LaToya Cantrell

Speaker 1 Okay, so Riley, what you're going to want to do is not just resonate in the front of your mouth, but you're going to want to try and relax the muscles around your larynx.

Speaker 1 So the way you can do that, you can sort of try and like stifle a yawn or

Speaker 1 try and act like you're like sniffing a flower.

Speaker 2 Okay, I've got it. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 It works. It really works.
Yeah. And like pull your, like, another helpful thing is you, you sort of like put your neck forward and like speak while you're smiling.

Speaker 1 It really does tend to help a little bit. That's crazy.
And just, you're going to want to like hunt your shoulders up, but that's not helpful. You want to put them down.

Speaker 1 And don't worry so much about pitch yet. Posture.
Yeah. Yeah.
You don't want to be in your head voice.

Speaker 2 How about if I do this?

Speaker 2 How's this sounding?

Speaker 1 It's pretty good. You fucking parsoid.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Welcome to No Gods Nowhere's.

Speaker 1 Did you just do you just go?

Speaker 2 Am I the world's first? You may have to bleep this. this am I the world's first cis

Speaker 1 maybe not the first but you're

Speaker 1 we will be bleeping that uh this is a free episode welcome to no god's now

Speaker 1 the show but all things municipal where also we are trying to trans Riley and we're doing pretty good you can't bleep that because then it sounds like I said something way worse well no no no no no I think you don't bleep November saying it bleep Riley saying it unless Riley there's something you finally want to tell us before the show goes to air

Speaker 1 Okay. Bleeping everything except oid, so I'm either calling her a parsoid

Speaker 1 or I'm a real 1850s style racist. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're chasing Riley around with the humongous calipers.

Speaker 1 You look like Flea in the Big Lebaski with the scissors.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 We're going to figure out what your ethnicity is, Riley, once and for all.

Speaker 1 Spin this guy down.

Speaker 2 You have the face of an Englishman, but the name of an Irishman.

Speaker 1 What the fuck's up with that? The world's first Canadian Englishman. Yeah, and the voice of a beautiful woman.
Okay. Okay.
Okay. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Here's a mayor I've wanted to do for a while. I'm the mayor of the episode.
My name is Mandela. Chansky.
I'm joined as ever by my deputy mayors and deputy friends, November Kelly and Riley Quinn.

Speaker 1 They're calling me now third femiest voice on the podcast.

Speaker 1 Fuck off.

Speaker 1 Here's a mayor I've wanted to do for a while, and I think she's a classic kind of no gods, no no mayors mayor. That is to say, she is petty, corrupt, and a little bit silly with it.

Speaker 1 Really vindictive mayor is classic for us. I love it.

Speaker 1 She was, however, still the mayor when the show started, so I've been waiting patiently in the bushes, like a predator, to pounce on this story as soon as she was either removed from office or defeated in an election.

Speaker 1 And friends, that day has come, and I'm ready to leap. ghillie suited out of the shadows and onto the podcast.
The Metaculus made you that ghillie suit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that metaculous, it sort of lowered from the heavens like you thought it would be very like beautiful, like the clouds part, but no, it was like on a fishing line and you could hear the creaking.

Speaker 1 It was, I'm starting to think I'm in a Truman show situation with the Mertacul. In some ways, that makes me respect the majesty of the Metaculous more, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it seems like an internet to run out and get the ghillie suit, maybe, when I started making the metaphor.

Speaker 1 But, but, but before we get into our mayor for the episode, um, around here, much like New Orleans, the city we'll be talking about today, we've got our own way of doing things around here, our own speed of life.

Speaker 1 I'm about to mix metaphors as I switch from Cajun to cowboy, but we're going to find out where yat.

Speaker 1 We're going to find out where you at. We're going to talk about the, I don't know, the Rougaroo.
Anyways, we've got our own little segment. We're going to find out who can beat them saints.

Speaker 1 It turns out a lot of teams. Our own little segment.
Almost all of them. It's called Municipal Roundup.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Very difficult to do a femme here. Yeah, y'all.
Yeah. No, watch Toy Story two and three and four, I guess.
I respect cowgirls so much more than I did at the start of this episode. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So here's the thing. We have a really unique, as Maddie said, we have a very unique culture here at No Gods, No Mayors, and in Municipal Roundup.
We love food.

Speaker 1 It's due to multiple waves of colonization by different European countries. So we kind of

Speaker 2 Family is so important to us as well.

Speaker 1 Actually, what I like to do is I like to gather around the table with my family. And you're not going to believe this, but I've got some friends that I call my family.

Speaker 1 And my kids think they are family.

Speaker 1 And they won't find out until later that it's not actually their aunts and uncles. I tend to call anyone about my age my cousin.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 2 So look, I actually, we're going to play another theme song very quickly after the first.

Speaker 1 Muscle confusion. You thought you you were in the big easy.
No, the big difficult.

Speaker 2 Well, I have an item from the Department of Addenda and Corrections, the Municipal Department of Addenda and Corrections.

Speaker 1 That's my least favorite department. I always hate hearing from them.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, this is a quite small one, fortunately.

Speaker 1 Sam, can we get some department music?

Speaker 1 We have addenda here. Corrections music.

Speaker 2 So, when I talked about the number one mayor we were all rooting for to bring back hope for politics in the United States, Kurt Scoogie. Kurt Skoog.
Skugett, Skoog,

Speaker 1 rise.

Speaker 1 We are all the Skugettes, the fighting Skugettes. Oh, I was imagining a sort of kicking line of Skugettes.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you imagine a kicking line couldn't fight, then I think you're sorely mistaken. The Rockettes actually started as a gang.
A lot of people ended up.

Speaker 1 They were a street gang. They mostly battled the Yiddish Black Hand,

Speaker 1 but they eventually got contained on the stage.

Speaker 1 I got my shit rocketed.

Speaker 1 The stage lights are there for your protection, not theirs.

Speaker 1 I went to see the Rockettes and they had the chicken wire mesh from the Blues Brothers and they were kicking at it the whole time. It was terrible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought it was to protect them, but no, it was to keep the Rockettes from fighting me.

Speaker 2 Well, no, so the Rockettes, not a lot of people know this, but the style of dancing the Rock Hats do is actually like Broadway Krav Maga. Like, that's the martial art that they developed for Broadway.

Speaker 1 The last time I thought about Broadway Krav Maga was its appearance in the film Birdman. My lord.

Speaker 1 So really off topic. Very quickly today, girls.

Speaker 2 Can I also just say before we started recording, remember it was like, oh, I'm like really not feeling well.

Speaker 1 I probably won't be, I probably won't contribute that much.

Speaker 2 And here you are.

Speaker 1 My body is declaring war on the concept concept of having any liquids inside of it right so like i it's been rough girls i've been fucking dying and i thought to myself as a small sickly victorian child the thing that would really cheer me up and would really be a tonic would be uh talking about some mares with my friends and i was so right this is sort of our podcast is sort of like the secret garden in a lot of ways honestly honestly like we do this one for us like the fact that it's extremely profitable is, don't get me wrong, very rewarding.

Speaker 1 It's cool.

Speaker 1 I would still do this just to hang out. Nogodsthemares.com draw on the Patreon, get Double the Mares.
John, John, John, 100% of God's Marine Front.

Speaker 1 I need money to replace all of my fluids. We need to get November to the sea immediately to take the air.
Skoog, Skoog, Scoogie, talk about Scoogie. Scoog, Scoog, Scoog,

Speaker 1 that's the old fighting Skoogette coming up. Beat me up, Scoogie.
Let's go. What do you got?

Speaker 2 Let's go, Scoogies. Let's go.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 So we described.

Speaker 1 So please, it's just one tiny correction. That's one tiny correction.

Speaker 2 We described, I misspoke, and I said Overland Park, Texas. I meant Overland Park, Kansas.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's fatal. This changes.
This changes everything.

Speaker 1 I'm going to have to go back and we're going to have to re-record a track of me reacting differently to everything subsequent to that in the previous episodes. That's right.

Speaker 2 And everything in this episode up to now. Yeah, it's going to happen.

Speaker 1 This changes everything. You're gonna have that episode 1.01.
Yeah, you know who really hates it when you screw up Kansas and Texas is people from Kansas and Texas. That's a keen observation, Massey.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I also have, so that was, that was the Department of Addenda and Correction.

Speaker 1 It took six minutes.

Speaker 1 I think we're overpaying those guys.

Speaker 1 They get a whole pay scale for Kansas, Kansas, not Texas. Yeah, and yeah, and we're paying internal affairs very little, and I'm getting away with a lot of corruption.

Speaker 1 I just want to point that out right now.

Speaker 1 Is that foreshadowing by any chance? No.

Speaker 2 So, so, so look, I also need, I need to tell you both about an item about another favorite mayor of ours.

Speaker 1 Oh, please.

Speaker 2 There is a hot off the press, as of six days ago, Tiffany Henyard update.

Speaker 1 It's called the municipal roundup because we are all becoming as one inside it. That's right.

Speaker 2 We are going to have a great time. So this is a press release.

Speaker 2 And by supposed I mean, when I say press release, I assume that this has been like fully legaled and fact-checked by like the New York Times.

Speaker 1 I thought you meant our podcast and I was like, oh,

Speaker 1 the guys in the department aren't doing that, you know?

Speaker 2 Like, so this is, this is actually, this is nothing to do with Dalton, Illinois. This is an announcement from Tiffany Henyard in College Park, Georgia.
The colony is spreading.

Speaker 1 Oh, are you sure that's the right state, Riley? I know you've in the past gotten it wrong.

Speaker 1 College Park, Kansas. Or Texas.
Or Tennessee.

Speaker 2 College Park, Taxiforn.

Speaker 1 Arkansas. Oh.

Speaker 1 Some sort of our Kansas? That's interesting, Riley. No, it's going to be our Kansas after she gets done with it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Our Kansas does sound like the leader of a techno-barbarian state, the Emperor of Mankind, would have

Speaker 2 united in the Age of Strife. Thank you.
Thank you. Warner 40,000.

