Sailing into the Unknown with Joe Rhodes

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Speaker 2 You may have heard us mention her before, but HyperFix producer Emma Cortland has this cousin, Cousin Margie.

Speaker 2 Well, she's technically Emma's mom's cousin. But Cousin Margie has been a part of Emma's life as long as she can remember.

Speaker 2 When Emma and her brother would get sick at school, it was Cousin Margie who would pick them up, take them back to her house, and put on Peewee's Playhouse on VHS.

Speaker 2 And as well as being a surrogate parent, Cousin Margie is also a veteran reporter.

Speaker 2 And last year, when HyperFix was still in its infancy and we were trying to figure out what the show could be be and what premium episodes would look like, Cousin Margie recommended that we talk to her friend, another reporter named Joe Rhodes.

Speaker 2 One year and five or so episodes later, we have a pretty solid foundation with Joe.

Speaker 2 But to catch anyone who hasn't heard those episodes up, Joe is a retired journalist and he decided at the age of 69 to embark on a three-year residential cruise aboard a ship called the Villa V Odyssey.

Speaker 2 The ship would take him and the rest of its residents around the world to all seven continents and over 100 countries, and Joe would be documenting the whole thing on his substack, which is called Unmoored.

Speaker 2 But before they even set sail, the ship and its proprietors found themselves underwater, so to speak, with a litany of problems with both permits to dock in different parts of the world, as well as mechanical problems on the ship.

Speaker 2 And these issues kept the Villa V docked for four months past its scheduled departure date and left eager would-be residents stranded in hotels in Belfast, waiting.

Speaker 2 The ship finally did set sail in September of 2024, but it continued to be plagued with septic system problems, air conditioning failures, leaks, last-minute changes in itinerary, and most frustrating to Joe, an inconsistent and relatively low-quality beer selection.

Speaker 2 There have also been reports from both Joe and others of a fair amount of high-seas skull duggery on behalf of the owners of the Villa V.

Speaker 2 Attempts to silence critics with intimidation, threats that they'd be removed from the boat, even kicking one woman named Jenny Phoenix off the cruise before it got underway.

Speaker 2 The incident is currently the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, and it was also the subject of an episode of Hyperfixed, which we'll include in the show notes.

Speaker 2 And throughout all of this, Joe was documenting his experiences aboard the Villa V, which were by turns hilarious and tragic, frustrating and transcendent, and always interesting.

Speaker 2 And now, just a little over a year into his three-year cruise, Joe has made the decision to leave the boat for good. And this felt like the end of an era for Hyperfix.

Speaker 2 I mean, an interview with Joe was our very first premium episode, and we have been checking in with him on and off on our premium feeds since then.

Speaker 2 So, consider this episode a capstone to our series on this broken-down boat, and Joe as the bemused stenographer of its shambolic journey across the world.

Speaker 2 And of course, we wanted to know, you know, what's the latest with the Villa V, why he chose to leave, and what was next for him. So last week, on November 11th, I got a hold of Joe and we caught up.

Speaker 1 Joe!

Speaker 3 Good afternoon!

Speaker 2 Is it the afternoon?

Speaker 1 Well, barely. It's noon.
It's 12 noon on Wednesday. Oh, right.
You're in some other part of the world.

Speaker 1 Where are you right now? I am in lovely Mermaid Beach in Queensland, Australia.

Speaker 2 I actually just went to Australia this summer, but I was in Melbourne the whole time.

Speaker 3 Sure, I will be there later. But

Speaker 1 I'm making my way towards the South Pole.

Speaker 2 One thing I would like to recommend to you, about an hour outside of the city, if you take a drive, there's like a nature preserve for penguins, and every night...

Speaker 2 The penguins that have been out hunting all day come back. They use the same path every night.
So they just built bleachers there and you can pay and watch the penguins come in at night.

Speaker 1 I would love to do that. I love penguins.
I'm a big penguin fan.

Speaker 2 What are your living arrangements right now? What are you up to?

Speaker 3 I am currently at the lovely Tropicana Motel on the Gold Coast Highway,

Speaker 1 halfway between Brisbane and Sydney. I'm going to go see an NBL National Basketball League Australian Professional Basketball Game tonight.

