981 - Down in the Mall (10/27/25)

Speaker 0 All I wanna be is ill jumbo.

Speaker 0 All I wanna be is ill jumbo.

Speaker 0 We need a bottle tail pistols.

Speaker 0 All I wanna

Speaker 1 Hello, everybody.

Speaker 3 For you, it is Monday, October 27th. But for me, it is an unspecified date from last week.
That's right. It's a pre-recorded show.

Speaker 3 We are transmitting you this message from the past into the future in the hopes that nothing extraordinary happens in the week Felix and I take off.

Speaker 3 But for today's episode, it is a timeless, timeless topic. We know this one will never be out of date or out of fashion.

Speaker 6 That's right.

Speaker 3 Your thoughts, questions, and concerns. It's a call-in show where we will solicit your questions for Felix and myself.
End of note, Chris is on the ones and twos again.

Speaker 8 Oh, hello. It's good to be back.
I missed you all.

Speaker 3 Oh, and also our comic book, another occult ritual in which we intend to profane God and all that is holy.

Speaker 3 The occult ritual known as comic book creation is available at badegg.co, year zero, a chapo trap house house comics anthology. Still available for purchase at bad egg.co.

Speaker 10 Okay,

Speaker 3 now we begin this transmission into the future.

Speaker 11 So I actually wanted to start us off with an inadvertent two-parter. I don't know how this happened, but I'll just do the first one real quick.

Speaker 13 Hey there, Chapos. Long time, first time.

Speaker 13 Saw on the news that the curdled masses of South Africa have landed in Washington, D.C., and was embarrassed to see that my state is on the short list of planned recipients.

Speaker 13 My question for the table is: Do you think that my new Afrikaner neighbors will assimilate to our multicultural neighborhood, or are they simply too racist for even 2025 Appalachia?

Speaker 1 All right, big love to the table. Glad to hear Matt's back on the mend.

Speaker 11 And this was a follow-up from a different person.

Speaker 15 Hello, Chopper Crew. This is CJ from the country of South Africa, as we Afrikaners like to call it.

Speaker 15 I've been loving listening to the show over the years, but one thing I did not appreciate is your strong anti-Afrikana sentiment.

Speaker 15 But now that we're finally being accepted as refugees in your country, I was wondering, what do you guys think are the most important things that we need to learn about your culture in order to assimilate properly?

Speaker 15 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 I'll kick this off by addressing both callers here.

Speaker 3 You have to understand, the only South African that I know or have ever met is Adam Friedland. And, you know, you've listened to his episodes.
He's the most annoying man on earth. So

Speaker 3 I was just saying, it's coloring my perception of people from South Africa, but I will plead ignorance here.

Speaker 3 The only South African person I know is Adam Friedland. So

Speaker 3 anything I say in this matter will be colored by that lens.

Speaker 24 Frankly, I just think South Africa is too different of a culture for them to ever assimilate.

Speaker 27 I mean,

Speaker 28 they had

Speaker 27 segregation enshrined in law for a good part of their history. They had like a contingent of like really annoying Zionists that were kind of a kind of part of

Speaker 24 their foreign policy apparatus and guided a lot of their decisions in the latter.

Speaker 26 latter quarter of the 20th century. I just know, in all seriousness, I think South Africans are actually kind of like what the forerunners in Halo's, Halo are to humans.

Speaker 30 South Africans are to Americans.

Speaker 4 I was wondering about what, what was the, what was the last time I remember discussing South Africans on the show?

Speaker 39 And I realized it was when we were talking about that

Speaker 20 YouTuber I used to watch in 2008.

Speaker 41 I didn't watch him because I agreed with him, but

Speaker 28 he was that sort of Jack Manlet,

Speaker 46 you know, white South africaner who would he he was called reindeer but spelled in like lead speak and he would go uh they just renamed johannesburg airport to oatambo airport who the is otambo

Speaker 28 and he was he was doing this in like he used to do this before obama got elected he was so advanced he was like 15 years behind the meta now everyone yells in their car now everyone is like they renamed the airport i'm gonna kill myself no i i i think if anything uh they will become a model minority

Speaker 3 to the afrikaner's gentleman too called i i i i have to correct i have to correct my statement uh my perception of what you're like is uh i don't know adam freedland doesn't really count as an afrikaner but my only other uh perception of white south afrikaners uh comes from the film lethal weapon too So once again, like, I think I've been prejudiced in, you know, sure, because of the whole apartheid situation, but also because of the film Lethal Weapon 2.

Speaker 9 All right.

Speaker 11 Well, we've got one from a girl next up. So brace yourselves.

Speaker 51 Hey, Choppo. I recently re-listened to your 2021 episode where you all are making predictions for the rest of Biden's term.

Speaker 51 And for the most part, pretty spot on, including Amber's prediction that we would see QAnon on the runway. I am wondering what sort of shots you all are calling for the rest of Trump's term.

Speaker 39 I don't think it is

Speaker 24 too outlandish of a prediction

Speaker 3 to say that there will be further economic calamity and discontent with the economy.

Speaker 38 I do think that

Speaker 20 one of the problems that NA Trump administration has, regardless of whether it is the first, more internally divided and

Speaker 26 reticent and article shy Trump won versus the more emboldened emboldened

Speaker 44 and strengthened by

Speaker 45 several more years of rot Trump II,

Speaker 58 is that after about 18 months, two years, you run out of things to be about.

Speaker 39 Part of that is a,

Speaker 59 I don't even know, I don't even know if you would call it a flaw with the design of Trumpism.

Speaker 61 It just is baked into the design that it assigns itself problems that are either not solvable or not solvable within within two years while um

Speaker 65 only really being able to exist on a media cycle where things cycle in and uh

Speaker 63 rage and discontent cycle so quickly so the politician is not beholden to the same norms and cycles of people from 20 30 years ago This is actually the thing that I have had the most trouble, like even gaming out a coherent prediction on.

Speaker 24 We We know what it looked like for Trump One when it stopped being about something.

Speaker 4 They were all over the place.

Speaker 30 They would fire people based on articles frequently. There was tons of like recriminations and backbiting and shit like that.

Speaker 21 Now that they have, they've fully bought into this idea that like, no, we should never, like, we should never back down from anything.

Speaker 53 It doesn't matter what someone says about someone who works from us.

Speaker 21 We'll always stand by them.

Speaker 53 That was our biggest mistake the first go around.

Speaker 52 What happens when like none of this other shit is in play?

Speaker 70 Where it doesn't even like move the needle for supporters for them to do these horrifying jackbooted raids because

Speaker 46 the economy is in the shitter so bad that no one is even coming here.

Speaker 22 I mean, I guess they are already terrorizing Americans, but at a certain point, you cannot just wish for one news cycle over the other.

Speaker 26 That was sort of one of the problems with Biden.

Speaker 8 And Biden still had like

Speaker 41 foundational Biden-y bullshit he could fall back on.

Speaker 3 Trump doesn't.

Speaker 43 It looks increasingly dicey after, you know, repeated foreign policy failures where he's similar to Biden, said, I have a unique ability to make these deals.

Speaker 25 And if they are repeatedly shitting the bed over and over and over again, then it's really about nothing.

Speaker 27 And,

Speaker 49 you know,

Speaker 41 the reason it's hard to predict is that can either be fucking horrifying.

Speaker 30 Like they go, okay, Paste Comitat, we're ripping up posse comitatas.

Speaker 26 The fucking, the Air Force is going to fucking bomb Peoria.

Speaker 40 Or they like, uh, feel bad about themselves like they used to.

Speaker 21 And they go, we're back to firing people over articles.

Speaker 26 I really don't know.

Speaker 3 I mean, my question, and like to Felix, to go off what you just said, it's a cliche, but right now it certainly doesn't seem like they're behaving like a party that's really concerned with running for re-election.

Speaker 3 As we get this dawn of like, I don't know, a kind of aesthetic fascism or open embrace of Hitlerism from various people in the GOP or people who work for them, as we've discussed on the show over the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 3 I would fully expect them now

Speaker 3 with more or less ICE being used as Trump's personal domestic military or law enforcement apparatus, where he can, you know, basically hire from the dregs of society anti-social

Speaker 3 peanut heads who can then terrorize people in largely democratic cities or what are clearly meant as intimidation to the majority of the country that lives in cities that where the Democrat power base is in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York.

