It Could Happen Here Weekly 103

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
As media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted
to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
every episode of the week that just happened is here
in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but

(00:23):
you can make your own decisions. Ah, welcome back to behind.
Wait no, sorry, it could happen here.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
You know.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
We'll keep that in so that our audience, who I
know is deeply tied to the myth of my own perfection,
knows that I too, air speaking of perfect creatures who
have never made a mistake. Our guest today is Dan Olsen. Hello, welcome,
Hi Dan.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
How you doing.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm doing well, not making mistakes exactly exactly. You are
the Buddha I met on the road, and I'm going
to say hello, teach me how to be flawless.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:07):
So, first, have you heard of gold?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, I was about to talk about gold. The perfect
investment Dan, perfect investment vehicle never fails. So Dan, you
are a YouTuber, an investigator, one of my favorite researchers.
We had you on recently to talk well a couple
of months ago, I donuple time, Flat Circle etcheda, but
we had you wanted to talk about your work reporting

(01:33):
on the NFT bubble bursting and on the metaverse bubble bursting,
and more recently, you just published a two and a
half hour documentary investigation into.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
The game Stop stock cult.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Which is a lot of people are aware of the
first part of this, which is that in January twenty
twenty one, a bunch of folks started like buying you
via some weird Reddit movement, started buying huge amounts of
game Stop stock, which, in a period of pretty exaggerated decline,
caused it to briefly surge in value to absurd levels.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
And I think that's where most.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
People kind of and then, you know, eventually it fell apart,
and I think that's where most people kind of stopped
paying attention.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
Yeah, they they remember that week where it was like
in the news, and then they just kind of assumed
like that was it.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
So yeah, it's it's been a It's an interesting and
weird ride because the evolution into like cult like behavior was.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It was a very strange journey.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
It happened surprisingly rapidly, but also not that surprisingly, Like
once you fully unpack it, you know you have this
Internet movement that is very nebulous in its origins or
not in its origin. Sorry, the orders are very straightforward,
like Wall Street Bets is a gambling sub that had

(03:05):
like it self describes as if four Chan found a
Bloomberg terminal, so sure you know it's it's crass, it's
irony poisoned. You can get just as much social clout
for losing thousands of dollars as you can for winning

(03:26):
thousands of dollars. In fact, there's an argument that there's
more clout for lost porn than there is for like
actually posting big gains obviously, like not like the healthiest
or most wholesome community you could you could imagine, but
you know, out of that plus COVID madness, plus stimulus

(03:52):
checks and just general nihilism arose this kind of Frankenstein
short squeeze play on game Stop that weirdly never actually happened,
because the play just sort of turned into its own

(04:14):
self fulfilling thing that enough people believed in the idea
of this short squeeze play that they just kept piling
in and piling in, and suddenly like the short squeeze
doesn't actually matter at all because there's enough critical mass
flooding in that you just get this massive pump anyway,
which convinces people that, oh, the squeeze is going on,

(04:37):
because in the moment you don't actually know like what
mechanisms are driving the price movement. You just see number
going up, and so more people kept piling in, piling in,
piling in. I got a phone call from, you know,
from a friend of mine who's like, hey, have you
heard about the GameStop stuff? And I'm like, yes, I
heard about it two days ago, So if you heard
about it today, it's it's way too late.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Do not over. It's over.

Speaker 4 (05:02):
And sure enough, like I went back and reviewed our
text messages and like, and if he had bought, he
would have been a just massive bag holder.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Like it it plummeted, you.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Know, hours later, and like for people who are not
finance people, which I certainly am not, this is like
if you watched The Big Short, Uh, that's kind of
the tax I mean number one. That movie is seen
as a blueprint by a lot of these guys. Obviously
there's folks, knowledgeable financial folks who have critiques of that movie,
but it is it is accepted as like almost kind

(05:32):
of like a sacred text within the Game Stop Stop
Yeah community.

Speaker 4 (05:36):
And it's weird because like they're the game Stop enemy,
the the the ape.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Okay, well I'll just use their lexicon. We'll go over
real quick.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
They call themselves apes for reasons that are not worth explaining.
Their enemy are short sellers. But short sellers are like
Doc Bury short sold the housing market. And Bury is
that's Christian Bales character, right, Christian Bales character.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
All of the main characters in that movie short sold
the housing market.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Like that.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
That was their play. That was the big short was.
They're like, look, there's this bubble, we're going to short
sell it. Then when the price goes down, we close
our positions out and keep a tremendous amount of money.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
And I should we should go just because when I
watched this with a friend, they did not know what
short selling was. It's not I think normal, it's not
a thing normal people will.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Ever be in a position to do.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
The basic idea and this is all occurring with like
stocks and commodities, but the basic idea is you make
an agreement with somebody to get basically a loan of
a bunch of shares in something, right, and with the
understanding that you will give those back at a point
in the future. And then you take those and you
immediately sell them for their their present value, right, and

(07:05):
your hope, your like play it like goal is that
the value of that drops and then you are able
to buy back an equivalent amount to repay the loan
and have made a profit based on the gap between
those two numbers.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Right, that's the idea.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
That's that's the that's the idea. You you can, as
an individual like do this.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
You can.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
You can take out a short position with your broker,
you can. You can do it through derivatives like puts.
I wouldn't recommend it.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, it's it's not normal people's stock stuff.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, it's not normal people's stock stuff. Like you're there's
nothing legally barring you from doing it. But it really
is kind of this like advanced play. You got to
know what's going on, especially because like a thing that
a lot of people in the description sort of skip over,
is it. Well, you're borrowing it, you know, you're borrowing
a thing, and thus there's the expectation that you'll pay

(07:59):
some kind of like you know, borrowers fee akin to
a kin to interest on like the value of the
thing that you've borrowed, but like it's it's not interest
on you know, like a housing loan where the interest
and like where your payments all are geared towards paying
off the loan. It's just kind of like, all right,

(08:20):
you owe me five bucks every single month forever as
long as you're holding this. And so you know, if
you're not paying attention, like, you need to be very
actively managing these kinds of positions otherwise, like your borrowing
fees will just eat up all of your profit.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, And it's the kind of thing where like today
most of those kind of kinds of trades aren't even
really made by people directly. They're made by massive banks
of computers and algorithms and shit kind of yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Anyway, I think that's that's enough background back to the
kind of cult aspect of it, which is I think
much more relevant for what we're talking about here. One
of the points you made early on that I found
really interesting is is that a significant amount of the
initial game stock game stops. I'm going to keep doing
that hype was driven by influencers, right, and that there's

(09:14):
evidence based on kind of the US government's analysis of
this that got published that like regulators are paying additional
attention at increasing attention to the influences that that or
to the impact that influencers can have here, because there's
this concern that, especially working in groups, there's like an
ability for people like this to disrupt the economy to
a significant extent a way that would affect like normal people.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
Yeah, so one of the weird kind of so pump
and dumps have existed forever, right. The thing was is
that so the the memes stock run up, it wasn't
just GameStop. It was about like fifteen twenty, like in
January twenty twenty one, like so late twenty twenty, early
twenty twenty one. It was about fifteen twenty different companies,

(09:59):
you know, Nokia, BlackBerry, bed Bath and Beyond, like you know,
just kind of a bunch of over the hill companies
that were all sort of part.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Of this this wave.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
And the issue was that in the game stop price
run up, So the price went from at the end
of twenty twenty as everybody like as sort of the
meme wave like begins, and particularly once Ryan Cohen, billionaire Chewy.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Founder Chewy the Cat treat or dog.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Online dog food sales. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
Yeah, when he buys in like that kind of like
puts the stamp of approval on the whole thing. So
it goes from like four and a half dollars up
to nineteen something, and then at the end of January
it goes from nineteen twenty dollars up to four hundred
and eighty and so in that spread the short sales,

(10:55):
so there was short interest in game Stop. There was,
in fact a rec less amount of short interest in
game Stop, but the price increase was so huge, the
volume of participation was so big, so many people were
jumping on this that the short interest closing their position.

(11:16):
The actual like short squeeze portion of all of this
is only like ten percent of the price movement. All
the rest of it is just people fomoing in on
like this thing.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
That they heard about through their cousin.

Speaker 6 (11:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
I think another thing that's kind of interesting to me
is like, as this thing has evolved, you know, you
mentioned that the actual price got up to like close
around five hundred dollars by the time this thing kind
of transitions into being this millenarian kind of apocalypse cult right,
like not you know, nukes and stuff, end of days
apocalypse generally, but like a the entire economy is going

(11:53):
to come The belief that kind of has evolved broadly
and that obviously there's different kind of actions is but
is that like there is going to come a point where,
like the price of games stop stock will increase to
such an insane some people say hundreds of millions, billions
of dollars per share that it effectively allows all of

(12:13):
these apes who have bought shares to hold the entire
world economy hostage until they have their increasingly ourcane demands met, right, Yeah,
that is the belief, and that.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Is the belief.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
So so out of that, like so okay, so the
short's closing was only like about ten percent of the
of the total movement. So that leads to the conclusion
that you know that the events of January twenty twenty
one weren't a short squeeze, which is actually kind of true,

(12:47):
Like it wasn't it wasn't purely a short squeeze. It
was actually very little of it was a short squeeze,
but because it wasn't a short squeeze like that term
then allows the creative individual to fill in the gap
and just say that. It's like just say this like, oh,
the short squeeze never happened, Therefore it's still on the table,

(13:11):
the short like the the end. You know, it hasn't
happened yet, therefore it can still potentially happen. And in fact,
if we just like look at the trend line, like
I bet since it hasn't happened, since it didn't happen,
and the position that they held in December was so reckless,
it's only gotten worse since, which means that they're getting

(13:33):
which means that these short sellers must be getting desperate,
which means they're going to be willing to engage in
whatever level of depraved criminal activity is necessary to protect themselves. Therefore,
it's just getting more and more and more and more extreme. Therefore,
when this finally goes off, it's not just going to
be like, it's not just going to be a five
hundred dollars price point, it's going to be a nuclear

(13:55):
explosion that's going to topple the entire economy. Yeah, and
that's that's this like of logic and what they and
it all comes from that, just like missing the fact
that it's like, oh, it wasn't a short squeeze because
it was mostly fomo. The short squeeze was buried under
a mountain of fomo. Yeah, but so it wasn't a

(14:15):
short sc It's like, yeah, it's all just like based
in these like word games of like, ah, you said it,
you know that the dumb and dumber. You know, it's like,
what are the odds a one in million? So you're
saying there's a chance. It's like, well, yeah, that's not
what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
It's interesting because of the impossibility of the things they're
actually hoping for, but also their fundamental belief that like
it's inevitable, in part because you know, this is this
is not wildly different from the psychology of like needing
to believe in uh that you are going to paradise
in the after.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, hallmarks of millennarians. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Because of that, what you get is a lot of
people who think that they are thinking scientifically, but what
they're doing is taking an endpoint, and the endpoint is
that you know this specific you know these hedge funds
or whatever are are evil and you know, illegally bribing
or whatever the government to stop us from succeeding, or
there's this other conspiracy. You're starting with this endpoint and

(15:12):
then working backwards and like finding ways to explain the
things that have happened within that framework, like the.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Things that would need to be true in order for
the yeah thing.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
To happen, like the thing that like Citadel must have
ordered robin Hood to stop letting people buy and share
game stock stocks rather than like, you know what what
actually happened, which is that robin Hood simply like could
not exist if they allowed this to continue. Yeah, and
you know legally, I don't believe there's anything that was

(15:42):
stopping them from doing that. It's medieval peasant brain kind
of stuff, is what I initially like. That's how when
I was watching your documentary, I was like, Oh, it's
this you know, this need to find this kind of
like magical answer to the problem. And then I like
interrogated that conclusion and was like, well, no, it's not.
This is just the way people's brains work, right, Yeah,

(16:03):
like we're pattern making. This isn't medieval pissant shit. They're
no dumber than we are. Like, yeah, that's what this shows.

Speaker 7 (16:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
And one of the things that I love just kind
of on that is that, like you if you had
a time machine and you went back one hundred thousand
years and and found a bunch of you know, homoliteral
literal cavemen, yeah, actual apes more or less, you know,
but like hundred thousand years ago, that's that's modern humans. Like,
you know, genetically, that's genetically modern humans. You could just

(16:33):
like implant yourself in their tribe and teach them calculus
and you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
They would be short game stuff stuff that. It's like
like we're like, things don't change.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
It's like he's like, yeah, no, we've been We've been
doing this ever since we were you know, this pattern
seeking doesn't change. It's almost like it is basically endemic
to the human psyche. There's a really good question that
that I've gotten in response to this is just like
is this just secular religion? Like is this just are

(17:06):
we just like wired to need faith in some shape
or form and if that is not provided by some institution,
we will just invent it. And it's like I don't
have the answer to that, but sign's point to yes.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Now, so I wanted to talk a little bit about
one of the other things that you brought up that
I thought was interesting is the way you've got this
this cast of and these are you know, the influencers.
These are the people who make a lot of these
like arcane videos or put out these publish these prospectuses
with dozens or hundreds of pages laying out you know,

(17:48):
the arcana of how these different sort of anticipated apocalyptic
financial moves are going to go out, right, Yeah, a
lot of these people. The belief is that that I
think is accurate at least this is what I got
from your documentary. Maybe I was interpreting you wrong, is
that most of these or many of these people are
not believers. They're manipulating a group of people because there's

(18:10):
money in it. And one of the tactics that you
see used a lot is kind of faux humility. Right,
I'm just a dumb ape. You shouldn't trust me. I'm
not qualified to give financial advice. But here's the secret
history of the universe to invest your money here.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
Now, So, I mean, you've seen this a lot with
with various like cult leaders and pseudo cult leaders and
just general like grift fluencers. You know, there's always this
question of like how much of their own how much
of their own hype do they believe? How much did
they believe when they started, how much did they eventually
just like convince themselves of as people you know, follow them,

(18:48):
and I think it's it's very much like kind of
a an individual case by case basis. Some of them
are absolutely true believers, like from the get go. Some
of them, like a lot of them, are like soft believers,
you know, you know where it's like they're not hardcore
into it, you know, if you really pressed them, Like

(19:10):
it's not motivating their their daily decisions. But what they're
taking from it is like social reinforcement. That they've found
a group of people who respond to them, who like
their posts, who leave messages. It's like, oh man, this
blew my mind. I can't believe the system is like
this fragile. You know, my tits are jacked, lighting the

(19:33):
fuse on the rocket ship, buying more moon tickets, you know,
and they and they respond to that very socially, and
and and out of that sort of soup of like
reinforcing messages, it's really easy for people in those influencer
positions to just kind of like hold conflicting like hold

(19:55):
the conflicting beliefs of like, I know that this is impossible,
but also so it is like fulfilling me socially to
say these things. I'll just I'll just juggle that inconsistency.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
And the way the mechanics of social media, and particularly
in this case, it's the mechanics largely of Reddit. That's
not the only place this occurs, but Reddit is certainly
like the homeland. You could say, the way in which
up votes and down votes work, and the way in
which upvotes and down votes take you know, critical content
people who are trying to induce some accuracy or you

(20:31):
might even say sanity in the discussion, and that that
gets pushed down and hidden after a certain point of
time with enough down votes, as opposed to like the
stuff that is fundamentally unhinged but is like utopian gets
up voted. It's it's the the physical, like the actual
mechanics of how the site is structured to work enforce

(20:53):
fund at a fundamental level, enforced group think consensus.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Oh, and I mean in the best part about it.
And we see this like all across Reddit communities. Which
is this like it is it? It's the social enforcement
of truth, that that people will take this social mechanism
of up votes and down votes and use it as
proof against the claim that it's like, oh, well if
if your negative sentiment were true, it would have been

(21:21):
up voted. Yeah, because like there's this underline, there's this
kind of just like implicit belief that people will recognize
truth and will upvote truth, and thus up votes and
down votes are are an accurate filter on reality, which
is demonstrably not true.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
So yeah, that's intensely at play here because you'll see
apes who will then like reference the fact that like
that you know that it's like if this insane theory
were false, why did it get so many up votes?