Speaker 1 They're having their end-season tournament, and I'm going to see the Brisbane Bullets and the New Zealand Islanders who have an 18-year-old kid who is from Mexico, believe it or not, who is supposedly a really high-value NBA prospect.

Speaker 2 How does it feel to be off the ship?

Speaker 1 It feels incredibly weird to be off the ship. I didn't know

Speaker 1 that land legs were a real thing.

Speaker 1 Sea legs and land legs are a real thing.

Speaker 2 I'm familiar with the concept of sea legs, but what do land legs feel like?

Speaker 1 Land legs are when you cannot walk on solid ground because you've been at sea too long and everything wobbles as if you're still

Speaker 1 on the boat.

Speaker 1 And it's particularly acute when walking down hallways.

Speaker 1 I mean, some of this was that I was just drunk, but part of it was that even before I was drunk, that the world was still moving in waves and I wasn't. And it also, it's very noticeable at urinals.

Speaker 1 So you're wobbly, and I still am a little bit.

Speaker 1 The world is still sort of

Speaker 1 up and down in my head. And I didn't realize it would be this acute.
I'm sure it'll fade fairly quickly, but it's pretty disorienting.

Speaker 2 I can imagine. How long have you been off the boat?

Speaker 1 I've only been off the boat for three days.

Speaker 1 I got got off the ship in Cairns, which is the northern part of Queensland.

Speaker 1 And the last, I went from Darwin, Australia, which is at the very top.

Speaker 1 It's what they call it the top end in the northern territories, famous for saltwater crocodiles and the only place in Australia that the Japanese bombed during World War II.

Speaker 1 And so that was the last port that I left as a resident. And it was the last place I was able to have my sort of departure ritual.

Speaker 1 As often as possible when we would leave a port, I would go out to the aft deck and light a cigar and watch the lights fade into the distance. And it was probably my favorite part of the trip.

Speaker 1 I did it as often as possible. It was the time where I felt like I was really on an adventure.
It just, it was kind of cool in a cinematic way.

Speaker 2 What was it about that particular thing that made you feel like you were on an adventure?

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 being able to feel the sea and the breeze and to watch ports fade.

Speaker 1 And because when you're going in and out of places, you go through industrial areas and then you come into the into the harbor and the bay and suddenly the whole skyline is laid out in front of you.

Speaker 1 And so it's the opposite of that as you're leaving. Port you've become moderately familiar with shrinks in the background as you slowly fade away and go to the next port.

Speaker 1 There's something very romantic about it.

Speaker 2 You are kind of sailing into the unknown, as it were.

Speaker 1 Yes, the next chapter awaits.

Speaker 2 You were on the boat for just over a year,

Speaker 2 and I read your last, your most recent sub stack.

Speaker 2 You mentioned in your last post that things started to escalate toward the end of the trip. in the past month or so.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Can you talk to me about what was happening?

Speaker 1 I think what happened was just by the passage of time and 250 people that have been together in the same enclosed space for over a year, we started getting on each other's nerves a little bit.

Speaker 1 And there was a palpable sense, certainly in the last month I was on board, of people being a little bit less patient with one another, being a little bit snappish with one another.

Speaker 1 Sometimes that was amongst the residents, sort of being more critical of things and calling each each other out for their various complaints.

Speaker 1 There were some complaints that people had been a little short with the crew members, that they had been barking a little bit at the bartenders and the waiters.

Speaker 1 I didn't actually see any of that, but it was enough of an issue that the captain

Speaker 1 made an announcement one day: you know, please treat these people with the respect that you'd like them to treat you.

Speaker 1 Some people, I think, really like being in that small community where you've you've got lots of people to lean on and lots of people to ask for favors.

Speaker 1 But there's also the downside of everybody being in your business all the time.

Speaker 1 And depending on your personality and your history with that, that can be grading after a while. We all know a little bit too much about each other.

Speaker 1 And I think after a year, that started to make a difference.

Speaker 2 It seems surprising to me that it would all kind of happen at once like that.

