker 32 But even if we're going to be generous and say that these large language models are the ones that are doing the cut up process and you are secondary or tertiary or even further down the line to it, I mean, it doesn't involve a human intelligence at that point.

Speaker 32 So just in terms of the, you know, the Barossian current, it's just not a third mind. It's

Speaker 32 the material conditions are such that it is not and cannot be a third mind.

Speaker 4 Where I would like to take this discussion is actually to the very next talk that I attended as part of a three-talk series called The Politics of Tarot.

Speaker 4 And the specific one that I think continued on this line of thought and even stuff like automatic writing was from Icon to Index by Thomas Leake, the generative logic of tarot, in which he discussed, I will have to check his name later, but discussed an author in the 80s who was trying to use tarot as a way to remove the human element of writing, tried to create an automatic story using the tarot archetypes assembled in a randomized shuffling to generate a story based on the linkages between each of the cards and remove his own agency in directing where the story goes, except for trying to bridge each card from one to another.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 the presenter was discussing if this bears any similarity to generative text models. The presenter said no.

Speaker 4 The presenter said no, this actually is not like LLMs, which purely operate on a people-pleasing, probabilistic capacity to follow one word after another in accordance with whatever the prompt of the person who's operating the the AI wants it to generate.

Speaker 4 Though the presenter stated that like this author who was using tarot probably would have loved using an LLM to try to accomplish this goal of his, trying to access kind of like a form of automatic writing similar to like Austin Osman Spare, but without human input, the shuffling of the cards and forcing the human brain to make connections between these archetypes still contains a creative human process based on randomness in the shuffling of the deck versus the people-pleasing, probabilistic, generative text that LLMs produce.

Speaker 4 This concludes the first episode of my Occulture 2025 coverage.

Speaker 4 In part two, releasing Sunday night, the panel will discuss digital technomancy, traditional magical practice, and why people are doing occult practice in 2025.

Speaker 4 See you on the other side.

Speaker 7 Time for a sofa upgrade. Introducing Anibay sofas, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.
Every Anibay sofa is modular, allowing you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 7 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 7 Liquids simply slide right off. Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 7 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years. Don't compromise quality for price.
Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today.

Speaker 7 Sofas start at just $699 with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get early access to Black Friday now.
The biggest sale of the year can save you up to 60% off.

Speaker 7 Plus, free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washable sofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 8 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 9 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 11 It's the ragebait.

Speaker 12 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 13 If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 15 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 17 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 16 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 15 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 23 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 5 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 29 Season Zero of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 30 Head over to globalgamingleague.com.

Speaker 31 Com, com.

Speaker 1 Let's take a minute to unpack the myths behind GLP-1 drugs. Myth number one, GLP-1 is a long-term solution for weight loss.

Speaker 1 True, GLP-1 can potentially be a long-term solution for weight loss if you want to be on a drug that changes your body's natural instincts. Myth number two, GLP-1 can fix your metabolism.

Speaker 1 False, GLP-1s fix hunger, and this leads to weight loss. But the GLP-1s may actually slow down your metabolic rate as your body adjusts to consuming fewer calories.

Speaker 1 Myth number three, GLP-1 leads to a loss of muscle mass. True.

Speaker 1 GLP-1 can lead to a loss of muscle mass due to losing weight so rapidly that your body is pulling from both fat and muscle to make up for the energy gap from consuming so few calories.

Speaker 1 If you're looking for a natural GLP-1 therapy without the needles, consider Metabolism Ignite.

Speaker 1 Metabolism Ignite is powered by plants and can help boost your natural GLP-1, helping you burn fat instead of muscle. Clinically proven to help you lose nine pounds in 90 days.

Speaker 1 Visit VeracitySelfcare.com and receive 15% off your first purchase with promo code iHeart.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Yep, yep.

Speaker 20 It could happen here.

Speaker 3 Electile disorder.

Speaker 4 Executive disorder, which is our weekly newscast, which we've been doing all year. So we should know what it's called by now.

Speaker 20 Yeah, that's why I'm so good at doing it and naming it.

Speaker 4 Yep. This show covers what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you and me and everyone else.
I'm Garrison Davis.

Speaker 4 This episode I'm joined by Robert Evans, James Stout, and Mia Wong, and we are covering the week of October 22nd to October 30th. Yep.

Speaker 3 So I think we should start off the bat with the same thing we started off last week with, which is that as you're

Speaker 3 Halloween.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, that

Speaker 3 on the upside, Halloween, woo is spooky. On the downside, like 40 million people

Speaker 3 lose their snap benefits the next day. On Saturday.
Yeah, but what's spookier than that?

Speaker 20 Look, one thing you can't say about the government is that they're not failing to celebrate the holiday.

Speaker 2 I am scared of the consequences.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Stock up on the trick-or-treater candy, I guess.

Speaker 3 Steal as much candy as you can. I guarantee people you're going to need it to stay alive.

Speaker 2 You see a group of children, you run past them.

Speaker 3 Take them.

Speaker 20 Oh, they're kids. They can't stop you.

Speaker 20 Yep.

Speaker 2 Hold it above your head. They can't reach you.

Speaker 4 But no,

Speaker 4 it is extremely grim. And there seems to be no indication from the Republicans or the Trump administration that they are going to work with the Democrats to resolve this.

Speaker 4 without sacrificing health care for millions of Americans.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So Gavin Newsom, a friend of the show, has deployed the California National Guard to assist food banks in the state.

Speaker 3 Oh my God.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 look, the thing is, when you participate in the largest crackdown on protected First Amendment speech in recent history, you don't get to show up and hand out snacks and feel good.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 2 many food banks, including some in the Bay Area, have refused the help of National Guard members, right?

Speaker 2 Because they have this very obvious concern that some people might be reluctant to go to places where the soldiers who are standing right next to all the different immigration agents in LA

Speaker 2 are now working. And so this will have the opposite of a positive effect in those instances, right? People are afraid to go to food banks, they're going to remain hungry.

Speaker 2 The consequences of this will be negative.

Speaker 2 The issue, I don't think, is a lack of person power. The issue is a lack of funding.
The state has mobilized $80 million in funds,

Speaker 2 but millions of Californians will be going hungry.

Speaker 2 And because of the failure of state authorities to stop federal authorities deploying the National Guard to LA and to other areas where immigration enforcement was happening, this stunt that Newsom is going for could have very negative consequences for food banks and for Californians who are hungry.

Speaker 2 Something sick and cool you can do if you have the means and the time is to pick up food from food banks for people who need it.

Speaker 4 A lot of people might be concerned. One of the biggest problems is how much food banks get food also through these programs.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, support, yeah, food banks themselves are going to be struggling right now.
For like, I actually, um, I did a thread on lib on blue sky where uh were you good?

Speaker 4 Were you going to say live Twitter and then corrected to blue sky?

Speaker 2 I was going to say lib sky. Um

Speaker 2 yeah, yeah, but I fact-checked myself. Uh, it's blue wave sky.

Speaker 4 There you go. You cannot get that uh past me.
I could pick up on what you were doing.

Speaker 2 I mean, immediately Garriton Davis, like a viper struck yeah at the core of my uh my thought process yeah so if you're on uh if you're on skeeter then you can you can find a little thread i made i'll link it in the show notes with uh food banks that are looking for donations and you can also use that to find a food bank in your area if you're interested in that but yeah this is a serious problem this is the

Speaker 2 should be the biggest news story.

Speaker 2 I'm thinking particularly of those folks in Alaska, right, who found themselves as climate refugees due to this storm, right, which flooded their villages, and now not only facing the loss of their villages and their homes, but also all their cashed food.

Speaker 2 These are people who often would have hunted or fished or relied on

Speaker 2 storing food for the winter and now finding themselves unable to access federal benefits.

Speaker 20 Doing the thing that like there's a representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana made a tweet today blaming SNAP recipients for not stockpiling a month's worth of food.

Speaker 3 What the fuck? Does he understand how this works?

Speaker 20 He said, try to get your head wrapped around how many pantries you can stock with $4,200,

Speaker 20 which is what people get on average per year, he says, with SNAP benefits, in properly shopped groceries.

Speaker 20 Any American who's been receiving $4,200 per year of free groceries and does not have at least one month of grocery stock should never again receive SNAP because, wow, stop smoking crack.

Speaker 4 That's inhumane.

Speaker 20 Dealing with the shit that they talk about is almost pointless because they're all liars.