Speaker 3 I fully expect to see more of that.

Speaker 3 And I, you look, they're already announcing that they're going to contest elections or just steal them through legal means via gerrymandering or just not seating people who have won elections.

Speaker 3 But I would expect them to use ICE or

Speaker 3 some form of law enforcement or National Guard presence to contest elections or overturn them more or less illegally. However, that being said, like that is a terrifying thought.

Speaker 3 But that being said, my prediction is at some point this

Speaker 3 aesthetic fascism, which has created sort of a TV, a television show where like, you know, the leader's enemies are punished on a daily basis.

Speaker 3 You know, if you don't approve of the leader's favorite podcaster, you'll be just deported from America.

Speaker 3 I wonder if that will run into a wall of the more or less gutting of state capacity that's taken place in this country over the last 40 years or so, like the neoliberal hollowing out of state capacity.

Speaker 3 And I'm thinking about this in light of a story I saw today about how the Trump administration is more or less outright buying like like an equity stake in a lithium mining company and at the same time cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies to a lithium refinery and battery plant that was going to be built in Nevada.

Speaker 3 So it sort of seems like I'm not yet willing to see that there's like the holistic kind of classical fascism because I think the American population is so depoliticized and I think like the organs of the state capacity itself are so essentially hollowed out.

Speaker 3 I wonder if their grand plans will run into some sort of hurdle in that regard. Does that make sense?

Speaker 33 Yeah, no, and I think that's a very good, I don't know if you'd call it prediction or just

Speaker 43 appraisal, but

Speaker 26 just to put a bow on this for now, the thing that really

Speaker 61 frightens me more than anything is the idea that this program will be broadly unpopular, more unpopular than it is now, that like, you know, 15% of fucking Americans support it, right?

Speaker 30 15% of Americans and like

Speaker 24 80% of capital support it.

Speaker 42 But

Speaker 46 because it's the only thing, because there's only like,

Speaker 30 there's this, which is like, okay, this is our answer to climate catastrophe.

Speaker 74 We will shoot and kill everyone.

Speaker 28 We will immiserate all the people that you fucking hate.

Speaker 49 We will burn down any boats that come with 100 miles of our shores.

Speaker 26 That up against nothing,

Speaker 43 that wins, unfortunately.

Speaker 58 Yeah.

Speaker 58 And

Speaker 57 how does something come out of the greatest nothing in all American politics?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because, like, you know, you can't keep pointing out that Donald Trump is Hitler and then like not use the power of the state to, I don't know, like effectively take away the wealth and power of everyone who supports Adolf Hitler, you know, or like, or give the people,

Speaker 3 you know, for whom Hitler particles are metastasizing, could give them some relief in their life from like the iniquities of fucking living paycheck to paycheck or just being angry all the time.

Speaker 32 I mean, I will go one step further.

Speaker 76 A party that could sell itself as,

Speaker 28 you know, believing the things that it is said about Trump, they would have fired Hakeem fucking Jeffries and Chuck Schumer about a year ago. Yeah.

Speaker 61 So I don't know what that looks like.

Speaker 37 And before

Speaker 20 we get mistaken for completely prognosticating unambiguous doom, I will say that sometimes people surprise you.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I said it on an episode after Trump got re-elected.

Speaker 9 Like,

Speaker 3 to hold back all thoughts of doom, I truly believe, and I'll put my money down in this prediction. These men are cowards.
They will fuck it up.

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 3 Like, and I feel 100% confident about that.

Speaker 75 Yeah, I agree with that.

Speaker 11 So I got another another prediction, but this one's a little bit more lighthearted, and it's from another girl.

Speaker 78 Hi, guys.

Speaker 78 I wanted to ask you all, as New Yorkers, what you think the funniest next step for Andrew Cuomo would be when and if he loses the upcoming mayoral election, because I feel like his political career is going to be pretty much dead.

Speaker 78 I mean, it would be funny if he ran for something else, but I feel like if he loses, he's not going to leave the public eye. And I'm wondering what stupid thing you think he's going to do next

Speaker 3 that is a great question and it's one I was actually thinking of earlier today I think you're 100% right that if he loses this I mean basically he already has lost by getting blown out that badly in the Democratic primary his his political career is over and I think it is highly unlikely that he will win in the general election I think that's I think it's assured at this point I think you're you're right that his political career is over I mean just just look at the way he's been running this campaign I mean

Speaker 3 that he would do this again to write one for city council where he has to talk to people and pretend to like them, that he has to like even pretend to be in New York City or even anywhere else in the country who that would conceivably have him.

Speaker 3 So his political career is over. However, that being said, his career in public life

Speaker 3 certainly just will never go away.

Speaker 3 And I'm thinking like my serious prediction of like what the most likely landing spots for him is either Columbia or NYU will offer him some sort of well-renumerated senator to be in their like, I don't know, political science department or I don't know,

Speaker 3 one of these academic jobs where like he's made chair of something and doesn't really have to do anything, but gets paid a lot of money.

Speaker 3 Either that or like the well-trod path of becoming a lobbyist or working for a lobbying firm.

Speaker 19 I think those are very good, much more likely predictions, but I am just to think out the box, I'm going to offer two ideas that I legitimately, I could see them happening.

Speaker 4 One, I think

Speaker 57 he will invent an entirely new position, the likes of which we will never see.

Speaker 24 We have never seen before.

Speaker 67 He will say, I am the new freelance ambassador to Israel

Speaker 48 because like the Republicans are not serious enough about it.

Speaker 59 They're making tweets and doing selfies.

Speaker 39 I'm the only shadow ambassador.

Speaker 34 Yeah, I'm the shadow, not even shadow ambassador, but I'm like, I'm the people's ambassador to Israel.

Speaker 75 Like, I'm the real one.

Speaker 38 Either that or I could see him starting some type of program with America's favorite comedian, Andrew Schultz.

Speaker 3 To Andrews, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 58 They already have a name.

Speaker 38 Damn, so they fired you for touching on people.

Speaker 8 Felix, I'm seeing

Speaker 8 the freelance, the people's ambassador.

Speaker 8 I think that Eric Adams and Cuomo should go into business and open up a little people's ambassador shop because you got turkey and israel right there you've got the entire middle east opened up to you by the people's mayors no yeah they pretty much cover the entire reason region uh

Speaker 79 eric adams is exactly the type of guy who gets bribed by azerbaijan

Speaker 3 i was thinking uh just as you were saying this right now what would be the best um

Speaker 3 post-political career in the public eye for Andrew Cuomo.

Speaker 3 I think him and his brother Chris should start an OnlyFans together where they do like Island Boy stuff and they like open mouth kits each other and like you do light incest play together.

Speaker 3 It's like doesn't have to be porno, but they could just be like working out together, doing push-ups, you know, brother stuff, wrestling.

Speaker 38 Did you ever see that?

Speaker 29 Um, the OnlyFans guys that uh our friend Aaron would always retweet about uh three or four years ago, where it's like these two like super tan naked British guys.

Speaker 26 And the caption is, the caption is, me and my dad don't give a fuck.

Speaker 56 And it's a link to the OnlyFans.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I think Andrew and Chris, they have a career in broadcasting, you know?

Speaker 35 Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 33 I think that's a great, great prediction.

Speaker 48 It would be funny.

Speaker 26 I mean, would he ever do, would anyone in American politics do this anymore? Just be like, okay, I get the message.

Speaker 3 Just go away.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 43 Just ends it.

Speaker 82 No, no one in American politics.

Speaker 36 The only guy in American politics who would do that, I think, is John Kerry.

Speaker 11 We've got a question from someone who has a neighbor that they're trying to figure out.

Speaker 83 Need the Chapel Boy's advice on this one. I live in Chicago, in the Ukrainian village neighborhood in a new neighborhood.
Nobody actually has a Palestinian flag hanging outside, but also a...

Speaker 83 red and black white nationalist Ukrainian flag.

Speaker 83 Didn't know if this is like a Michigan, Ohio state, like one of those house-provided flag situations, or wasn't sure if that was a combo support system. Should I avoid this house?

Speaker 83 Should I bake them cookies? What are your thoughts?