Speaker 1 But maybe that's just sort of the nature of that kind of powder keg there were some particular triggers we were in japan for a month and a half during the hottest time of the year

Speaker 1 and it was incredibly hot and humid and you know that that's puts people not in their best moods right and so i think a lot of the grumpiness was uh accelerated because because people were uncomfortable and it was made a little worse by the fact that some of the ongoing problems on the odyssey were ongoing.

Speaker 1 The air conditioner was not working all the time. There were people whose rooms at night were in the 80, 85 degrees.

Speaker 2 I can't imagine.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Fortunately, I was not one of those people.

Speaker 1 If my cabin had been 85 degrees, I'd have jumped off long before I did. I wouldn't have tolerated that.

Speaker 1 And Villa V, to their credit, did the best they could under the circumstances which I believe they created, which is that if somebody's cabin was unlivable, they would try and find them another cabin for the night somewhere on the ship where the air conditioning was working.

Speaker 1 But that's, you know, that's not a good long-term solution.

Speaker 1 There were also problems with leaky pipes, and several rooms got flooded a couple of times, and people had to abandon their cabins because there was six inches of water in there.

Speaker 1 And of course, once the water was drained out, and then you've got stinky carpet. None of it's catastrophic, but it certainly puts people on edge more than if everything was going swimmingly.

Speaker 2 Do you feel like there is or has been or will be some kind of mass exodus? Or is it really just like, are you the only person who's taken off or have other people left too?

Speaker 3 I'm not the only person that's taken off.

Speaker 1 In fact, there have been, there were a couple of very prominent YouTubers who had a significant audience.

Speaker 1 who had been sort of boosters of the project and they left because they felt like they were not getting what they wanted out of the experience.

Speaker 1 I think also felt like they had made some sort of business arrangement with Villa V that they were not getting the money that they were supposed to get. But

Speaker 1 their departure caused a big ripple. In fact, probably that was one of the things that caused people to start talking about stuff in a way that may have led to a few more confrontations.

Speaker 1 than we were used to. People were really debating, well, why did they leave? What's so bad that they weren't able to work it out? And you then start questioning other things as well.

Speaker 1 So there's been a slow, I would say slow, but fairly steady trickle of people who have decided for, I think, a variety of reasons, this just wasn't the right place for them.

Speaker 1 And I think that's ongoing. There are people that I know that are going to be leaving in the next month or so.

Speaker 1 As Christmas approaches, a lot of people are thinking they'd rather be home for the holidays, and some of of those people probably won't come back.

Speaker 2 So I wanted to ask about that because there was one pretty prominent couple that decided to leave the ship and I'm wondering if we know why.

Speaker 1 I don't know for certain.

Speaker 1 I know that they were unhappy with management, that a lot of the irritations of just of the air conditioning and the Wi-Fi and the leaky pipes took a toll.

Speaker 1 But I also think they felt like the management had not been completely upfront with them. They were trying, they had an arrangement where they were advertising cabins for Villa V

Speaker 1 and letting people know, here, you know, you can come rent this particular model. And I think they expected a certain percentage, some sort of commission.

Speaker 1 And I don't think they got what they were expecting. And over time, they decided they were not being treated fairly and didn't want to do it anymore.

Speaker 2 So that couple, they call themselves Midlife Cruising on YouTube.

Speaker 2 It's this very very friendly couple named Angela and Steve who shot video of all the adventures they went on when they were in port and talked about what it's like to be on the ship.

Speaker 2 But in their video about why they left the Villa V,

Speaker 2 so much of their explanation is bleeped out to the point where it's like almost comical.

Speaker 4 We made some great lifelong friends, but there were definitely some things

Speaker 4 that stole our joy and we just had to go. And we'll tell you more about that in future videos.

Speaker 1 And during the process of selling, we had to sign the cabin ownership release form.

Speaker 1 And in there, it has some terminology that

Speaker 1 we can't really explain a lot of the reasons why we sold.

Speaker 4 Yes. To sell your room.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 we're not going to. Yeah, we're not going to.

Speaker 2 It just feels like a level of sort of intrigue that doesn't match the experience of going on a boat.

Speaker 1 Like, what's happening there?