Speaker 20 But like,

Speaker 20 as like what you said, like, people are on snap for a wide variety of reasons. They're largely employed.
They're just not getting enough money to actually like survive and feed their family. And

Speaker 20 like the $4,200 a year for a family is not, in fact, enough to stockpile a huge quantity of food.

Speaker 2 No, it's not.

Speaker 2 It's remarkable how detached the people who make our laws are from the working class experience.

Speaker 3 There is no way that guy knows how much a banana costs.

Speaker 20 costs no way zero no he has no idea that man hasn't shopped for himself in fucking 20 years yeah yeah that guy does not know uh how much it costs to buy a no mac and cheese for your kids and obviously you know we here we talk about storing food about canning your own food and there are things you can do even on a budget when you don't have much money to build a stockpile and and that's why i encourage people to pay attention to things like prices at the grocery store when things are a lot cheaper because they're in season and learn how to do things like pressure can, right?

Speaker 20 And pickle different foods and whatnot, because there's, there are ways that you can,

Speaker 20 and this is why, right? It's not because you should be doing that or you're irresponsible.

Speaker 20 It's because we, even when it comes to the social safety net, you know, that we have, what little of one that we have, you can't rely on it because at any given point, it could become a fucking fucking football.

Speaker 20 for Democrats and Republicans to fight over and go away, right? Like that, none of this stuff is reliable, which is why people ought to, if it's at all possible, be doing stuff like that, right?

Speaker 20 Not because they should have to do that, but because you cannot rely on the government, right? And I don't say that as like a critique of people or to like shit on people.

Speaker 20 It's just like it's a, it's a fact. It's a fact that people need to increasingly accept because this is not going to be getting better in the long run.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Let's talk about Graham Plattner. All right.

Speaker 3 Oh, God. All right.
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 So talking about how to touch politicians.

Speaker 20 A couple of weeks ago, James brought up Graham Plattner, who is running for Congress in Maine, and some ads that he had put out, which were really,

Speaker 20 and I still think are really good ads.

Speaker 20 Good ads in terms of they were effective, objectively. He raised a lot of money.
He was leading in the polls prior to, as we'll talk about, a bunch of scandals coming out.

Speaker 20 He's no longer leading, but he was doing very well for a while.

Speaker 20 So his campaign, the strategy that he was following, which was largely a mix of talking about and really pushing investments in social programs and particularly healthcare and attacking the billionaire class in very stark terms, talking about the need to effectively get rid of that as a group of people, like tax them out of existence.

Speaker 20 That's a popular, you know, and a good thing to campaign on. And the success that he had early on is evidence that there's a lot of legs.
to talking about that kind of stuff in the way that he did.

Speaker 20 And he talked about it in a very combative way, right? This guy was a former Marine, some sort of fisherman, I think, whatever kind of, he's like,

Speaker 2 Oyster farm.

Speaker 20 I think it's an oyster farmer or some shit. Whatever.
They have up that nonsense state.

Speaker 20 Sorry, Mainites.

Speaker 2 And they're called Maniacs, technically.

Speaker 4 I think they're called Mainers.

Speaker 2 They call the Wright Garrison.

Speaker 20 So he was coming across as a very like blue-collar guy, right? Like a very, and kind of crude, but crude in a like, I'm a straight talker sort of guy. And that worked.
That was a good campaign.

Speaker 20 And we highlighted that because I think it struck, you know, James is the one who brought it to our attention, but I think it struck all of us as a, oh, yeah, this is a guy who is kind of doing, talking to voters in a way that we wish more Democrats were, right?

Speaker 20 And then in the last couple of weeks, oh, God, so many scams come out about this guy.

Speaker 20 The most well-known of them is that for the last 20 years of his life, he has had a totenkopf tattooed over his pectoral. That is the death's head.

Speaker 20 Now, it dates back before the Nazis.

Speaker 20 It was initially, I don't know if this was the very first use of it, but the the very first prominent use of it in military history was as the insignia for a unit called the Death's Head Hussars, which was an elite German cavalry unit.

Speaker 20 I mean, I'm sure I think they did still exist in World War I, but that was well past their prime. And it was then adopted by the SS.

Speaker 20 And it was worn by a number, by a lot of guys in the SS, but it was specifically the insignia of a unit called the Totenkopf SS, which existed to guard concentration camps and death camps.

Speaker 20 So having one tattooed on you, bad.

Speaker 2 Yeah, not cool.

Speaker 20 Plattner has said basically,

Speaker 20 it was a dumb tattoo I got when I was young and just joining the Marine Corps and I didn't know what it meant.

Speaker 20 And I am willing to believe that like a 19-year-old who joins the Marines would make a bad tattoo decision because I have a lot of friends that were in the Marines and they all have bad tattoos.

Speaker 3 Right? None of them have death heads.

Speaker 4 Also, you got it while in like Croatia while drunk was sure leave.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Right. And he was, he was hammered.

Speaker 4 And yeah, the probability of walking into a tattoo shop in Croatia and coming out with a Nazi tattoo is extremely high.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 it's not low.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. They're on the flash seat for Friday the 13th.

Speaker 4 They probably are.

Speaker 20 If it had just come out that he'd had this for some period of time, been like, yeah,

Speaker 20 I was hammered in Croatia and I got a fucked up tattoo and realized it and got it covered, I'd have been like,

Speaker 20 not a story, right? Like, man gets bad tattoo as dumb kid. But number one, he kept it until he got it covered in like the last week or so.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Let me tell you, that was a real piece of art that he covered it with.

Speaker 20 Which is a wild choice to just keep it for that long.

Speaker 20 But also, he claimed I had no idea until it like came out as a story because I forget what outlet, but some news outlet found out that he had it and was going to publish it.

Speaker 2 I think his team told Pod Save America when he went on the Pod Save America pod.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But he had heard that there was opposition research.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah, because he, so he had sent out to like another thing that he went on, like a picture of him with the shirt off.
And they were like, wait, what?

Speaker 3 Like, there were a few of them floating around, huh?

Speaker 2 If you've lived that kind of life, there's going to be pictures of you with that

Speaker 2 shirt off.

Speaker 20 You know, like the refusing to acknowledge, yeah, I knew earlier in my life that it was a death's head.

Speaker 20 And like, there's reports from people who knew him that he called it a totenkoff and joked about it.

Speaker 2 I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 Now, let me be clear.

Speaker 20 I don't actually think Graham is a secret Nazi sleeper agent.

Speaker 20 I really don't. I think he's a guy with really questionable judgment, which is reason to be very critical of his campaign.

Speaker 3 And yeah,

Speaker 20 I take a lot of issue with how he's responded to this because rather than, again, just kind of doing a meaculpa, he's gone on the this is my enemies in the democratic party trying to silence me thing, and a very weird coalition has propped up kind of around him, trying to argue that this is a circular firing squad kind of deal.

Speaker 20 Like, there was a Jacobin article being like, It's fucked up that people are going after Graham and the pod save guys are defending him.

Speaker 20 Like, it is a weird coalition that's circling around this fella.

Speaker 4 What do you think that Joe Rogan of the left meant?

Speaker 3 Vibes, essays?

Speaker 2 We wanted a guy who took loads of steroids and didn't have problematic opinions.

Speaker 20 I'm never going to say this in any other instance about Joe Rogan, but he wouldn't have gotten that tattoo because he knows what a death sentence.

Speaker 4 I don't know if he knew in like 2007 or whatever.

Speaker 4 I think there's a very strong alternate world where 2007 Joe Rogan is traveling in Croatia.

Speaker 3 Joe Rogan gets a totem cop. Accidentally gets a totem cop tattoo.

Speaker 4 It's not impossible.

Speaker 20 You're right. You're right.

Speaker 3 I guess I'm just assuming he's watched enough World War II documentaries to know.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but watching those while like smoking weed, so he doesn't remember anything.

Speaker 20 That's fair. These are fair points you're making, Garrison.

Speaker 20 So a couple of surprising things about this, and this is not the only scandal that's kind of come out about him recently, but number one, it did not immediately take a strong hit to his polling.

Speaker 20 This seems to be primarily just because a lot of voters aren't aware of it because in polls where they at where they inform people that he had a Nazi tattoo, his support drops dramatically by like 30 points.

Speaker 20 Um, that said, he was leading until like two or three days ago, I think was the most recent poll that came out that had uh Maine Governor Janet Mills in the lead above him.

Speaker 3 We're not talking about the main race yet.