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Well? Because it it hypes you up. It makes you
people are irrational.

Speaker 4 (22:07):
You got a tingle feeling in your tummy when you
read it and the person told you that you were
going to be a millionaire.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, that's why.

Speaker 8 (22:14):
It's like asking why do we like magicians? Of course
we like magicians. It's it looks nice, it's fun, it
makes us feel a sense of wonder. Yeah, I want
to discuss one of the terms that you use a
lot that I missed the first couple of time because
I'm not.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
This is not a community I had studied. I thought
you misspoke at first when you described like someone reach
achieving a financial wind fall as wife changing money. I
just thought you, like, I do that all the time,
show it's delivererate.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yes, yeah, no, No.

Speaker 7 (22:45):
I was like, okay, this is a thing they say.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
A lot of people are like, I thought you misspoke.
I'm like, no, that's because I was tricking you, Like
I was. I was deliberately like very lighting in this term,
like because like because they use it like obviously as
a as an entendre yea, and I it's like, okay,
like I'll just use it straight faced with no explanation
three four times and then finally explain it at the
end and make a lot of people angry when they

(23:11):
realize that, like, no, they weren't just mishearing me.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
So that's one of those things like that goes to
sort of the four Chan roots of of all of this,
which is, you know, the sort of like crass irreverence
slash misogyny of of chan speak and just this you
know Wall Street bets will use this kind of like
celebration of making so much money that you can afford

(23:40):
to be misogynistic and just like swap your wife. And
it turns out that, like, as we know, you make
a joke like that often enough, you're eventually going to
attract the people who are just straight up like, yeah,
I hate my wife.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah I want to be able to replace her, Yeah,
using my using my crypto or my yeah whatever, my
game stock Stop, god gains. I was wondering if you
might lay out one of the things, the parts that
was most interested in me was the whole Teddy Day,
Teddy Day, Oh boy, Teddy d Yeah. Can you explain

(24:17):
Teddy Day to our listeners?

Speaker 4 (24:19):
Okay, So Ryan Cohen, who fancies himself an activist investor,
he buys into game Stop and gets a minority, pretty
substantial holdings that count as like a minority thing. You
need to file a bunch of paperwork with the sec
that say, like you know, it's like I hold greater
than ten percent of this company. And he used that

(24:43):
position to basically get power inside the company itself as
chairman as of a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
He's now CEO.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
So so Ryan Cohen gets heavily involved with with Game
Stop and he's like, I'm gonna turn this around because
his real angs, what seems to be his anxiety in
life at the moment, is this like sense of legacy.
He doesn't just want to be like like, oh, I
got lucky with an online pet food sales thing. I'm
a I'm a real I'm a big boy finance guy,

(25:11):
you know, I save dying companies, real rich guy hobby.
He puts out a series of children's books called Teddy,
named after.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
His late father.

Speaker 9 (25:23):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
And these are it's it's five books that have a
target audience of two year olds.

Speaker 4 (25:32):
That because you know, when when you're rich and you
want to do something like that, you want to vanity
published books. You don't just like go to an off
the shelf vanity publisher. You make your own vanity publisher
because in the scheme of things like that's just not
that expensive.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
So Amazon has made it easier than ever, easier than ever.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
So he found this LLC, you know, air Quote Founds
pays the like six hundred bucks in filing fees to
create this LLC. Teddy Publishing files a whole bunch of trademarks.
You know, we're talking like a few thousand dollars all
in all in order to file, like in order to
just file a bunch of paperwork. And this is all

(26:12):
just like the scattershot stuff of like, Okay, we're making
a product aimed at children, let's file the trademark for
Teddy very broadly, and so it's going to cover like
basically children's merchandise across the board. You know, what if
we want to put what if we want to put
the characters on blankets or bottles or cups or plates

(26:34):
or party supplies or whatever. So these trademarks are just
incredibly wide ranging across just merch Yeah. But the existence
of these trademark applications and this LLC becomes the seed
for Teddy the company. As this like the mechanism through

(27:01):
which Ryan Cohen is going to collaborate with Apes in
order to trigger MOASS. Because I guess this is the
important thing about the mythology. Apes believe Ryan Cohen is
on their side, that he is, he is their inside man,
he is working with them. He is as frustrated as

(27:21):
they are that this hasn't happened yet. But for like
arcane legal reasons. He needs to like he needs to
operate like a like a clockmaker, you know, he has
to do everything very delicately and indirectly, and like his
hand cannot be seen pushing on the scales. So they

(27:42):
think that it's like that this becomes the thing that
they view all of their all of their hopes and
dreams into his Teddy llc that it's like, this is
the thing that he's going to use as the mechanism
to do this. He's going to like buy game Stop
via Teddy. He's gonna buy maybe some other company via Teddy.

(28:03):
Teddy's going to get bought in to, like is gonna
get bought by game Stop, like one way or another.
There were like hundreds of competing theories all rooted in
in this.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
But then back in.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
January of this year, a insanity starts in two So
in both GameStop forums and bed Bath and Beyond forums,
the two meme stocks that are linked by Ryan Cohen,
they they create this idea called Teddy Day, which is

(28:43):
a combination of a bunch of things. So Ryan Cohen
tweeted several Titanic references. James Cameron's Titanic was being re
released this past February on a day that aligned with

(29:04):
National Teddy Bear Day, and so two different communities of apes,
for completely separate reasons, latched onto this idea of Teddy Day.
It was Friday, February tenth, twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
They latched onto it.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
As just this that like, this is the day, this
is when it's all going to come together, this is
when he's going to make his big move. And a
major driving piece of evidence that they had for Teddy
Day was that in one of the Teddy books, the
kids learned to read a clock and the hands on

(29:48):
the clock are pointed to ten and two. So Ryan
Cohen left them clues in this children's book published six
months early, warning them that that February tenth was going
to be the day that it all went down.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
That was the day of the apocalypse. That was Teddy Day.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
And it got just like the the spread of this
got just like absolutely unhinged on the forms, like it
was all that super stunk and BBB why we're talking
about For like a week and a half leading up
to it, the hype was like unreal and then of
course nothing happened.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
You you I don't know if you noticed this.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
But but the US economy did not collapse last February.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Oh that's good.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
I had been I have been living like a postal
apocalyptic warlord under the assumption that it had. But all, yeah,
I'll pivot now.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:51):
So so it's just it's one of those like it's
just such a great encapsulation of the fact that like
that these communities, they will they will invent these these
catalyst moments, convinced themselves that like, oh, here's a date
that's upcoming, and then the moment that, like the great
disappointment happens, some of them like bleed off, but for

(31:12):
the most part, like it. Nothing can actually like stop
the inertia. They can just discard it. And and they did.
They you know, no one talks about Teddy Day anymore
except for the fact that like it, it had a
brief Teddy Day two point zero as October second was

(31:34):
like upcoming, because you know, ah, maybe it wasn't the
tenth of February, it was the second of October, you know.
And and sure like I'm willing to bet that when
next February rolls around, like we'll we'll get Teddy Day
three point zero.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Yeah, I'm sure it just keeps this. The same thing
has happened with like different kind of Christian apocalypse cults,
right where you'll have a guy pick a day, then
the day comes and then there's always a reason. And fundamentally,
because this becomes so much of someone's social life, because
it becomes part of their emotional support network, because it's

(32:10):
like fundamentally, you changes the way you talk, Like you
learn so many new words that make it into your
diction that like it's easier to just keep rolling the
expected date ahead rather than like acknowledge that kind of
fundamental hit to your self conception that admitting you got
played would take.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:31):
Yeah, the guy who does so religion for breakfast, Yeah,
he picked up on the fact that, like I was
using phrases like a great disappointment in in the video,
like very deliberately, because it's like it's the it's the
same mechanism. So the great disappointment was like that's the
event that caused the Seventh day Adventist to come into
existence because it was like a expected date of the

(32:56):
apocalypse of the Second Coming, Like yeah, didn't happen, and
you end up with like this, then fragmentation of the aftermath,
a bunch of people just bleed off. But you end
up with like a couple different factions. Ones who are like, ah, well,
the date was like the date wasn't wrong per se,
or like the idea wasn't wrong, just like the date
was wrong, like maybe it's off by one hundred.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Years or whatever.

Speaker 4 (33:18):
And you get other people who are like, actually, it
did happen. It just happened in secret, like obviously it
wasn't going to just like happen in Times Square. It happened,
like you know, the millennium is already kind of like
rolling underneath normal like normal looking society. It's going on
right now. It's just day to day life hasn't changed.

(33:40):
And that's how you know it's happening is that nothing's changing.
It's like okay, okay, cool, so completely unfalsifiable, rad awesome.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Love that for you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
So, one of the things that kind of related to
that I have been thinking about a lot lately is we've.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Got this.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
The story that keeps, you know, popping into the news
every couple of usually a couple of times a year,
that what are called nons are are increasing as a
percentage of the population every single year, which is like
people who are not affiliated to any religion. And I've seen,
especially a few years ago, you know, atheists that I

(34:24):
knew who were kind of like more active and like
atheism is a movement really celebrating this. I think that
does Like the the assumption that that means that like
atheism is growing more popular has been kind of fundamentally inaccurate.
I think what we're seeing and what this this is
kind of evidence of, is that like non affiliation with

(34:46):
an organized religion is more common than ever. People are
rejecting organized, settled religion at a kind of unprecedented rate
that's certainly undeniable. That doesn't mean they're as they are
still believe and this is an example, right right, This
is people are creating. The Internet has given created a
tremendous capacity to build religions, and that's what people are doing.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
That's what this is.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah, And it's like how long lasting will it be?
I mean, I don't in the scope of in the
scope of world faiths, I don't think game stopism is
is poised to stand the test of time. I don't

(35:34):
think we'll be seeing an ape emperor any anytime soon.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
But yeah, like and and the thing is is that
like you.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
Go back through history and like you you look at
like religious archaeology, and like you start sort of breaking
away from sort of this idea of Christian hegemony as
being effectively like that it's like, okay, you know, once
the Christianization of Rome happened, like it was was then
locked in like until you know, Martin Luther, and then

(36:06):
you get like fragmentation into sects, but like it stays
like locked in, and it's like it's like nah, when
you start really digging into the history, it's like this
is just this is always going on, This is always
boiling under the surface. You look at like Puritanism in
America through a non like through just kind of like

(36:28):
a human lens of like what you know about how
people behave, and you suddenly start seeing that it's like, oh,
they were just like in a constant, perpetual state of
internal fragmentation as people had different ideas about like what
was supposed to happen, what should happen, and just kind
of like formed you know, cliques and factions, and sometimes

(36:50):
those factions got big enough to split off and then
they lasted, you know, ten twenty thirty fifty years and
then like either folded back into the main thing or
or whatever. But this kind of like churn in in
faith and belief is is just it's always there. It
just in an organized, codified faith. It's a lot easier

(37:15):
to lose track of it. Particularly from a historical perspective.
It's a lot easier to just look at like the
bigger picture and be like, ah, it was all the same,
it was homogeneous.

Speaker 5 (37:25):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (37:25):
And it turns out no, yeah, sorry, that was a
very no, no, no, there was. I threw a lot of
like very big assumptions into a very tightly packed statement there.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
No, no, no. I think that was great.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
And yeah, that's that's kind of I think what I
what I had to sort of ask about, you know,
just sort of this fascination with the way in which
almost anything can become a cult these day thanks to
sort of the social dynamics of the different online communities

(38:04):
and how they they reinforce each other. Like this is
kind of at the center of almost everything that's a
problem right now one way or the other.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
Right, Yeah, I think the thing that is new and
modern really is the ability or is the I don't
want to say ability, the phenomenon of decentralized self organizing
belief systems. You know that like there's these a lot
of the a lot of the meme stock influencers. You know,

(38:34):
they're not leading it. They're just like nudging it. They're
not in charge of it. And if they if any
of them like tried to like really like seize the reins,
that that would get them like exiled. You know, any

(38:56):
any kind of like overt power grab would be would
be antithetical to it. But so it's the it's and
it's the same thing like in QAnon, if somebody anyone
who's come out and been like I am q listen
to me, gets immediately just like just demolished by the
faithful because like it's it's antithetical to their whole thing

(39:17):
to have a really identifiable leader. And and the fact
that there is no identifiable leader, that that the leader
is mythological is is useful and beneficial to the to
the organization. And those kinds of like those kinds of movements,

(39:38):
they're not unique to the modern age, but the modern
age has made them very easy to form, almost by accident.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, well, dan uh, this be something for people to
continue to keep an eye on because it's not gonna stop.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
Probably, oh boy, I'm I'm there's gonna be some like
amazing doctor dissertations on this subject in like ten years.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yes, I would, I would certainly agree with that. Well, Dan,
you want to let the people know where they can
find you.