Speaker 1 They signed versions of a non-disclosure agreement.

Speaker 1 And part of the deal that allowed them to get out of their cabin and sell it to somebody else was that they not disparage Villa V in any public comments in particular ways.

Speaker 1 This is how they decided to go as far as they thought they could go without getting in trouble. And so that's why they were bleeping things out.

Speaker 1 And the non-disclosure part of it, they basically had to sign a piece of paper that said, we're not going to try and trash you in public in order to be allowed off the ship. That's so wild.

Speaker 1 They didn't really have much choice.

Speaker 1 And fortunately, because I never bought my cabin, I was always a segmenter.

Speaker 1 I never had to sign anything like that.

Speaker 1 But there are lots of people, anybody that bought a cabin, and particularly those who signed on on the founders level, which are the people that gave them lots of money beyond just the cost of their cabin, basically invested in the idea.

Speaker 1 They've got really strict non-disclosure agreements, and they would lose a lot of money if they were to publicly complain.

Speaker 2 It seems like it's not great that they're the ones who have dipped out of the cruise. That seems like actually

Speaker 1 probably

Speaker 2 pretty bad for Villa V.

Speaker 1 Am I right?

Speaker 1 Certainly management seemed to feel that way. They did a lot of

Speaker 1 sort of rebutting of them online, saying, you know, don't believe everything you read.

Speaker 1 Things were actually much more amicable than you may have heard in whatever social media forum you've been following all of this. But yeah, I think it did take a toll.

Speaker 1 And I noticed that since they left,

Speaker 1 the Villa V management types, who I I think spend way too much time on social media anyway, they become more obsessed with it. Anybody that says anything critical online, they immediately sort of

Speaker 1 gang rush them and sort of flood them with, oh, no, it's not as bad as you've heard. And here are all the great things we're doing.
And those people are all just malcontents. They're whiners.

Speaker 1 They're complainers. They wouldn't be happy anywhere.
And they may be right about some of those people. Hell, they may be right about me.

Speaker 1 But they do seem awfully defensive about it, which makes you think that, yeah, it has

Speaker 1 it has some financial impact on them.

Speaker 2 I suppose I would be defensive too if I were in their situation, but also it seems so clear that this thing has been plagued with problems from the start.

Speaker 2 It would be one thing if it were like one unhappy customer and then many hundreds of other very happy customers.

Speaker 2 But it seems like pretty much everybody who went, even people who desperately wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, the people who are the boosters,

Speaker 2 if they can't reach like a sort of satisfactory experience, like what's the hope for everyone else?

Speaker 3 It's a fair point.

Speaker 1 Having said that, though, I would say the majority of people on board, maybe even 65 or 70% of the people on board, feel like they've had a great time and feel like they've gotten their money's worth and they're happy they did it and they would do it all again.

Speaker 1 It would be, it would be unfair to say that most of the people that have signed up are disappointed. I don't think that's true.

Speaker 1 But many of them are. And even the people that are still enthusiastic certainly have questions and have doubts about the future and worries about some of the decisions that have been made in the past.

Speaker 2 After the break, I asked Joe, do you really think the Villa V is going to make it to the end of its voyage?

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Speaker 2 You have given me the impression,

Speaker 2 in not very subtle ways, over the course of this conversation and over the course of the year we've been talking, that you don't think this is going to make it to its final port.

Speaker 2 And I'm interested to know what is coloring your thinking about that right now and sort of what the status of the ship is in terms of its ability to actually complete this voyage?

Speaker 1 I think physically the ship can sort of can limp along.

Speaker 1 It never goes very fast and it stops in lots of ports to get maintenance done, but I think it'll get where it's going if they can continue to pay the bills for maintenance and repairs.

Speaker 1 And I am skeptical if they have the resources to do that long term. But I was also skeptical that they would make it this far.

Speaker 1 So they've already gone further than I ever thought they would,

Speaker 1 but they've had, they've gotten lucky. They've dodged a lot of bullets, but sooner or later, one of them's going to hit right between the eyes.

Speaker 1 That some major catastrophic repair is going to be required that they can't afford to get.