Speaker 20 This is, we're still in the uh, the primary, right? So he's challenging Janet Mills for the primary.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 20 And yeah, at present, according to SoCal Strategies, who did a poll very recently, I think this is the most recent poll, Mills has 41% from likely voters, and Plattner has 36%,

Speaker 20 although about a fifth of respondents are undecided. And yeah,

Speaker 20 this is a pretty dramatic upset because prior to the whole Nazi tattoo news coming out, Plattner was leading Mills by about 34 points. So this has gone from Plattner looked to have it in the bag to...

Speaker 20 It's pretty close. Mills is ahead, not by a lead that's so commanding that it's the definite thing.
You know, a standard polling error could have them basically be neck and neck.

Speaker 20 And we all should know at this point how frequently that kind of stuff happens.

Speaker 2 Yeah, polling.

Speaker 20 Never roll.

Speaker 20 But yeah, so I don't know.

Speaker 20 It's one of those, somebody got angry at us on the subreddit being like, I can't believe they're hiding that, like, this has happened, you know, with this guy that they endorse.

Speaker 20 Like, never, we didn't endorse him. And number two, like.

Speaker 20 This shit was breaking when we were recording the ED last week. We made like a reference about it, but not much had come out.

Speaker 20 And there certainly hadn't been time for us to really look into what was going on here. And it's not, this is a main Senate primary.

Speaker 20 This is not like the very top of our list of crucial things to hit the second it happens. We can wait on something like this to see how stuff's shaking out a little bit.

Speaker 20 No one's voting yet, so it's not like we're influencing the election by not coming out or whatever.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like we only get to cover so much.

Speaker 2 We have one hour of like news roundup show a week and the blue sky Twitter drama about Graham Plantner is not as important as the fact that millions of people are losing their food this week.

Speaker 20 no uh one thing that is interesting and i do think this is an important race just because of kind of what it says about what sort of strategies are working now and igniting the base and what kind of stuff does matter in terms of scandals i think there are some things that are really relevant here one thing that is interesting to me is that according to a poll a very recent poll the article came out on october 26th 2025 a majority of young democrats still back Graham Plattner even after the whole tattoo thing.

Speaker 20 And this is really interesting to me because the data shows that, in general, among likely voters,

Speaker 20 his potential support plummets when people are made aware that he had the tattoo.

Speaker 20 But young Democrats are by far the group most likely to have become aware of it as soon as the story broke because young people are much more online than older people.

Speaker 20 And among young people, he's still well ahead, which I really just do think speaks more than anything to the strength of

Speaker 20 the platform that he came out the gate with.

Speaker 20 And the rhetoric, right? His combative rhetoric is really attractive to young voters, especially.

Speaker 2 Explain your generation to us, Garrison, why you like this.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 there's a lot of stuff that the Zoron campaign kind of like ignited around.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, you're right.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Rhetoric. And then people, you know, Sanders and AOC had their anti-oligarchy tour, which, I mean,

Speaker 4 we don't need to debate the use of that term.

Speaker 4 But no, there is a huge frustration at the geriatric Democratic Party. And this sort of populist rhetoric is very popular among young people,

Speaker 4 as it has been since the Sanders campaign in 2016. This isn't like new or revolutionary information.
The fact that this guy has gotten to this point

Speaker 4 has gotten either past scandals or is navigating through it, despite his very questionable background in military and military private contracting, his misogynistic Reddit posts, which were unearthed as an attack against him, which I think he actually handled that scandal fairly well, using it as a parallel to chart his like own political journey.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, I can understand why a whole bunch of young people who are reading about this aren't going to actually care at all about any of these stories and still vote for him because of what he's saying.

Speaker 20 Yeah, and I want to be clear, I didn't bring this up because I think it's bad, even that like young people are still supporting him.

Speaker 20 I think this is something that people, especially in the Democratic Party, who care about winning, and I think it's people on the left who who are trying to look at what can we do to get more progressive and combative candidates who are going to do something, both about the right and about the billionaire class.

Speaker 20 What can we do to actually

Speaker 3 win?

Speaker 20 You should be paying attention to this because this rhetoric works.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And because surely there's one other guy who can say these things.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right. There's got to be another guy without a Nazi test who can say this.

Speaker 4 Surely I can find one person who could use rhetoric, is good on camera, and has not had a toten covered tattooed on their chest for almost 20 years.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And also, I, the most wild part about this, I don't even think is that. It's that this guy was in Blackwater.
Like, so technically it's Constellus, but he calls it Blackwater. He was.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's the other scandal.

Speaker 20 So please, let's, let's, yeah.

Speaker 3 He's deployed to Afghanistan for Blackwater in in 2018 in the first Trump administration. No one at any point in this process went, hold on, wait, this guy went to fight in Afghanistan like in 2018?

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 they prosecuted the guys from

Speaker 3 Visar Square, yeah, from the Nassau Square massacre. Yeah, after the square, like those people got prosecuted four years before that, and he joined Blackwater in 2018.

Speaker 20 And to be clear, because this is something James brought up when we talked about this in our chat previously, he didn't technically join Blackwater because Blackwater has changed its name and I think merged with a couple of countries.

Speaker 3 It was a different name. But to be fair to me,

Speaker 3 he called it Blackwater. He said, I worked for Blackwater.

Speaker 2 There's a way in which, like, I'm okay with people fucking up if they acknowledge they fucked up. Right.
Like, I'm okay with him saying, I did this and it was wrong. So I left.
And I regret doing it.

Speaker 4 I mean, that is what he's saying, though. It was specifically after this deployment.
Yes.

Speaker 4 That this is where he says that, like, this marked his like political quote-unquote radicalization or like entering the path of like how he viewed his life in politics, specifically was negative experiences during this deployment.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 20 And I guess that is something I have really complicated opinions on because I'm not, and I really have a lot of issues with folks on the left who are like, anyone who was ever in the military is forever baby killer and deeply unserious.

Speaker 20 Like, I think that's

Speaker 20 deeply, deeply unserious and incredibly counterproductive.

Speaker 20 And I don't, I think that like it's good that someone can do something as fucked up as join Blackwater and realize that they did a horrible thing and change.

Speaker 20 Maybe doing it in 2018 is too recently for me to want him in Congress as a progressive.

Speaker 3 I don't know. Yeah, it was like, that was, it was like a decade after, like, he was one of the, so he wasn't one of the, like, the torture guards, but,

Speaker 3 like, when he was a Marine, he guard, he was like one of the guys who was, like, assigned to guard Abu Ghraib

Speaker 3 technically after the torture scandal. But it's like, it took you, it took you, like, a decade after that

Speaker 3 to realize that maybe the thing I'm doing is bad. Like, I just, I just, oh, God.

Speaker 20 Well, yeah, and that's, that's kind of like the, because I don't, you know, I don't think.

Speaker 20 having been stationed to guard a place where horrible thing, like, war crimes were committed necessarily damns you forever because, like, you don't choose where you're stationed to guard.

Speaker 20 Who knows when he became aware what was going on in the place he was guarding, but at some point he did. And that wasn't like the moment where he was like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 20 You know, and I, again, I have a lot of friends.

Speaker 20 I have friends who were with the very first infantry unit into Iraq, one of whom, as they were invading, was like, you know, this is criminal, guys, right?

Speaker 3 You know, we're breaking, you know, this is fucked up.

Speaker 20 You know, this war is bullshit.

Speaker 2 Pat Tillman was saying that right like during the invasion

Speaker 3 this guy shipped out in 2016 yeah that's like it took him a i would i would have took a minute it took a minute reasonably long time and also when you read his interviews about it he's like i did it because it was fun which is just like that's that's honest yeah it's honest it makes me insane look i mean that's that's why people join the marines is they like money and or their adrenaline junkies right i'd rather he was honest about that shit actually Like, like, I, I, I, yeah, it's just like distressing.

Speaker 20 I, I, I, I actually like that.

Speaker 20 And again, I do kind of like, because there's not a, there's not a perfect answer as to like, well, when should you have had a change of heart about something like this before you can like be trusted as a political leader on the left?

Speaker 20 And I actually don't really know.

Speaker 20 I think I would be inclined to be like, give him the benefit of the doubt on that stuff more if it weren't for the Nazi tattoo.

Speaker 3 Yeah. If the Nazi tattoo

Speaker 3 shipped out with Blackwater 2018,

Speaker 3 those things together are kind of sketchy.

Speaker 3 Maybe do a couple of tours as a dog catcher first.