Speaker 2 Let's go. So, College Park, Georgia, November 13th, 2025, Globe Newswire.

Speaker 1 Our Georgia.

Speaker 2 Tiffany Henyard, the visionary entrepreneur and dynamic leader, known as the youngest and first woman mayor of Dalton, Illinois, successfully launched the flagship retail store for her bold new streetwear line, THA New Wave.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah. I'm Googling this immediately.
Let me see. You did not put this in the show notes, and I did not

Speaker 1 know it was coming in the full-body fucking.

Speaker 1 of uh the movie loves to have a clothing brand that when you google it it auto corrects from ashes to icon and it looks like uh i don't think it's ai generated though it might be it looks so much like the old atlanta thrashers hockey logo it's crazy style meets the grind style yeah it is the new way of clothing isn't just a brand m dash It's a movement of style, hustle, and legacy.

Speaker 1 From streetwear statements to luxury vibes, every piece drips with confidence, power, and purpose. We don't follow trends, M-dash.
We create them. This is style with a mission, M-dash.

Speaker 1 For those who hustle hard, shine bright, and move different. The new wave clothing, M-dash, where style meets the grind.
Oh my God.

Speaker 2 We need to hire the Dracula Flow guy to read that out.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I agree.

Speaker 1 This is the first time that that particular bit of copy has been read by a human.

Speaker 2 Oh, 100%.

Speaker 2 So this is the press release. The event begins at 5 p.m.
Doesn't say the date.

Speaker 1 Doesn't say the date at all.

Speaker 1 Well, you'll know because you're connected to the hive mine.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Your limbs will be seized and you will be sort of taken control of and then

Speaker 1 you'll be walked to this thing.

Speaker 1 If you're new to this, the Tiffany Hanyard episode, if you've not listened to it, I very, very passingly mentioned that she, as a landlord, allowed a little too much mold to grow in the home that she was the landlord of.

Speaker 1 And then these two jokers and then a third joker who will reign nameless, me, latched onto that as the entire town of Dalton, Illinois is now one fungal entity. Yes.
Okay. And we were.

Speaker 1 That may be true. We don't.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 2 So this is what they say.

Speaker 2 The grand opening celebration in College Park, Georgia. The event begins at 5 p.m.
on an unspecified date.

Speaker 2 The new store, located at its address, now serves as the permanent home for the brand, embodying the mantra available worldwide and solidifying its place in the heart of the urban style i love you know that mantra embodied the mantra available worldwide i think we all are all three of us really that that that's like what this podcast is all about it's embodying the mantra of available worldwide i i i went on tiffany henyard's instagram to because we're mutuals uh to to find this and uh she followed chief you follow each other's pride yeah you see oh my god do you guys see what umfi did

Speaker 1 And so Oomfi is also, I see her Mother's Day post in which

Speaker 1 she does appear to be wearing, I don't know if this is part of the new wave clothing, but she does appear to be wearing the jacket that the hives were all wearing for the album Tyrannosaurus Hives.

Speaker 1 Oh, I was going to say she looks like the prisoner.

Speaker 1 That too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 She looks really good.

Speaker 1 She's awesome. I guess the hives canonically all live in a house.
I think they can't leave. I think I do think they're called that.
You know, the hives, really,

Speaker 1 it's all coming together, much like Dalton, Illinois.

Speaker 2 So I'm going to carry on, please. Because I need to read this whole press release.
It's really, really good.

Speaker 2 So THA New Wave Clothing represents the powerful next chapter for Tiffany Henyard, a woman recognized for her tenacity and is, quote, the most powerful woman in the south of Chicago.

Speaker 2 In the southland of Chicago.

Speaker 1 That's something Trump would say.

Speaker 2 That is just something Trump would say because it's in quotation marks. It has leading capitals.

Speaker 1 It's also like, she doesn't mean Southside Chicago. She means South Chicago.

Speaker 2 She means the Southland.

Speaker 1 The Southland of Chicago. I'm being corralled by the Department of Addenda and Errata to say that I didn't mean Tyrannosaurus Hives.
I meant the black and white white album. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much. I actually noticed that and I wasn't going to say anything because that's how dearly I'm going to be.

Speaker 2 Manny, do you want the fucking Department of Adenda and Corrections on our asses again?

Speaker 1 I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 Just doing like real sitting cop shit. You're like, yeah, I got the Department of Adenda and Errata up my ass all the time.
They're flying helicopters over my house.

Speaker 1 They're going to take my mic.

Speaker 2 I open up November's car boot and in there is just a bunch of like slight

Speaker 2 misspeakings. And I'm like, you can't have this.
And she's like, you got to misspeak now so i can trust you

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 you've got written down on a little slip of paper in your car the juice is the squeeze in quotes and i'm not sure what it means

Speaker 2 you've written it's it's like you you it's like if you see me not take if you see me refuse to take a piece of paper that says overland park texas

Speaker 1 you'll you can't trust me and like i'm gonna get killed on duty yeah he's wearing a fucking wire yeah me making fun of you for saying the juice is the squeeze is actually a really bad idea because as mayor of this episode, I'm about to enter what I call the danger zone for group chat renamings as the person who has to talk the most.

Speaker 2 So Henyard's journey has always been defined by breaking barriers and embodying bolded resilience and originality.

Speaker 2 The streetwear line is a direct translation of her pioneering spirit and her belief that bolded clothing is a form of identity empowerment. THA New Wave is more than a fashion brand.

Speaker 2 It's a movement created for those who are unafraid to dream big, rise strong, and walk unapologetically or in their own skin. Right.
Every piece in the collection, yes.

Speaker 1 How many M dashes is that you've just said?

Speaker 2 That's the thing.

Speaker 1 None. Oh, not one M dash.
So the press release, a real person, the website perhaps is a GPT.

Speaker 2 I don't think an AI could have described Tiffany Henyard as the most powerful woman in the southland of Chicago in quotes with leading capitals. It's too weird.

Speaker 1 It's a really good point. So The New Wave has one Google review, which is from a local guide who has given it one star

Speaker 1 and says, Tiffany Henyard's new failed business venture store does not appear to be open or have any inventory past low-quality knockoffs.

Speaker 2 That was written by a Donald J. Trump.

Speaker 1 Huh?

Speaker 1 Low-quality. The new wave is no longer hot.

Speaker 2 Tiffany Henyard was a terrible mayor. She even called herself.
She called herself, get this the most powerful woman in the southland of Chicago.

Speaker 2 I think that's a load of mushrooms.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's in a

Speaker 1 strip mall. It looks like the strip mall from the accountant, actually.

Speaker 1 I mean, I will say, outside of every major city in America, including many other major cities in America, almost everything here is in a strip mall. So that's not really.

Speaker 1 You got to narrow it down a little bit. I'm walking across the,

Speaker 1 frankly, depressing parking lot to Nikki's smoking room, which is written in cursive. And they sell cigars and liqueurs, apparently.

Speaker 1 America is a land of riches and wonders. That's right.

Speaker 2 So the last thing I'm going to say before we move on to the mayor,

Speaker 2 the distinctive style and quality of the brand, highlighted by its partnership with an international name such as Puma, resonated strongly with attendees today.

Speaker 1 Such as Puma. That's what I call it when I buy a Puma tracksuit and I write my own name on the back and Sharpie and sell it.
It's a collaboration.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so basically they're closed Mondays, Tuesday to Saturday. They're open 11 p.m.
to 8 p.m. and Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m.
The grand opening on October 25th.

Speaker 1 Did you say 11 p.m. to 8 p.m.?

Speaker 2 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Excuse me.

Speaker 1 No, only at night. You can only buy these clothes at night.
Only at night and backwards.

Speaker 2 You can only buy these clothes at night?

Speaker 1 Backwards of nighttime is it the daytime? I'm not clear.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, you can buy them in a dark, damp time of day, basically.

Speaker 1 That's all.

Speaker 1 Away from sunlight.

Speaker 1 I'm just, I'm just, I have ADHD, and so I'm down the street from this, and I'm now looking at the squarest dental practice I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 1 It's so clearly in the footprint of a McDonald's, but now they do like orthodontics. Yeah, you've banished Nova to the geo-guesser zone is what you've done.

Speaker 1 I'm in deep Atlanta, Georgia here.

Speaker 2 To be fair, let me be clear.

Speaker 2 The funniest thing in the world would be to go to a dentist and be like, all right, line me up.

Speaker 1 You're getting a skin fade on my teeth. Yeah, give me a skin fade on my teeth.

Speaker 2 Make him evil.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 That's my item.

Speaker 1 Oh, what a beautiful item.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Riley. That was incredible.
Thank you. Okay.
Yeah. I'm going to close the Google Maps.
Please. Thank you.
All right. Beautiful item.
Thank you, Riley.

Speaker 1 You are as good at bringing items to me as you are a beautiful woman. Okay.
Thank you. Let's dig into.
Okay. So much has written okay in the document.
Genuinely touched.

Speaker 1 Wait, did I?

Speaker 2 Why did I write that instead of say it?

Speaker 1 Do you developing a system of like like automatic writing in order to allow you to express these feelings? Riley is sending me secret messages in the Google Doc that he's afraid of saying out loud.

Speaker 1 It's, oh my God, it just said, I'm a woman. Please keep up the jokes.
It's helping. Okay.
Yeah, no problem.

Speaker 1 So. Let's dig into the main course, which I say because New Orleans is a rich, storied, and distinctive food culture.
Do you get it? Do you get it? Do you get it? Oh,

Speaker 1 sure. Yes, I do.
We're entering into the kind of what we, what we might think of as the commander's palace of the main bit of the episode.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a, what is it, dollar martini, 15 cent martinis? I still do it. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 Anyways, I'm not, by the way, going to do context corner about New Orleans, Louisiana, because you've heard of this one.