Speaker 4 (40:11):
They can find me on YouTube. The channel name is
Folding Ideas and I'm on Socials, Twitter, Blue Sky, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera, as as Foldable Human.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Excellent.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
All right, check out Dan's videos. Check out his YouTube channel,
like and subscribe and.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Check us out.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
But you already have because you're here, so continue to
check us out.

Speaker 10 (40:56):
It's it's chaos in congreg This is this is it
could happen here, the podcast about things Falling Apart and
just this is a jest a falling Apart episode with
though it's a kind of funny one.

Speaker 7 (41:08):
Yeah, I'm your host, Mia Wong and with me is
Garrison Davis. Hello.

Speaker 11 (41:14):
Chaos every everywhere, but especially in Congress.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
So I just.

Speaker 7 (41:18):
Realized you grew up in Canada, which means I did. Yes,
can can you explain what the speaker that? Do you
know what the speaker of the House is for America.

Speaker 11 (41:31):
Yeah, it's the guy who like presides over the things
and has the hammer and he yells, you.

Speaker 7 (41:39):
Know, that's that's that's that's that's pretty close. Okay.

Speaker 11 (41:43):
See see come.

Speaker 7 (41:44):
On, yeah, yeah, it's not bad. It's not bad. This
is okay. So what we're we're going to go into
a bit more death about what this person does because
I don't know, the American Constitution was written by absolute
clowns and there's some wild stuff there. But however, comma,
you know, so some more seriously, this is a very
this is a very sort of consequential and dangerous moment

(42:06):
in American political history. And in this moment, Congress is
incomplete chaos. It is it is. It is the most
non functional it has been in my entire life. And
that is that is saying something like Congress has been
non functional for my entire life. This is the worst
it has ever been. And the reason this is the

(42:28):
worst has ever been is that Kevin McCarthy, who is
the now former Speaker of the House, was removed by
a vote of no confidence on October third, which when
this comes out, that will be exactly two weeks out.
And he is removed because he tried to cut a
deal with the Democrats to avert a government shutdown untill
the seventeenth, and he got the deal through.

Speaker 11 (42:47):
It would have been crazy if we had a shutdown
till seventeenth. God, imagine, imagine, I met Jesus. Fuck.

Speaker 7 (42:54):
Here's the thing. Okay, there's no shutdown till the seventeenth.
There's also a chance of a real serious chance that,
like the shutdown starts and we still don't have a
Speaker of the House. Oh yeah, like it's not that high,
but it could happen, which is nuts. This has never
happened before. Yeah, and so so I guess we should
we should go into specifically what hasn't happened before. And

(43:15):
the thing that hasn't happened before is that no sitting
speaker of the House dream their term, has ever been
removed by a vote of no confidence, which is nuts
because again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, for most
of the two thousands, the Speaker of the House was
a guy named Dennis Hastick, who was literally a pedophile,
and he was not removed by a vote of no confidence.
So like, this is this is the level of you know,

(43:39):
weirdness that we're in, like like literally the two hundred
something year history of the US, this has never happened.

Speaker 11 (43:45):
And from my understanding, you don't actually have to be
like an elected member of the House to be the speaker,
which means they could carry on this tradition and they
could get Polanski as Speaker of the House if they
could ef thoughts to carry it over.

Speaker 7 (44:01):
You know, at this point, this is only we're gonna
get you later. There was a there was a a
two day span, two and a half days span where
Trump was trying to get himself elected a Speaker of
the House. Yes, yes, and then that.

Speaker 11 (44:13):
Which would be probably the most funny, the most funny.

Speaker 7 (44:16):
Oh yeah, results.

Speaker 11 (44:18):
Yeah, but you know so so because this is he
also has a path to the presidency.

Speaker 5 (44:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (44:23):
Yeah, you just have to get two impatriotes.

Speaker 11 (44:26):
Somehow and take it out. This is how Trump can
still win. This is the path, guys.

Speaker 7 (44:32):
This unfortunately she's well, I mean here's the thing. Okay, legitimately,
if Biden and Harris died in a plane crash tomorrow,
I actually think Trump could win the would win the
Speaker of the House vote.

Speaker 11 (44:44):
Oh yeah, absolutely, But this is this.

Speaker 7 (44:49):
Is this is how Berdie can still win. This is
the path.

Speaker 12 (44:55):
So all right, so so you know we're in this,
We're in We're in I don't know, We're just you know,
this is all like nuts but like again, we are
just we are in the wilderness, like we're in complete
chaos lands.

Speaker 7 (45:06):
No no one the US has never been here before.
And okay, the other thing we need to mention is, okay,
so you know you were saying that there there hasn't
like you know, we we need we need to bring
back the like pedophiles to be the Speaker of the House.
So Speaker of the House, not a pedophile. The guy
who removed him as Speaker of the House. He's by
Mad Gates probably probably.

Speaker 13 (45:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (45:27):
So here's here's what I can say legally about Matt Gates,
the guy who led eight Republicans to join the Democrats
in the in the voter no confidence. He is a
man best known for being investigated for the Department of
Justice for trafficking underaged girls. What I can legally say
is that he was suspected by the Justice Department of
being a pedophile. There are there are like there were

(45:48):
receipts from his like on his phone from like cash
app of him sending money to underage girls. So you know,
bad things, bad things happening there. That investigation got killed
because the bourgeoisie uh protects its allies. But Comma, we
do not Speaker of the House right now, so something

(46:11):
I think, I guess we should also mention this. So
there's like a there's no Speaker of the House. There's
some guy they put in who's like, is not actually
an acting Speaker of the House. The only thing he
can do effectively is like make sure that there's vote
specifically on there being another Speaker of the House. Yeah,
And this has thrown the entire American political system into

(46:34):
chaos because with no Speaker of the House, the House
of Representatives cannot pass bills. They can't do it, They
cannot pass any bills at all. And because of the
way that the American system was designed, not having this
one person shuts down the entire effectively shut it shuts
down the entire legislative branch, right because you can't get

(46:56):
anything passed in the Senate without also getting it ratified
in the House. And this has just shut down effectively,
like most of the American government outside of the like,
you know. I mean, so the executive branches and all
of the departments stuff are self functioning, but there is
no legislative branch right now, effectively, is what has happened,
right I think maybe subcommittee meetings are still running, but

(47:18):
they can't pass any bills, and this is both a
blessing and a curse. Normally, this I think would just
be a curse. I don't know. Maybe right now this
is probably the best possible time this could have happened,
because the consequence of this has been the US has
been unable to follow through on its most sort of
just rapidly genocidal impulses about Palestine because again, the House

(47:39):
literally cannot pass any bills until they figure this shit out.
So we haven't been able to send money to it Laziel,
we haven't been able to send like God forbid, like
we haven't been able to plenty troops, which I don't
know if they I don't know if there was actually
the political desire to do that anyways, But you know,
the fact, the fact that there was no speaker in
the immediate wake of the stuff that's been happening in

(48:00):
Palestine means that you know, they've they've been restrained from
just like glassing the entire Middle East, which is which
is good. The downside is that again, we have until
November seventeenth to pass a funding bill to avert the
government shutdown. And not only is there like no progress

(48:22):
on a deal about that bill, like the American legislature
is currently incapable of passing any bill, much less the
spending bill. So things are going great in the American
political system. And okay, so we should we should ask
the question why is this happening? And there are both
sort of short and long answers to this question. Both

(48:45):
of them effectively have the same route, which is that
the Republican Party is a coalition. It's one that usually
has pretty broadly compatible politics, but it is a coalition
between different sectors of capital. So think, for example, you know,
you have your different right wing like tech mogul billionaires,
right like Elon Musk or like Peter Thiel. But these
people align on a lot of stuff, but they don't

(49:07):
necessarily have the same interests as like a weapons manufacturer
or like coke industries, or I mean just like you know,
like one of the big sort of tensions, for example,
is that the Republican Party has a lot of backing
among the financial sector. Uh, the financial sector has very
little interest in conflict with China because they have an
enormous amount of capital like tied up in Chinese firms.

(49:31):
There are a lot of other like people who have
a lot of like like even this is this is
a thing between Elon Musk and Peter Teel right or
like Musk is kind of more pro China than like
the average like Republican tech billionaire because he has a
bunch of contracts in a giant factory in China and
so so okay, so this is this is a coalition
between different segments of capital who disagree. This is also

(49:52):
a coalition between different like right wing social movements who
are also you know, a very powerful part of the party.
You have evangelical stuff. But I mean, you know, the
consequence of this, and the consequence of the sort of
shift right of American politics has been you now have
this party where there are like libertarians alongside neocons, you

(50:12):
have more moderate conservatives, and you have basic people who
are effectively neo Nazis. And the fact that the coalition
is like this now, the fact that it is genuinely
more so than it's been in a long time, a
very broad and diverse coalition. This has made the House
of Representatives effectively unmanageable. Okay, and this has been a

(50:34):
real issue in the Republican Party for a while now,
partially because you know, and this is this is why
we're getting the government shutdown stuff, like a big part
of Republican strategy for the last decade, basically since Obama
took office, has just been shutting down the government and
doing art obstructionism, so you know, nothing can get done
at waitgre have you have you been Do you remember

(50:54):
the last government shut down?

Speaker 12 (50:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (50:56):
Yeah, yeah, it was only like two years ago. Yeah,
it feels like maybe maybe it was longer. It feels
like it was pretty recent. There was no it was
it was in twenty eighteen. I think it was like, yeah,
I see, because in my brain we're still in twenty twenty.

Speaker 7 (51:10):
Oh yeah, they were actually twenty So what I.

Speaker 11 (51:12):
Said when I say two years ago, what I mean
is twenty eighteen.

Speaker 7 (51:17):
Yeah, I mean, and it's that one was funny because
that was a that was a Republican president. Yeah, yeah,
which is very funny. But yeah, but you know, but
back when Obama was in office, like this just happened
all the fucking time, Like every other week. There was
like a threat of a government every single time a
bill liken, a funding bill was going to pass Congress,
like I had a bunch of family members get furloughed

(51:37):
well at one point, because the government actually did shut
down for a long time. But there's a real problem
with this, which is that this political strategy encourages, effectively
the it encourages creating chaos, right, and this is something
that Trump has been very good at sort of exploiting.
But it also means that there's now this like qudra

(51:58):
of politicos who've come up who are like incredibly right
wing and effectively the only thing they know how to
do is obstructing anything from functioning. And this is what
McCarthy ran into. He ran into Gates and his sort
of like band of Mary I don't know, I was
gonna call him a band of Mary weirdos, but that's
way too complimentary. His band of like absolute fanatics. And

(52:22):
the real issue here is that, Okay, so there's currently
two vacant seats in the House, so this means right now,
to win a vote in the full House. To become
a Speaker of the House, you need two hundred and
seventeen votes. Sorry, hold on, there's new shit happening, like
right now, McCarthy thinks that Jim Jordan has two hundred

(52:49):
and seventeen votes. I don't know if I believe him.
I don't know. Well, I'll just explain what's happening now
and then we'll put that at the end.

Speaker 11 (52:56):
As like breaking news. Inswer that at the end, Daniel,
thank you? Or keep it in right now is a
funny bit, yes, because this situation is still is still
developing as of time of recording.

Speaker 7 (53:06):
So yeah, like as yes, it's the only way should mention.
You know, this process is complicated enough that like, yeah,
as we are recording it, stuff is changing rapidly, like
stuff has been. News is coming in.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
So what's been.

Speaker 7 (53:16):
Making it hard is that in order to get two
undred and seventeen votes, right, the Republican majority is only
they only have two hundred and twenty one votes. So
if you want to become Speaker of the House, you
can only lose four total votes, and this means you
have to win both the Moderates and Matt Gates's coalition
of fanatics. And this is effectively impossible. It is, it

(53:37):
is unbelievably difficult. McCarthy was able to do this because
he pulled votes from the far right by like promising
things like impeaching Biden and stuff like that, and also
sort of cutting cutting his own deals with people like
Marjorie Taylor Green who like and is And this is
the other thing about about this impiacement vote is that

(53:58):
it's not actually a purely ideological lines like far right
versus moderate vote, because.

Speaker 11 (54:03):
No, like he he even split the more extreme contention
of the Republican Party in Congress. It's it's it's really bizarre. Well,
it's not bizarre because you can like understand it, but
it is certainly interesting where where the dividing lines and
ended up being for a lot of the people that
we consider mostly being on the same side right because
usually people imagine like Matt Gates and Marchie Taylor Green

(54:26):
usually in the same kind of far right voting block.
And to see like divisions over over this vote is
certainly an interesting aspect of you know, possible fractures within
the even the extreme contingent of the Republican Party.

Speaker 7 (54:41):
Yeah, and this and this has been a really interesting dynamic,
but it also makes it just like impossible, Like you
have to in order to do this, you have to
somehow appease the moderates and gates and like you're dealing
with multiple different right wing fringe factions. Yeah, and then
and this is you know what we talk you more
about the Freedom Caucus in a little bit. But you

(55:04):
have to, like you're at a point where you're trying
to appease so many different groups of people who all
have kind of competing agendas, who also just have like
personal beef with each other. And as of right now
time of recording, which is two pm Pacific time on Friday,
no one has been able to actually pull together this vote.

(55:26):
We're gonna take an ad break, and then we're.