Speaker 11 I would like to interject and say that in my hometown, there is a very infamous truck that has a half Confederate, half Palestinian flag on it.

Speaker 38 I think.

Speaker 80 I cannot believe that you even thought avoiding this guy would be.

Speaker 53 No, ingratiate yourself to this guy. In fact,

Speaker 3 if you you think you have too many friends get rid of some people you already know so you can onboard this guy i don't know what's up with him but i like it he's got balls this kid's got balls and i i respect that yeah definitely you know uh bacon i mean first of all uh you know i can tell you're from chicago because you're actually interested in the lives of your neighbors do what i do in new york city and just ignore them they're they're not real they're not they're not people regardless of their politics or their seemingly contradictory flag assortment all right we've got one for chris actually one on parenting, which is why we brought him in here.

Speaker 84 Hi, guys. Hail from Austin, Texas, here.

Speaker 84 So, my favorite comic strip growing up was Calvin and Hobbes, and I've recently had the opportunity to reread Calvin and Hobbes with my four-year-old son, and it's just the best.

Speaker 84 So, my question is: if you have kids one day, or Felix, if you choose to acknowledge any of your occluded children, what one piece of media would you most want to share with them? Thanks.

Speaker 11 I guess that goes to all of us.

Speaker 22 Too many to pick from.

Speaker 33 Some of my fondest memories are my dad showing me not just R-rated movies.

Speaker 26 Like, he obviously, one of the most foundational things that ever happened to me was my parents showing me Terminator 2 when I was like five or six, and my mom, like, explaining the time travel mechanic to me.

Speaker 26 But, but when I got older, when I was like eight or nine, my dad would show me like lesser known R-rated movies.

Speaker 21 Um,

Speaker 71 possibly the most influential of which was Mel Gibson's 1998 crime thriller, Payback, one of my favorite movies.

Speaker 28 So I would definitely show him that.

Speaker 33 I would not show him any trash American manga like Kelvin and Hobbes.

Speaker 43 Instead,

Speaker 35 I would probably show him Lone Wolf and Cub to let him know that,

Speaker 3 you know, there's an alternative path. And he walks the demon path in hell.

Speaker 28 Well, no, to let him know that like there's an alternative path where I could have killed him and then myself.

Speaker 48 And then I still have that option.

Speaker 3 Just kidding.

Speaker 26 I would never do that.

Speaker 3 But we would read Lone Wolf and Cub.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 32 I think how, I don't know how I would

Speaker 59 introduce some of the games I like, because by then, who knows what we'll have.

Speaker 33 I'm going to be one of those guys who has his first son when he's 64.

Speaker 43 So

Speaker 32 who knows?

Speaker 69 Like, they will probably hate Metal Gear Solid 2.

Speaker 44 It'll probably be like trying to get us to play, you know, Pac-Man.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 28 at the very least, some of the great R-rated classics of the 90s.

Speaker 3 I would like to say to you to this, Color,

Speaker 3 the thought of you passing on and reading Calvin and Hobbes to your kid is very dear. And

Speaker 3 I would share similar sentiments of Calvin and Hobbes, comic books, things like that.

Speaker 3 You know, I would definitely echo what Felix said about rated R movies because like some of the, once again, just to reiterate exactly what Felix said, some of the most influential moments in my life for my dad showing me rated R movies for the first time, including The Godfather, Goodfellas, Chinatown, Last of the Mohicans.

Speaker 3 You know, like

Speaker 3 that felt like a big step into adulthood. But you know what? I'm going to say, like, assuming that my kid is much younger or the same age as the callers,

Speaker 3 I'm going to go back to a book we talked about not too long ago on the show. And I would like to read to my future child,

Speaker 3 if I do have a child, my theoretical future child, the Red Wall books. We talked about those earlier.

Speaker 3 Just jump right in with those. They'll be learning about mice and rats, otters, woodland creatures, and all the delicious meals they eat in a medieval setting.
Yeah,

Speaker 61 Red Wall Animorphs, because,

Speaker 25 you know, the greatest YA books ever written.

Speaker 82 And

Speaker 4 in my opinion, the greatest children's books of all time, like young children, Richard Scary, he's never going out of style.

Speaker 3 And I would definitely like to pass on the favorite book that my dad read out to me aloud. I will be doing this aloud and also at the public library, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

Speaker 21 Can't wait to read that book out loud to my child.

Speaker 14 Every father cannot wait till when their kids turn, you know, four or five and they can finally read Revolutionary Roadwood.

Speaker 17 I will just say, because I have been clearly thinking about that a lot.

Speaker 8 Yes, love all the things said here. Redwall books.
Will knows from having stayed at my place recently that my dad just sent me my entire stack of Redwall books for my my childhood room.

Speaker 8 So I've got all of those on hand.

Speaker 3 They're in beautiful condition, too.

Speaker 8 I dove right in.

Speaker 8 I will also say that I have very fond memories of being read some of the real, real children's classics like Around the World in 80 Days and Treasure Island and Dr.

Speaker 8 Doolittle, which are kind of old and stuffy, but I have very fond memories of those ones are classics for a reason.

Speaker 8 The main thing I have been thinking about, to be fairly serious about this, is like more than trying to put the child on to one to a series of things that are specific to me really trying to work to get her a sense of like that you can find new stuff and really trying to instill that the world of media and books and tv shows and movies isn't just like what's presented to you or what's laid out in a series of thumbnails but that if you like something you can find more like it and how to like go deeper and just make your own taste and find stuff like that.

Speaker 8 And I know that's a bit more of a

Speaker 8 pre teenage kind of task to or lesson to impart on somebody, but you know, in this algorithmized world, that's something that I've been thinking about a lot of value to instill of like finding your own interests beyond what you see or is presented to you.

Speaker 76 Oh, you know what's that? You know what's that you know another great

Speaker 25 like ages, I would say like six through 12, the way things work.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I love those

Speaker 75 books. Yeah.
I like to order.

Speaker 3 Oh, okay, order. Stephen Bitsy's incredible cross-sections.
The cross sections, they rock the castle, the Titanic. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 The naval ships. Oh, my God.

Speaker 75 Yeah.

Speaker 35 Also, Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

Speaker 75 That's up there.

Speaker 4 Those were great.

Speaker 22 Those were great.

Speaker 27 I had a really embarrassing

Speaker 29 instance from reading those books when I was like seven, where I like, unknowingly, I said like a May West quote to my family.

Speaker 18 And they were like, you fucking do.

Speaker 3 When I'm good, I'm good. When I'm bad, I'm better.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I just read it from one of those books and I was like, that's cool.

Speaker 4 Little boys are gay.

Speaker 18 That's really what we're trying to say.

Speaker 8 I believe we've talked about that on a call-in episode before.

Speaker 3 Real quick, though, before we get to the next question, I would just like to disavow the comments made by Chris.

Speaker 3 If you are a parent and you have a child that develops any of their own beliefs, tastes, or opinions, you have failed.

Speaker 11 All right, so these next two aren't really questions, but they're little like tips or little insider information that I think you all will find fun about some of our recurring characters.

Speaker 11 Hey, Chopo, this is a tip about John Fetterman.

Speaker 86 When my friend was growing up in Braddock, Pennsylvania, when she was like 15, he would come into the Elks Lodge and buy her and all of her friends drinks when they were underage.

Speaker 3 That was clearly being recorded from John Fetterman's trunk

Speaker 3 as he plows into a school zone.

Speaker 33 That is so.

Speaker 39 Not just trying to fuck like high school girls, but like at the Elk Club.

Speaker 3 At the Elk Club?

Speaker 39 Like that his dad is a member.

Speaker 14 God, what a fucking piece of shit.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they got, you know, they got a hot young trim down at the VFW.

Speaker 18 Yeah, what the fuck?

Speaker 28 He's Spencer, you actually wrote something that's basically the, you wrote this really funny

Speaker 40 story about like a pedophile who's like socially inept.

Speaker 18 It's basically

Speaker 9 yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11 I think it's understandable because he was buying the mead from what it sounds like.

Speaker 11 And here's one that's even better about our good friend Bolsonaro.

Speaker 88 Seven or eight years ago, my cousin and I saw Jair Bolsonaro at a mall in Northern Virginia. I googled it right after, and he was in town visiting Trump that morning.