Speaker 1 But, you know, big, big overview stuff. The city's got some problems, local corruption.

Speaker 1 uh really bad environmental racism and regular racism poverty crime um both violent and not overall infrastructure issues for instance the water signs it's it's minus 9 000 feet below sea level yeah we'll get into that uh the water system by the way is so out of date and corroded that often local residents are under a water uh boil order or a boil water order is what i would say normally um so but that said it is one of the only good places in america the horrible country that sucks the city has been run in like a medium insane way since its founding But so has the entire state of Louisiana specifically.

Speaker 1 Like if you know any lawyers that live in Louisiana, the entire state has no bar reciprocity with any other state because the lawiana is based on the Napoleonic Code. It's crazy.
Because

Speaker 1 it's like, it's only partially, right? Like, so Louisiana, South Africa, and Scotland are the only jurisdictions in the world that have a hybrid between civil, like civilian and common law.

Speaker 1 It's insane to do it that way. It's crazy.
Do you know how insane you have to be to be a lawyer in Louisiana? As insane as you have to be to become a lawyer in Scotland or South Africa. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, but the city government structure is like this. It's mostly normal at this point.

Speaker 1 Like there's weird home rule stuff with the individual like wards of the city, but those don't even line up with the city council. The city council has seven members.

Speaker 1 There's like five regular members and two at-large members that are kind of like the

Speaker 1 basically like the leadership of the city council. And then there's the mayor who's the executive of the council.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And if you, if you want like a sort of more background on this, you can watch a little documentary called American Horror Story,

Speaker 1 one of the seasons of which gets into this. Yeah.
So, okay. Who is Latoya Cantrell? Who I have not said the name of her yet, and we are 22 minutes into the episode.

Speaker 2 Pretty good. That's great.

Speaker 1 I introduced the show, right? Yes, I did. Okay.

Speaker 1 She is born Latoya Wilder in the Los Angeles area in 1972. Her mother is a social role.
I died. You fucked up the joke.
You sidestepped the trap I had laid for you.

Speaker 1 What? Because in the notes, it says in the LA area. And I was going to do a bit where I was like, Maddie, it's called Louisiana.

Speaker 1 Fuck.

Speaker 1 That was going to do numbers. I was wondering why I wrote L.A.
area. Anyways,

Speaker 1 fuck. Well, her mother, sorry.
She's born in Latoya Wilder in the LA area in 1972. Maddie, it's called Louisiana.
Oh my, you got my ass so bad.

Speaker 1 Leave all of that in.

Speaker 1 Leave both of them in.

Speaker 1 Sam.

Speaker 2 We're not cowards. We're not cowards.

Speaker 1 Her mother is a social worker. Her father is an LAPD officer.
LA, the city, not the state.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's Louisiana.

Speaker 1 Her father, Sheriff J.W. Pepper, Louisiana State Police Department.

Speaker 1 Anyways, her cop dad gets hooked on drugs and leaves her mom. Whoa.
Okay. Jesus.

Speaker 1 That's a... Pretty dark movie, I feel like I've seen at some point.
They have to leave their family home for a smaller place, and her brother goes to live with her grandmother.

Speaker 1 and later Latoya too has to move in with her grandma and begins suffering from asthma from the horrible air pollution at the time in the 1980s.

Speaker 1 So they moved to Palmdale, California, which is in that weird like little Bakersfield in hill on the other side of the San Gabriels or she says the high desert to get away from the smog for her asthma.

Speaker 1 She says that

Speaker 1 things got really bad. The high desert is, I haven't been, but like I have some, like some of my ex's family are out there.
Yeah, it seems bad. It's really, I've driven through it.

Speaker 1 It's it's unpleasant.

Speaker 1 The way she describes it is that things became hard in Palmdale when Reagan became president and like social programs are cut and the area was impacted heavily by crack and gang violence.

Speaker 1 She works at a Del Taco and McDonald's a blockbuster and then goes to New Orleans to Xavier University, which is an HBCU in New Orleans.

Speaker 1 And due to the absolute incredible Frankenstein weirdness of New Orleans, the city, it is the only Catholic HBCU, Xavier.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of black Catholics in New Orleans, which is, I think, like the only place in America that's really got that

Speaker 1 population. Just interesting to me.

Speaker 1 So she does six years at Xavier, and she gets interested in sociology and the root causes of things like poverty, gang violence, graduates with a degree in sociology.

Speaker 1 By 1999, she's working at an education foundation, working with the public schools and living in Broadmoor in New Orleans.

Speaker 1 So there's a lot of tough, there's a little tough to decide the neighborhood of Broadmoor. I spent a decent amount of time in New Orleans, but I'm not a New Orleanian myself.

Speaker 1 But so much of the city and how it works is like geography due to literally what is the high ground. So like uptown is the high ground.
It's where rich people live, which is not north, south.

Speaker 1 It's like east-west. Again, it's like every other American city more or less is like, you have the kind of expected thing of like, oh, redlining made this into a kind of like racist two-fort.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But also because it's New Orleans, there is several distinct sort of spins on this.

Speaker 2 There's like a Z axis in addition to like the usual words.

Speaker 1 The Z axis says never go to Algiers. Yeah.
For Americans, that's the letter Z. I don't know why they're saying it like that.
I imagine it's some sort of fungal issue.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 but like, you know, huge sweeping generalizations. Uptown is the high ground.
It's where rich people are.

Speaker 1 And the poorest areas generally, which with exceptions like Lakeview and Gentili, which are like kind of in a swamp, but are pretty middle class for whatever reason, the lowest lying areas are the poorest areas.

Speaker 1 It's sort of generalizing about New Orleans. It's like, it's like this, but with these nine or 10 exceptions.
Basically.

Speaker 1 The ninth word is very low-lying, for instance.

Speaker 2 This is a little bit of the person currently studying German. It's like, yeah, that's like German.

Speaker 1 All of the rules.

Speaker 2 So there's a billion exceptions you have to memorize. It's so hard.

Speaker 1 You are the only person on earth, Riley Quinn, who could look at the city of New Orleans and say, this looks German. This looks German to me.

Speaker 1 There is no place less German on the face of the fucking earth than New Orleans.

Speaker 1 Sorry. They used to call it Germans Ruin.

Speaker 1 I will say two things. New Orleans actually has a German population of immigrants.
They were people who worked on the barges coming down the Mississippi. They all live in, they all built houses in,

Speaker 1 oh boy, what's it called? I can't remember now.

Speaker 1 It's right by the end of the canal. Anyways, out of Bargewood.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 so Broadmoor, where she settles. It's uptown.
Barges, you want the barge district. It's where all the barges are.
Just keep walking until you get to the bottom.

Speaker 1 It's called the Marines is what I was trying to think of.

Speaker 1 So Broadmoor is uptown, which is right near all the fancy stuff, but is also one of the lowest lying areas in the city. The neighborhood is overwhelmingly black, like 70%,

Speaker 1 but it's also home to much of the Landrew family, which is like a local political dynasty, right? Like former mayors, congresspeople, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Like Broadmoor, the neighborhood driving around it is kind of bizarre, like from personal experience. There's like a lot of like standard New Orleans, like craftsman, craftsman houses, shotgun houses.

Speaker 1 And then all of a sudden you'll see this block of like brick tutors. It's very strange.

Speaker 1 So there's a real serious diversity in the kind of person that lives in in broadmoor and it's not the typical like new orleanian thing of like extreme extreme segregation between like the white city and the black city the high ground the low ground etc okay so speaking of high ground and low ground uh her real political journey starts with uh hurricane katrina that's a horrible thing for your political journey to start with yeah so but she starts out doing some good i would say uh because uh broadmore received some of the worst flooding in the city during katrina in 2005 um people know about katrina and its aftermath but an important thing at this point do they like zoomers I think this was 20 years ago.

Speaker 1 But the city, you know, it's like

Speaker 1 due to basically man-made events, the hurricane like decimates the city. A lot of people have to leave.
It's

Speaker 1 a disaster. They basically are abandoned by the federal government.
The New Orleans Police Department is standing on a bridge shooting civilians trying to escape. This sort of thing.
Yeah. But

Speaker 1 an important thing to remember that I think a lot of people who are alive for it forget also is like the vultures circling the city afterwards.

Speaker 1 Like a lot of people really saw it as an opportunity to completely reshape the city, strip it for parts. This is how they end up with, there's technically no public school system there anymore.
Jeez.

Speaker 1 It's like just charter schools. There's all this stuff where they wanted to like, you know, it's gotten heavily gentrified.
It's turned into like only a tourist town.

Speaker 1 It's like a very, the aftermath is still, we're still figuring it out. But Cantrell, like a lot of New Orleans, was stuck in Houston for a couple of years.

Speaker 1 But by 2007, she's back in the city and she's working on rebuilding her two-family home and she heads up something called the Broadmoor Improvement Association. And here's the thing at the time.

Speaker 1 I'm going going to have to come up with a cover name for the CIA. Yeah, it's the DIA?

Speaker 1 The other agent in the room is like, I was thinking the DIA, but that's already in our museum in upstate New York. And also another thing.
And also another thing. That's true.
Huh? Is this?

Speaker 1 Look it up.

Speaker 2 Is this a trans thing?

Speaker 1 It's a reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Speaker 2 Okay, so it is. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 Good. What if the CIA were troops? The DIA.

Speaker 1 So at the time, the city wanted to turn Broadmoor entirely entirely into parkland, thinking the neighborhood was like too far gone and that some green space would help abate flooding in the future.

Speaker 1 Its residents, again, mostly black, would be simply resettled elsewhere in the city, which I'm sure would have been normal and good.

Speaker 1 Kentrell and the BIA worked to save the neighborhood. It's a huge.
Fuck off.

Speaker 2 You got to check out my favorite movie, The Bonston Gardener.

Speaker 2 It tells the story of Bames Beasus Bangleton.