Speaker 20 You know, I'm seeing a lot of, because there's a whole lot of like, well, no one else who has a chance of winning in Maine is supporting the progressive policies he is. You know,

Speaker 20 you can't have it all be perfect or whatever. He's, you know, we should at least hope that he gets in and he does the things he's saying.

Speaker 20 And I guess, like, if he does get elected, and it's not the most likely thing right now, but it's certainly not impossible. I guess I hope he does the good stuff he says that he's done.

Speaker 20 I just have a lot less faith in that, given both what's come out and his reaction to it, right?

Speaker 2 It's his reaction to it that was really disqualifying.

Speaker 3 Right. Like, right.

Speaker 2 There's a world, I guess.

Speaker 2 I didn't know that he told people it was a totenkoff. That's pretty fucking incriminating.

Speaker 4 But yeah, there's reports from people who've said that. It's unclear.

Speaker 2 Okay, there's reports.

Speaker 20 Got it. We don't know objectively, but people have talked to the press who knew him and said that he described it as a tote and cough to them several years ago.

Speaker 3 Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 If his response had been like, oh fuck, I didn't know. Let me get that covered up immediately.
That's that's his response was so bad to

Speaker 2 defend it and to be like, oh, there's a conspiracy against it. It would be really bad.
It's that failure. And it also just shows like a lack of judgment and a lack of ability to like be critical of

Speaker 2 his own actions, which is worrying.

Speaker 20 It shows the kind of Trumpian fancifulness that really worries me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, demagoguery kind of thing.

Speaker 4 A lot of populists are like this. Like this is this is a part of populism.

Speaker 2 Like this is a popul.

Speaker 4 I don't think you can fully decouple it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 20 That's probably true, Garrison.

Speaker 20 Yeah. That's probably true.
But I

Speaker 20 don't know. I'm not going to tell you how to vote.
I've made a habit of never telling people how to vote.

Speaker 20 So if you're in Maine, enjoy your Mick Lobster and do whatever your heart tells you is the right thing to do, my friend. But also please don't eat a McLobster.

Speaker 20 It's clearly poisoned. You know,

Speaker 20 avoid a McLob McLobster's at all costs.

Speaker 2 Yeah, buy an oyster instead.

Speaker 4 The strongest endorsement Robert Ethens can make.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Is it not buy a McLobster?

Speaker 3 Avoid a McLobster at all costs.

Speaker 2 Yeah. If you're on the West Coast, avoid shellfish in some months at all costs because you can get paralytic shellfish poisoning.

Speaker 20 Oh, yeah. I mean, some people, that's just basically getting free muscle relaxers, James.

Speaker 4 Let's do it ad break

Speaker 2 for muscle relaxers.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 All right, we are back.

Speaker 32 Um,

Speaker 4 can I do my Halloween ice Nazi sure Bovino segment? Is that how you say his name? Bovino?

Speaker 2 Gregory.

Speaker 2 Bovino.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Gregory Bovino.

Speaker 4 It looks like a Bovino to me. Sure, why not? So we're going to talk about him playing dress up and

Speaker 4 how Border Patrol disrupted a Halloween parade.

Speaker 4 So last weekend, while conducting an immigration enforcement raid, Board of Patrol disrupted the route of a children's Halloween parade in Old Irving Park in Chicago using tear gas and arresting several people, including two U.S.

Speaker 4 citizens. A crowd gathered around after Border Patrol arrested a 35-year-old construction worker who has lived in Chicago since he was four years old.

Speaker 3 Jesus.

Speaker 4 Neighborhood residents said that federal agents then deployed tear gas without warning.

Speaker 4 That following Tuesday, the architect of Operation Midway Blitz, Greg Bavino, appeared in federal court as a part of a lawsuit alleging excessive force and violations of a TRO restricting the use of tear gas and crowd control munitions.

Speaker 4 Bavino seems to be flagrantly violating this TRO as he was photographed personally throwing a tear gas canister into a crowd on October 22nd during a raid on a laundromat and Home Depot.

Speaker 4 The DHS says that protesters were throwing rocks and Border Patrol issued warnings, though this account is contradicted by video of the incident. U.S.

Speaker 4 District Judge Sarah Ellis told the Border Patrol chief, quote, kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of law enforcement officers.

Speaker 4 They just don't. And you can't use riot control weapons against them, unquote.

Speaker 4 This TRO requires that crowd-control munitions may only be used if someone poses an immediate threat to law enforcement, with agents instructed to give two verbal warnings before tear gas or pepper spray can be deployed, and to wear body cams, badges, or visible IDs.

Speaker 4 This order was issued on October 9th.

Speaker 4 And to get an idea of how closely this is being followed, Vavino himself still does not wear a body cam and told Judge Ellis, quote, I have not received a body-worn camera nor the training, unquote.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so border patrol agents have generally, just to give some context here, not worn body-worn cameras for a number of reasons. Firstly, they just don't want to.
Secondly, no one is making them.

Speaker 2 Thirdly, they believe that it is possible for people to detect the Bluetooth signal. that the camera gives out and thus

Speaker 2 find them.

Speaker 2 This is something that is theoretically possible, as best my research can tell. You can make your own judgment as to which of those factors is weighing most heavily on their choice not to wear them.

Speaker 2 But that they have never been required, like as a group, to wear body-worn cameras all the time.

Speaker 4 No, this judge is trying to force them to, they're just refusing to follow the order, despite Bavino saying that 99% of agents have these cameras, which is a bizarrely specific claim.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like yeah is he the one percent like i guess it's he's like

Speaker 4 he's he's just so obviously lying it's just oh god yeah it's it's just it's lying we i think we that should be enough to say yeah i don't know if i said they never wear them to be clear they have gone forward and back uh on wearing them but it was earlier this year that the the specific security risk they they have access to the cameras yes yes they're just refusing to follow this order yep yep Now, the same complaint that alleged that Bavino threw a canister with a justification into this crowd also details an incident from the next day, October 23rd, where agents, without wearing identification as required by the order, shot a protester in the neck with a pepperball from five feet away and while driving away, pointed a pepperball gun, and I'm going to read from the complaint, quote, and then a real gun at declarent Chris Gentry, a combat veteran who was lawfully standing on the side of the road, voicing his opposition as agents were driving by in their vehicles.

Speaker 4 The agent who pointed the real gun at Mr. Gentry's face said, quote, bang, bang, you're dead, liberal, unquote.
Great.

Speaker 3 Cool.

Speaker 20 Anyway.

Speaker 4 Plaintiffs have requested body cam footage of this incident, which has yet to be provided.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I think it's worth noting.

Speaker 3 They do this every single time there is any kind of protest. They do stuff like this.
They've been pointing guns at people the entire time they've been here.

Speaker 4 They've been putting a lot of guns the past few months. as we have reported.

Speaker 3 Yes, they have

Speaker 3 two people.

Speaker 2 They've shot more than two people. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Saying something like this is insane. Yeah.

Speaker 3 No. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It shows obviously like a complete lack of concern for accountability.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 No. Like absolutely no thought that you could be held accountable for this.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 No, and it also shows a desire to kill liberals.

Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 20 Which liberals need to be aware of.

Speaker 3 I mean, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 20 You can't let this organization continue to exist, nor can you let the people doing this stay free if you ever take power again.

Speaker 20 There has to be accountability, and there has to be an end to their ability to, to the ability of any law enforcement agency to exist knowing that they are unaccountable and cannot be punished for the violence that they do to civilians.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I guess I'll take this point to mention that we have covered CBP and DHS's previous shootings in previous years and that

Speaker 2 the internal review process they have for those, which has led to a lack of accountability, even when compared to other law enforcement offices.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 During this hearing this last Tuesday, the judge declined to alter the TRO to ban the use of tear gas completely, saying that she believes Bavino, quote, understands where I'm coming from, and quote, I don't know that we're going to see a whole lot of tear gas being deployed over the next week.

Speaker 4 Unquote. Cool.
Great.

Speaker 3 Amazing stuff. Jumping out of our judiciary.

Speaker 2 Greg's picking up on the vibe, so we should be fine now.

Speaker 4 Yeah, this Bonvino guy seems incredibly trustworthy.

Speaker 4 Though Judge Ellis did instruct Bovino to meet with her every weekday evening throughout Operation Midway Blitz till the next hearing in November to provide instant briefings on use of force.