Speaker 11 (55:28):
Gonna do you know who else actually needs to be
appeased by these same people?

Speaker 7 (55:34):
Is is it the products and services? It is podcast?

Speaker 11 (55:37):
Ronald Reagan Coin looks down upon Congress every single time
that guy hits that little hammer, And Ronald Reagan Coin
also looks down upon all of you. I think I
think I have a good idea where to put my
new uh my new four to oh one k investment
in I'm going to do all all gold coin, move
all that over to gold coin. It's stable, it's gonna

(55:57):
be worth it, it holds value, and that is that
is definitely my plan.

Speaker 7 (56:02):
Oh we're back.

Speaker 11 (56:02):
Hello everybody. Sorry, did didn't did not realize you were
already back so soon. I was just talking with me
about expanding my investment portfolio. Anyway, as you were saying, so, what.

Speaker 7 (56:15):
Has happened after that? The answer is an absolute clown show.
I mean, this is this is one of the most
like James.

Speaker 11 (56:22):
Lets let's not disparage clowns, shall we.

Speaker 7 (56:26):
That's true. This is unfair to me.

Speaker 11 (56:27):
This is we could have clowns in the audio, We
could have closeted clowns in this phone call.

Speaker 7 (56:33):
That's true. That's true. Okay, I I yes, I've been
being unfair to clowns by comparing them to the Republican Party.
This has been this has been one of the most
pathetic displays of politics I've ever seen. And I have
followed the political trajectory of Israeli labor like this is.
This has it's been truly awful. So all right, So,
so McCarthy is ousted. The problem immediately is that no

(56:55):
one has any where close to enough votes to replace him,
like like and when I say no, what like McCarthy
McCarthy went down by he lost eight votes from the Republicans.

Speaker 11 (57:06):
Yeah, yeah, No one else is within like sixty, right,
Like what like this wasn't just a power move for
Gates then? Like he he was like was was he
looking to.

Speaker 7 (57:21):
Take the spot or no? No, get the Gate. There's
Gates has absolutely no shot of winning. He would get
like ten votes maybe, like basically nothing. What he was
trying to and this is this is kind of Gates
is in this kind of obstructionism thing where he's trying.
The thing he's trying to do basically is he's trying
to like he's trying to set up himself as a
political flank of like the moost Republicans, Republicans and everyone

(57:44):
else are these like sellouts to work with the Democrats. Yeah,
and he's he's also been trying so so Gates's preferred
candidate is a guy named Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan is
the found he was the founding head of the powerful
far right Freedom Caucus, and he's a really he's a
real piece of work. He's mad.

Speaker 11 (58:02):
I feel like Jimmy Jordan has been a recurring character
on this show. Yea, sometimes he's not a very n
he sucks, like she's not quite like a full on
neo Nazi in the way.

Speaker 7 (58:15):
Like yeah, but like he's not good. He's he's he's
from like the far right. He's what I guess you
would call the like the more acceptable far right of
the Republican Party. Like he's from the Freedom Caucus, like
is is a like a very right wing organization even
within the Republican Party. But they're not seen as like
weird fringe fanatics in the way, at the.

Speaker 11 (58:34):
Very least, they will hold the door open towards people
that are even like like even way way more extreme.

Speaker 10 (58:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (58:44):
Yeah, and that's been he's been serving in Congress since
like twenty and seven.

Speaker 7 (58:49):
Yeah, he's a very he's a very high He's.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
One of the guys.

Speaker 7 (58:52):
He's he's been like the architect of a lot of
well not the architect. He's been one of the figures
behind a lot of the sort of like government shutdown stuff.
He's been. He's he's been one of the guys who's
kind of like I don't know, like he didn't he
cause he didn't come in on the tea party wave.
He came in before that. But he's been he's been
a guy who's been pushing that kind of sort of

(59:14):
like that kind of very very rote with politics. His
his original opponent was Steve Scalise, who is a kind
of semi McCarthy ally kind of and you will see
him described as being more moderate than than Jim Jordan,
and that is maybe kind of true in the sense

(59:36):
that like he's being back in the fact that like
like Jim Jordan is being backed by like Marjorie Terry Green,
Matt Gates and like Donald Trump. This is after Trump
gave up his bid to like become speak of house himself.

Speaker 11 (59:48):
He backs, which would have been the funniest dot com Yeah.

Speaker 7 (59:50):
Would have been very funny. But however, we don't. We
don't live in the funniest off possible timeline set. We
live in the worst one.

Speaker 9 (59:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (59:55):
Yeah, So that didn't happen. So the problem is the
other guy is is again this is Steve Scalise, and
again he's called a moderate. Scalise also wants there There
is a report of him calling himself and I quote
David Duke without the baggage and in in the early
two thousands, he spoke at a David at a rally

(01:00:16):
for a group founded by David Duke. Mm hmm, what.

Speaker 11 (01:00:23):
Without the baggage? What is left of David Duke? Like,
how what is that?

Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
What does actually mean? Like we should I guess we
should have mentioned so David Duke if people don't remember
David Duke was the Grand Wizard. Yes, yeah, so what
he says David Duke without the baggage, What he means
is that he he has David Duke's politics, but he
doesn't have the immediate what the fuck association you get
when you mentioned the head of the fucking KKK that

(01:00:50):
that that's what he was going for. Right, So this
is not a good guy he's being presented as.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
And again this.

Speaker 7 (01:00:56):
Is what passes for like a moderate I mean, he's
kind of in the modern the part, but like, this
is what passes for a fucking moderate Republican in twenty
in twenty twenty three, right, Like these people have always sucked,
They've always fucking been like this, and you know the problem, Yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's it's it's a real issue that again,
like this guy who is like speaking at like it

(01:01:20):
should like in any even remotely noma political system, having
given a speech at a rally for an organization ran
by David Duke would immediately be disqualifying. But you know, no,
like you can just do that. You can do that
and you get to be a moderate in twenty twenty three.
But the problem with the problem Scalisee has is that
Sclezi's problem isn't that again like clan bullshit. It's the

(01:01:44):
fact that the way that votes for the Speaker of
the House work is that So there's an internal blind
vote inside of the inside of the Republican Party where
each each each representative gets to anonymously vote like each
a problem representative gets to a anonymously vote for their
preferred candidates. So Jim Jordan like kind of narrowly loses

(01:02:09):
out to Scalise in the first route in the first vote,
so he loses one hundred and thirteen to ninety nine,
and so Scalise comes out as the guy who's the
nominee for the Republicans.

Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:02:23):
Problem is, Scalise lasts one day as that guy. Because
the problem is to actually become speaker, you need to
win a vote on the House floor and the vote
on the House floor with everyone in the House, including
the Democrats. That's where he needs to win two hundred
seventeen votes. He did not have it. He so incredibly
did not have it. That again, within a day of

(01:02:43):
him winning this vote, he is out. So Scalise is
now out of the race. What has been so the
developments Literally as we are recording this, Jim Jordan has
won a vote to become like the next he's the
next person to vote because he was running against just
a fucking clown. Sorry I'm being offensive to clowns. He's

(01:03:05):
just like a nobody, like just like some dipshit Republicans
like picked off off the street, right, like this is
where we're at, like that there's no one like if
if Jim, if Jim Jordan can't do this, like there's
like I don't know, like you would like bring McCarthy back,
Like there's nothing he like Jordan. Jim Jordan's like the
last even semi serious political figure of the Republican Party
who could even conceivably do this. So Jim Jordan has

(01:03:28):
won the vote inside the Republican Party. However, come and
and also the other important thing that happened literally as
we were recording, is that he's been he's been endorsed
by McCarthy now, which is kind of a big deal.
McCarthy has said publicly that he thinks that Jim Jordan
has the votes. I don't believe him, and I don't
believe him because immediately after he said that, it came

(01:03:48):
out that Jim Jordan is sixty vote short on the
floor of the House, sixty six zero. He is screwed.
There's no way, like he has to get through sixty
sixty votes and there's no way. I I don't see
a path for him to do this, even even with

(01:04:08):
McCarthy's support, Like, I don't, I don't think it's a
way for him to do this. As a time of recording,
the thing that has happened is that the Republicans have
all gone home because they get out at five, and
he's going to try to spend the weekends like building
up support, trying to build up enough votes in the
House to like win speakership.

Speaker 11 (01:04:27):
But yeah, this has not seen where it seems like
it's it seems like a pretty uh pretty chance.

Speaker 7 (01:04:36):
It's it's possible that like on like Monday or Tuesday
or something when they're like, when this comes out, I'll
be eating crow and I'll have to record like it
that's true because of his date.

Speaker 11 (01:04:44):
But yes, because this does come out after the weekend.
So yeah, but we will, I.

Speaker 7 (01:04:49):
Know buy this. I I absolutely just do not buy
that Jim Jordan has enough votes. This is this is
this is this is this is my analysis. If I'm wrong,
I'm wrong, but guessing at sixty votes and like, there's
no way, there's no way. So this is this is
this is a fact. This is the current state of

(01:05:09):
Congress right now, Like we don't we don't have a
legislave branch. Everything, everything is in chaos. Nothing but down.
Two more to go. We're almost there, fellas. Yeah, well
the executives. If we cannot come the executive. If we
can not go the executive, the judiciary will fall by itself. Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:05:34):
So that's that is certainly certainly exciting. There's always always
good things to look forward to.

Speaker 7 (01:05:40):
Yeah, but you know, I think that I think a
closing note on this is that the fact that the
US effectively can't do anything right now while it's in
the middle of a pretty serious like a couple of
longline one is in the middle of like several very
very serious international political crises and wars. Is has I

(01:06:00):
don't know, it's been the thing right now that has
been restraining the US from just like really going all
out and trying to get it when of Palestine killed.
So I guess there's that, But I don't know. Our
government is a joke, yeah, and like and I guess
I guess. The last thing I want to say is

(01:06:22):
I want to invite all of you, everyone is listening
to this, to look at these absolute numbskulls, Like, look
at what they're doing right now. They can't even pick
the one guy who is necessary for the entire legislative
branch to function. And I want you to ask yourself,
could we do this? Could like any of you and
like your neighbors and your friends, run a political system

(01:06:43):
better than this, because I bet the answer is yes.

Speaker 11 (01:07:03):
As mass bombing continues across Gaza, two point three million
Palestinians remain trapped in the strip as the Israeli military
conducts a total blockade. Israel has cut off water, electricity,
and fuel while intentionally restricting humanitarian aid from being sent
into Gaza. This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis.

(01:07:25):
On October seventh, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a
speech addressing Palestinians inside Gaza. A part of the official
English translation of the speech reads, quote, all of the
places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in that
to wicked city, we will turn them into rubble. I

(01:07:46):
say to the residents of Gaza, leave now, because we
will operate forcefully everywhere.

Speaker 7 (01:07:52):
Unquote.

Speaker 11 (01:07:53):
The next sentence in the speech was left untranslated, but
it roughly read quote, we will target each and every
corner of the strip. According to the UN, by last
Thursday October twelfth, about four hundred and twenty three thousand
people had been displaced from their homes by Israeli air strikes.

(01:08:14):
That's about twenty five percent of the Palestinian population. Many
sought refuge in crowded United Nations shelters set up in schools,
but even those shelters and hospitals were attacked by air
Last Friday, October thirteenth, Israel issued a military order for
all citizens in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, to evacuate

(01:08:35):
their homes within a twenty four hour period in apparent
preparation of a major ground assault on the besieged enclave.
Over one million Palestinians live in this area. It's almost
half the population of Gaza. In between bombings, Israeli military
aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets into Gaza City advising civilians

(01:08:56):
to immediately leave their homes and the un shelters, but
not to actually try and leave Gaza, as the leaflet
warned that if anyone approached the Israel Gaza security wall,
they would quote expose themselves to death unquote. Israel laid
out just a few roads that it was supposed to
be quote unquote safe to travel southbound. Thousands of people

(01:09:19):
in a northern Gaza began to flee towards the strip's
southern half on Friday morning, but as they were following
Israel's orders, civilian convoys transporting Palestinian families out of Gaza
City were bombed by the Israeli military at three different
points along the evacuation route. At least seventy people were killed,
with hundreds more injured by the Israeli airstrikes as they

(01:09:41):
were trying to follow Israel's impossible order to evacuate everyone
from their homes in just twenty four hours between Netanyahu's
speech and the evacuation order of northern Gaza. This leaves
people questioning where exactly are these people supposed to go
in Gaza told the Associated Press quote, we can't flee

(01:10:04):
because anywhere you go, you are bombed. Unquote. Gaza isn't
that big. It's only twenty five miles long, and it's
completely surrounded by Israel and the Mediterranean Sea save for
a small section on the southern tip, which borders Egypt
with Israel, sealing off access to Gaza. The only way
in or out is the Rafa Border Crossing, located at

(01:10:27):
the southern end of the strip, bordering Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
The Rafa Crossing is a critical passage for humanitarian aid
and serves as a vital gateway between Gaza and the
outside world. One of the very first targets of Israeli
bombing this month was the Rafa Border crossing between Gaza
and Egypt. It was targeted by three air raids in

(01:10:48):
a twenty four hour period, severely damaging the crossing, preventing
it from operating and resulting in fatalities. There's video and
audio of the bombings where you hear hundreds of people
make a singular scream. It's pretty gruesome. With Israel undergoing
a quote unquote complete siege of Gaza, this crossing was

(01:11:10):
the only way to send humanitarian supplies into the Strip
and to let willing refugees flee the assault. The Egyptian
Foreign Minister has said that Israel has yet to allow
the reopening of the crossing. Egypt is expected to assist
in delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians and the enclave, but
it has rejected proposals to accept fleeing Palestinians into its borders.