Speaker 2 It's not even the right movie.

Speaker 1 You're thinking of the Bud Shepherds.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm thinking of the Bud Shepherd. Fuck.

Speaker 1 The Bud Beppard.

Speaker 1 The Big Bopper? The Big Bopper. Hello, baby.
This huge coalition, which is a black and white, it's crazy when they shot BFK.

Speaker 2 Because a lot of that happened in New Orleans, actually. A lot of the planning for it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
So this huge coalition.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 This is the dumbest rip I've ever tried to get going. I'm sorry.
We have to find something better. This can't be it.
This can't be it. No, no.

Speaker 1 We have to find something else to latch on to than the letter B. I know.
I was just stuck with the sort of tweet about Pen Badgley being named, like trying to make up a fake name and looking at a cop.

Speaker 1 And I just thought of the BIA.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I'm not very good at podcasting.

Speaker 1 You're wonderful at it.

Speaker 2 Anyway, having a fun time.

Speaker 1 So Broadmoor comes back like faster. comes back in big square quotes uh comes back comes back a lot faster than uh many of the other flooded neighborhoods in the city.

Speaker 1 Um she clashes uh pretty severely early on with Mitch Landry, who's the mayor at the time, but they end up working an episode. Uh, probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, every New Orleans mayor of the last 70 years is an episode, unfortunately. Or fortunately.

Speaker 1 So, uh, but they work together. They kill the park and instead get an investment plan passed that many credit with the revival of the neighborhood.
Uh, she's really heavily involved.

Speaker 1 She's basically responsible for reforming of a local school board, the reopening of a library, and the opening of a local community center within a church. Okay, great.
Cool. So she saved the city.

Speaker 1 She saved a name. She saved her neighborhood.

Speaker 1 Yes. Hell yeah.
With like a big, diverse coalition of both black and white, rich and poor. Like,

Speaker 1 yeah, like, so it's like a feel-good story early on is what I'm getting at here. I mean, I'm not thrilled about the rich involvement in this coalition, but, you know.

Speaker 2 So I guess what you're saying is it all ended well.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the end of the episode. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 I've been your mayor. No.
So

Speaker 1 in 2012, after working for like six years to rebuild the neighborhood, the representative for District B, which includes Broadmoor, fuck. Don't again.
Dude, the letter B.

Speaker 1 Well, it's this funny thing where the districts in New Orleans are letter not numbered because the wards are numbered.

Speaker 1 So it'd be too confusing because the districts don't line up with the wards for reasons I don't fucking know.

Speaker 1 It's going to be some shit that was set up by like Benjamin Butler when he was kind of dictator of New Orleans during Reconstruction. Yeah, it's back like, you know, Boston, the roads are all wacky.

Speaker 1 They say it was was cow paths. These were actually all alligator carriage paths.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They like took New Orleans, the end of the Civil War, a bunch of like German Union soldiers went insane due to kind of what they call Teuton's malice.

Speaker 1 And then the

Speaker 1 and then they installed a guy who looked like Detective Sipowitz from NYPD Blue to be absolute dictator of New Orleans.

Speaker 1 And it kind of worked. He was very racist, but in some unexpected ways, because he really took the whole kind of z-axis dimension to heart.
I think Benjamin Butler is a mayor, actually.

Speaker 1 Okay, we could talk about him, put it on the list. Yeah.
Or he's already on the list, and we've already done it in the future, perhaps.

Speaker 1 We already will have been doing it.

Speaker 1 We are the heptapods from Arrival coming to you with

Speaker 1 a podcast delivered in sort of ink. Yeah.
Yeah. Maddie has executed death function.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I'll check this out.

Speaker 2 You're pointing at a whiteboard like this woman. You,

Speaker 2 woman, like me.

Speaker 1 You.

Speaker 2 I was going to say.

Speaker 1 Not enough Canadians even have verbs.

Speaker 2 Time is a flat sash. There we go.
I got it out.

Speaker 1 There it is.

Speaker 1 There it is. That's the trailer.
Okay. Is it?

Speaker 1 We'll find out. We'll find out.

Speaker 2 We know. No, we know already.

Speaker 1 We know already.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's in 14 minutes when I make a joke about

Speaker 1 historic buildings. The letter B again.

Speaker 1 The letter B again?

Speaker 2 It turns out it was B.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the lady, the woman who was the District B representative in the city council wins an at-large seat, which is

Speaker 1 again.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 that's how it started.

Speaker 1 So wins an at-large seat, which is like, well, like I said, the leadership position on the council. So Cantroll runs the district in November of 2012 for the two remaining years of their term.

Speaker 1 There's an amazing incident I found where on the campaign trail, two months before the election, her husband, Jason Cantrell, who is an assistant

Speaker 1 city attorney, was speaking with a cop in court and a joint fell out of his pocket. Just fell out of his pocket.

Speaker 1 He was charged with possession and had to resign.

Speaker 2 That is the literal nightmare scenario.

Speaker 1 Like, how does a joint just fall out of your pocket is what I'd like to know.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe maybe it's because he went to a joke store and had like hand buzzers and stuff in there.

Speaker 2 It was just sort of just some jumping beans and it was just, it got all crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 she wins a full term in 2014 as well. And she's focused on quality of life stuff.
She's instrumental in passing a smoking business.

Speaker 2 Because she has to be the sole breadwinner now.

Speaker 1 I mean, yes. So she's instrumental in passing a smoking ban in 2015, which you could in fact smoke inside of all bars in New Orleans until 2015, which is a humongous thing, actually.

Speaker 1 It's a problem for a town where like so many people work in the service industry or nightlife, where it's like massively horrible for your health if you like play the trumpet at the maple leaf and you're inhaling smoke all night every night.

Speaker 1 You know, like it's so yeah, that's actually kind of a big deal.

Speaker 1 The other big thing was siding with some local residents against the city when they wanted to institute some zoning variances to build some big hotels downtown.

Speaker 1 But I was reading this political profile of her from 2015. That's like, this lady's going to become the mayor someday.

Speaker 1 It's very strange. Another set of developers wanted to build a 120 million 20 20-story budget hotel on historic Canal Street that would be three times as high as the zoning code allowed.

Speaker 1 It would occupy what is currently an empty lot and lead to the destruction of all but the facades of three pre-Civil War buildings that now house a sushi restaurant, a bar, and a massage parlor.

Speaker 1 A liquor store and a souvenir shop would also have to make way for the project. The armpit of Canal Street, Cantrell calls the site.

Speaker 1 Neighbors and preservationists opposed the variants and said the site. I deserve better because of the historic buildings and higher-end tourist hotels.

Speaker 1 Cantrell

Speaker 1 convened a working group of interested parties to seek consensus. When that didn't work, she seemed to give a green light to the project by allowing it to move through the city's planning process.

Speaker 1 Neighbors questioned her motives and stepped up their opposition. By late March, the developers announced without explanation that they would withdraw the project.

Speaker 1 So it's just sort of like her motivations seem insane and inscrutable.

Speaker 1 I just, I just thought it was sort of instructive in terms of like, she just seems, I don't understand, like, this is not a person with politics, it appears, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I just don't quite understand where she's coming from on it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's like, this is his it's all very confused yeah right yeah it's like sorry go ahead no i was saying i was agreeing with you

Speaker 1 okay it's all very confused so she's also a member of the uh quote-unquote criminal justice committee which mostly means uh addressing understaffing in the new orleans police department uh who you might remember as the guys uh standing on the danziger bridge uh shooting random residents and covering it up after the hurricane But in all, she's like very popular in the council.

Speaker 1 She seems to represent her constituents well, at least, and is well regarded and is an up-and-comer in the local political scene and is generally seen as like a very exciting figure locally.

Speaker 1 So in 2017, she announces she's running for mayor. Mitch Landrew,

Speaker 1 her old enemy, is term limited out and she wins the open primary in the runoff. There's like, there's not been a non-Democrat mayor of New Orleans in like 200 years.

Speaker 1 So the way they do it is like jungle primary style.

Speaker 1 There's some weirdness during that time where she's accused by her main opponent in the runoff, another Democrat, a judge called Denise Charbonnet, of improper financial practices, like some strangeness with using a city credit card for campaign stuff, which Cantrell says she's paid back with campaign funds eventually,

Speaker 1 perhaps a precursor of things to come.

Speaker 1 But she is New Orleans's first ever woman mayor and the first non-New Orleans born mayor in the city in like 50 years. Materially, she seems to be kind of fine.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 She like early on, anyways. She focuses early on getting like a big infrastructure bill passed, like badly needed, especially getting millions to the local sewerage and water board, which

Speaker 1 is like Landrew and a couple predecessors have failed at getting. She installed new leadership at the utility, which also is badly needed, but she's also a little weird at being the mayor generally.

Speaker 1 So wait, she is sworn in January 2018. And in April, she extends a job offer to a guy named Warren Riley.
Uh-huh. Yep.
That's right. Riley is a weird name for a guy to have, but that's fine.

Speaker 1 So Riley is the former New Orleans police chief who in 2010 resigned two years before the city was due to enter into a federal consent decree aiming at reforming the

Speaker 1 extremely troubled force. For instance, it took 18 years to punish the officers at Danziger Bridge, which I mentioned.

Speaker 1 In April 2018, she offers him a job, Director of Public Safety and Homeland Security for an annual salary of $180,000.

Speaker 1 The next bits here are according to a lawsuit, so you know that they are good and cool.

Speaker 1 Just a few weeks later in May 2018, Cantrell told Riley that there are very powerful people who live uptown that do not support you for the position.

Speaker 1 And the next day, Cantrell called Riley and told him, Chief, I can't do it. I'm sorry.
I will not be able to appoint you. I will have to make you whole.
I am sorry.