Speaker 4 Though just one day later, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Judge Ellis' order requiring these daily reports. In some other Bovino moves,

Speaker 4 earlier this week, news broke that top ICE field office chiefs are set to be reassigned and replaced by senior Border Patrol and CBP officials with the goal of netting more arrests to boost deportation numbers.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So the role of Border Patrol Germany is to patrol the physical border and to do enforcement in that 100-mile border zone, right? The role of ICE.

Speaker 2 The majority of ICE agents are not the people that you see out there jumping out of cars and doing these smash and grabs, right?

Speaker 2 The majority of ICE agents are people who will work in an office, who will check in with migrants through their intensive supervision program, which is one of their quote-unquote alternatives to detention, right?

Speaker 2 Both of these agencies are relatively aligned with what I'll call like Donald Trump's agenda. But Border Patrol, particularly, has made a name for itself.

Speaker 2 Like Bovino himself and other Border Patrol chiefs were,

Speaker 2 there was a time when it looked like they were going to force Bovino to retire, and that time was 2023.

Speaker 2 A briefing against the Biden administration, right?

Speaker 2 Bovino has been kind of particularly emblematic of this new Border Patrol approach.

Speaker 2 And it is particularly BP that has been aligned just with a lot of things.

Speaker 2 They had issues getting people vaccinated, right? Like with this whole kind of political social milieu that is representative of the modern right.

Speaker 2 We see with ICE urgents, like some of these people, I'm not going to say they joined like looking to help, you know, like make the world a happy place, but like they

Speaker 2 are reasonable civil servants, right?

Speaker 2 Like I've talked to plenty of migrants who have gone to their, and you'll hear from some of them in a scripted series next month, gone to their ice check-ins and been like, that was fine.

Speaker 2 That person was professional, that they seemed genuinely concerned for things I'm facing. And, you know, I was not unduly harassed, made to feel uncomfortable, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 4 Now, the Border Patrol agents are like particularly brutal.

Speaker 2 I have not heard that same. That was a reasonable professional

Speaker 2 about Border Patrol agents from migrants.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Border Patrol also has a pretty high churn.

Speaker 20 right as you know so that they have a lot of people who have joined since let's say the first trump admin yeah And that may kind of change things because those people are joining specifically because they want to fuck with migrants.

Speaker 20 And while that's always been a thing for Border Patrol, a lot of people joined Border Patrol because it's the easiest way to become technically a federal agent. Yeah.

Speaker 20 And it can be a path to becoming a...

Speaker 3 better kind of federal agent.

Speaker 2 Sure. You can be.

Speaker 20 It's a career thing, which is why part of why there's so much churn. Part of why.

Speaker 2 BP, just to characterize some of the issues the organization has has had, right, has consistently offered waivers for like the academic qualifications that other agencies would not offer waivers for.

Speaker 2 They have a problem, a serious problem with sexual assault, not just of migrants, but of women in the Border Patrol.

Speaker 2 They call the women in the Border Patrol the fierce 5% because this is an agency that has not succeeded in getting more than 5% of its agents to be women.

Speaker 2 It is an agency that has, I guess, for want of a better term, radicalized,

Speaker 2 even

Speaker 2 within DHS agencies. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, all of the most brutal incidents of use of force in like Portland in 2020 that came from feds was Border Patrol.

Speaker 20 That was Bortak.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Bortak.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I would encourage people, if they want to get a sense of how Border Patrol sees itself, to go to the social media page that Bovino curates and has created for a while to look. And again, he was,

Speaker 2 my understanding, like hemmed up for his social media posts in the Biden administration. He's obviously not being restrained in that way now.
Go and look at,

Speaker 2 I think it's called Border Patrol Special Operations Command or DHS Special Operations Command, which includes Bortak. Go and look at their pages, right? Like these guys,

Speaker 2 they see themselves in the realm of like a military branch or a paramilitary police. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 that is what they are doing in Chicago.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 NBC is reporting that the White House has approved the reassignment of at least a dozen directors of ice field offices, with sources telling Fox News that the cities will include Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Philadelphia, El Paso, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, and New Orleans.

Speaker 4 This is almost half of the ICE field offices in the country. This turnover is being orchestrated by DHS Secretary Christy Noam and DHS senior advisor Corey Lewandowski.

Speaker 4 With some of the replacements being hand-picked by Bovino, this is like Bovino being able to shape ICE how he sees fit using his border patrol-like background.

Speaker 4 And these changes are reportedly motivated on differing views on tactics across agency leadership with the ICE strategy and like the Tom Homan strategy of focusing on targeted removal of known criminals or immigrants with pre-existing deportation orders versus the border patrol tactic of doing these large sweeps and roundups around places like home depots, laundromats, restaurants, neighborhoods, urban centers.

Speaker 2 So Bovino like has been on this for a minute, right? Like I'm now realizing we need to cover his career in more depth, but like I've seen this, oh, where did Bovino come from stuff?

Speaker 2 In 2010, when he was out of the Blythe Border Patrol Station, I believe, Blythe,

Speaker 2 California, for those not familiar, Bovino was part of a raid on bus and train stations in Las Vegas, right?

Speaker 2 Like these broader kind of dragnets have been something that he seems to have, they've been a characteristic of his career, right?

Speaker 2 So that would make sense for him to be the guy advocating for this now.

Speaker 4 The official statement made made by DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin at this point says, While we have no personnel changes to announce at this time, the Trump administration remains laser-focused on delivering results and removing violent, criminal, illegal aliens from this country.

Speaker 4 She followed up this statement with a tweet naming a whole bunch of people involved in all of these news stories, including Bavino, and like praising them for their patriotism.

Speaker 4 Let's take a look at two pictures of Bovito here

Speaker 4 for his courtroom attire.

Speaker 4 Who wants to describe what Bovito is wearing here?

Speaker 2 It looks like a statue of Stalin.

Speaker 20 He looks like a guy in the SS is dressing as a guy in the SS for Halloween.

Speaker 4 I don't think it's very Stalin.

Speaker 3 I think it's very German.

Speaker 20 That is an SS looking coat. I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 It's intense. He has the little, he has little stars on his collar.
And yeah,

Speaker 4 this like boxy wool trench coat. It's very with the like shaved sides of his head it's very clear what he is trying to evoke this is a little bit coy but like

Speaker 4 come on come on dude and to follow this up like dhs is really is really pushing bovino now as like the face of this this mass deportation push and they're making fucking like fash wave hypes fash wave hype edit reels of of

Speaker 4 show it guy it's it's mad of bavino and i i will I will play the whole thing, but really, it's the first two seconds that demonstrate what's going on here.

Speaker 2 This will be linked in the notes.

Speaker 2 I didn't realize it was Hamster Dance Coldplay on the soundtrack. Like, I had never listened to that.

Speaker 20 Yeah, that's a choice.

Speaker 4 We're not going to play much of that audio.

Speaker 3 Garrison, we're going to play all of that audio.

Speaker 4 We are not playing 30 seconds of copyrighted audio, but just

Speaker 4 the first, literally the first two seconds of him doing what is very clearly a C. Kyle, and then transferring it into military hand signals.

Speaker 3 But like,

Speaker 4 come on, dude. Yeah.
And then throughout, throughout this, the rest of the little fashion wave edit, it's like pictures of him in his

Speaker 4 tactical gear. And then pictures of him in what I would describe as an SS-inspired military dress uniform with the little, you know, the stars, the trench code.
It's like very clear what he's doing.

Speaker 4 The DHS Twitter account has been doing these little cute Nazi posts for a long time now. They know what they're doing.

Speaker 4 But specifically, this now being like

Speaker 4 the new kind of face of this whole operation, both by playing a hand in restructuring the leadership of ICE and deploying to the forefront of places like Chicago as he leads and orchestrates the mass deportation operation.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Like Operation Midway Blitz, like Blitz, really Blitz? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 Interesting. Interesting.

Speaker 4 Unfucking believable. That the fact that this guy was not canned by any previous Democrat administration, like

Speaker 4 abolishing ICE is obviously like not enough here.

Speaker 4 Cause as we're talking about the way that like Border Patrol has actually been the ones leading the most brutal of these raids, I think like there is a specific focus on like ICE because that's like a safer target, I get like, it feels like, because like people know what you're talking about.

Speaker 20 All of DHS we need to get rid of.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 the fact that this guy wasn't fired is going to be looked back upon in the same way that like a Yende promoting Pinochet is looked back on.

Speaker 3 Just

Speaker 3 yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah.

Speaker 20 How else do you describe it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, like if there was going to be a free country, all of this shit, all of the DHS agencies, all of this needs to cease to exist as a minimum.