(01:11:35):
Both Egypt and Israel operate a blockade of Gaza to
strictly control the passage of people and supplies going in
and out of the Strip. There's no freedom of movement
to enter or leave Gaza. Even when there's not a
declared war. One can't simply leave Gaza. There is no
Gaza airport, at least not since two US and two Historically,

(01:11:56):
the Rafa border crossing into the Egyptian Peninsula was only
open to the public very sporadically, and often for very
narrowly defined categories such as medical patients, religious pilgrims, foreign residents,
or residents of Gaza with foreign visas or passports. But
I don't have to tell you how hard it is
to leave Gaza even when there's not a war. Because

(01:12:18):
late last year, we interviewed two Palestinians for a still
upcoming episode that's being worked on. During the interview, they
touched on their own experiences escaping Gaza. So we're going
to play some of that interview for this episode, and
I'll jump in occasionally to add some context. So here
is Ahmed Matar and Abdullah al Casabre, athletes from a

(01:12:42):
PK Gaza, one of the most recognized parker teams in
the world.

Speaker 9 (01:12:46):
My name is Ahmad mat I'm twenty six years old.
I'm from Gaza, Palestine, and I do parkour. I live
at the moment tenniswit in because I'm open. Within six
years ago after I got invited for the Eraword Challenge,
it's a partcour competition that was organized in Sweden and Helsingburg.

(01:13:10):
And yeah, since that time, I just live in Sweden
because I just did not want to go back for
so many reasons that we can just talk about it
later in this episode.

Speaker 7 (01:13:23):
Hey, guys.

Speaker 5 (01:13:24):
I'm I'm a taddler.

Speaker 13 (01:13:26):
I'm twining, five years old and also in Barkour Athleta
and I'm also right now in Italy. I got a
chance to travel to Italy because I part debated in.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
A in a in a movie or in.

Speaker 13 (01:13:40):
A film which is the directory is in man village Girosa.
He's an Italian movie. It's called more jumb But my
friend he was the main character. I was one of
the characters in the filma. So we got a chance
to to participate in a festival in si And it
wasn't really easy. It was really hard to do it

(01:14:01):
because because you know, having visa Ahma as dad, it's
we get a visa as a Palestinian, and especially from
gether city is something really really hard. And even though
it's about having the business about it, traveling outside Gaza
something else. This is also other completely different story. But
we could manage that, and I've been here in Italy.

(01:14:23):
I came to participate in Sishida. First of all, me
and my friend we managed to get shing a visa
and it was just for five days. And now I'm
here in Italy for almost eleven months. In the other city.
You when you were there, it is not you don't
really feel free as free, you know, because you're surrounded
all the time by so many obstacutes, you know, which

(01:14:45):
is which is really crazy and it drives even though
because we were really kids and we didn't have a
really good childhood somehow.

Speaker 9 (01:14:55):
Yeah, I remember since were we were kids, we were
seeing that tanks or what is it called, Yeah, the
tanks that bombs and we were seeing it in front
of the street and we were hearing bombs and shootings.
And that was before two thousand and five. That was
like since I was four years I could remember all

(01:15:15):
of that moments where the tanks are crossing our road
and we were seeing that I attacks happening between people together,
and bombs and flights and drones and and that's something
that for sure affects us as a kid, that we
we get the far whenever we see some bombs and

(01:15:39):
just we want to hide from the bombs and we
want to be close to the family. For me, all
of these things that happened around me affected me that
I wanted to be that guy who would like to
enjoy life. In the same time, Gaza was a place
that we had the situation, but we are the psychologically

(01:16:03):
or how is it called, Like when you are affected
by the situation where you know that you are you
can be dead at a moment, or it can get
a bump close to you any moment, or someone close
to you who die.

Speaker 13 (01:16:18):
I mean kids the most important for the kids just
there safety and we didn't have safety. The safety is
what kids really want, you know all the time. I mean,
when you're a kid, you just need your mom or
your dad next to you because you really feel this
kind of safety. But when we were kids, we couldn't
have this kind of feeling because even our parents they

(01:16:39):
were not really sure what might happen to us or
to them, so how they will protect us. So it's
not really easy for anyone to protect the others. You know,
no one able to you know, to do that. That's
something affected us for sure, like because we we we

(01:16:59):
we grown up in such things like that. Maybe for
me an hour, if you were talking about this is
maybe something usual, which is something normal, because I really
good used to it somehow, which is not normal. I
mean it should have been normal for anyone, but for us,
you know, we could it kind of normal because it's
kind of we used to and now when I really
because before I was really kids, so I didn't know

(01:17:22):
what but it's really going on. I was really terrified
and I was really scared, and I didn't know what
is really going to happen. But now when I'm kind
of an adult and I know what is really going
on and I see the kids when when because for example,
the last four especially when I'm even outside, guess that
it's completely completely different, you know, because when you're inside
Gaza with your family and your friends top apply, it's

(01:17:44):
really different. But now when I can see how the
kids they are screaming, how the kids they they they
have this kind of feeling, you know that you know,
they are really ter fired with the pomps because they
are sneaks to them. So I can really myself and
I just go through back, you know, the.

Speaker 3 (01:18:05):
Memory of the stories.

Speaker 13 (01:18:06):
That really happened via the memories, a lot of memories
before about that it was really crazy.

Speaker 11 (01:18:13):
We're going to go on a quick ad break, but
when we get back, Ahmed will talk about his long
experience trying to leave Gaza. When Ahmed was younger, he
began to share videos online of his athletic skills, slowly
gaining notoriety around the world for his pretty impressive parker ability.

(01:18:33):
Soon both himself and Pik Gaza were being invited around
the world to perform a parker or to enter into
parker competitions. P k Gaza was invited to the Arabian
TV show Arabs Got Talent, but they were unable to
go on the program due to difficulties traveling outside Gaza.
During this time period, the Rafa border crossing into Egypt

(01:18:55):
was only open around six times a year and for
only a few days. To catch a flight out of Egypt,
you need to have all of your proper paperwork, tickets,
and a valid visa which lines up perfectly for when
the Rafa border crossing happens to be open, and you
have to also hope that you're not in the back
of the line to get through the border crossing because
they only let a certain number of people through each day.

(01:19:18):
Ahmed was invited to participate in the Red Bull Parker
Challenge in China and even successfully got a visa to travel,
but wasn't able to leave Gaza because the Rafa border
crossing was closed during the timeframe when the visa was valid.
The US based World Free Running and Parker Federation tried
to help Ahmed travel to the United States to participate

(01:19:39):
in the wfpf's twenty sixteen competition in Las Vegas, but
Ahmed was unable to get an American travel visa due
to long wait times to use the Northern border crossing
into Jerusalem, and even if you did manage to get
into Israel, it was quite difficult to receive a US
travel visa as applicants were frequently denied. A park Ori

(01:20:01):
Gym in Italy frequently invited Ahmed to participate in their
summer and winter events, but the Italian embassy denied requests
for a travel visa three times. In late twenty sixteen,
Ahmed got invited to the Air Whip Parkour Challenge in Sweden,
and with the help of some Swedish friends, he was

(01:20:21):
able to secure a travel visa in just two weeks. Unfortunately,
when Ahmed got the visa, the Rafa crossing was closed,
but by pure luck, just one day later it was
announced that the crossing would be reopening. When he went
to the crossing, he learned that there were thirty thousand
people in line in front of him. With the crossing

(01:20:44):
only set to be opened briefly and the temporary visa
set to expire, it was not looking great. After a
very challenging series of events that Ahmed is about to explain,
he was able to get to Sweden and just last
year he started in a play about his own life
and his journey traveling from Gaza to Sweden.

Speaker 6 (01:21:05):
Tell us a little bit about this. This is going
to be a play about your life that they're doing
in Sweden.

Speaker 9 (01:21:11):
So we have had the premiere for the play in
ninth of May. So we have been doing the show
for a while now, like we have had eight performances
at the moment, and the play is about me with
my family and then my friends from Peking Gaza. I

(01:21:32):
also talks about the journey from Gaza to Sweden, which
was the biggest part of the play. That yeah, talking
exactly about how it is to face the visa embassy,
Egyptian control, Egyptian security when we get out of Gaza,
that they have to also a Palestinian side that they

(01:21:54):
have to interview. Was every like I have if I
have the visa. Let's say I got the visa after
some tries, then I have to apply for the trouble
which I have to stand in the queue behind all
of that people who already applied before me, which is
imagine nine thirty one thousand, Mike, you number is thirty thousand.

(01:22:16):
Then I have to wait. And okay, let's say I
got in front of all of that people and today
I am here in the Palestinian side. Then this Palestinian side,
then RAPA orders have to interview me and check all
why do I need to travel? Show me your documents
if I have any mistaken my documents, and I go

(01:22:36):
back to Gaza. Even if all my documents, I have
the vision and everything. And then if you don't want
me to travel, then I have to stay in Gaza. Okay,
let's say I did best the Palestinian side. I am
in the Egyptian security side, and there one time the
Egyptian security sent me back to Gaza after waiting. I
have the visa and I was like, no, what are

(01:23:00):
you going to do? I'm going to do parkour. I
have a poor competition. Now what is parkour?

Speaker 5 (01:23:06):
Jump?

Speaker 9 (01:23:07):
Oh, then you go jump back in Gaza.

Speaker 7 (01:23:10):
I have to go back, and my.

Speaker 9 (01:23:13):
Family did not expect I would be backing as because
I was at home around five am in the morning,
and that was a whole day, like waiting to get
to the Egyptian side, and then from there he send
me back and yeah, and the end, I mean, without
the help I could, I would not have travel because

(01:23:34):
thirty thousand people in front of me. I have the
Q number, but I am behind them, and I have
the visa that will expire in two days. Like let's
say that it starts in two days and it will
expire in twenty days. And if I don't travel in
this twenty days, my visa will expire, and then I
cannot travel with him. And the only thing I had

(01:23:57):
to do was like going to the crossing the first
day with my father. He went with me and we
just stand there in front of the crossing. It's you know,
there is a control, there is a list with names
that you cannot really cross if you don't get any help.
So I go there and then we just waited around
six hours, me and my father. Then the sunset came

(01:24:19):
and good dark, and then he was like, I cannot
do anything. We have to go back, and then we
went back home. The day after my fight, tell my
father list can we go, I have to travel, I
have the visa. I just will explore. And then he
was like, well, I cannot do anything. He don't know
what he will do, my father. So I told him, okay,

(01:24:39):
I will go for the guy. We have a guy
close to us, like let's say my neighbor, but he's
a far neighbor. And he was the manager of the
crossings between us, like managing of coordinating the visas or
like the last between US and Egypt. So he can

(01:25:00):
really do whatever he wants. He can enter Egypt whenever
he wants. He's a very friend between Egyptians. So he's
the manager of the christ he's the boss. So I
go to him and I wait him outside his car.
Like so, I was close to his car waiting him
to get out of his home. I know he goes
to his work around eight in the morning. Then I

(01:25:21):
wake up at seven in the morning and I go
there waiting him to come to his car. I see
his car. Then I was really happy that he did
not leave to his work, and I knew that he's
still there and I was waiting waiting, and then he
came and then I show him my visa and I
really have to travel the competition and they have to
join this competition. And then he was like, okay, but

(01:25:44):
do you have the Q number? Yes, but I am
the last in the list. Okay, but how will we do?
I cannot tell you, but I have already. I told
him I have already been into Egypt before, but the
Egyptian security sent me back to Gaza and he told me,
do you have the registration of that the time you travel?

(01:26:05):
And I told him yes, and did have that time
and it was okay, follow me to the crossing. I
told him, yeah, but I can I go with you
in your car so you don't forget me when you
go there. Because he's very like beoble just run after
him and a crossing mariandn there. I had to tell

(01:26:25):
me I want to go with you, and he said yes, okay,
you can come with me. And then he told me,
but you cannot stop. I told him, can I stop
her and say goodbye to my family first? Because they
did not know that I will travel. I just took
a very small bag with me in case I really
had like a tack bag with me and he said yeah,
but you cannot stop. I have to go now. And

(01:26:47):
then I was okay. I called my mom, Mom, he's
going to help me, and but I cannot stop say goodbye.
And then yeah, I went to the crossing and he
put me into like a viv that I had to
go like in a very special past that was just
five people in it. And I was very like respected

(01:27:10):
by the control there and there was like I got
all the way today to Egypt. And in Egypt, I
really met the same guy that he also asked me
about parkour and he was like, oh you And then
my friend, the guy, the manager of the crossing told
me I show him what parkour is. I really had

(01:27:31):
to go slept for him. I did a workster in
that room where he the control chick and I was
oh wow, so cool. Okay, here is the stamp enter
to Egypt. But I had to go into that airport.
He did not know. You know, the Egyptian don't understand
the visa, like if if it's in the visa, it

(01:27:52):
says that it's gonna be valid in this day, if
it's valid in this like imagine I get the visa
today but it's not valid yet. But the crossing is
opened today and tomorrow and the day after I have
to travel in these three days, then the crossing will
close for another six months, so I had to travel
in them days otherwise I will lose my visa. So

(01:28:14):
my visa was not valid at that time. I traveled
from Kasas, so he thought that it's valid.

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
So he was, oh, go to.

Speaker 9 (01:28:22):
The airport now and travel from there. He thought that
I can travel to Europe directly, but if my visa
is not valid, Europe would not let me in. So
I had to stay in the airport that time that
my visa was not valid, which was five days, and
then and I traveled, but I had to wait in
the airport because he did not understand my visa.

Speaker 11 (01:28:46):
No one should have to do a Webster front flip
to cross a border. Because there was still one week
left until the visa became a valid, Egyptian security sent
Ahmed straight to the airport to wait for the week.
While in limbo at the airport, the Egyptian authorities locked
him in a small room without his phone or his
belongings until the visa became valid. After many harsh difficulties

(01:29:11):
and compounding inconveniences, Ahmed boarded his plane for Europe. Ahmed
has built a life for himself in Sweden. He's been
teaching parkour classes there for years now. In fact, that's
how the play came about. The mother of one of
his students is a theater director and she became interested
in his story. By his account, life is much better

(01:29:34):
for him now, but he still is not free to
see his own family or to go back to his
original home. Getting into Gaza is almost as hard as
getting out of Gaza.

Speaker 6 (01:29:45):
And hopefully you guys can get back into your family's too,
because I know that must be read difficult, being separated
and not being able to get back.

Speaker 9 (01:29:55):
Yeah, it's been six years almost.