Speaker 88 But he went to a mall for some reason afterwards. Not even like a good mall, like the shitty mall around here.

Speaker 88 And he spent like probably five minutes at this kiosk watching little robotic dogs, like toy dogs, do backflips.

Speaker 4 That, yep, that sounds about right.

Speaker 45 Sounds like our guy.

Speaker 3 Oh, man.

Speaker 3 I'm picturing, I know the exact kind of robotic dog that does the backflip. And I'm just imagining Bolsonaro looking at that.
I'm so impressed. Watching.
Imagine watching that for five minutes.

Speaker 36 You could probably occupy his attention for a day with a drinking bird.

Speaker 3 Or like, or like, God, thank God it was a shitty mall and there wasn't like the sharper image in there. He would have gone in there and like, he would touch the

Speaker 3 orb, yeah. You know, touch the orb with like the little

Speaker 3 arcs of electricity and make your hair stand up, stuff like that.

Speaker 3 He never would have left. He would never have gone back to Brazil.

Speaker 12 Lula didn't need to arrest him.

Speaker 11 They just built like the most stimulating mall in the world.

Speaker 12 He'll be there for the rest of his life.

Speaker 8 Put him in front of one of those puzzles that's two bent nails put together and you got to figure out how to do it.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Give him the ball in the cup.

Speaker 11 It just like keels over.

Speaker 30 I miss the sharper image so much.

Speaker 3 It was my favorite catalog to get in the mail.

Speaker 44 My parents would never let me order anything from it but i loved just looking at the stuff in it i did i did the same thing and i would think like oh i bet like bill gates he just shops here every day he's like going to the grocery store for him

Speaker 36 it's so it's so cruel it's like we could afford to shop at the sharper image every day now and now it doesn't exist that's why we're killing ourselves

Speaker 11 All right, this one's actually a pretty good question. It's a little tricky, but I think it's pretty interesting.

Speaker 90 Hello, Chapo, first time caller, long time baller. This is Neil.
And my question is, this is kind of a matte question, but it's for everyone.

Speaker 90 What

Speaker 90 event or phenomenon of today do you think will be the most grossly misunderstood

Speaker 61 by future historians?

Speaker 90 Look forward to your answer.

Speaker 7 Thank you. And that is a good question.

Speaker 3 That is a really good question. Yeah.
I'm going to do a joke answer

Speaker 3 and assume for the purposes of my answer that the historians we're talking about about are a million years in the future and i think the answer would be what's up with all these fucking cars why are they everywhere um

Speaker 27 yeah i think in the future they're not going to they're that they're gonna improperly um sketch out the timeline like they're gonna think that vladimir putin opened the world's oldest vault and then everyone was like oh they're all black everyone from the bible

Speaker 67 when really it took like it took like quite a long time for everyone to

Speaker 37 realize how old the vault was and what was in it.

Speaker 8 I have a fairly can of worms answer, but that's like the point: I think that COVID and its ramifications

Speaker 8 are going to have, end up having long-term, there are going to be a lot of effects and descriptions of that time that get analyzed in a lot of directions for a lot of

Speaker 8 ideological purposes for a long time.

Speaker 8 And I think that the prevalence of that, and I'm not saying in which direction, I think in a lot of different directions, but I think the prevalence of that will cause that specific moment and its direct consequences to have a lot of varying types and narratives of historiography around it in the near future.

Speaker 3 If that is both specific and vague. No, no, no, yeah, I definitely know what you're talking about.
And like,

Speaker 3 I mean, just to go off your response, like,

Speaker 3 I think it's interesting because what you're talking about is like, it was this moment where it should have been understood as like a shared experience that was something the whole country went through.

Speaker 3 But really what it was is like the first or I don't know, final moment of like the shattering of a consensus reality.

Speaker 70 Yes.

Speaker 3 Where like any everyone's experience of it will not be remembered as like a shared collective event, be it traumatic or otherwise. It will be remembered purely through the 320 million like reflected

Speaker 3 reflections of individual experience and like how they interpreted it, how they felt about it.

Speaker 3 Because like, yeah, I think it's like the beginning of the end for consensus reality, which will certainly be interesting for future historians.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 8 And I think it's also telling that the other thing I was mauling of saying is just the overall sensation of the breakdown of media hegemony over the last like 15 years and its causes and effects and just the sensation of moving moving through that.

Speaker 8 Because I think, as you're saying, what I'm really talking about is, you know, coming out of the 20th century where there was, you know, certain forms of cultural hegemony that allowed for shared narratives of mass culture

Speaker 8 and because of that history into this first part of the 21st century. And then specifically with COVID, where that is and has totally broken apart.

Speaker 8 And then how you try to put that back together in terms of how you're building narratives and history in the future.

Speaker 6 Good luck, guys.

Speaker 11 I've got one that's directed to Felix specifically about Fighting in the Age of Loneliness.

Speaker 77 Hi, guys. I have a question for Felix about UFC, in particular, John Jones.

Speaker 77 In light of the end of his career, has it made you reconsider the way you talked about him in Fighting in the Age of Loneliness and also the episode where you talked about that Condom Depot?

Speaker 77 Because

Speaker 77 I think you made a really good case for humanizing him, but in light of the end of his career and all the shit with Aspinall, has it made you reconsider his legacy or his character? Thank you, guys.

Speaker 33 I don't know if reconsider as much as

Speaker 35 like fully made unambiguous that he is now fully like a piece of shit as a gossip, which I think was like, you know, not a super out there call to make around that time because there had already been a bunch of incidents like him,

Speaker 34 you know, crashing into that pregnant woman's car and like fleeing the scene

Speaker 66 at the same time as there were these like incredibly humanizing aspects about him.

Speaker 27 Of course, this was all before like the really horrifying domestic violence case

Speaker 66 against his longtime fiancé and the mother of his kids.

Speaker 72 I still do think that he is like a very tragic figure.

Speaker 58 And I

Speaker 44 do kind of hate like pop psychology stuff, but I think in the case of Jones, it's very easy to see

Speaker 50 what demons he's grappling with and where they might come from.

Speaker 21 Namely being like growing up in a very repressed household as like the fuck up in a group of siblings who are all very accomplished and then experiencing something as horrific as the death of a sibling when you're very young.

Speaker 24 I've always seen him as someone who has been forever crystallized in that moment, crystallized as like a 17-year-old fuck up, no matter what he accomplished, no matter what he went on to do.

Speaker 43 And it's especially, it used to be like almost kind of charming before a lot of this stuff, but as he grows older and as he ages out of competition, it becomes less rakish and more just horrifying.

Speaker 27 And

Speaker 64 yeah, the aspenol stuff was quite scummy, but I don't even know if I would put it in in like the top 10 of like

Speaker 30 scumbag shit that he's done.

Speaker 37 But I still think overall, a tragic story.

Speaker 73 The least of which is really what he could have accomplished in the sport.

Speaker 64 I mean,

Speaker 73 he and his kids and everything, they could have had a much better life

Speaker 30 if not for him just never moving past this.

Speaker 56 certain point.

Speaker 11 I have someone from

Speaker 11 who prefers to remain anonymous because they are in occupied Republican territory.

Speaker 92 I'm a high school English teacher calling in from the middle of a very red state.

Speaker 92 And one of the great joys of my job at this moment is being able to work with high school seniors and expose them to new ideas and texts like the autobiography of Malcolm X.

Speaker 92 Persepolis, Handmaid's Tale, even the Dark Knight Returns.

Speaker 92 And so one thing I wanted to ask all of you is if there are any texts you recall from high school, whether that's fondly or just because of what they got you thinking about. Thanks and take care.

Speaker 34 There's the alphabet of manliness by Maddox.

Speaker 27 That's a big one.

Speaker 68 No,

Speaker 32 I really enjoyed the

Speaker 25 Robert Caro LBJ books when I was in high school.

Speaker 22 But as far as like literature,

Speaker 66 The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison,

Speaker 44 that's a great one for especially for seniors, I think.

Speaker 30 It might be like kind of early, but I think there's something to be said about like reading books when you're kind of on the cusp of adulthood and enjoying the parts that you can understand and then coming back to them.

Speaker 66 I think that's one of the

Speaker 24 like the great joys of sort of like trying to rise to the occasion with things you're reading.