Speaker 3 And these people need to be like hauled in front of a Nuremberg tribunal. And that's the minimum viable, there might be a democracy after that.

Speaker 20 We need so many Nurembergs.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And like, it's not, I don't want to burn, you know, gloat about this. It's not hard to have seen this coming.
We have. talked about this for years, right? Like,

Speaker 2 this began in the 1990s with Operation Gatekeeper, Operation Hold the Line.

Speaker 2 We've documented this extensively. We've documented the fact that under the Biden administration, there was virtually no oversight, right?

Speaker 2 That they were able to detain people outdoors without food, water, or shelter and deny that those people were detained.

Speaker 2 This is all stuff that we've covered. And if it wasn't in your news diet, then you should question the news sources that you were using.
But like,

Speaker 2 it was very easy to see this coming. And as Mia said, very little was done to prevent it during the last four years.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 20 And somewhat more amusing news during the ongoing trial over the

Speaker 20 different federal agents deployed to Portland and the necessity of that federal deployment and potentially the mobilization of National Guard troops in Oregon being sent to Portland, which is still being fought over in the courts.

Speaker 20 Portland police were brought up on the stand and testified that during one night out at ICE, federal officers gassed Portland police and fired pepper balls at one officer.

Speaker 20 And when Portland police confronted federal, not ICE, sorry, but these are federal FPS agents outside of the ICE building.

Speaker 20 And when Portland police confronted the FPS agents afterwards, they responded, help or get out of the way.

Speaker 20 And this is simply, there's no actual, there's no rules of engagement, right?

Speaker 20 Rules of engagement for, you know, soldiers and the like are supposed to be stuff like you don't fire until a certain standard of danger exists, right? You don't, you, there are rules

Speaker 20 at which point you are allowed to engage with which kinds of weapons, right?

Speaker 20 Your ROE may say one thing about using a night stick or mace, and it will say something else about using tear gas or whatever. There's no actual ROE for these guys.

Speaker 20 They're allowed to just kind of fire whenever they want, and they're not well trained. They're not very good at what they do.

Speaker 20 Most of them have not actually had the kind of training you're supposed to have with these weapon systems they're using.

Speaker 20 And they're just kind of firing willy-nilly, which is why they've been hitting cops repeatedly.

Speaker 2 Most FBS agents are contractors.

Speaker 2 They're not full-time law enforcement officers. Right.

Speaker 3 Talking of

Speaker 2 things that it would have been easy to see coming, I want to talk about ICE's facial recognition app. So I've seen a piece in 404 Media.

Speaker 2 404 Media is the most annoying outlet to read pieces in because they will send you 17 emails a day.

Speaker 2 Media suggests that ICE is claiming a facial recognition match in its app, Mobile Fortify, is a definitive determination of somebody's status.

Speaker 2 They're quoting here the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Benny G.

Speaker 2 Thompson, as saying, quote, Mobile Fortify is a dangerous tool in the hands of ICE and it puts American citizens at risk of detention and even deportation.

Speaker 2 He also said that, quote, ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a definitive determination determination of a person's status, and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship, including a birth certificate, if the app says the person is an alien.

Speaker 2 ICE using a mobile biometrics app in this way, in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested, is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans' rights and freedoms.

Speaker 2 Thompson is misguided if he thinks that, like, this is new.

Speaker 2 It is new in that that it has impacted U.S. citizens.
Yes.

Speaker 2 This article, for reasons I cannot explain, does not mention CBP1, right?

Speaker 2 As is often the case in immigration reporting that we see now, it's completely lacking in context. The context here is that CBP1 is an app developed in the first Trump administration.

Speaker 2 It's often referred to as a Biden app because the definitive political question of our time is who was president in 2020.

Speaker 4 There's just no way to know.

Speaker 20 It's impossible to say. You can't

Speaker 20 data on anything happening that far back.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, I have a new one which is more recent, which we're going to talk about next. Grock.

Speaker 4 Grock, is this real?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But CBP-1

Speaker 2 was effectively determinative for migrants, right? We've covered this in great detail here. There were some public records.
about CBP-1 that I've looked at extensively.

Speaker 2 The sort of too long didn't read a version is the app did not work well on Android phones, especially previous generation Android phones, which are very common among people coming from the global south.

Speaker 2 The facial liveness scan. So what the facial liveness scan does is that let's say Robert is coming to the US, right?

Speaker 2 They wanted to check that the phone is being held by Robert, that it's not been held, someone's not holding up a photograph of Robert in front of the camera. Right.

Speaker 2 So you sort of move it around and it determines that it's a real 3D face,

Speaker 2 not a photograph. It really struggled with black faces.

Speaker 2 I've seen this firsthand.

Speaker 20 All this stuff does. It's the same thing with how there have been

Speaker 20 emotion-activated faucets and stuff that wouldn't recognize dark skin.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a data set that they put in, right? To my understanding.

Speaker 2 The results of those scans were determinative for migrants, right? It could determine their ability to make an asylum appointment and therefore to enter the U.S. and make a claim for asylum.

Speaker 2 This caused people to remain in various, very dangerous situations. It has probably led to people dying.

Speaker 2 It's another example of why we have to pay attention to the border if we want to know what's coming down the pipe domestically.

Speaker 2 And talking of shit that is coming down the pipe from the border domestically, I want to talk about public lands again because Utah Senator Mike Lee is back on his bullshit.

Speaker 2 This time he has another bill. People will remember that Mike Lee tried to insert in the budget reconciliation bill a massive sell-off of public lands, right?

Speaker 2 And what Lee does is he uses whatever terminology he thinks will make people support this crusade he has against lands owned by the public for every one to access.

Speaker 2 The last time he tried to wrap it up in language about affordable housing. If you read the bill, you would have seen that it wasn't going to result in any affordable housing.

Speaker 2 This time he's wrapping it up in the language of border security.

Speaker 2 And this is where I'm where we're going to return to the defining political question of our time, who is president, because Lee, who introduced the bill in October of 2025, said, and I quote, Biden's open border chaos is destroying Americans' crown jewels.

Speaker 2 Families who want to enjoy a safe hike or camp out are instead finding trash piles, burned landscapes, and trails closed because rangers are stuck clearing up the fallout.

Speaker 2 Cartels are exploiting the disorder, using these lands as cover for their operation.

Speaker 2 This bill gives land managers and border agents the tools to restore order and protect these places for the people they were meant to serve.

Speaker 2 Diligent observers will notice that Biden is no longer the president of the United States.

Speaker 2 And further diligent observers will notice that many people currently working for the federal government on public lands are being laid off or furloughed due to the government shutdown.

Speaker 2 What Lee's bill would do is allow DHS to identify illegal roads in public land areas and then to upgrade them to navigable roads.

Speaker 2 This is important because the 1964 Wilderness Act doesn't allow motorized access to wilderness areas.

Speaker 2 And what Lee is proposing is that they would identify these illegal roads within a 100-mile zone, but he is proposing a blanket change to the 1964 Wilderness Act to allow the construction of roads, which would completely change.

Speaker 2 the nature of wilderness in the United States.

Speaker 2 And like sometimes a slippery-slope argument can also be a fallacy, but in this case, building roads into the wilderness will permanently change the nature of that wilderness and will lead to other losses of protection on public land.

Speaker 2 Lee makes the argument that it's important for search and rescue and for border access. There is already mechanized access for search and rescue, right?

Speaker 2 Like search and rescue helicopters, for instance, can access wilderness areas.

Speaker 2 They have agreements in place with land management agencies which allow them to do this already when there is a risk to human life.

Speaker 2 The bill also talks about removing invasive species and reducing fire risk by removing fire fuels down by the border.

Speaker 2 Again, I'm guessing what this would do would be this, this would, I mean, if you fire fuels, like look at the southern border near where I live, right?

Speaker 2 Like think of the California sagebrush chaparral, like clearing firefuels there would completely change that landscape forever.

Speaker 2 It would remove much of the value that this wilderness has, not as untouched, right?

Speaker 2 People have lived in this area for tens of thousands of years and that they have touched that nature and they have lived alongside it and worked with it.

Speaker 2 But it is an area that is significantly less damaged than most of the United States, right?

Speaker 2 The bill would also inventory fires and damage to wilderness caused by migrants. I guess this is just an attempt to say another bad thing about migrants.

Speaker 2 It also prohibits any housing of migrants on federal lands unless it is in a prison.