Speaker 6 (01:29:58):
Jesus man.

Speaker 14 (01:29:59):
Yeah, that's really hard, you know.

Speaker 9 (01:30:01):
Dramaton the Theater. I've invited my brother and luckily he
got the visa from first time. He got help from
the same guy and that helped me and asked him
and he put him into a special vest. He traveled
from Gaza with having doing and then now he's here and.

Speaker 6 (01:30:20):
Oh wow, he didn't have to be a backflip in
the visa.

Speaker 9 (01:30:24):
I did not, because he's an artist and he had
the visa and everything. So he got the visa because
in dramat and the Theater Center invited him to be
a part of the show with his cool piece of
fabric that he drove. True. Yeah, Alla, the same way
with the travel and you know, if you don't have

(01:30:48):
someone to help you, you would not travel.

Speaker 6 (01:30:51):
Yeah, it shouldn't be that way.

Speaker 9 (01:30:53):
Abdulla had to get it also help because his visa
also was also one week and one week and he
had to prove that week and he's named the last
of the place.

Speaker 11 (01:31:05):
Unfortunately, Abdullah had some internet issues and some of the
audio isn't usable. But he similarly only made it out
of Gaza because he had a friend who had a
contact at the Italian consulate. When Abdullah tried to apply
for the visa, the office wasn't taking any more applications,
but this friend was able to explain Abdullah's situation to

(01:31:27):
the consulate and they decided to give him a travel visa.
Abdullah also had to travel through Egypt and was forced
to stay in a small present cell for three days
without food or water. Once he got to the Cairo airport,
the German airline he was booked on refused to accept
his paperwork because they didn't want the responsibility of stamping
his passport with the alternative of just going back to Gaza.

(01:31:51):
Abdullah was able to find a manager of sorts and
explain his situation with the travel visa and needing to
go to this film premiere or this Parkhorp thing. You know,
it's not the easiest thing to explain, not everyone knows
what parkhor is, but the manager was sympathetic, and then,
just like what happened with Abed, they requested a Parkourt

(01:32:13):
demonstration to see if this guy was actually telling the truth.
So the already exhausted Abdullah did a backflip in the
airport as he was recovering from the COVID vaccine, and
then the manager, seemingly satisfied, transferred him from this German
airline to an Egyptian airline and he was able to
make it to Italy and escape the prison of Gaza.

Speaker 13 (01:32:36):
When you're anyone who's a prison, the only thing that
he thinks about, I mean, when you're a prisoner for
the whole life, I mean, the only thing they think
about is just how to escape. No, I mean that's
normally because you just want to be free, because you're
a prison.

Speaker 9 (01:32:49):
I've never been into the prisons, I.

Speaker 7 (01:32:52):
Mean I've never No, we both say.

Speaker 9 (01:32:55):
I mean, I've been to the Brazen of Gaza, but
not the.

Speaker 13 (01:32:58):
Real exact That's exactly what I mean. So we both
we were in a prison which is open, big prison,
and the only way that we were thinking about is
help to get out of that. And the only was
really possible is just to use per food as an
opportunity for us so we can get our freedom. And
somehow now you're in Sweden. Im in Italy, we have

(01:33:21):
this scant freedom, but at the same time it's really
hard because our family is all friends and everyone. We
still connected, not freedom, so it's still connected.

Speaker 9 (01:33:32):
Like I mean, I was trying to meet my family
last in this summer and I applied for the Egyptian visa.
Because I still don't have the Swedish passports, I have
to apply as a Palestinian to go back or to
visit Egypt. So I applied for the Egyptian visa to
visit my family because my mother was in Egypt and

(01:33:54):
so there to to attend the marriage of my actem.
But she was there in Egypt with my sister and
the yeah, I applied for the visa. I never with
the visa, so I have to it's like I'm not
free yet. I mean, yeah, I will get the Swedish

(01:34:19):
passport soon. I don't know when, but I'm sure it's
not more than six months from now, because I have
been applying. I have applied six months ago and it's
usually not more than a year to get the decity.
And usually it's accepted if you have everything correct in
the country, like if you're legal and you pay attacks working,

(01:34:41):
you're studying and another language, I'm good there, Just like
I have to wait so in the end I will
be able to meet them. I would not be able
to I would not say I will be free to
enter Gazza whenever I want, because yeah, to enter gas
at the moment I hear from people, it takes like
three to four days and you suffer in the way,

(01:35:03):
just like you have to stay in the car these
three days and every thousand kilometers one thousand meters to
get to stop by a control like a road control
that they need to check everything you have, every bag
you have take it out in the road and you
have put it back by yourself, and then the car

(01:35:25):
continues another another control, and then in the end you
arrive like Gaza and you say this is the worst
part of my trouble because because they don't want to
do it again, they don't want to get together and
suffer the same way again and the same to get
out of Gaza. To get out of Gaza. I mean,

(01:35:45):
if I have the Swedish passport, for sure I will
have I will have the best trouble from Gaza without
worrying about getting a pieza or not. But in the
same time, yeah, I need to wait an aqueue. When
well I traveled, When I will be able to travel
from Gaza, is it like going to be one month,
two months, three months, because it's like thousands of people

(01:36:08):
who want to travel, and it just they allow five
hundred people a day and that's maximum. And then I
don't allow any more of that people. And then also
they they closed the crossing at any moment. And I
remember the time I traveled from Gaza, was the crossing
was closed for six months to three six months and

(01:36:29):
it was none it was not open at all, and
there was start thirty one thousand people in the front
of me in the queue, thirty one thousand, So I
imagine like I was the last person in the queue
and they have to wait all of these people to travel,
and the crossing was open just the three days every
three months. That means like in this three days, it's

(01:36:52):
one thousand, five hundred. When is the rest gonna travel?
When will I have to travel? And imagine you have
a visa that is valid for like ten days. If
you get the visa just for everything in Europe that
is just three days, and then you get the visa
for ten days, and then if you don't travel in
that ten days, your visa get expired, and then you

(01:37:15):
have to apply for a new visa. And then after
that you have to wait because if you get refused visa,
you cannot apply directly. You have to wait six three
to six months and then you can apply for the
new visa. So it's really terrible, Like I don't want
to go through all of that process again. And that's
why I decide stay in Sweden and work in Sweden

(01:37:38):
and get a Swedish citizenship where I can travel freely
without worrying about oh, getting a visa or not. And
because till now, because I'm not Swedish, I have to
think about getting a visa or not. Will I be
refuse vicea or not? And even Egyptian embassy refuse my
visa and they did not even answer me. Call them

(01:38:00):
every day, did I give the visa? When will you
give me the visa? I go to their office here
in Stockholm. The end, they're like, oh, you have to
call us, send us an email, and I call and
send the in. Oh, we will call you when you
get the visa. But will you call me that if
I don't get the visa. No, we will call you
when you get the visa, Okay. And then they said

(01:38:23):
to my mom, I'm not coming to the Egypt.

Speaker 6 (01:38:26):
Yeah, that sounds rough. And I know for a long
time Abdallah was in Ghaza when you were in Sweden, right,
and Abdellah was trying to get the visa to travel.
Last time we spoke, you hadn't been able to get one.
So I'm glad you did. I'm glad you're now a
film star.

Speaker 9 (01:38:41):
You have been applying many times. Yeah, I remember we
went together many times. And they also like there is
a weird and also invited him and you had also
and they got refused visa. And I'm sure he applied
befo as to Italy and he applied for England. Yeah,
I also applied Italy, I got refused Italian visa around

(01:39:05):
four times, and I got the refused visa from Norway Oslo.
I got an event in two thousand thirteen and USA
fight did me like for Las Vegas, and WFTF invited
me for an event in Las Vegas that I could

(01:39:28):
not make, and also Germany Hamburg and Hanover invited me.
And there was many events that I could not make.
In the end, I could make it to airwork. But
the first year of the airwork like they invited me
twenty fifteen and I applied for the visa, I did

(01:39:49):
not get it. And then the year after twenty sixteen
and got the visa because I had the help also
from another private invitation. So I got double invitations that
it made it stronger for the consulate and the embassy
in jury residence the visa and it was like yeah,

(01:40:09):
it was twenty one days visa and directly when I
arrived with and I was like, my friends knew I
don't want to go back. So they taught me to
the migration office in Helsingborg in Malmo and there I
extended my visa for six months first and in that
six months I wanted to work and stay here. So

(01:40:32):
I started to look for a job and I started
my own job actually like start to work with hardcore
or myself, like making classes that I was teaching in English,
and I had one of the students translating to the
kids in Swedish, so he was getting three classes. It

(01:40:52):
was tough at that time. I was like it was
hard for him also to translate because he was not
more than thirteen years old, who was so shy and everything,
and I was forest forrest. You learned the Swedish language
because of that, because I wanted to work, and I
just started to know hands, head and the food, knee,

(01:41:16):
and it was easy because it was similar to English.
And by the time the kids had taught me to
speak Swedish at the moment because it was the only
way I learned Swedish. It was my way to learn
Swedish was I was the kids all the time. The
kids language was the easiest to take, like to back out,
because the kids have a simple language that you can

(01:41:37):
really learn it much faster than talking with another that
talked really fast and talking very advanced Swedish. I dreamed
to travel from Gaza and then I made it. I
did travel from Gaza and then you think, Okay, what
do I want to make next? And then I I
want to work with Packport, and then I started working

(01:41:58):
with Pakport. I never expected that I would be in
the biggest theater stage in Sweden. A then I am
here in the biggest theater stage in Sweden. That's just
like being able to come and watch my store and
watch me perform in Parkour and telling nice story to
the It's like I never think thought about it, but
just Parkour brought back to me.

Speaker 11 (01:42:19):
As an extra note, earlier this week, James spoke with
Ahmed and Abdullah and as of a few days ago,
at least both of their families were okay. Obviously, this
is an ongoing situation, but I just wanted to add
that in here because that's the most up to date
information we have. Ahmed is still in Sweden, is still

(01:42:40):
doing Parker. You can find him at Mataragaza on Instagram
or his website Matargaza dot com. That's m A tar
Gaza dot com. Abdullah is still in Italy and is
studying to become an English teacher, and just last February,
Ahmed and Abdullah were able to see each other in person.

(01:43:00):
For the first time in quite a while. The documentary
that Abdullah is in is called One More Jump. It's
about very similar questions on whether it's worth it to
stay and fight for your country or try to escape
and fulfill your dreams. Thank you once again to Abdullah
and off Ed for talking with us. I'll link their
social medias in the show notes below. See you on

(01:43:23):
the other side.

Speaker 14 (01:43:40):
Hello, everybody, Welcome to it could happen here. This is
Sharene and I am so happy to be joined by
my guest today. I'm so excited to speak to him.
I am joined by dB Kashi. He is a pro
palsying activist from New York and Israel, and there's just
a lot of stuff I want to talk to you about.

Speaker 5 (01:43:59):
So welcome, pleasure to be here. Great to meet you, Sharen.

Speaker 14 (01:44:02):
I want to start with just some background for the
audience to just like kind of get to know where
the perspective you're speaking from. Can you tell me a
little bit about your family history and where you grew
up and where your parents are from and all of that.

Speaker 5 (01:44:14):
Sure, my parents were both born in Israel, and they,
like Miny Israelis moved to New York City in the
eighties and had myself and my two siblings, and as
my grandparents were getting older, to whom we were very close,

(01:44:35):
my mom decided to move back to Tel Aviv when
I was in two thousand, so right before the Second Intifada.
And so when I was thirteen eighth grade, I moved
to Tel Aviv for the first time. And you know,
obviously I was very familiar with it, like visit every summer,

(01:44:58):
and you know, grew up in in our grandparents' house,
both of whom were Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Israel
in the early fifties. And so yeah, so when I
moved there in eighth grade, I was completely pretty much
a shock in terms of what I was used to

(01:45:20):
in New York. Obviously, I had friends from many different
walks of life, many different backgrounds here. I was very
used to that, right. I didn't grew up in you know,
a very staunch Jewish community. I had Jewish friends, but
I didn't solely have Jewish friends, and so that's what
I loved, that's what I embraced. But when I moved

(01:45:42):
to Israel, it was very jarring. You know, I had
studied in Hebrew for the first time, and you know,
everything that we studied in school was pertaining to the
Jewish identity. So every kind of history class, you know,
you'd study about the Roman Empire and the Jewish people.
You'd study about, you know, ancient Greece and the Jewish people.

(01:46:04):
And that's okay to learn about Jewish identity, but intertwining
it with every aspect of the school curriculum and really
thinking about the persecure really kind of hammering home this
notion of persecution. Really kind of understanding how you know,
And again, I think it's important to understand your history

(01:46:29):
and history in general, but I think that kind of
introducing this notion of persecution as a tactic to retraumatize
people that aren't directly experiencing the trauma. Right, So, everyone
in the world learns about the Holocaust, but did you
know that in Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day isn't on the

(01:46:50):
same day as the rest of the world's Holocaust Remembrance
Day because they want to own their own kind of
version of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, right, And so you know,
when you think about the Holocaust, you think about other holocausts,
other genocides that have happened, and Israel's failure to recognize
those genocides like the Armenian genocide, right, and the fact

(01:47:12):
that you know, many people don't know, but you know,
throughout history Israel has armed genocidal forces with Israeli made
weapons to you know, support imperialist motives and colonialist powers
around the world. So you know, even even now with
what's happening in Armenia with the Iserbaijani's right, Israel's on

(01:47:35):
the wrong side of that equation, right, And so it's
never been about standing with the side of the oppressed
for Israel. It's never been about, you know, ensuring that
what happens when they say never again, actually never again,
never happens again to anyone around the world. Right. Think

(01:47:57):
about their policies, the racist policies around refugees, right. I
think people don't understand.