Speaker 1 And that there's going to be a note on the door someday in some port somewhere in the middle of nowhere saying, we're sorry, but we're having to cease operations effective tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Please get all your belongings and get off the ship. I don't think that's an unrealistic prospect.
I don't have any inside information to tell me that that's what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 And I don't think it's going to happen anytime within the next few months. But I don't see how they can sustain this.
The occupancy rate is still barely 50%.

Speaker 1 They're constantly putting together these promotional deals that are clearly meant to generate cash in the short term.

Speaker 1 They just started a thing where you can buy a cabin for five years at, I can't remember what the rate is,

Speaker 1 but the weight, but you have to put up $50,000 ahead of time. So they seem to me, everything, the way they operate seems to indicate that they're cash poor.

Speaker 1 And they're doing a lot of nickel and diming stuff with the residents, fees for things that didn't have fees before.

Speaker 1 They started charging $45 a day. If you had a guest, just come visit in the port.

Speaker 2 Jeez, OPete, that's so expensive.

Speaker 1 It is expensive.

Speaker 1 I think their original argument for it was because people were eating in the diner, the Palms grill. But trust me, that's not a $45 meal.

Speaker 2 They're just trying to make up their margins wherever they can, you know.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure there's anything they could be doing differently at this point.

Speaker 1 I'm not criticizing them so much for the decisions they're making now trying to keep themselves going as I am for the decisions they made when we started that have basically put them in a hole that I'm not at all confident they can dig themselves out of.

Speaker 1 It's a money pit. They bought a house that needed more work than they realized and they've spent all the time since then just trying to fill that hole in the basement.

Speaker 1 And they filled some holes better than others but I think they're always going to continue to be in some version of crisis mode I would say to anybody that if you like the idea of living on a ship for an extended period of time four or five months and you can afford to do it it's great but I wouldn't give them a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and assume that the ship will still be sailing in five ten or fifteen years and I think some people did sign up with that assumption and those are the people i worry about that if it goes belly up the people that have given them hundreds of thousands of dollars and sold their homes i don't know where those people will go i doubt seriously that they will get their money back

Speaker 2 you know reflecting on this experience i'm wondering sort of in aggregate what your thoughts are about it um I don't regret doing it.

Speaker 1 It's been good for me in that I feel like

Speaker 1 the world seems smaller and I think that's a good perspective to have.

Speaker 1 When things happen in other places, they're not just names on a map to me. As the typhoons go through the Philippines recently, there were some while we were there, but some since we've been there.

Speaker 1 Those villages are real places to me. You know, we've been to those places.

Speaker 1 And just from a historical perspective, that we were able to spend time in Hiroshima in Nagasaki, and to not just have those be places from a history book.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm hanging out on the ship with folks from all over the world, and many of whom are at different, various stations in life. And I don't know that I would have mixed with them

Speaker 1 if I had not been on the ship.

Speaker 1 So I don't regret it. If I had it to do over,

Speaker 1 I would wait. Because most of my misgivings about this have been because

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 the uncertainty of it and the sort of

Speaker 1 aggravations that seem to have come from lack of planning. Yes.

Speaker 1 I would have said, let's let these people sail for a year or two and see how things are going, as opposed to jumping on right at the beginning. Right.

Speaker 2 It must be so weird to suddenly be

Speaker 2 a civilian again. I mean, I don't know how else to describe it.
In some ways, this, the ship was like this great gift to you.

Speaker 2 And in other ways, I feel like you were a little beholden to it, you know, because you were a captive in some ways. You had to follow it wherever it went.

Speaker 2 And there was also just like a lot of difficulty that you could not have possibly anticipated. So I'm like curious what it feels like to no longer have

Speaker 2 either the opportunity or the responsibility that you were dealing with before.

Speaker 1 It's very much a bubble.

Speaker 1 When you're on the ship, it's a small bubble. It feels like the whole world,

Speaker 1 everything is happening within the context of those 250 people in that enclosed space. And that can be both comforting and aggravating.

Speaker 1 When you step away from it, which I've done a couple of times over the course of the year and a half, you realize that all the stuff that seems important when you're there, a lot of it's really petty and gossipy and

Speaker 1 not significant to anyone that's not on the ship. But there is a certain comfort level in knowing who the characters are and sort of following the storylines.