Speaker 2 It's Lee taking this border hawk stuff and strapping it onto this crusade that he has been on for a long time to deprive people in the United States and people visiting the United States of access to their public lands and eventually to sell those lands off to the highest bidder.

Speaker 2 He introduced it on October the 2nd. It's in the committee stage right now.
This probably is one of the things that folks could call a representative about and suggest it's a very bad idea.

Speaker 2 Talking of bad ideas, Maduro has announced the formation of an international brigade to defend his incredibly corrupt regime in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 I say this as someone who has been to Venezuela and written a PhD about the Spanish Civil War. This is a very bad idea.

Speaker 2 Don't do this.

Speaker 2 This is

Speaker 2 Maduro does not need your help. Fuck that guy.

Speaker 2 Talking of things that don't need your help, here are some adverts.

Speaker 4 I can't believe you're throwing the People's Republic of Venezuela under the bus like that as they're facing down war with the United States of America right now.

Speaker 2 Standing in the breach against imperialism. Yeah, I read all about it.

Speaker 4 What happened is hashtag Solidarity, James.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I read about it on the Grey Zone and I'm changing my opinions, Having spent more time than I'm sure half the staff of the gray zone in Venezuela.

Speaker 3 Speaking of spooky, the shit Trump's getting as part of tariff negotiations. Woo.

Speaker 3 All right. So as we talked about last week, Trump has been in East Asia to do a bunch of meetings for a conference that's already happening.

Speaker 3 And this is where tariff negotiations have been being handled. This has been being held in South Korea.

Speaker 3 South Korean president Lee Jim-young presented Trump with South Korea's highest honor and also gave him a giant golden crown. Have you all seen the giant golden crown?

Speaker 4 It's that easy, folks. All you got to do.
It's all you got to do is just these little stupid things.

Speaker 4 And then he loves you.

Speaker 3 Giant gilded crown. I haven't seen the crown.

Speaker 2 I'm going to look at the crown right now.

Speaker 3 Look up the crown.

Speaker 3 I am beseeching you all.

Speaker 3 However big you think this crown is, it is way larger than that.

Speaker 3 It is. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah. No, it's

Speaker 3 Jesus.

Speaker 3 Wow. It's like the size of a fire island.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Maybe

Speaker 2 they directly took

Speaker 2 the one that they took from Prince Andrew for being a nonce and melted it down or something.

Speaker 3 It's really something.

Speaker 3 Now, Li Jae Myung is a name you might recognize because he's the guy who was famous for that video of climbing over the fence to stop the coup last year.

Speaker 3 And one year later, he is giving Trump what I think might be the largest crown I have ever seen. Now, this crown is being described as, quote, a gilded replica.

Speaker 3 So I don't know how much of this is actually gold. I suspect it's gold paint or whatever.
I don't know. I do not have confirmation on it.

Speaker 3 But, you know, great, great things happening in sort of like a revolutionary anti-coup movement, which has ended with giving Trump the giant golden crown.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and apparently they, and they got like a kind of favorable,

Speaker 3 sort of okay-ish kind of trade deal out of out of giving the president of the United States giant golden crown. So, in terms of tariff news,

Speaker 3 while in China, Trump had his long-awaited meeting with Xi Jinping. They struck a deal.
Trump decreased the quote-unquote fentanyl tariffs to 10%,

Speaker 3 which leaves the tariff rate for all Chinese goods at 47%,

Speaker 3 down from its previous 57%.

Speaker 3 China has agreed to not do rare earth mineral restrictions that we talked about last week and has also pledged to buy U.S. soybeans.

Speaker 3 Again, it's deeply unclear how much of this is actually going to happen. I think

Speaker 3 my guess is that they probably won't do the harshest of the rare mineral restrictions, but I will believe the soybean purchases when I see it, and I haven't seen it yet.

Speaker 3 There's also been some interesting news out of the Senate where there's been a couple of symbolic votes against some sets of tariffs.

Speaker 3 The Senate voted 50 to 46 to end the state of emergency that supposedly allows Trump to do the Canada tariffs and also voted to block tariffs against Brazil.

Speaker 3 The four people who voted against both of these, who voted with the Democrats, are Mitch McConnell, McConnell, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murowski, which it kind of makes sense because Collins and Murowski are supposed to lead the two moderates.

Speaker 3 Rand Paul is like, just hates tariffs. Yeah.
He's a free trade hardliner who,

Speaker 3 whenever I talk about this, I will say he has had, as much as all of this is his fault, he has had one great light ever, which is I have a trade deficit with my grocery store.

Speaker 3 It's like

Speaker 3 actually really good.

Speaker 4 Is he like an Austrian like economist, like libertarian type?

Speaker 3 I know he's like a libertarian guy.

Speaker 4 I'm just trying to figure out what specific flavors he's doing.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 he's like one of the Austrian gold standards, but also like those people are still free trade people.

Speaker 4 Like really hardline. Last time I heard Charlie Kirk talk in person, he was debating like five Austrian economists.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 The most annoying people in the internet.

Speaker 20 Like, honestly, I...

Speaker 20 I wouldn't wish that on anyone. That sounds like him.

Speaker 3 That sounds like, why would you agree to do that?

Speaker 20 Especially if you're already rich. I don't understand it.
I don't understand it.

Speaker 3 Now, okay, it's also worth noting, though, that despite these votes, none of this is going to take effect because the House right now effectively does not exist as a legislative body. It sure does.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it doesn't exist in general because they keep not calling sessions because every time they try to call a session, the Democrats,

Speaker 3 in the one political theater thing that like

Speaker 3 is kind of a good idea, but they're still bad at it.

Speaker 3 They keep being like, you have to release the Epstein files, and the Republicans keep being like, no, so we kind of don't have a House of Representatives.

Speaker 20 I keep thinking about that one scene from Mars Attacks where the president's like, you've still got two out of three branches of government, and that ain't bad.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Except in this case, it's very good.

Speaker 3 We basically have one branch of government. We have one branch of government.
Yeah, we have one branch of government.

Speaker 20 But that doesn't work as a Mars attacks joke.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And also, it's worth noting: the House voted to not allow any tariff legislation until March 2026, a thing that it could apparently do. It is totally normal.
Sure. Oh, wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, so speaking of things that are totally normal, we're going to close this with Trump getting mad at Canada because he saw an ad they were running

Speaker 3 on this series that was, oh, God. It was, it was, it was a bunch of clips of Ronald Reagan being like tariffs bad because Reagan.

Speaker 3 Reagan's domestic protectionism took the form of currency devaluations and not tariffs, et cetera, et cetera. But like, yeah, so, and, and Trump saw this, lost his mind, said that it was AI.

Speaker 3 There's a whole saga here about him claiming that it was like also unauthorized usage of footage, which is a fiasco. And then also all of the tariff negotiations that have been happening to the U.S.

Speaker 3 and Canada have been called off, and he just put another 10% tariff on them because he was mad about it. Go J's.

Speaker 3 Yeah, totally, you know,

Speaker 3 totally, absolutely a thing that like an elected head of government does, and not a guy who just received a massive golden crown.

Speaker 3 Aw, Garrison, that's not a Blue Jays hat, but you know, this is a Blue Jays hat, Mia.

Speaker 4 How fucking dare you try to

Speaker 4 she splay in my own

Speaker 3 country

Speaker 3 to myself.

Speaker 20 Yeah, it's Toronto's team, right?

Speaker 2 Garrison's wearing a hat for those who are not working for cool zone meetings.

Speaker 4 Yes, it's the Toronto Blue Jays. Oh my God.

Speaker 32 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Toronto Blue Jays.

Speaker 20 I thought it was the Toronto Blue Jays. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But there's not a J on it.

Speaker 3 Why?

Speaker 4 Well, no, it just has the maple leaf.

Speaker 2 But it's only three points. It's not a traditional maple leaf either.

Speaker 4 James,

Speaker 3 are you going to she-splain my own country to me? Garrison, when it comes to birds and leaves. I am going to Canada Splain to you.
It rocks.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but that's fun. That's just how tariff policy is set now is you pissed off the king and he decided to put a tariff.
This is.

Speaker 3 I don't know,

Speaker 3 I don't really know how to do analysis of the fact that we just have a child king setting tariff policy. It's great.
Look,

Speaker 4 quick fact check.

Speaker 3 Can you read this? Oh, wow. It does say Blue Jay.

Speaker 4 Can you read this? Genuine MLB merchandise, okay?

Speaker 3 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 20 Yeah, no one would ever put that in fake MLB merchandise.