Speaker 59 I actually think like Anna Karenina is a good thing to at least try to read at at that age.

Speaker 68 And

Speaker 34 I'm a big believer of kids wanting to rise to the occasion more than wanting to skate by.

Speaker 41 And I think that

Speaker 24 if you at least suggested that, you would be surprised by

Speaker 40 how many kids put a serious effort into

Speaker 33 not just finishing it, but trying to understand the best they can.

Speaker 64 forever young that they may be.

Speaker 3 I would add on to that, a book that definitely, i mean it's a cliche but a book that has definitely shaped my perception of politics america and what writing can do that i encountered around the age of ice being a high school senior is hunter s thompson's fear and loathing in las vegas my next recommendation i i would this would be iffy to recommend kids in a high school but you know what the author is a pretty right-wing guy i would suggest james elroy's underworld usa trilogy It's like, for any kid who's interested in history, but also literature, like a work of historical fiction that provides a panorama of like the squalor and depravity of like the Cold War in this country and like what it really looked like and what it just, what it, what it feels like, I would highly recommend those books.

Speaker 3 And then I would also recommend, if you can pass on, this one I will recommend to any high school senior, and I think you could pass this along to yours as well, Gorvidal's Narratives of Empire.

Speaker 3 five book series, Pentology, starting with Burr, which I think is one of the greatest works of historical fiction I've ever read.

Speaker 3 but like that is a book about the founding of this country that is like alive it puts you there it's very funny and it gives and like Gory Vidal sets up in each book basically which traces the history of this country from its founding to the outbreak of World War II in the last book over the fall those five books he provides an architecture to understand how

Speaker 3 this country became the empire that it is today. And it is the transition from this country as a republic to an empire and what that means for the world that you currently live in.

Speaker 3 And I would highly recommend those books for any

Speaker 3 ambitious high school senior who's looking to have an understanding and like, and also like a critique of empire and like the history of this country.

Speaker 21 For history, I would greatly recommend

Speaker 25 two books.

Speaker 49 Patrick Seale's biography on Haze al-Assad,

Speaker 27 it may be like the best biography ever written outside of the LBJ Caro books.

Speaker 34 Pity the Nation by Robert Fisk.

Speaker 68 And

Speaker 28 just for like contemporary stuff,

Speaker 27 I'd be remiss if we did not recommend the Seminole Classic, Matt Taibbi's Insane Clown President.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 8 This might be a bit of a basic answer, but if you, for a kid who they're not sure that they actually like reading, maybe a bit of a wise ass, not sure if real celebrated books are for them, Catch 22 is always such a banger.

Speaker 9 Oh God, yes.

Speaker 3 Oh my God. It delights to read.

Speaker 3 It's not American history. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And it just goes down so smooth and makes you feel so smart reading it if you are a high school, high school kid who has like some kind of a scance view at life, culture, American society, history, all of those things.

Speaker 34 That reminds me of the last one, I think, a very underratedly funny book.

Speaker 56 The trial by Franz Kaufko.

Speaker 3 Yes, that's another really good one.

Speaker 56 Wow.

Speaker 11 All right. This is probably our most depressing question, but here it goes.

Speaker 93 Hey, Chapo. I have a younger sister who is 25 and a big fan of H3H3 productions, and she has absorbed the ideological baggage that comes with that.

Speaker 93 I was wondering if you have any recommendations to kind of ease her into the Chapo mindset. I've tried to introduce seeking derangements to her, but I don't think it took for whatever reason.

Speaker 93 So if you have any ideas, suggestions, recommendations, they'd be very welcome.

Speaker 75 Okay, thanks. Bye.

Speaker 3 I definitely have a recommendation. I think the correct way to ease your sister into the Chapo mindset and away from the path of Ethan Klein is one of those sort of

Speaker 3 bad kid wilderness retreats where like you pay someone to abduct her and sort of like put her in a van to like the wilderness in Utah or fucking Wyoming or something and you know give her give her some hard lessons, you know, like freezing, chopping logs, things like that.

Speaker 3 We're like, you know, drill instructors yell at teenagers who got caught shoplifting or talk back to their parents. She needs some, uh, she needs some tough love and some hard discipline.

Speaker 34 Yeah, I mean, this might actually be a case of Maddox's alphabet of manliness actually helping out a lot.

Speaker 64 We were saying it as a joke earlier, but it really might, really might be good here.

Speaker 3 You know, like, I'll just, you know, one more of note for the sister. Like, I would just, just ask her to consider when she's watching one of the, what is is it, H3H3? What is this thing?

Speaker 5 H3H3.

Speaker 3 H3H1.

Speaker 3 When she's watching one of Ethan Klein's streams, just be like, really take in what he looks like and what his voice sounds like.

Speaker 3 Like, you listen to this every day. Like, this is your guy.
Like, come on.

Speaker 9 Come on.

Speaker 8 Here's what you're going to tell her to do.

Speaker 4 Open a browser on her phone, on a desktop, whatever.

Speaker 8 Type www.youtube.com and search Come Town in the search bar bar and just go from there.

Speaker 4 If you have a pair of keys, I think you can

Speaker 5 go a long way with that.

Speaker 32 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 71 I got to be honest here.

Speaker 27 Can at least one parent, are they still fertile?

Speaker 9 I'm just kidding.

Speaker 56 I shouldn't say that.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 35 make her like, you know, it's like

Speaker 3 when you catch your kid smoking a cigarette, what you do is you make them smoke the whole pack of of cigarettes.

Speaker 3 So make her watch Ethan Klein for like 24 hours straight and be like, this is what stimulant abuse does to you, allegedly.

Speaker 76 You could

Speaker 26 use deepfake technology to create, like, you know, make an Ethan Klein sex tape, which fans of his show have been asking for for years, and he has not provided them.

Speaker 36 And I think that would have really disgust her.

Speaker 11 Yeah, worst comes to worst. There's always that like toy that makes animal sounds.

Speaker 5 I think that's a good backup, too.

Speaker 9 I got one for Will.

Speaker 89 This is a question for Will, first time calling in, longtime fan.

Speaker 89 My question is: why do you think that Transverse City failed to achieve the critical and commercial acclaim of Excitable Boy, despite being

Speaker 89 a brilliant sort of science fiction concept album?

Speaker 15 Cheers.

Speaker 88 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Friend, you answered your own question because it was too ahead of its time. With songs like Turbulence, referenced on a recent episode, They Move the Moon,

Speaker 3 Down at the Mall.

Speaker 3 And then, what is it? And then the title song, Transverse City, which I think is based on a Martin Amos story. It's just too much science fiction, too much, too much literary references.

Speaker 3 Zivon, just

Speaker 3 the goat, way ahead of his time. And people just, they just want to hear Werewolves of London over and over again.

Speaker 18 They just want to hear that.

Speaker 3 You know, great song. But I mean,

Speaker 11 the man's body of work goes so much deeper than that i just want to say i recommend reading the kind of biography of his life i'll sleep when i'm dead which was written by his friends and family uh he had a fucking insane life his dad was in the jewish mafia

Speaker 11 his mom was mormon yeah and the reason why i think it didn't take off is because after excitable boy came out he just did so many drugs that his career was just destroyed and by the time he came back and you can look at those albums every single musician is on those.

Speaker 3 Like Transversion, oh my God, yeah.

Speaker 62 Neil Young and Chick Korea on it.

Speaker 11 So he had like everyone trying to help him out, but it was the 1980s, and people wanted to hear some of the worst synthesizers of all time. So just wasn't working out for him then.

Speaker 3 The Long Arm of the Law, that song is fantastic. Oh, Nobody's in Love This Year.

Speaker 10 That

Speaker 3 so many great, so many great songs. But yes, is Yvonne turbulent.

Speaker 3 He's led, he led quite a life.

Speaker 3 He He was quite a guy.

Speaker 3 Spencer,

Speaker 3 I think there was an anecdote in that story about him showing up to

Speaker 3 Jackson Brown's wedding and shooting a gun out the window of his car, screaming, we're going to run him out of town.

Speaker 3 It's the law. We're going to run you out of town, firing a revolver into the air at Jackson Brown's wedding.

Speaker 11 Yeah, no, he comes across as like

Speaker 7 just

Speaker 11 for some reason, he comes off as like legitimately insane. And also everyone wanted to be his friend.