Speaker 1 She then hung up without saying another word. That seems not ideal.
Yeah, Riley obviously sued Cantrell for breach of contract. And in 2022, he awarded

Speaker 1 $700,000 in damages. So, yeah,

Speaker 1 again, a bit of a strange person. Her Her handling of COVID was regarded locally as pretty good.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Like everything I found about it was like,

Speaker 1 yeah, it was like pretty popular during COVID. Like she did a good job at like, I didn't, I couldn't find like the numbers compared.

Speaker 1 I didn't crunch the numbers, but it seemed like locally people regarded her response as pretty competent.

Speaker 1 In 2020, though, the IRS puts a lien on her home because her family owes $95,000 in back taxes.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's the kind of thing that starts making you act a little uncut gemsy.

Speaker 1 In fairness.

Speaker 1 in fairness if the federal government is going to drown your entire neighborhood yeah i feel like that is one of the better reasons to take a kind of um casual attitude to your federal income tax you know that's true if i live if i was a new orleans resident though through katrina i also would not be paying the federal government any money in 2021 hurricane ida hits new orleans really badly um i don't know if people remember this one i i do just because i knew a lot of people living there at the time but it's really bad it's like evacuation orders the whole thing.

Speaker 1 It's during this really horrible heat wave. It's in like still bad COVID.
Her handling in the aftermath is really criticized.

Speaker 1 Things like garbage pickups didn't come back for weeks and is still kind of fucked up.

Speaker 1 So, you know, it's like really hot and it's wet everywhere and there's just garbage floating around and how you might get mad at the mayor if that's the case. Oh, hot, hot, wet garbage.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hot, wet garbage. She manages, however, to get re-elected that fall with like a really, I mean, this is 2021.
Almost every local election in America had like massively depressed turnout.

Speaker 1 Uh, this is when Eric Adams gets elected, you know. Yeah, I'm not gonna swim past a bunch of hot, wet garbage to go and you know, vote.
I might be mad at her, but I'm not that mad at her.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, exactly. Okay, so I kind of spid run through all the early stuff because I want to get to a period of her political career and personal life that I am simply entitling what-whoa.

Speaker 1 Oh, are we dealing, are we dealing with because it seems like we're dealing with a basically effective mayor who is about to enter into a kind of prolonged mayoral crash out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, she's as effective as anyone could be effective as mayor of New Orleans as it is currently constructed. It is like an impossible job.

Speaker 1 I was going to get to this in a little, in a little while, but there was a quote that I found from like a New York Times article about all the fucked up-ness going on here where someone goes, it's time for someone new.

Speaker 1 before adding with barely a pause, but the next one isn't going to be able to do anything. And that's like the local attitude about politics, right? Like it's cool.

Speaker 1 Like it is the problems are medium unfixable. Yeah.
It's giving up.

Speaker 1 It's, I, it's like, you know, it's, you talk to people, like I talk to people who live there and either it's like everyone there loves the city so much because it is a very lovable place.

Speaker 1 It's a wonderful city for a bazillion reasons. But it does feel sometimes.
like it's in a managed decline, right? Like it is the below sea level thing isn't getting fixed.

Speaker 1 The federal government is not interested in like shoring up the infrastructure. Um, the state government thinks it's full of like, you know, blue-haired baristas or whatever.

Speaker 1 So they don't give a shit. Like it's um,

Speaker 1 it's not great. It's a model of the future as well for everyone.
Yeah, it's yeah, very much. And I cannot stress enough, uh, like it is not just a tragic place.
It is a wonderful place.

Speaker 1 Uh, that is just a place that people live. And if you're a tourist, they're act normal.
Um, so, okay, so early in her second term, uh, crime is spiking.

Speaker 1 The city has, I believe, the highest murder rate in the country at the time. Carjacking is really rampant.

Speaker 1 Like, literally a guy walking up to you and like pointing a gun at you and getting you out of the car. Like it's in 1990.

Speaker 1 Your classic epidemic of pressing triangle. Yes.

Speaker 1 A guy running at me kind of like his shoulders are weirdly high and his arms are kind of out. I shifted to a different animation phase.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's swiveling the top of his body, but not the bottom as he runs around at me.

Speaker 1 So I got a, the first header I've got, the first heading I've got is called trips. Because why is it always trips? It's always trips.
Mayors love to take trips.

Speaker 1 Well, because if there's a massive like triangle pressing epidemic, you don't want to be in town driving around. That's true.
I'm going to be on a plane.

Speaker 1 And it's not like, you're not like, you know, sort of Brazilian super rich kind of administrator who can just like get a helicopter everywhere or have a bunch of like

Speaker 1 SWAT team psychos and armored cars driving you around. And the guy pressing the, the guy pressing the triangle at me only has to fly the helicopter like once a game.

Speaker 1 So it's really not, it's less scary it's like one mission every time um so here's a here's a headline for everybody city attorney says mayor cantrell on the hook for thirty thousand dollars and travel upgrades and a little quote for you uh cantrell reiterated on tuesday that the travel upgrades were not for luxury but for her health and well-being she said the threat of covet has prompted her to fly first class in some cases and she's previously souted cited security concerns.

Speaker 1 Quote. Yeah, I mean, listen, if you're not in first class on a plane, anyone could come up there and like carjack you, basically.

Speaker 1 And I'm impressed with her frugality that she's on the hook for $30,000 for first class because like occasionally I like to

Speaker 1 like look at how much first class flights cost to amuse myself because that amount of money is terrifying. And I'm pretty certain that's like one flight.
So

Speaker 1 well.

Speaker 2 That's like one flight to Baton Rouge, basically, that she got first class on.

Speaker 1 Quote, and I stand by that all day long. Anyone who wants to question how I protect myself just doesn't understand the world black women walk in.
Yes. Okay, cool.
Perfect.

Speaker 1 In a press conference on September 8th, Mayor Cantrill told Fox 8, which is the local Fox affiliate, that she did not plan to pay the city back for flight upgrades on overseas flights. No, absolutely.

Speaker 1 I think you can absolutely mount an identity-based defense of your kind of luxury self-care that other people are paying for, right?

Speaker 1 It's fine to do that. I mean, I've never flown first class, but if I did and someone got mad at me, I would be like, you are being transphobic to me.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you know any idea what a cis person could do to me and coach? Yeah. They could come up to me.
They could press triangle.

Speaker 1 They could just cause action hijack my ass directly out of the exit road.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Cis people, what you don't know is that cis people all have the just cause grappling hook.
And that little curtain between coach and first class is the only thing that stops it.

Speaker 1 A lot of people don't know this also, but the enormous power that cis people hold over me. If a cis person press triangle at me, my tits fall off.
Oh, God. Yeah.
So these also,

Speaker 1 according to the New York Times, included trips that were economic development trips to Switzerland and the French Riviera at a cost of $43,000 over four days.

Speaker 1 What can New Orleans learn about economic development from Switzerland? Well, it's helpful for economic development to be upper mountain.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then they checked out the French Riviera. They checked out the French Riviera, which is French speaking, and they thought lower lying, but a lot of it is up cliffs and capes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 These are key insights. These are key facts.
You want a fact-finding trip that doesn't find facts? Yeah. That's a great point.
Your honor? Okay. So in 2022, there is some weirdness with an apartment.

Speaker 1 And this is when she came to my attention as a candidate for the show, three years ago before the show existed.

Speaker 1 But this is when I became aware of her. Miraculous spoke to you and you didn't know what it was and you were afraid.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it said, be not afraid as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It was, it's actually just a, it's a glowing orb surrounded by multiple sashes covered in eyeballs, and it's on fire.
I wonder if we know anyone who could draw that for us. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Okay, biblically accurate mayor. Come on, let's see it.

Speaker 1 I actually,

Speaker 1 wait, instead of let's see it, let's shirt it. I don't know.

Speaker 1 We used to come up with shirts every episode and we never drew that. Yeah, then we never did any.

Speaker 1 I know. But

Speaker 1 biblically accurate mayor, pretty good. Okay, so here's a quote from a Fox article from 2022.

Speaker 1 A two-month-long Fox 8 investigation finds New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell is possibly breaking city policy and maybe even state law, spending much of her time at a city-owned apartment, possibly without paying rent.

Speaker 1 We saw Mayor Cantrell showing up early in workout clothes, leaving to take walks along the river and watering plants on the balcony.

Speaker 1 One night in August, she did not leave the apartment until almost 1.30 a.m. The mayor spent the night at the apartment several times in the surveillance video we come through.

Speaker 1 Your honor, is it illegal to have a pied-terre that the city owns for like meeting with dignitaries and stuff? Yeah. Is it illegal

Speaker 1 for the city to be my landlord? In many ways, the city is exploiting me in that relationship. And we're back to Jordan.

Speaker 2 I think Ken Sim looked down south here and was like,

Speaker 2 I could do this with a gym. I could do the bro version of this.

Speaker 1 So this is an apartment in the, it's on the edge of Jackson Square and the French Market Corporation manages it. The French market is like a big market that's over there.
Sounds like a nice apartment.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's very nice. So according to the French market, the two-bedroom, two-bath apartment has a fair market value of $2,900 a month.

Speaker 1 $2,991. Sorry, about $3,000 a month.
A month. $3,000 a month.
$3,000 a month.

Speaker 1 So there we go.

Speaker 2 There it is.

Speaker 1 We did

Speaker 1 a little bit on the group chat. Free text.

Speaker 2 Let me just quickly bargain on the screen.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Time to kill myself.

Speaker 1 $3,000

Speaker 1 a month

Speaker 1 has standards of behavior policy that each city employee must sign in return. It states, quote, use of city property is for work-related purposes, not personal benefit.
And

Speaker 1 being the mayor, as we once heard a mayor say, is a full-time job. That's true.
So

Speaker 1 she's doing everything she does is a work-related purpose. Oh my God, that's so smart.
I never thought about

Speaker 1 how it feels to know that I am ontologically ontologically the mayor.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The mayor is back to having one body and it's mine.
You notice how a sash never ends? It's like a kind of like a Mobius strip.