Speaker 3 It wouldn't be allowed.

Speaker 2 I've never seen any genuine MLB merchandise in markets markets in Iraq, for example.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Hey, I'm the owner of a proud Fix and Gann shirt that I bought at a market in there.

Speaker 3 All right, fine. All right, all right, everybody.
Okay,

Speaker 4 I think it's politically important for the Blue Jays to win the World Series and contribute to the American century of humiliation.

Speaker 20 James, I still have my Tumberland boots that I bought in Syria.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I have a 5.1.1 jacket.

Speaker 20 Oh, and I got a great Adotis track suit when I was an Istanbul.

Speaker 3 James, do we want to do this Fed election monitoring right now or next year?

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's do it now. Let's talk about talking of things which are not as they seem.
California Attorney General.

Speaker 2 Look at that, Garrison.

Speaker 3 That is why they pay me the medium bucks.

Speaker 2 California Attorney General Rob Bonter is warning.

Speaker 20 That's such a fake ass name. I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 Sorry.

Speaker 2 Garrison is wearing that hat for those not watching this podcast on top of their head in the fashion of a Fez.

Speaker 2 California Attorney General Rob Bonter is warning about election interference by the federal government.

Speaker 2 The federal government has sent monitors to California, to a number of different counties in California, in order to monitor the elections that are happening here on the 4th of November.

Speaker 2 To be clear, Federal monitoring is not uncommon. The Biden administration did it in more than 80 places in 2024, for example.

Speaker 2 But Bonter seems convinced this monitoring is going to lead to election denial, election interference. Here's Gavin Newsom talking on X about this.

Speaker 36 So today the Trump administration announced they're sending election monitors to five specific counties here in the state of California. They have no business doing that.

Speaker 36 They have no basis to do that. In fact, we have a statewide election.

Speaker 37 for a statewide constitution.

Speaker 38 This is about voter intimidation.

Speaker 36 This is about voter suppression, period, full stop. And it's a pattern, isn't it?

Speaker 36 It's consistent with what they've done with the federalization of the National Guard and the intimidation and the chill that that's created. They'll do that right around Election Day as well.

Speaker 36 Same thing with ICE and Border Patrol, mass men. Watch that space showing up in and around polling booths and voting places.
But this is a bridge too far.

Speaker 36 And I hope people understand it's a bridge that they're trying to build, the scaffolding for all across this country in next November's election. They do not believe in fair and free elections.

Speaker 36 Our republic, our democracy is on the line.

Speaker 38 We all need to wake up.

Speaker 2 I'm actually a lot more concerned with the stuff around, and I think he's probably right that we will see

Speaker 2 more federal agents around polling places in election time. What California is doing in response is assigning monitors to monitor the federal monitors, which will be interesting.

Speaker 2 And it seems unusual, right, for the federal monitors to be monitoring things. One of the the things that's on the ballot this year is Prop 50, right, which would redistrict California.

Speaker 2 It's gerrymandering. It's a gerrymandering proposition to it.

Speaker 20 It's revenge gerrymandering, let's be clear.

Speaker 3 It's gerrymandering.

Speaker 20 The bill is specifically, we not we're going to do this, but we're going to do this if

Speaker 20 the there's redistricting in Texas. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's uh it's yes.
It's an attempt to to rectify the very obvious gerrymandering in Texas.

Speaker 20 It's it's kind of mad mutually asserted destruction is applied to gerrymandering.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Um Yeah,

Speaker 2 neither of these things are great. That's here we are.

Speaker 2 I think that's all I had on this, actually. Cool.
Yep. I think that's

Speaker 20 episode.

Speaker 2 That's where we're at.

Speaker 20 All right, everybody.

Speaker 3 Well, until

Speaker 4 breaking autism news. Oh, God.

Speaker 4 Texas is suing Tylenol, specifically a pharmaceutical company, Johnston Johnson, for marketing Tylenol to pregnant women and failing to disclose what Attorney General Ken Paxton calls, quote, a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.

Speaker 2 unquote. They don't market it to pregnant women.
Like, generally, they're all.

Speaker 20 If I'm not mistaken, it says on the bottles, don't take if you're nursing your pregnant.

Speaker 2 We covered this in a previous episode, but generally, drugs are not, very few drugs are marketed to pregnant people, right? Be they women or otherwise.

Speaker 20 Yeah. No, the only thing you're supposed to take as a pregnant woman is cocaine.
And you got to make sure it's pure.

Speaker 3 Non-binary people tell you you can take anything.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 If you're not pregnant, it's okay to do whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 3 If you are pregnant, not not a woman it's okay go go right ahead yeah yeah yeah sure but wait no i don't think that it that's how it works

Speaker 4 transvastic double yeah yeah yeah true i think if you have a fetus gestating in you you're only supposed to do cocaine definitely the least autistic of people non-binary people yeah definitely definitely they can just take whatever or do or do take whatever yeah do how many drugs like like they'll they'll say that you should consult with with your doctor consult a doctor yeah and none of them are risk-free but

Speaker 2 it's a cost-benefit analysis, right? We covered this.

Speaker 4 The autism and Tylenol, like correlation versus causation based on that one Swedish study.

Speaker 4 I'm interested to see how Johnston Johnson argues this in court and if that will have effects across

Speaker 4 the rest of the Trump administration's anti-Tylenol push, if they're able to successfully defend their product against Ken Paxton. So critical support to Tylenol, I guess.

Speaker 20 Welcome to the resistance, big pharma.

Speaker 3 Jesus. Yeah.

Speaker 2 If people want to listen to more on that, they can go back and find our previous episode.

Speaker 20 All right, everybody. Until next time, try not to be on a fishing boat anywhere south of the U.S.
southern border.

Speaker 20 It's not safe right now.

Speaker 4 Good luck trick-or-treating. Happy Halloween.

Speaker 20 Yeah, good luck trick-or-treating. It's not safe right now.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, don't be trick-or-treating in a boat this year.

Speaker 4 We reported the news.

Speaker 3 That sucks. Yeah.

Speaker 19 We reported the news.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 3 You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 19 Hey guys, it's Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa. So as a sideline reporter, game day is extra busy for me, but I know it can be busy for parents everywhere.

Speaker 19 You're juggling snacks, nap time, and everything else.

Speaker 19 Well, Gerber can help create a more parent-friendly game day because they have the most clean label project certifications of any baby food brand.

Speaker 19 So you can feel good about what you're feeding your little ones. I mean, Mac loves them.
You can't go wrong with the little crunchies.

Speaker 19 You just put him in a little bag or you put him in a little container and he's good to go. Make sure to pick up your little ones' favorite Gerber products at a store near you.

Speaker 23 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 26 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 29 Season Zero of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 30 Head over to globalgamingleague.com.

Speaker 31 Com, com.

Speaker 1 A Dudley board-certified OBGYN, an endocrinologist doctor, a naturopathic and licensed acupuncture doctor, and a certified health coach walk into a room. What do they talk about? GLP-1, of course.

Speaker 1 But more specifically, the difference between the synthetic version of your body's own hormone that are prescribed by doctors nationwide versus Metabolism Ignite product, which naturally increases your body's GLP-1 by 55%.

Speaker 1 GLP-1 slows digestion, leading to bloating and discomfort, versus Metabolism Ignite, which supports your digestion and gut health.

Speaker 1 GLP-1 side effects can lead to nausea, fatigue, and muscle loss, whereas Metabolism Ignite is powered by plants and there are no side effects.

Speaker 1 Some long-term results of GLP-1 links to weight gain after stopping the synthetic drug drug, which has been proven in multiple studies.

Speaker 1 In comparison to Metabolism Ignite, there is no weight regain and this product supports metabolic health. The prognosis these three medical practitioners all agree upon?

Speaker 1 Visit VeracitySelfcare.com and receive 15% off your first purchase with promo code iHeart.

Speaker 39 We all have dirty mouth moments, but this one makes your dentist proud. I'm talking about dirty mouth toothpowder from Primal Life Organics.

Speaker 39 Instead of foamy fillers and dyes, it gives your teeth back the minerals they're made of, restoring enamel naturally. Best part, it's safe even if the little ones swallow it.

Speaker 39 No harsh chemicals, no scary warning labels, just clean ingredients that whiten and strengthen with science. Ready to switch? Visit PrimalLifeOrganics.com and use code DirtyMouth for 15% off.

Speaker 39 That's PrimalLifeOrganics.com.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.