Speaker 11 Like, when he was like 16 years old or something, the turtles wrote happy together and they let him write the B side because they knew it was going to make a shitload of money.

Speaker 9 Wow.

Speaker 3 I didn't know that. Yeah.

Speaker 11 So I don't know. It seems like he had plenty of good, like he had a lot of friends, including David Letterman.
So I think he's

Speaker 11 doing fine. He was doing fine.

Speaker 11 This one is for Chris. It's about music.

Speaker 84 Hey, Chapo. So of course you guys are big proponents of the movie mindset at Chapo Trap House.
But what about the music mindset? What albums or artists have you guys been listening to lately?

Speaker 88 Thanks, y'all.

Speaker 8 Hey, Maddie. Nice to hear from you.

Speaker 12 I mean, Spencer and I were talking a little bit before this.

Speaker 8 I think it's actually been a great year for rock music. I'll just run down some of the stuff that I've been really into this year.

Speaker 8 Where should I start? That new water from your eyes album is fantastic.

Speaker 8 My boys, Viagra Boys, came back with an album that I don't think is quite as good as Cave World, but they're still on a huge run.

Speaker 7 I'm going to see them Friday. They were some of my favorites out there.

Speaker 8 Wet Leg did not hit the sophomore slump. Their second album is quite, quite good.

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 3 it's great.

Speaker 3 That was my summertime, Jim. Yes.

Speaker 8 Catch these fists. Yes, they're still great.
Both Activity and Automatic, I think, are quite good. Gorilla Toss, Friends of the Show, put out a new album.

Speaker 8 And then I've also been quite into, over the last few years, Can has been doing a series of live reissues, and I've been listening to the hell out of those, those a series of live albums that are quite well recorded and packaged and put together.

Speaker 8 So Can's live reissues. Oh, and Emily Allen's Clanging.
Emily Allen was featured on Truanon.

Speaker 8 That's how I heard of that record, but that record is sick and it is probably one of my favorites of the year. Emily Allen's Clanging.
So that's kind of been what's on rotation for me.

Speaker 8 Oh, and the Stereolab, new Stereo Lab in 2025.

Speaker 18 And the new Pulp album.

Speaker 8 Folks, we're making it in 1997 again through Science and Magic. Stereolab and Pulp back in the record stores.

Speaker 79 Chris was actually telling me about

Speaker 67 how his favorite artist is this guy, Somber.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah. And of course, Somber and DeForvid.

Speaker 3 Also,

Speaker 33 we were actually the reason we're doing a call-in show.

Speaker 82 We were going to announce a new temporary co-host.

Speaker 25 His name is David.

Speaker 3 Part of it is spelt with numbers.

Speaker 18 But not the part you said, he's had some trouble.

Speaker 39 I don't endorse the things he may have done.

Speaker 3 I really like his music. And, you know, like,

Speaker 3 this question is a good moment to like, I guess I betray the fact that like what I'm listening to lately is

Speaker 3 highly influenced by a recent major death in the music community. And I know you probably already know what I'm going to say, but I have been listening to a lot of the lost prophets recently.

Speaker 3 He was killed in prison.

Speaker 3 There was no reason for that to happen no uh in all sincerity i have been listening to a lot of d'angelo lately because his death uh the other week i that that one hit me like a truck because it was like it was almost like another album release in the from d'angelo and then it came out of nowhere and it was just like i kept expecting it's like it's 2025 like we're we're overdue for like another masterpiece album from d'angelo that arrives out of nowhere and is instantly critically acclaimed as like a work of genius and then he just disappears for another 10 or 15 years but no uh the i've been listening to a lot of d'angelo i mean i remember i was a high school senior when voodoo came out and that that album felt like a message from god and i've just been thinking and listening to a lot about d'angelo recently because i i guess you don't know what you have until it's gone i you know my dad died of pancreatic cancer too so i just been feeling that one

Speaker 3 and just strikes me as like one of those artists that like really it's an insult to categorize his music or like to put him in a genre because like he is like so many things like like he's he really was the heir to prince you know in in modern american music and r.ip d'Angelo that's what i've been listening to a lot of lately all right here's one uh a bit more serious hey guys first time long time um just wondering why do you think saudi arabia is doing all this stuff like the riyadh comedy festival i mean

Speaker 16 you have all the oil America bends to your will.

Speaker 16 You got away with 9-11, so why give a shit what anyone else thinks? Just want to hear your thoughts. All right, cheers.
Bye.

Speaker 27 A lot of reasons.

Speaker 3 A,

Speaker 82 maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next year, but like someday,

Speaker 26 oil may not be the world's most dependable energy source.

Speaker 21 They may no longer have a claim on perhaps the world's only multi-trillion dollar company in a Ramco.

Speaker 73 B, is they actually were kind of spooked by the reaction to Khashoggi.

Speaker 59 I don't think you would see a repeat of

Speaker 79 the troubles they had today,

Speaker 25 in part because a lot of the Western journalists that

Speaker 25 really did put in a lot of effort to ostracize them have so thoroughly disgraced themselves in the last two years, especially.

Speaker 28 But it did spook them and it did provide them with a vision of the world of a world where maybe perhaps everyone would not accept their money and that they could not buy their way into things.

Speaker 85 And

Speaker 47 I guess third,

Speaker 59 you could also read it as perhaps the family having a plan B.

Speaker 64 You know, maybe one day

Speaker 22 the

Speaker 28 actual physical location that the kingdom is in is uninhabitable.

Speaker 64 Maybe they will no longer be able to govern it. Maybe a lot of things.

Speaker 63 I would much rather be an itinerant former royal family with a trillion dollars worth of equity and everything on earth than an itinerant royal family with just like some gold bars, which have proven to be one of the dumber investments you can make in recent times.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's a really good answer from Felix. And I would just like to, I guess, resummarize in my own way.

Speaker 3 It's like, There's the hard power that they have represented by all the fucking oil and the ability to do 9-11 that comes with it. But if you're going to be that wealthy and powerful,

Speaker 3 like soft power has its attractions too. And I think like, like America exercises its soft power in the cultural sphere.

Speaker 3 It's interesting because they're just like sort of buying it because it's like, they're not exactly like, it's not their culture that they're like interested in promoting to the rest of the world or buying or like, you know, marketing to the rest of the world.

Speaker 3 But their money is spend so good that like things like sports, art, entertainment, tourism, travel, like all these things, like that's where they can like, I think they're exerting a huge amount of influence like with things like the Riyadh Comedy Festival to kind of rebrand themselves to the rest of the world, but also to bring the best of the rest of the world to them.

Speaker 3 So it's sort of like they don't have to market themselves to a world that may be wary of things like 9-11 or killing journalists or, you know, the general lack of political freedom enjoyed by anyone living in that country, not in the royal family.

Speaker 45 There are two other things also.

Speaker 21 Though they have presented as a united front in several foreign policy things,

Speaker 53 there is a lot of bitterness on the Saudis' part towards the United Arab Emirates.

Speaker 24 We got a glimpse at this a little bit when there was this perception that the UAE sort of cut a side deal.

Speaker 64 in Yemen that the Saudis were not a part of.

Speaker 30 And there's also a perception within Saudi Arabia that they were sort of goaded into

Speaker 33 putting the majority of the resources, manpower, and taking the vast majority of the blame for the disastrous intervention into

Speaker 30 the Yemeni civil war starting in 2015.

Speaker 44 So you could read this partly as them trying to, you know,

Speaker 36 step on the Emiratis' toes with this sort of like,

Speaker 41 you know, vast cultural purchase.

Speaker 61 But

Speaker 36 also, there is a paradoxical thing about Muhammad bin Solomon himself in that he is

Speaker 58 one of the only

Speaker 44 important princes of his generation to

Speaker 36 not be educated outside the kingdom in the West, to actually be educated, I think, entirely within Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 34 But he also may be the most reliable consumer of American

Speaker 36 and Western culture out of that entire generation.

Speaker 20 He seems to take to it and enjoy it as much as any stupid American his age.

Speaker 57 He was,

Speaker 27 he would, he was sort of known as being kind of a neat until he was like 20 something.

Speaker 4 But one of the things he did all day, he would just, he would just hole up in his room all fucking day and play Civ games.