Speaker 1 The sash never ends is an incredible way to see it.

Speaker 2 Okay, me Rex, if you're listening, we have another song title for you.

Speaker 1 America's first heptapod mayor. She was in that apartment writing the sentence from both sides into the middle.

Speaker 1 We have begun mayor process.

Speaker 1 Zoran begin transition process. Oh my God, the Zoran transition stuff.
You can stop texting it to me, everybody. I've seen it.
I've made my little jokes about it. We can move on.

Speaker 1 The word transition can mean many things.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We're also, yes, we're all meeting the Pope with one lucky guess.

Speaker 1 We're all meeting the Pope with one lucky guest. We all know this.

Speaker 2 And yes, you can also stop texting me that when I was on the Carniero episode and I pronounced bread pow as pow,

Speaker 2 that I accidentally said that he knows that that's dick. And he said, he knows what side his dick is buttered on.

Speaker 1 Wait.

Speaker 1 Wait.

Speaker 1 Why didn't that go the addenda and errata?

Speaker 1 I forgot.

Speaker 1 We need to get some fucking addenda and errata heptapods.

Speaker 2 Because it was too good not to say. And then by the time I remembered, we'd already gotten into Latoya Kentrel.
But then I figured

Speaker 2 I could slip it in here that I accidentally mispronounced the Portuguese word for bread as Portuguese slang for penis, implying that mayor of Luanda, Higuinho Carnero, knew, quote, knew which side his dick was buttershot.

Speaker 1 You only buffs a woman's side.

Speaker 1 I do wait on, sorry.

Speaker 1 What kind of a dick has sides?

Speaker 1 Again, from our limits his time-bound perspective.

Speaker 1 My polygonal dick.

Speaker 1 Tagging the Latoya Contrale episode with spoilers for the movie Arrival.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. It's just like the dentist.
You go into the urologist and you're like, hey, line me up.

Speaker 1 Square it off. Getting the skin fade.

Speaker 1 Going into what I thought was going to be the arrival references episode, but it's actually the interstellar references episode.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 What did the mayor's office say about this?

Speaker 1 Quote, the mayor's usage of city-owned apartment at the Pontalbo, which is the the name of the building, is consistent with the usage of past mayors, her director of communications said in a statement.

Speaker 1 In addition, the most recent franchise agreement contains no rules governing how that unit should be used.

Speaker 1 Lastly, according to the French Market Corporation, this mayor and past mayors were under no obligation to pay for usage of that unit.

Speaker 1 The city sent Fox 8 the franchise agreement cited in the mayor's statement. It does not relate to the city's use of the Hunter-Pontalbo apartment.

Speaker 1 The franchise agreement is a 2013 council council ordinance that merged the former building into the French market corporation.

Speaker 1 So they're just like, as you can see clearly in this, in this contract, it says we can do whatever we want. And they handed them a contract that said something else.

Speaker 1 I assumed that journalists didn't know how to read. Yeah, I sorry.
I yeah. But it's

Speaker 1 it's 2022 here and they can still do that. The group says their sources regularly saw Mayor Cantrell coming and going from the apartment in a city vehicle, sometimes parked legally.

Speaker 1 Sources also reported seeing her on the balcony of the apartment, putting up a privacy screen to obstruct the view of the balcony, and seeing packages addressed to her in the building's mailroom.

Speaker 1 Amazing. Amazing.
Just move into a city. I mean, I don't know why the city has the apartment, but yeah,

Speaker 1 why the fuck not? And I will say, crucially, they're not seeing her husband at the apartment. It's just her.
And

Speaker 1 girls' night at the city apartment. Yeah, that I own question mark.

Speaker 1 I love that a recurring theme of no gods, no mayors is where does the mayor live it just keeps coming up history yeah once once you are mayor it becomes very important to dissemble to to hide your whereabouts to use what the russians call musketovka you know yeah otherwise otherwise your your enemies you know could could press triangle on you

Speaker 1 so right around this time due to her various handlings of things specifically like ida and the general unhappiness with the crime rate and the trips etc a recall effort is launched by uh belden batiste who is the kind of guy who was always running for something but never wins love that kind of guy Every unto every nation is granted a Curtis Sleewa.

Speaker 1 Essentially, but you know, like this is a Democrat Curtis Sleewa. So organizers submitted.
Terrifying thought. Blue Beret.

Speaker 1 Organizers submitted about 67,000 signatures, but only 27,000 or so were legitimate, which are well before, well below the $45,000.

Speaker 1 It's a bipartisan consensus in New Orleans city politics that your enemies don't know how to read and won't check. Well below, yeah.
It's well below the 45,000 signature deadline.

Speaker 1 This included a lot of photocopies of signatures and then names like Donald Duck and Nikki Mouse. Incredible.
Not even bothering to think of a real fake name is really beautiful.

Speaker 1 Just assuming that, yeah, the city clerk won't read, won't check the signature is the one thing they're supposed to do. But weren't you just talking about an apartment, Maddie? Yes, I was.

Speaker 1 Because she's often seeing and coming and going to the apartment with an officer in her security detail. named Jeffrey Vappy.
Nudging date. Nudging.
That's Vappy.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you're telling me that this is less an apartment situation and more an apartment from the apartment situation. I was also thinking about that.
A little bit.

Speaker 1 It's feeling pretty the apartment.

Speaker 1 Person who's only seen the apartment seeing an apartment. All right, listen, I saw two films in the last week.
All right. Leave me alone.
Was it Arrival and the Apartment?

Speaker 1 Actually, it was 1917 and All Quiet on the Western Transit. So I'm just drawing from general knowledge.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it takes some time to filter through the kind of coffee puck that is my brain and so next week i'll be like you know this mare reminds me a lot of like getting machine guns

Speaker 1 this reminds me of uh seeing a bird while i die yeah that's that one right when he sees a bird and he dies i think that's a tone is that all quiet at the end no the original all quiet no no the only thing he sees at the end of all quiet is well maybe the original i only saw the the the new one oh i've only seen the original in high school oh you should see the new one it's good is it good yeah it's good you should leave all of this in.

Speaker 1 I think so. So Jeffrey, Jeffrey Vappy.
Jeffrey Vappy. That's Vappy.
In January 2023, this story runs in the local Fox affiliate.

Speaker 1 The wife of New Orleans police officer Jeffrey Vappy filed the amended divorce petition earlier this month.

Speaker 1 It claims that in November 2022, she became aware of an inappropriate relationship between her husband, Jeffrey Vappy, and a woman identified in court documents as Mrs. L.
Period C. Period.

Speaker 1 I wonder who that could be. Also, she became aware of it.
It's like, yeah, I was reading this letter. I was like, there's no water tower on our house.

Speaker 1 A source tells Fox 8 that L C refers to Latoya Cantrell. In the filing.

Speaker 1 What fucking source needed they did they need to put that one together for them, you know? Like, they had detectives working on that in shifts.

Speaker 1 In the filing, Vappy's wife claims that her husband had been in an ongoing sexual relationship with Mrs. LC since May 2021.
That is the same month Vapi joined Cantrell's executive protection team.

Speaker 1 God damn. Okay.

Speaker 1 You know what? Get it. Like either she like sees him on the sort of like anti the mayor gets pressed triangled detail and is like, this guy's hot.

Speaker 1 Or she already knows he's hot and she nep she like nepotisms.

Speaker 1 What's nepotism for someone you want to fuck? Grooming. She like grooms him in onto the like detail and then has the affair with it.
Like that either way, that's girl boss shit.

Speaker 1 I'm looking at a photo of Jeffrey Vappy. Hold on.
Let me look at this. I mean, he's a New Orleans cop.
I don't think he's going to be hot already, but like.

Speaker 1 No, he's sort of

Speaker 1 a guy.

Speaker 1 He looks... Yeah, he's ordinary type guy.
I mean, he looks better with the shades on, which is... He looks like a baseball reliever to me.
He's got kind of like a normal guy face. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's really short as well. It's like...
Okay.

Speaker 1 but i'm i'm not sure there's one photo of him where he's standing behind latoya cantrello oh no he is taller than her i think there might be a hobbit situation she's she's on a she's on a podium she's on a she's on a dais okay cool yeah looking at a photo looking at a story from the hobbit being like elijah wood's really short i don't know what's going on really really funny to me that like american mayors have like sort of miniature secret service details that's yeah that are but they're always made of the local cops yeah which like just like means you can never reform the police because then there's just one of them is in your house with a gun at all times.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But also being like a city cop, like a New Orleans city cop and being like also kind of a secret service laugher is, that's incredible.
Yeah. The executive protection team.

Speaker 1 So, quote, if he was on city time padding his payroll, if he was malfeasant in office, he wasn't performing his official assigned duties while he was with the mayor.

Speaker 1 There are some potential state violations. And if there are federal violations involved, it could be wire fraud because he put in timesheets for time he may not have actually been working.

Speaker 1 There may be a program fraud because federal funds were used to fund city government and the police department.

Speaker 1 And if he wasn't doing his assigned responsibilities during those times, those are all potential federal violations. And the mayor is potentially a principal to all of that.

Speaker 1 So this is like potentially some deep shit. In addition to some photos of like explaining dubious relative heights, I've also seen

Speaker 1 a photo of Latoya Cantrell and Jeffrey Vappy at dinner together across the table from each other, looking the most like

Speaker 1 two people that are having an affair I've ever seen in my life. He has

Speaker 1 a grin on his face as he is like looking at the camera and she is looking into his eyes with her like arm rested on her like

Speaker 1 her like cheek. She's like, I don't know.
This is cute. I'm sorry.
Yeah. Wait, drop in the chat because I want to make this the.

Speaker 1 Zencasta. Okay.
It'll be the episode art on the Patreon, I think. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 You say caught in 4K, but this is 1920 by 1080.

Speaker 1 This is incredible.