Speaker 1 You know, gossip is popular for a reason. It's compelling and it's entertaining.

Speaker 1 And so to be in the midst of lots of personal drama, professional, romantic, otherwise, that sense of being in a small town or or as we've talked about several times of feeling like you're back in high school, there's a certain comfort level in it.

Speaker 1 There's an infrastructure to it that I'm sure I'm going to miss.

Speaker 1 I think I'll feel a little bit more vulnerable out here in the world.

Speaker 2 It's funny, you know,

Speaker 2 you called your series on the Ville-Vie unmoored, but there's nothing more unmooring than lack of community. And for all of the difficulty you had on that ship, you never wanted for community.

Speaker 2 You always had had your people or people, maybe not your people, but you always had people.

Speaker 1 Listen, I'm going to keep the sub stack going and I'm not changing the title. There's no question.

Speaker 1 I continue to be unmoored I still have no real sense of where I'm going or what I want to do when I get there. I'm drifting.
And that was part of the reason I got on the ship in the first place.

Speaker 1 I had been living in the van for 13 years and had, you know, spent that time seeing almost everything I could see in in the U.S. and going to the same places over and over again.

Speaker 1 And I felt like I needed a change, but I don't feel like I've in any way found my foundation or any sense of stability.

Speaker 1 But that's probably just about me. I'm not sure stability is among the things that I'm able to attain.
So yeah, I'm out there.

Speaker 1 I'm floating loose. And

Speaker 1 we'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 You know, you spent a career working as a journalist, and it strikes me that you have like access to sources and abilities to get what you need to report on a story in a way that nobody else can.

Speaker 2 Are you planning on continuing to cover the Villa V or is that just something that you're, is that just a part of your life that you feel like is over and you're going to just set that down?

Speaker 1 I haven't made up my mind yet.

Speaker 1 My inclination is to let somebody else write about it. It's different.
I feel like I've been a participant and can't actually write the story

Speaker 1 in the objective way that I would if I were covering it as a journalist.

Speaker 1 If I were to write a critical piece about it, I think a lot of people would say, well, he's just a disgruntled passenger, and they wouldn't be wrong.

Speaker 1 My inclination at the moment is to leave that sort of serious journalistic work to someone else. And I highly recommend that someone else take it up.
But we'll see.

Speaker 1 I'm likely to change my minds probably after a couple of beers.

Speaker 2 Are you excited to be able to have better beer selections now?

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, oh, I'm so much more excited here. In fact, my first night off the ship, I learned a valuable lesson.

Speaker 1 We went to a place called the Crock Bar in Cannes and where the beer was not shitty and where many people came and bought me beers.

Speaker 1 And I, because I'm courteous and polite, chose that if they were all going to buy me beers, I should drink them. And it had a great time.
And it turns out you can have too many beers.

Speaker 1 I learned that when I was in high school, man. Well,

Speaker 1 I also learned it in high school, but I've kind of forgotten it. And, you know, I was never tempted to have too many beers on the Odyssey because the beer wasn't very good.

Speaker 1 But the beer and the crock bar was very good. I was supposed to leave the next day on a train to Brisbane.

Speaker 1 I didn't make that train. I was up all night,

Speaker 1 as I believe the phrase is,

Speaker 1 talking on the porcelain telephone. Ah, I see.

Speaker 2 What's next?

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a good question.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm going to stay in Australia until the end of the year.

Speaker 1 I kind of want to experiment to see if traveling for an extended period of time, six weeks or so, where I'm in charge, where I'm choosing where to go and how long to stay there, if that feels like a more satisfying experience than being sort of a prisoner to the schedule of the cruise ship.

Speaker 1 It was very frustrating sometimes to go into ports for just a night or to not be there on the night when there was a particular event happening and missing it by two days and having to leave right when you started to think, oh, this is a pretty cool place, but oh, we got to be gone at five o'clock.

Speaker 1 On New Year's Eve, I'm going to fly to New Zealand

Speaker 1 and then I'm going to spend a couple of weeks in New Zealand and just be a scenery gawking tourist over there. I'll take some trains and look at some mountains and chase some hobbits and stuff.