Speaker 23 So don't underestimate

Speaker 20 you know, that someone with access to hundreds of billions can just honestly like something.

Speaker 79 just like jeff bezos made that stupid lord of the ring show because of course he likes the most fascist fantasy bullshit whereas the the choice of the global south is game of thrones

Speaker 3 i'm felix i'm really interested to see in the next 10 or 15 years like how deep their money that can get them into ownership of american sports because like they already own like half of golf outright and i'm just wondering like are we going to see like saudi ownership of like an American sports franchise?

Speaker 82 I mean, gun to my head, I would say it's more likely than not.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I mean, like, why would you bet against that? They have, they have more money than God. And I guess, like, it's just like, I don't know, like

Speaker 3 baseball or football, like, these are like the only last like remaining sort of monocultures or like nationalisms that we have.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm sure some people would kick up a fit about it, but like, not when they pull up a fucking truck with like

Speaker 3 800 billion dollars in it to buy the Dallas Cowboys or whatever. You think Jerry Jones isn't going to sell for that amount of money?

Speaker 8 Now, Will, I have to ask, obviously, there are a lot of business considerations that would go into this.

Speaker 8 What American professional sports franchise do you think gut feeling would make the most sense to become a Saudi

Speaker 3 Dallas Cowboys? Dallas Cowboys. I said it already, Dallas Cowboys.

Speaker 18 All right.

Speaker 3 Actually, you know what? If they bought the New York Yankees, that would be really fucking funny. That's like Pete Davison doing the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

Speaker 32 I could, you know what?

Speaker 59 I could really see the Saudis as a way, as sort of part of their path into ownership of an NFL team, buying power slap from Dana White.

Speaker 21 So he'll tell Trump to let them like buy the Cowboys.

Speaker 11 We've got a couple more. We've got another Middle East one for Felix.

Speaker 94 Hey, Mr. Chapo.
My name is Forrest. I lived in Lebanon for three years and went to AUB for my master's program.

Speaker 94 This question is mostly for Felix. I was wondering what he thinks Lebanon's place is in Middle Eastern politics moving forward and

Speaker 94 if he thinks Hezbollah will

Speaker 94 be a player in the axis of resistance again.

Speaker 45 That's a very good question.

Speaker 30 I mean, I can honestly say that I have no fucking idea.

Speaker 34 This is not exactly a novel observation, but I...

Speaker 24 if I had to guess what

Speaker 20 they make of their current predicament, they see their choices either

Speaker 64 between annihilation by way of disarming and therefore

Speaker 44 just completely removing any deterrence, any threat they could provide, or

Speaker 3 a

Speaker 65 perhaps slow march to death in the form of Israel

Speaker 66 continuing to whittle away and destabilize and murder Lebanon.

Speaker 35 I think there

Speaker 62 there is a future where

Speaker 40 perhaps

Speaker 65 Iran can assert itself enough to

Speaker 25 throw Hezbollah lifeline.

Speaker 21 I don't know if we're in that future.

Speaker 30 But I will say at the same time that the circumstances Hezbollah

Speaker 57 arose from were in many ways, much more desperate.

Speaker 66 And I really cannot confidently make make a prediction one way or the other.

Speaker 9 All right, one more.

Speaker 11 This one's a little confusing, so let's just bear with me.

Speaker 89 Hello, Chevrolet.

Speaker 91 Like, what do you feel?

Speaker 18 What the fuck?

Speaker 3 Were they mowing their lawn when they

Speaker 12 all right? I'll actually do a last one.

Speaker 3 Calling in from the back of a Blackhawk helicopter off their way to your house right now.

Speaker 61 Sorry, I'm stowed away inside a turbine.

Speaker 12 All right, I have one last one, actually.

Speaker 11 And this is very Felix-centric, but

Speaker 11 you got most of the good ones.

Speaker 95 Hey, gang. My question is for Felix.
I'm always shocked when he mentions he has a, what, 104-year-old grandmother still kicking around. I think that's crazy and wonderful.

Speaker 95 And I'm just curious if she knows what Felix does professionally, if she has a sense of what podcasting is at that age. And also kind of curious what her politics are as someone who is that old.

Speaker 95 Hope she's doing well.

Speaker 25 Hope she's in good health.

Speaker 18 Thanks.

Speaker 35 Okay, so you know,

Speaker 30 I've sat through my mom, like trying to explain to her, like,

Speaker 66 it's, you know, it's a fucking radio show that's on the internet.

Speaker 81 And to the extent that she like understands

Speaker 34 the latter,

Speaker 75 I think she does kind of understand it we when when she was about a hundred and

Speaker 81 i think a hundred even

Speaker 73 she went to an e1 live in chicago which is really it really actually made me kind of sad to think about like she went through the great depression and

Speaker 34 had to then had to see like her grandson like dressed up like joe biden molesting his friends

Speaker 81 She probably thought, like, what was the point of it all?

Speaker 28 But she was very nice about it. If she

Speaker 44 could coherently coherently describe what was going on.

Speaker 23 But

Speaker 38 we actually,

Speaker 33 when she turned 100

Speaker 53 for her birthday party, everyone just kind of like asked her, asked her these types of questions.

Speaker 35 You know, what it was like living through certain historical events, because she really, like, a truly like remarkable life

Speaker 68 truly came from like the like depths of poverty that is like kind of hard to imagine in most of modern-day america and uh she is unsurprisingly for like a very old jewish woman who lives in a major urban center like uh

Speaker 44 liberal democrat the thing that did surprise me uh and the first i heard of it was at this party she

Speaker 24 very against zionism she said that that her and her husband they despite the fact that she's also an atheist they left their temple and went to a different one because someone explained like Zionism to her.

Speaker 37 And she said, oh, that's what Hitler thought.

Speaker 18 They don't like that.

Speaker 57 And apparently, this is later on.

Speaker 64 My mom told me that since, I think like the 80s, since about

Speaker 61 the Lebanese civil war, she would, she just refused to be involved in any charity that it is like anything to do with Israel.

Speaker 5 So she

Speaker 53 has like

Speaker 20 incredibly

Speaker 56 hard-held beliefs in a lot of things.

Speaker 30 I think every time she would call one of us for pretty much our entire lives, like the first thing she would say, like most of the time during like the Bush presidency or the first Trump presidency would be like, can you believe these Republicans?

Speaker 47 But also, yeah,

Speaker 30 ended up really surprising me on Zionism.

Speaker 58 She never like talked about Israel or any of that, but I really did not expect expect that out of her.

Speaker 3 Well, as someone who's a officially a grandparent orphan, I'm very offended by that question because it reminds me that I have no grandparents anymore.

Speaker 3 Although I do often, I often wonder to myself what

Speaker 3 my two grandfathers would think of me today or how they would think of my current work. One, of course, being the Soviet spy and the other, of course, being the U.S.
Navy officer.

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah. This one,

Speaker 11 another Felix one, but this is a funny one.

Speaker 92 Felix, you have brought up the name Dan Quinn many times on the show. Are you talking about the Washington Commanders head coach, Dan Quinn?

Speaker 13 What is this person's significance?

Speaker 92 Thanks. I'll hang up and listen.

Speaker 30 Dan Quinn is, I mean, you know, if you thought Chapo being 10 years old next year was scary, I have been following the life of Dan Quinn for 17 years.

Speaker 21 Like, I have spent so much time on this guy.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 27 Dan Quinn, I first caught wind of this guy through my fandom and MMA.

Speaker 79 He was back in 2008, he would make these, he was this like 40-something-year-old Irish guy who had like, you know, the body that every

Speaker 25 40-something Irish guy had.

Speaker 21 And he would always make these videos shirtless and he would go, do I look like I'm 43? And he looked the most like a 43-year-old you had ever seen.

Speaker 30 But he claimed that the key to his longevity, his athleticism, his shreddedness.

Speaker 62 He would most frequently claim that he was as fast or faster than

Speaker 20 just in general, like black people, he would say.

Speaker 34 Like he said, you've never seen a white boy catch an outside running back on fourth and inches like me.

Speaker 3 We should make clear that it is not Washington Commander's head coach Dan Quinn, but it is still someone very much associated with football, at least in Notre Dame.