Speaker 1 I love this so much. Wow.
It's a beautiful moment. And honestly, like,

Speaker 1 Your Honor, I think you should,

Speaker 1 all of this is fine, basically. Yeah.
Like, compared to some of the real pieces of shit we've spoken about, like, so far, far, I'm like, this is just messy. Yeah, this is just a messy lady.

Speaker 1 So while all these

Speaker 1 investigations began airing with the local Fox affiliate, Vappy was quietly removed from the detail and an FBI investigation of control began. They undetailed Vappy?

Speaker 1 They took him off. They undetailed Vappy.
He's been. I wonder

Speaker 1 that federal investigation, I wonder if the

Speaker 1 photo came from the FBI. Yeah, it's got the framing of like the inside of a van.

Speaker 1 That's really like elegiac if you're like, yeah, I'm the like New Orleans FBI agent, already weird combination of vibes, who has to follow the mayor around and take photos of her at dinner with her boyfriend.

Speaker 1 That's her. That's like the lives of others.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 What do you call a male mistress? Your mister? I don't like that.

Speaker 1 No, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 I think men can be mistresses, I think. Yeah? All right.
Her male mistress. I don't like that either.

Speaker 1 Federal investigators investigators say Vappy and Cantrell exchanged this photo in June of 2022, and it's a photo of a handwritten note that she's done in like a composition book with a little heart that she's drawn him.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Well, they're in love.
And is it, Your Honor, is it illegal to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves? Exactly. Your honor, my animal is a soft body.
My soft body is an animal.

Speaker 1 I am going full self-care about this. By the way, when like a local reporter tried looking into this, Vappy like searched his address on the police computer.

Speaker 1 So he's still a cop and he's still a piece of shit. Yeah.
But

Speaker 1 let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. That's right.

Speaker 1 That's the official stance of the podcast. That's a stance.
That's a stance. In February of 2023, while on a float during the crew of Tucks parade, during, it's like the end of carnival.

Speaker 1 It's like one of the last parades.

Speaker 1 local local nowhere corner this parade was i believe started by a bunch of college dudes that hung out at a horrible college bar called friar tucks So that's the atmosphere of the parade.

Speaker 1 On the final, yeah, someone in the crowd flips her off and she flips him off back, which I really love. Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 In May 2023, the city council votes unanimously to bar city employees from using any city-owned apartment as a residence. Well, it's a good thing she wasn't using it as a resident.

Speaker 1 She was just picking up packages there, staying overnight there, staying till 1.30 in the morning there, putting up like privacy screens on the balcony. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Your honor, the term love nest implies that it's a temporary domicile. Exactly.

Speaker 1 It's like the fucking Casey Perry song or whatever about David Harbour. I don't remember what she calls it, which is.
You've lost me. Oh, Jesus Christ.
Okay. So Casey Perry.

Speaker 1 I know who the two people in question are. Okay.
We're familiar. Yes.
Right. Well, on the album which she accuses him of cheating on her,

Speaker 1 she

Speaker 1 coins a name for that people are screaming it at me in the comments for his his like uh like fuck shack his his

Speaker 1 affair pavilion. What the fuck does she call it?

Speaker 1 What the fuck does she call a fair house? I'm typing in Katie's pussy palace. Pussy palace.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Is it illegal, Your Honor, to have a municipal pussy palace? Wow. Is it illegal? And if he's the affair is it still a pussy palace or is it a dick palace is it a dick domicile um

Speaker 1 so anyways i was reading a times story about the apartment and the failed recall from may 2023 and i found some quotes by the time i complete my tenure as mayor i would have slept with half the city of new orleans based on false accusations that come my way sometimes daily she added if i were a man you would not be texting me about the claim which she dismissed with a crude term which i need to know what the fuck she told the Times reporter to fuck off with.

Speaker 1 I need to know what she said.

Speaker 1 I think they do text male mayors about having affairs. Yeah, I think they very much do.
Yeah, maybe. All the time.
If I was a man, you wouldn't mind that I was heading down to the dick domicile.

Speaker 1 The boys club that is male reporters and mayors,

Speaker 1 you know, because they'll like turn a blind eye to sort of like male mayoral misconduct.

Speaker 1 Say that three times a day.

Speaker 1 Male mayoral misconduct. Male mayoral.
Male misconduct. Male mayoral misconduct.
I have the voice of a broadcaster and I am unpunished.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I'm looking forward to the next group chat name change. But

Speaker 1 they would be texting you. Yeah.
They would be texting you. Right.

Speaker 1 August, same year, 2023. The apartment is put back on the market to be leased at a fair market value.
The city is like, we just don't want any part of it anymore. This apartment's gone.

Speaker 1 No, no, no one gets the apartment. If you're a foreign visiting dignitary, you got to go to City Hall like a normal person.
God fucking damn it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We lost a municipal pussy palace over one woman having too good of a time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So help me, God. I will turn this city around if you can't behave.

Speaker 2 So I had to run out for a moment, but I'm back.

Speaker 1 No, no worries.

Speaker 1 The same month, August 2023,

Speaker 1 her husband. who she still has, by the way, Jason, dies of a heart attack, kind of out of nowhere.
God damn. Jesus.
Okay. Fuck.
Yeah. So it's September 2024.

Speaker 1 You know how sometimes you're watching like a noir and even watching the main guy bop around for a while.

Speaker 1 And then all of a sudden there's been like some story going on in the background that you completely miss. Yeah, sure.
Like the third man and the third man.

Speaker 1 The third man and the third man, or like it's not a noir, but you watch

Speaker 1 Big Trouble in Little China and all of a sudden it's like, what, this movie's been going on that I've not been involved with. So September 2024.

Speaker 1 The owner of a New Orleans building inspection firm that has long held lucrative city contracts was indicted on Friday on allegations that he orchestrated a sweeping fraud and bribery scheme involving gifts to Mayor Latoya Cantrell.

Speaker 1 A grand jury in the U.S.

Speaker 1 District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana returned a 28-page indictment against Randy Farrell, accusing him of 25 total counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and honest services fraud.

Speaker 1 Among other allegations, the indictment accuses Farrell and staff at his firm, IECI, of submitting hundreds of fake permit applications on behalf of unlicensed electricians who'd paid Feral bribes.

Speaker 1 You don't need to have a license to be an electrician. God, because this guy is paying off the mayor.

Speaker 1 It's fine. Here's the problem.

Speaker 2 Does New Orleans have like a big underground electrician scene?

Speaker 1 Apparently. Well, I like the idea of like, I don't need my electrician to be any good.
It's not like my house is going to get very wet all the time.

Speaker 1 So federal prosecutors also allege that Feral gifted Cantrell identified in the indictment as public official one. It's better than Mrs.
L. During CP Media.
Let's call her Latoya C. No, L Cantrell.

Speaker 1 Too obvious. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Thousands of dollars worth of tickets to a New Orleans Saints games, an iPhone, and Amelia Steakhouse in a scheme to convince her to fire Jen Cecil, at the time a top official in the city's Department of Safety and permits.

Speaker 1 She's asking if we know what electricity is before we install any electrical wiring.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Also, that does seem to be like random crap you have around a little bit.
Yeah. Just like, can you fire this person? We'll take you to dinner and some sports.
And you want a phone?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's like only, it's again, another recurring theme on this show.
And also, I'd say on Trash Future is like, how cheap are public officials? Like a couple grand.

Speaker 1 Like it's not that, it's expensive to go to a Saints game. It's not that expensive.
A steak dinner is expensive, but it's not that an iPhone?

Speaker 1 Becoming embattled because I have an iPhone sent to my pussy palace for firing the one person in the city who makes sure an electrician knows not to kill themselves. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And like, yeah, it's the sort of thing where this, this, uh, this uh official, Jen Cecil at the Department of Safety and Permits was like becoming suspicious of the business practices.

Speaker 1 And it accused the firm of not being above board. And they were like, well, I'll give you one steak to fire her.

Speaker 1 It's like, you've had like 12 electrocutions this week. What's what's going on? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the response is, I'm going to go around you to your boss, the mayor, and be like, you want to see some football?

Speaker 2 Hey, can I give you, can I give you gifts worth hundreds of dollars?

Speaker 1 Can I get you like a nice box of chocolates? Not too nice, too kind of medium nice. At the Saints game, they've got a chance.

Speaker 2 Do you want to go to a steakhouse and we'll share a bottle of wine and get a couple sides? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you want to get like the tasting menu? Yeah, I won't pay for the wine.

Speaker 1 At the Saints Games, they've got a big Diet Pepsi that has a bucket on top with chicken fingers in it, and I'll pay for the soda part of it. So I was digging into this indictment for a while.

Speaker 2 Do you want to go half on a dinner?

Speaker 1 You want to go splitzies?

Speaker 1 Just bringing the like zero Halliburton Atashi case to the like, you know, pussy powser, bringing it to like Jackson Square in the dead of night to meet with the mayor to do a secret bribery deal.

Speaker 1 And in there is, oh, like $35.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I said I'd cover the tip if we go Splitzies. It's just like rattling around.
You make more on the briefcase at that point.

Speaker 2 Like some of it in quarters.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, we keep a big bowl of this by the door, and I figured you could just have it.

Speaker 2 Like a 253 ones.

Speaker 1 I got some stickers. I got like a pack of multi-visimens.

Speaker 2 Oh, here's a Euro. That's from when I went to Europe.

Speaker 1 You want like one earring? I'm not sure whose this is.

Speaker 1 I've got a gift certificate for

Speaker 1 Verdi Mart that I think might be expired. But if you'd like it and want to talk to the guy, it's all yours.

Speaker 1 I got sent this two-for-one coupon.

Speaker 1 Just, would you like 10%

Speaker 1 off any breakfast combo?

Speaker 1 At the Denny's. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Hey, hey, I've enough. I'm going to bribe you enough to get 10 martinis at Commander's Palace.

Speaker 1 Doing all the president's men, but it's to uncover this scandal.