Speaker 1 And then I will fly back to the States in mid-January and then see how it feels to be back there and what I can do to save America.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what are you going to do to save America? What do you got for us? Because we're in pretty sorry shape at the moment.

Speaker 1 You seem to be having some problems. I'm going to work really hard in the midterms for Democratic candidates.
I'm going to knock on doors. I'm going to probably poll watch.

Speaker 1 You know, I live in a van when I'm in the States, and I'm going to go back to living in a van.

Speaker 1 And because it's a big gray van, it looks like exactly the sort of thing that you would smuggle illegal aliens in. I think that's how they refer to them, isn't it? The bad people.
So I'm going to make

Speaker 1 the van into an ice distraction vehicle.

Speaker 1 I've put a Mexican flag on it already, and I plan to put some provocative signs on the side and just drive around areas where we think there are ICE agents and see if I can get them to follow me and waste their time trying to track down my citizenship.

Speaker 1 I feel like I should be able to get pulled over a couple of times a week, and I'll probably be in custody by the end of the year.

Speaker 2 I think that you are a natural for that, and that's probably what you were born to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it feels like a fulfillment of my purpose.

Speaker 2 What are you most looking forward to now?

Speaker 1 I'm looking forward to seeing all the friends that I haven't seen in a couple of years. Going back to the States and reconnecting with all my pals

Speaker 1 that I've only been connected to through social media since I got on the ship. And I'm excited to see if we can save America.

Speaker 1 I'm 50-50 on our prospects, but I'm ready for the fight.

Speaker 2 I think that's it, Joe.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for taking us on this crazy trip with you. And listen, we are going to want to keep checking in.

Speaker 2 I want to know how your baiting of the ice agents is going and sort of what the world is looking like to you now that you are back on land.

Speaker 1 And I assume that with a little distance, I'll have a much clearer sense of what I did and didn't gain from this experience. It's still a little too fresh for me to analyze it.

Speaker 1 I'm sure I'll have more opinions as time passes.

Speaker 2 It has been a real honor to accompany you briefly on this trip, and we really appreciate you being so generous with us.

Speaker 1 I've enjoyed this so much.

Speaker 1 It's been really, it's been great for me. You are asking questions makes me think about things that would not have otherwise occurred to me and has helped me understand what I'm going through a lot.

Speaker 1 So thank you so much for helping me.

Speaker 2 I really appreciate that. All right, Joe, you have a good day.
I hope the basketball game is wonderful. I hope you drink some good beer.

Speaker 3 I'm going to do both things.

Speaker 1 All right. Take care.

Speaker 2 We'll put a link to Joe's Substack in our show notes.

Speaker 2 I know that many of the episodes that he's appeared on are premium feed only. So if you want to hear those, you you are going to have to sign up, hyperfixpod.com/slash join.

Speaker 2 But we have posted a couple on the main feed, so if you're not interested in that, I will include the main feed episodes featuring Joe in our show notes.

Speaker 2 Hyperfixed is produced and edited by Emma Cortland, Amor Yates, and Sari Safer Sukenek. It was engineered by Tony Williams.
Music is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder and me.

Speaker 2 Special thanks this week, of course, to Cousin Margie. You can get bonus episodes, access our Discord, and much, much more by becoming a premium member at hyperfixedpod.com slash join.

Speaker 2 Also, we are currently at almost 3,300 premium subscribers and we really want to get to 4,000 by the end of 2025.

Speaker 2 So on Friday, December 12th, I'm going to be hosting the first and last ever HyperFix telethon. At 12 p.m.
Eastern on December 12th, I will be on Twitch for 24 hours.

Speaker 1 And if you sign up during that time, I will perform a song, any song you request, live on Twitch.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm a pretty bad musician, so this whole thing could be a total fiasco, but won't that also be pretty fun to tune into?

Speaker 2 Again, that's twitch.tv/slash/hyperfixedpod, December 12th, at 12 p.m. Eastern, the 24-hour hyperfixed telethon.

Speaker 1 Radiotopia

Speaker 1 from PRX.