Speaker 38 So he says that

Speaker 82 by using the natural

Speaker 59 sweetener sugar replacement, stevia, and mixing it with weed or

Speaker 24 mix, putting it in a blender with water to blend out what he called the toxic floating soap, and then mixing it with weed to make something he called weed 2-0, or just drinking this stuff in the blender, which is called pure H2O.

Speaker 48 He would melt fat off his body.

Speaker 68 uh increase his cardio it was like smoking meth but healthy and with no withdrawals and it enabled him to, he thought, like completely destroy any of the

Speaker 24 current MMA champions circa 2008, as long as he could fight them in MMA in a rule set where there were no kicks or takedowns.

Speaker 4 So just boxing, you would say.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 didn't he say he cured his mom's dog's cancer with Stevia?

Speaker 48 Well, yes.

Speaker 24 He claims that he brought Peachy the cat back from the dog.

Speaker 44 Okay, the cat.

Speaker 57 Stone Quinn, his mom, cured it by giving it regular water.

Speaker 24 He also claimed to have invented an oral sex technique called the violin that

Speaker 24 could provide triple digit orgasms. He did offer the caveat in his first video ever where he said

Speaker 30 it only causes triple digit orgasms in abuse victims, but when the woman has not endured abuse in her life, they have to go to the hospital, which is something that people often forget.

Speaker 38 He's, he's like one of, he is probably like the first internet freak I got really obsessed with.

Speaker 20 Part of that is because some of the funniest posts I've ever read in my entire life to this day are about Dan Quinn.

Speaker 62 He has a really like surprisingly poetic way of speaking.

Speaker 24 He has a really interesting syntax that I think is hilarious and I've been obsessed with for so long. And he would also give out his number so you could call him.

Speaker 18 I called him several times when I was a teenager.

Speaker 30 And you just kind of have to watch, like, type in Dan Quinn Stevie, a fan into YouTube, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Speaker 25 But he, he just has his way of telling, of describing his life, is so idiosyncratic.

Speaker 24 Like,

Speaker 24 he part of his self-mythology is that he was like a like super respected criminal slash football player, slash boxer, slash like white guy that all minorities loved.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 53 in one of my favorite videos called like stories from my life, and he said, he starts out the video amazingly.

Speaker 32 He says, these are stories for people who think I'm anything less than a gallant knight on a quest.

Speaker 48 And he says that

Speaker 62 in one of his stories, he describes how one of his best friends was, in his words, Mark Brannon, aka Mel Gibson from Tequila Sunrise.

Speaker 3 He loves.

Speaker 30 calling people like the real version of like this character from this movie from 1987 that like no one remembers.

Speaker 76 But he's just,

Speaker 61 yeah, he's,

Speaker 41 I have a friend from Northern California, where Dan is from, of course,

Speaker 40 who actually went to a Stevia validation ceremony, which, if you don't know what that is, it is a ceremony where Dan would sit in the middle of a Vagos clubhouse, Vagos being a motorcycle gang he was affiliated with, blending Stevia while bikers just meandered about and sometimes rode in circles around him on their bikes.

Speaker 45 You know, I guess the term is like lol cow now, and it just describes someone who like

Speaker 43 is

Speaker 34 shockingly young to be on SSI and has like some horrible disability.

Speaker 62 But internet freak, it really used to mean someone with like a very special mind in my day.

Speaker 76 And I, I, I don't consider the

Speaker 66 near, I think over like half my life watching Dan Quinn

Speaker 21 wasted time at all.

Speaker 34 And I,

Speaker 44 as far as like limited series that will never get made, I could do a hundred hours of content about his life.

Speaker 61 I won't.

Speaker 26 I won't.

Speaker 33 I will never do that, but he is a foundational guy to me.

Speaker 36 One of my favorite observations ever made on this show was Matt Christman's amazing

Speaker 66 appraisal of the 2020 election, that it was Dan Quinn versus Demonius X, Demonius being my other favorite internet freak, with Demonius being Donald Trump and Dan Quinn, of course, being Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 I think the thing about Dan Quinn is like,

Speaker 3 to be a figure of this kind of fascination, there needs to be an astounding amount of lore that you just keep uncovering. And also, you need to be genuinely funny, not just to laugh at.

Speaker 3 And Dan Quinn is genuinely funny. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, Felix, my favorite video with Dan Quinn is one where he's in like a Burger King or a subway bathroom and he's recording, like, he's pointing his phone at the mirror, monologuing.

Speaker 3 And then someone knocks on the door and he says, No, I'm busy.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 38 He like, there are so many Dan Quinn phrases that have like seeped their way into

Speaker 26 the minds of everyone I know. Like, Demonius X is more popular with my family.

Speaker 41 My immediate family loves Demonius way more to this day.

Speaker 8 Grandma Ederman's always telling demonius stories.

Speaker 30 I would not show her demonius.

Speaker 56 That's like too much much for a 104-year-old, 105-year-old person.

Speaker 43 But

Speaker 75 for like, like,

Speaker 30 my mom will still say, it felt wonderful, like how when Demonius goes, I came in with my condom.

Speaker 70 It felt wonderful.

Speaker 28 But for people

Speaker 41 on the show,

Speaker 59 we say so many dan things, sometimes not even realizing it. One of my favorite dan phrases that has become a favorite of Matt's is genetic bitch.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Genetic bitch is so good

Speaker 3 he's like he's kind of a genius he's like he's sort of like in another universe he would have been like our r times uh james joyce i mean yeah i mean he he's his phrase his phraseology has infected so much of my daily life like i'm constantly referring to myself as a white

Speaker 8 uh i knew that we had done an episode where we dived more fully into the Dan Quinn lore previously.

Speaker 8 I just had to scroll through like 800 episodes on SoundCloud because I remember the thumbnail, but not the title of it.

Speaker 8 If you would like to know more, episode 196, Crazy Joe's Folly, I believe contains a lot of stuff.

Speaker 3 Crazy, oh, that's

Speaker 3 Dan Quinn line. Crazy Joe's Folly.
And then another like that.

Speaker 12 I think that episode contains a lot more Quinn lore.

Speaker 3 One of the one of like the cast off lines that he like just the names that he references with people in his life.

Speaker 3 And when he just, the phrase that will always stick with me is, speak on it, Chet Zawala. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Chet Zawala being the man that he knows. And he says, speak on it, Chet Zawala.

Speaker 32 That's the other great thing about him.

Speaker 66 Like, it's, it wouldn't be as fun if he was just, like, completely bullshitting if everything was made up.

Speaker 35 But the thing that, like, truly made Dan Quinn obsession worthy for me was the fact that, like, you would think, like, no one's his fucking name, Chet Zawalik.

Speaker 3 And then you would look it up.

Speaker 45 And not only was Chet Zawalik real, but he had the job that Dan Quinn said he did.

Speaker 34 There There is an article from Notre Dame's student paper from when Dan Quinn went to school there.

Speaker 33 Him getting kicked out of Notre Dame is a huge part of his mythology.

Speaker 43 And there's an article about him winning a boxing tournament that is written in the same stupid early 80s

Speaker 41 white street tough slang that Dan uses.

Speaker 38 So much of it is real. And that's what makes it so amazing.

Speaker 48 He feels like

Speaker 58 he bends reality around his unique command of language.

Speaker 3 All right, should we wrap it up there, boys?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I do just want to shout out on the show. I want to give a very special thanks to Spencer for filling in for me while I was gone.

Speaker 8 He's been a huge help, as well as to Nick, Hesse, and Brendan for picking up all the editing work while I've been out.

Speaker 8 But I just wanted to make sure that they all got banked on air.

Speaker 7 So that's it.

Speaker 3 Well, once again, thanks to all our listeners who submitted questions. Sorry, we didn't get a time for all of them, but

Speaker 3 always a joy to hear from you and know that we can rely on you when we need to bank an episode. So,

Speaker 3 hope nothing extraordinary happened in the week to come. But until next time,

Speaker 91 bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Speaker 91 I got to cut a hole in the day.

Speaker 91 I got a telephone call for Miss Dambo.

Speaker 91 My baby's coming home today.

Speaker 87 Sell me one of the clothes if I shave my head.

Speaker 87 Get me out of town, it's with a fireball set.

Speaker 87 Never trust a man in a blue trench coat.

Speaker 87 Never drive a car when you're dead.