Speaker 1 Um, like Robert Redford is on like three phones at once, being like, You know, she got 10% off at any breakfast, Concord, or Denny's, or you heard that she got.

Speaker 1 Um, so I was digging into this indictment for a while, and like a lot of it is not about the mayor, so I'm leaving that out. But um,

Speaker 1 I did find uh a very coen-esque uh little bit happening here. So later, the indictment says Farrell brought, bought 17 tickets worth almost $6,000

Speaker 1 for his associate. Yeah, revise that down.

Speaker 1 $6,000.

Speaker 1 $6,000. That's a lot of money, but not really in this context, though.
Yeah. So the Pharaoh bought 17 tickets for his associate,

Speaker 1 this guy named Zeton, to take Kentrell and others to the NFC championship game between the Saints and LA Rams on January 20th, 2019. Quote.

Speaker 1 Two bad teams. Well, it's the NFC championship game, Nova.
So it's two good teams. Yeah.
I'll quibble with like spiritually, though. Spiritually.
Spiritually.

Speaker 1 spiritually quote i'm working on making you the king of the city of new orleans and i'll be assistant king zettin texted farrell

Speaker 1 very cool thank you warren

Speaker 1 zeeson just get cantrell to get cecil out farrell replied and we will be kings with safety and permits

Speaker 1 i just love i'll be the king and you'll be the assistant king classic dumb guy classic dumb guy i love it what's what's a king's like other guy what's a king's friend called? Assistant King, probably.

Speaker 1 Probably the assistant king. Yeah.
Also, it is summer of 2024 and Vampi, the loverboy cop, is indicted on counts of wire fraud and false statements.

Speaker 1 In August of this year, 2025, Cantrell herself is finally, finally indicted. And this headline on NOLA.com, which is like the Times Pick website, is killing me.

Speaker 1 Federal grand jury indicts New Orleans mayor Latoya Cantrell after a years-long investigation. Here's a subhead.

Speaker 1 The charges mark a low point for the former neighborhood organizer who rose from his city council seat to the city's top political office. I just love the charges are bad.
They don't like them.

Speaker 1 They mark a low point. Yeah, I would say this is a low point is being indicted.
You'd hate for the federal indictment to mark a high point for you, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, she is indicted on 11 counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and lying to a federal grand jury.

Speaker 1 all stemming from her efforts to hide the alleged relationship with Jeffrey Vappy.

Speaker 1 That's why the feds have the photo of her writing him little love hearts and stuff. Yeah.
Sure. And the way she was paying for it was also like indicted.

Speaker 1 So prosecutors in the 44-page indictment describe Vappy and Kentrell. Yeah.
The price of a nice dinner came collectively from about six different general contractors all kicking in about $30.

Speaker 1 A bunch of general contractors with like just got electrocuted hair because they don't forget

Speaker 1 the plumbing version of that guy who just got drowned.

Speaker 1 Like they all look like Doc Brown and Back to the the Future with like the fucking like frizzle.

Speaker 1 And the money's like sparking. Yeah, the 44-page indictment describes Vappy and Cantrell deleting WhatsApp messages, lying to FBI agents, and intimidating subordinates as they tried to cover up signs.

Speaker 1 They were pursuing their amorous relationship. Sometimes you just, you just match each other's freak, you know, and that leads you to lie to the FBI.

Speaker 1 And like, while Vappy was on duty, they like took romantic trips to Napa Valley and Martha's Vineyard.

Speaker 1 I think the fucking the New Orleans FBI, right already a job where I would be at the most relaxed it was possible for a human being to be like my blood type would be beignet at that point right

Speaker 1 vertical in the back of the surveillance van or horizontal yeah Jesus Christ yeah I would be I would be and the thing is I then go okay as part of this investigation you also have to go on a bunch of romantic trips to Napa Valley and Martha's Vineyard and go to the wineries and go to the nice restaurants and it's like

Speaker 1 what have I done to deserve this assignment at the FBI? Yeah. You know,

Speaker 1 I'm wearing the most rumpled suit ever made. Just like fully, I'm rumpled.
I'm like soaking wet with

Speaker 1 vodka and rum drinks. Oh my god.
Like I've had so many, I've had so many hand grenades on the job. You know, I'm just like, I'm living above the Pat O'Brien's.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Chasing, chasing one of the like,

Speaker 1 like corpse revivers with

Speaker 1 like Napa Valley wine, the first non-cocktail beverage I've consumed, the first non-cocktail liquid I've consumed in like five years and time traveling. Oh, God.
If only.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I would live above the, oh, God, what's the...
There was a gay bars out in the French quarter. I think it was the Oz or the Crossing.
I can't remember which one it was.

Speaker 1 They had a neon sign that said, light beer, great taste for Miller Light. And it said LGBT.
Light beer, great tastes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm just imagining a little office romance between

Speaker 1 two FBI agents, both grotesquely rumpled and alcoholic

Speaker 1 and just absolutely stuffed with fried foods in the course of this investigation. And you know what? That's really kind of heartening me.
Yeah, it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 Cantrell is the second ever New Orleans mayor to be indicted after Ray Nagan, future guest,

Speaker 1 was indicted on some corruption charges in 2014. That's a spoilers for the future Ray Nagan episode, which occurred in the past from where I'm sitting, but also the actual events were in the past.

Speaker 1 So it's easy for you to look up. But it is also happening right now.
If you sort of learn how to speak Cajun with correctly,

Speaker 1 the mayoralty of Ray Nagan was worth it, even though he would eventually be indicted. Because you have to view the thing holistically, right? He's saying that to the judge.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't have had the happy moments with Ray Agan

Speaker 1 without

Speaker 1 the measure of kind of

Speaker 1 sort of upset. Yeah, don't cry because it's over.
Smile because of all the corruption I got to do. So this one ends kind of with a whimper.
She's term limited out in 2025.

Speaker 1 Just under indictment and just beats the clock anyway. Like, yeah, she really does just kind of dribble out the clock on this one.

Speaker 1 Like she's in the middle of getting indicted while the other election is going on. Everyone's kind of like, yeah, whatever.
Like, don't worry about it. Amazing.

Speaker 1 The people of New Orleans have elected very recently a new mayor, Helena Moreno, who will take office in January of next year, who's a Mexican-born former TV reporter and daughter of oil executives.

Speaker 1 So I'm sure her mayoralty will go normal. Fantastic.
Because New Orleans has no connection to the oil industry whatsoever. Wow, that's an alarmingly white woman.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you can put that in, but Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I mean, her parents are oil executives.
Anyways, so that's

Speaker 1 that's that's Latoya. That's Latoya Cantro.

Speaker 1 I came out of this one basically on her side, I think. Yeah, is it illegal to be in love? Is it illegal to be in love?

Speaker 1 Is it illegal to do a little bit of corruption in New Orleans with city resources? Yeah, like I really don't think that it is. As far as New Orleans mayors go.

Speaker 1 She's basically one of the best. I don't like the part where she was intimidating people, intimidating subordinates with her cop boyfriend towards the end there.
No, the cop boyfriend seems bad, but

Speaker 1 I don't necessarily get to choose these things.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the allowing, yeah, the allowing shoddy electrical stuff, that's not good.

Speaker 1 But ultimately, I think if I were electrocuted and you told me that the reason why was because, you know, someone was experiencing true love,

Speaker 1 then, you know, maybe that's fair. Yeah, like I get to, I get to heaven and God's like, don't worry.
Like, I'm like, oh, God, I'm so mad. I'm, I'm mad.
I'm dead. I'm dead.
Right.

Speaker 1 And God's like, don't worry. This happened because of true love.
I'd say, you know what? Yeah. Take me away to heaven.
God,

Speaker 1 yeah. No worries.
Yeah. I would say that.
I'd say that too. Anyways, that's my mare.
And Riley, and Riley thought the episode was great. Riley, I'm looking at Riley.
He's nodding. Oh, what's that?

Speaker 1 So you have something to say. Oh, he's holding up a little sign.
It says, I'm a woman. Oh, my God.
Oh, wow. That's huge.
Congratulations, right? It finally came out, guys. That's beautiful.

Speaker 1 She, her pronouns. She, her pronouns.

Speaker 1 Or it, it's. That's interesting.
Oh, no. Wow.

Speaker 1 Okay. Do you not want to go too fast with that?

Speaker 1 It's putting on a leather puppy mask. Hey, Riley.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Riley, Riley, Riley. Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 We'll talk about this afternoon. Okay.
Oh, God. Sorry.
I see. She's opening up Amazon to buy that horrible fucking skirt.
No, no. Hey, hey.
No.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Listen, we got to go deal with this.

Speaker 1 She's changing her ad to like cat puppy. I did, it's, it's, it's.

Speaker 1 No. Oh, God, that's really bad.
No, you got to. All right.
We really should take care of this. We got to get her to log off for at least six months.
Subscribe to the page.

Speaker 1 Subscribe to the Patreon where you can

Speaker 1 fund Riley's transition. To fund Riley's transition?

Speaker 1 It's going to be a lot of Amazon basics skirts. I'm asking Riley who are you going to do next week on the bonus? She's shaking her head.
She doesn't know yet. Okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, because of the puppy mask.

Speaker 1 I can't hear her at all. Yeah.
Because of the puppy mask.

Speaker 1 That's fine. It's really rough, would you say?

Speaker 1 I want you to know, by the way, that I had to literally step out of the episode to like be violently sick.

Speaker 1 And I trusted you both not to do any bits about my absence and I am repaying that with absolute betrayal.

Speaker 1 We left you alone. And now, now that Riley's had to step away for a moment, we are striking her from space with a laser.
Fantastic. I hope.
I actually don't know if Riley listens to the episodes.

Speaker 1 I hope, I hope, I hope he does. And I want him to hear this.

Speaker 1 I do too. We've been going for a long time.
I know it was us. Yeah, it was me, Riley.
Good episode. I did it.
Great episode.

Speaker 1 Bye, everyone. Bye.