Speaker 13 (01:48:05):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:48:06):
I have a very unique perspective because I understand kind
of the minds of the colonizers. I can humanize the colonizers.
I think there's a dangerous kind of maybe thinking about
things from a bit of a different angle than kind
of people are used to. And also bringing it back
to the events of the last ten days or eleven days,

(01:48:27):
at this point, I think, you know, I've always kind
of looked at and identified with the Palestinian struggle, right,
And I've always seen it as a human rights struggle, right,
and you know, as such, and as many well regarded
activists and thinkers and intellectuals have always talked about the

(01:48:50):
unification of all the struggles of the oppress, and that's
always always arrived at the identification with this struggle for
the Palestinian people. I've also felt, you know, by virtue
of this se this imposed identity of you know, Israeli,
I've always felt directly responsible for the oppression of the

(01:49:13):
Palestinian people, even though I've never done anything myself to
champion or perpetuate that oppression. I've always worked against it
from a very very young age. Now, people always ask me,
you know, kind of annoying questions like, you know, why
do you care so much about the Palestinians when so
many people in the world are suffering. And the answer

(01:49:34):
to that question is I care about all suffering. But
this is something that the government that supposedly represents me,
that the entity that supposedly represents me is directly perpetrating,
and frankly, after going to many protests in New York
and in Israel itself. I've realized that this is the

(01:49:55):
most important human rights struggle of our generation for sure,
but of modern times because it stands for all of
it's essentially the last beacon of direct colonialism. Right. We
all know how kind of neocolonialism works. I mean maybe
we do when we don't, but neocolonialism, through you know,

(01:50:18):
different coupitalist structures, right, America has been able to perpetrate
neocolonialism without actually having to occupy other people, you know,
save for Iraq for almost twenty years, but or fifteen
years or whatever, it was a very long time. But

(01:50:39):
Israel is directly and physically occupying on other people, and
they have been for the last seventy five years, right
officially for the last seventy five years. And that's been
a constant, Right, It's not, hey, you know, here's a
country and let's you know fight, let's continue our kind

(01:51:00):
of battle in that way. It's been it's always been.
If you're a scholar of Israeli history, of Zionist history,
you always you start understanding that the goal was to
take over all of Judaea and Samara, right, and that's
kind of how the settler government that Netanyahu has in
power has been speaking for years. Right. I'm really upset

(01:51:24):
and really kind of frustrated by the way that the
Western media has been portraying what's happening over the last
eleven days, because even Israeli media Halitz, which is an
Israeli newspaper, which is very prominent one right, isn't portraying
it the way that the Western media is portraying it. Right,
they're criticizing the Netanyahu. There's so many people in Israel

(01:51:48):
that are scared, right, All the leftists are scared. They're
being persecuted. They're signal groups doxing friends of mine, people
literally fighting for human rights, they're doxing them. Islaelfly he's
orthodox reporter that's been staunchly pro Palestinian and he's a
very prominent member of the press. Angry mob of right

(01:52:09):
winging extremists try to knock down his door the other
day and he had to escape from the back door
and run away, so they don't, you know, potentially kill him, right,
And so these voices are being silenced in Israel. No
one is talking about that. Everyone in the West is
beating the drums of war. The media is supporting that.
We've seen on the kind of a micro but tragic level,

(01:52:33):
what happened to that six year old kid that was
stobbed to death by someone just because of the anti Islamic,
anti Palestinian rhetoric that's being perpetrated. And so everyone's kind
of losing their shit as all of a sudden, everyone's
saying the same thing because everyone is being pushed to
justify this war. But people are starting to wake up, right,

(01:52:54):
The UN's woken up in very very slowly. People are
starting to wake up because they're seeing that genocide is
actually being committed and so you can't throw your full
weight behind genocide. But they're walking it back too slowly.
And the people that I'm disappointed by are people that
are supposedly smart, spewing complete nonsense rhetoric about two sides. Right.

(01:53:16):
I struggled, Right, this is important. I struggled. I know
people who were killed in the Hamas attack personally and
intimately know them. Right. You know my ex girlfriend's best
friend was killed, right, She's We've hung out many, many,
many times. She was a very sweet, very kind person.
We know an activist who was literally because people don't understand.

(01:53:38):
And this is for a lot of the kind of
pro Palestinians that that and I completely empathize, and I
understand why people believe what they believe. Believe me, but
this is for a lot of the pro Palestinians that
you know immediately called all of them settlers, right, And
I think it's important to distinguish because if there's ever
going to be a path forward in this mess, we

(01:53:59):
have to offer a new rhetoric that deconstructs the nationalist ideologies. Okay,
I don't put the Palestinian flag or say free Palestine,
which I do as a nationalist ideology. I say that
as a deconstruction of nationalism, as a call to freedom

(01:54:21):
for all, right, though oppressed as well as the oppressor. Right,
if you actually read everyone's quoting, everyone's quoting Phenonen, right,
everyone's quoting all these revolutionaries, if you actually read the
material that they said. Chae Gavari even said the true
revolutionary is guided by deep with deep feelings of love

(01:54:41):
in their heart. And he said this at the risk
of sounding absurd, he said that direct quote the people
perpetuating in Israel. I can say this from a first
hand account. I know very good people that are guided
by nationalists and fascist ideologies. However, they've been manipulated, they've
been lied to, They've they're fed propaganda twenty four to

(01:55:05):
seven through the news and the sentiment in Israel right now.
And I can tell you this, I'm getting messages from
people they think everyone is trying to kill Jews. That's
what they believe, That's what they've been told. They think
this is armageddon for the Jewish people. That's what the
media narrative is in Israel. Okay, in spite of the
fact that there are many people that are against what's happening,

(01:55:28):
there are many people that directly blame Netanyahu for this,
but they're being scared to believe that they're being going
to be attacked on all fronts, and they have to
do everything they can to neutralize the threats. Okay, that
is the survival kind of That is a fact. Does
that mean that every single person in Israel is a
terrible human being, as evil as some people say, No,

(01:55:50):
that is not true at all. Right, And my point is,
and what a lot of the revolutionaries said, right. Palo
Freer in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed said in the
process of dehumanization, the oppressor dehumanizes himself. Putting that aside, though,
I think that you know, for me, I see I
know people that died, it was very difficult for me

(01:56:12):
the post in the first two days. I think there
were some problematic justifications for the massacre that didn't sit
well with me because I'm a humanist. But in the
same token, right, I think that I understand the context.
I think it behooves us to understand the context.

Speaker 9 (01:56:32):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:56:33):
There's a really famous quote. I forget who said it,
but if you started the clock or started looking at
kind of the colonization in America from when the Native
Americans started shooting the arrows, you think that the Native
Americans were the aggressors. Right. If you started looking at,
you know, the colonization of Algeria when the Alga, when

(01:56:55):
the local population started rebelling, you think that they were
the aggressive, right. And that's not to say in the
same breath that terrible things happen to amazing people there.

Speaker 3 (01:57:07):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:57:08):
What people don't know, and a lot of the Propolst
movement doesn't know, is that many of the people living
in the area on Gazas are actually activists, like very
anti Zionists activists, right that many of the testimonies of
the families of the of those activists are saying to
stop the genocide, that it's not going to bring back

(01:57:31):
their friends, their family members. Those are the people that
were a lot of whom were killed in the attacks
because that's where they live, they work with. You know,
organizations at GAZA like acknowledge that, right, understand the complexity
saying hey, you guys are all settlers. That's just dumb.
It's not factually true. Their grandparents were, their great grandparents

(01:57:54):
were one hundred percent. But now their generations and generations
of people, right, just like in their generations and generations
of people that descended, Are they to be held accountable
for the actions of their ancestors. Doesn't make any sense.
They should be held accountable for actions that they take now,
for sure, right, holding your government accountable, you know, thinking

(01:58:15):
about an actual solution to this terrible situation that one
hundred percent people should be held accountable for. But to
call them settlers as a justification for their deaths is
something that I will never do, right, and I don't
think it helps the struggle, right. I think it's important
to say and then simultaneously also say, did you guys

(01:58:37):
know that Israel played a very major role in establishing
the Commas, Like, don't be stupid, open a history book,
see what happened. Right, Understand, don't just be quick to
call and quick to say both sides. It's not a
both side situation, even though the aggression was terrible, those
are those two things can be true. It's a devastating,

(01:58:57):
tragic event, right, and I know many great people that
were killed in it, But in the same breath, we
have to remember what caused it.

Speaker 14 (01:59:05):
Yeah, Context is everything.

Speaker 5 (01:59:07):
Right, context is everything. Israel funded the Kamas. Bib has
direct quotes in Israeli newspapers saying we have to fund
the Kamas in order for is Palestinians never to have
a state. He directly said that how do you guys
ignore these statements. They've been very Bib has been very
clear as to what is going to happen and what

(01:59:27):
he's trying to accomplish. And then on top of that,
to compound things, the settlers in his government right now
Isamal Bengvil and Smotrich are two settlers. They literally are settlers,
like in according to the National Law they're considered settlers, okay,
illegal settlers. And there the second and third most powerful

(01:59:48):
people in Israel. Okay, I don't think people understand or know,
but those two guys. There's there's a famous rabbi okay,
in Jerusalem. He's an extreme missed fundamentalist rabbi, Jewish fundamentalist rabbi.
What he's been calling for for a long time, Ka
sadaka is Kahana was right. He was a very fascist

(02:00:11):
rabbi that was basically calling for the extermination of all Arabs.
And they're basically they're called kahanistem and that's it's basically
what the left in Israel used to call this government.
Man tash Khanistem means government of Kahanists, Okay, that is
what that's who's running the country. And this rabbi has

(02:00:31):
been calling for in a biblical sense. And we all
know when people have an utmost you know, devotion to religion,
that guides them right, not our world. Our world does
not guide them. The religious texts and the religious leaders
are the ones who tell them what is right and
what is wrong right religious in religious fundamentalism, and so
what this rabbi has been calling for for years has

(02:00:54):
been a war to end all wars. Okay, that is
what he's been telling them. That is what they've been
operating under. Okay, their allegiances are to him, not to
the Israeli people, like literally to that ideology, and so
they're in the government right now. Over the last year,
they've been essentially adding illegal settlements at a rapid rate,

(02:01:21):
emboldening and empowering settlers to commit violence that we haven't
seen in many, many years, levels of violence we haven't
been seen in many many years, even before this latest
aggression I'm talking about over the last twelve months. And
the biggest most annoying thing that I hear from Westerners
that think they understand, right, they're like, oh, yeah, we

(02:01:44):
really care about Palestinians. But Hamas has to go two
things to that. One, the fact that there are Palestinians
on the West Bank and the Palestinians in Gaza doesn't
mean they're not the same people. They're Palestinians in forty
eight as well. They feel feelings of solidarity because they're
all oppressed in different ways. Right, It's solidarity under this

(02:02:07):
got under this Grand Zionist oppression that they experienced and
so I think that it's a fallacy that it was
an unprovoked attack. It's a fallacy, right, It's not the
case the fact that Aleksa kept getting bombarded by settlers
on purpose, on purpose, I don't put it back like

(02:02:28):
they did this to get a provocation. They've been provoking
to get the retaliation for Hamas. They've been doing this
for years. This is nothing new, right. Every time Ramas
shot rockets over the last five years is because Israel
was attacking ELECXA right right after Ramadan if you remember,
or doing Ramadan. Sorry, And so every time a barage
of rockets came in right after that barrage rockets because

(02:02:49):
Hamas wanted to show that someone is sticking up for them.
But I'm just saying you have to understand the context
when you're in a blockade, when you're living in a
concentration camp. Worse than a concentration camp, frankly. Right, every
electricity is controlled, water is controlled, food is controlled. You're
not able to leave, right, You're not able to freaking

(02:03:10):
leave when you want. You're not able to come when
you want, not able to. A sixty kilometer strip of
land is the most densely populated strip of land in
the entire world, depression is the highest, the highest rates
of depression. I think the highest rates of child suicide
are in Gaza. Okay, when you're living under those conditions,

(02:03:33):
I have no idea how you don't. I have no
idea what that would feel like. So how can I
judge anyone any response to that? Right in the same breath,
I can also say it's a tragic thing that innocent
people died, and they're innocent people, and I think it's
important to hold that complexity. Also for the Palestinian cause.
I think it's important to not lose sight of our

(02:03:54):
humanity in criticizing the grave injustices that Israel has committed
and putting the blame squarely on Israel's shoulders. That Hamas exists.

Speaker 14 (02:04:03):
Yeah, I think that's something that I keep coming back
to is whenever someone is just all about condemning Hamas,
which is like, yes, as you mentioned, like innocent people
shouldn't have died, But I blame all the violence that's
happening in Israel on Israel, like it's not you. Yeah,
you can't just start like at a slave revolt as

(02:04:25):
the beginning of history of slavery. It's like, no, actually exactly,
they did that for a reason and they had no
other choice. And I mean for Palestinians, I think, like,
what's the biggest context that's missing is like they've tried everything.
It's not their first choice to kill people that didn't

(02:04:46):
deserve it. It's I think I think that's what's been
really annoying with the the people that have chosen to
spoke to speak out that have never spoken out before.
They are so narrow in their view of them that
it's so damaging because they have so many follow werds,
or they're talking about the wrong things, and all of
those things like kind of perpetuate a really dangerous environment

(02:05:11):
where like a six year old kid can get stabbed
to death. Or I don't know. I agree with everything
you said, and I really appreciate you saying all those
things before I forget. We're going to take our first break,
so don't go anywhere and we're back. Something you mentioned
early on that I have been thinking about and getting
getting really angry about is why people are surprised or

(02:05:35):
like unexpecting you to speak out about Palestinians if you
are not a Palestinian. I am not a Palestinian. I'm Syrian,
and I am extremely vocal about the Palestinian cause and
the Palestine. I've always been one hundred percent free Palestine
till I die. And it's almost like surprising to people,
like why are you so worked up? Like why aren't

(02:05:57):
you so worked up like that? That's what really gets
me is your humanity and care. It shouldn't be contingent
on your identity if you actually give a shit. And
I think that's what I really want to like relate
to people, is this is not the Palestinian's struggle solely
for themselves, Like this is a struggle for all. Like
if this genocide obliterates the Palestinian people, that's on humanity shoulders.

(02:06:21):
That's not like that that is so indicative of how
depraved humans have become. It's just so upsetting. It's just
a complete obliteration. There has been videos of settlers saying
they want to flatten the whole thing, make it a
parking lot. I mean, I don't even have to tell
you what like actual media and like politicians have been
saying because it's like atrocious. But I think that's what

(02:06:44):
I want to relate to people, is like if you're not,
if you don't care, examine that, because that is troubling
to me, if you don't care about actual genocide. And
maybe that word has been used too much to like
make people give a shit, but it really makes me
people's humanity when they are able to kind of just
like shrug it off and continue about their day.

Speaker 5 (02:07:06):
I've been practicing being hopeful. I think it's really important,
especially in times like these, to be hopeful because without hope,
and it sounds cheesy, but it's true, we're not empowered, right,
We're not able to act. And I think what's exciting,

(02:07:28):
what's I guess heartening to me is actually the people's
response to what's happening. Yes, there are many influencers and
celebrities that posted the wrong thing, I'm also seeing many
that posted the right thing. I'm also seeing many people
that I'm surprised by. I'm seeing many people that I

(02:07:50):
wasn't surprised by posting the wrong thing, frankly, But I'm
also seeing many people white people, you know, black people,
right like, people of all kinds that are disconnected, you know,
from an identity perspective to the Palestinian people doing so
much showing up. I went to the I was. I

(02:08:15):
saw images from the protest in uh the other day
and there, and I'm not talking about the Jewish protest,
which was amazing, right. What JVP did with if not
now in front of truck Schumer's house was incredibly right.
That's that's solidarity. That's that's that's real, right, That's that's
that's that's humanity, right, that's what humanity should be. That's

(02:08:38):
real solidarity. I'm talking about the protests though, that that
was Palestinian lad in the midtown, and I saw tons
of Jews there, m hm. And I'm not talking about
the stmar Anti Zionist, you know Hasidic Jews, those are great, right,
and they're they're helpful. I'm talking about like regular regular
ass Jews, right, like me, Right, people like not even

(02:08:58):
wearing yamakas, like people with you know, small yamlicas that
aren't like you know, Hasidic or anything, holding up signs
to help liberate the Palestinian people. In spite of the Hamas,
in spite of everything that happened, they showed up. They
were not scared. A Pastinian flag doesn't scare them, right,

(02:09:22):
I shouldn't it shouldn't. But again, I want to be
I want to I want to maintain my my I
guess I want to maintain the view of objectivity. I
think again, you know, Devil's advocate, I think when when,
And again this is not not me blaming, right, it's

(02:09:42):
more so offering kind of a perspective to question how
to kind of move forward when people Israeli's Jews whoever, right,
are indoctrinated to believe that Palestine means no place for me, okay,

(02:10:03):
And then you couple that with the anger anguish that
the oppressed people are feeling and saying, yeah, fu fuck that,
like we we don't want you here, right, like you
look what you're doing to us. I think that they
view the Palestinian flag as a replacement of, you know,
the flag of Israel, which many people actually kind of

(02:10:26):
not many people, some people view it that way. And
I think that the way I see it and the
way many people I know see it, it's a flag
that represents liberation from oppression, liberation of the Palestinian people
who are being actively oppressed by Zionism, right, an ideology, right,

(02:10:50):
you know, perpetuated and executed by people. But it's still
an ideology.

Speaker 14 (02:10:55):
So just like because I think this always comes up
but being anti zion and it has nothing to do
with being anti Semitic, And I think they always get completed,
and that's on purpose to make people afraid to speak
up about Israel. I can only imagine how brainwashed Zionism
becomes to like the whole, like the education and everything, Like,

(02:11:17):
is that something you experience like firsthand?

Speaker 5 (02:11:20):
One hundred percent? I think what we've seen over the
last decade, right, the fact that Natanya has been in
power for over twenty years, that's that's like the dictatorship
level stuff. And people in America are like, oh yeah,
the West, you know, there is a semblance of you know,

(02:11:41):
power to the people in the West, as semblance of it. Right,
we're seeing how much the media is in cahoots with
you know, power against the people right now. It's just very,
very scary and everyone should be up in arms, no
matter where your feelings lie. But there is you know,
there's a new president. You know, every four years of

(02:12:03):
a president is termed. Right, you can't be you can't
be a president for more than two terms. Right. These
are real things, right, these are real protections you have
three different branches of government. Right, you have local level
local government, you have so many different checks and balances
that are you know, corrupted and corupted in certain ways,
you know, through lobbyists and you know, corporate interests, et cetera.

(02:12:25):
I'm aware, but at least you have that system. In Israel,
that system doesn't exist, Okay, there's no constitution and a
prime minister can't be termed. And so now Bibing Ntano
has been in power and figured out how to survive
attempts on his throne many times over through building coalitions

(02:12:47):
with the right wing extremists, which frankly are against his interests.
Like he wanted to kind of perpetuate status quo and
just kind of be in power. Like this is kind
of made it difficult for him to just be the
guy who kind of you know, makes it makes everything
okay for Israelis. Right now, Israelis are scared shitless and so.
But but putting that aside and going back to your point,

(02:13:11):
the knock about was never even discussed until recent history,
Like it was not like no one even knew what
that word means. Right, we celebrated it as Jomat's mote
independence day. So the Israeli Independence Day is the Palestinian's
knockbat which means the great tragedy for those who don't know,

(02:13:36):
and what they call it the catastrophe. Yes and so.
But but what's interesting and very sad is that in
recent years, because of the world actually and when Israelis
tell you don't know what you're talking about, don't comment
on things you don't talk about that you don't know about.
You most likely if you've done any any literally any

(02:14:00):
if you read one book on Palistine, if you read
on Palestine by Noam chomskyin and Elain Pape, like, you
know more than Israelis know about their own situation. And
I say that wholeheartedly because I know what they study, right,
They omit the large swaths of information in order to

(02:14:22):
form the psyche through the narrative that they perpetuate. And so.
But because of recent external and global pressure, because of
the fact that the world's the new generation of young
people have educated themselves on Palestine, you know, catalyze a
lot of them, catalyzed by the social justice movement. Right,

(02:14:45):
the Angela Davis is the Tromskis of the world who
always since the sixties I've been talking about Black liberation
is incomplete without the liberation of Palestinians unifying struggles. They
know more about history of it Israel and Palestine then
Israeli's new. Okay. I've always been super impressed, not like

(02:15:05):
not to say that people are dumb. I actually think
people are very smart, right if they're willing to look.
But every Palestinian friend of mine, every single one knows
so much about Zionism and zion Is history, right, there's
scholars of Zionist history, right, But Israeli there's no idea
about Palestinians and Palestinian history.

Speaker 14 (02:15:26):
It's just I think it's really unsettling because, I mean,
for those who don't know, the catastrophe was like like
the mass expulsion of like seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians,
ethnic cleansing, massacres extreme, like just a disgusting show of
forcing someone to leave their land and taking it over.

(02:15:47):
It was atrocious and her and I think the fact
that they can't even learn about power or like learn
deeply about Palestine or Palestinians, it's like another way of
ethnic cleansing and like forgetting to even exist. And I
think that's very unsettling because you can't just forget. I mean,
at the same time, they say, like history is written

(02:16:07):
by the people that are in power, right, or the
people that like win the war, quote unquote, and they're
very capable of convincing a big amount of people that
likew like that they were never here.

Speaker 5 (02:16:18):
I think being hopeful is a practice, and I've definitely
fallen into, you know, bouts of depression and helplessness and
hopelessness also, I think we all do. But I think
it behooves us to practice hopefulness, especially in times like these,

(02:16:43):
because without it, we don't have the power to liberate
the oppressed. Right, Yeah, and I think you know, yeah,
I mean, like like you said, it's it's I think
it's also important. I keep saying the Palestinian struggle is

(02:17:04):
the people's movement all over the world, right, and we're
seeing that It's not me, I'm nobody, but but we're
seeing that people understand that. Right. Like I said, people
are smart, Right, you don't have to go to you know,
an Ivy League school to be intelligent.

Speaker 13 (02:17:19):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:17:20):
Palafreer talked about banking and intelligence, right, when you just
consume information from a teacher, perpetuating the perpetuating the injustices,
and maintaining the system of oppression. Right, you can be
as educated as you want in that form of education
and not understand the world and understand the inequalities around you, right,

(02:17:40):
But if you feel those inequalities, if you have that empathy,
if you're able to expand your consciousness a little bit
to also include those that you may not identify with
or as or you know that that maybe are not tangible,
their experience is not as tangible to you, then then
you're able to understand and situations pretty clearly and easily.

(02:18:02):
And I think the world is showing up because they
understand that. Right. Sure, the air world is showing up.
And that's incredible, right because they understand. Right, this is
like what I always say is Palestine is the last
kind of like I said earlier, the last direct colonialist
project that exists in the world direct right, in terms

(02:18:24):
of direct and active about that colonials project that exists
in the world and the air world. You know, if
you read Edwards Aid and Orientalism, you understand how the
West basically created and othered kind of they are a
world in order to create that separation and division in
order to create you know, a world that serves self

(02:18:49):
interest in visualism versus kind of communitarianism and of the
kind of East. And so when when you think about
in that context, you start understanding that, you know, this
is and this is a struggle against kind of Western imperialism, right,
this is a struggle to free all oppress people, because

(02:19:13):
that's what that's what Zionism Israel currently stands for. And
everyone who perpetuates it, and people that talk about intersectionality
and anti racism and all of that, and they still
say and they still don't understand that this is literally
a real time manifestation of the ship that they've been
reading in history books, right, and we're seeing it and
it's jarring, and resistance is fucking jarring, right Like it

(02:19:37):
was darring to me. I could barely watch it. I
had people crying, you know, and this is I didn't
say this earlier, but I had you know, family members
that didn't want to speak to me, and like, you know,
people cursing at me, and like friends from you know,
middle school sending me hate messages. My mom is receiving
death threats, right, Like this is real shit, right, And
so like this isn't like an abstract like and and

(02:19:59):
so you know that's what that's what people don't necessarily
understand when they just approach it academically. And I commend them.
And I think it's important to like understand the intellectual
context of things, like I've done the work, I've read
the books, but I think it's also important to kind
of take a step back and contextualize things all around, right,

(02:20:21):
and only through that contextualization can we rehumanize, you know,
both the the oppressed and the oppressor are in order
to actually have a path forward that's inclusive of all
that doesn't that doesn't pit people against each other. Right,
Jews lived on that land for many years before Zionism,

(02:20:43):
if your.

Speaker 14 (02:20:44):
Scholar, I want to say, just fine, before the introduction
of Zionism, which is a very modern, very fascist ideology.

Speaker 5 (02:20:54):
Not only Zionism though, right, Like think about Psych's Peco. Right,
the British French treaty that was signed in nineteen twenty
that sliced up the Arab world, according to their whim
didn't take into account any demograph, any ethnic geographic relations,
didn't take into account any of that, and that is

(02:21:16):
what set the tone for a lot of what we're
seeing in their world today. Right, compounded by the introduction
of a European ideology into the region that served European interests,
is what is what we're seeing to this very day,
and the Palestinians bear the biggest brunt of it. I
wouldn't say like I would say, like in recent years,
there's tragedies all around due to Western imperialism and Western intervention. Right,

(02:21:42):
I take that back, right, Like I don't want to
compare tragedies, but the tragedy of the Palestinian people that
there's no one really advocating on their behalf. Yeah, I
was going to add a wrinkle that probably ninety nine
point nine percent of the population doesn't know, including Pustinians
and Arabs, because it was actively erased. But up until
psychs Peco, up until Western imperialism, Arab Jews were an

(02:22:08):
integral part of Arabic culture. Okay, An my grandparents from Iraq, Right,
Iraq wasn't the Iraqi Jews were not Zionis. There were
hundreds of thousands of Jews in Iraq that lived there
since Babylonian times. Right, there are many you know, many
empires that came through the air world, right, so this
place replaced et cetera. But they were there for hundreds

(02:22:30):
of years at the minimum. Some would say some of
them were actually not there due to the Spanish Inquisition, right,
but actually were there before and never left basically, And
so you know they were musicians, you know, they played kusum,
right like there were there were statesmen, there were they
were very integral part of the culture, right. And and

(02:22:53):
there many Arab friends that do know this, and they
they're like, yeah, like this is the biggest, the biggest,
one of the biggest tragedies is kind of the betrayal
of the Arab jew right, And they understand, right, like
at this point in time, and this is not only
iraqis was Egypt and you know Yemen and Morocco. There's
a huge just community, right, like these these people live there.

(02:23:16):
The Nazism is not an Arabic concept. They're trying to
paint Arabs as Nazis.

Speaker 14 (02:23:22):
Even growing up, I would go to Syria a lot,
and my grandfather would like he would only get bread
at the Jewish bakery, Like he would take the walk
and go there, and it was normal. No one cares, like,
no one gives a shit really what your religion is
in those communities. And I think, I mean, this is
obvious for people that are reading about all of this,

(02:23:43):
but the media and Zionism in Israel, they're purposely conflating
what's happening with religion to make it more complicated for people,
to make it this like ancient battle of all time,
when it's not about any kind of Muslim versus Jewish
versus Arab versus whatever. It's it's really so simple, to
the point where it's kind of silly. And I think

(02:24:05):
they make it so complicated for people to be scared
to talk about it. They're they're not informed enough. They
don't know about religion, they don't know about the history.
You don't have to know about any of that to
know that oppression is wrong and genocide is wrong.

Speaker 5 (02:24:18):
And every every every resistance movement in history was considered
a terrorist, yes, movement in modern times, right, even Israeli militias. Right,
you had the Lefi, the Excel and the AGA. Okay,
they're considered terrorist organizations because they would attack civilian British

(02:24:39):
and they've attacked civilian targets during the British mandate. YEP,
sounds familiar, but you know what, those those three militias
became the idea, the idea exactly. The three militias that
formed that formed the IDEF once Israel was given statehood
were considered terrorist organizations. The ira Rist organization right Melson

(02:25:01):
Mandela was on the US Terrorist watchless until two thousand
and eight. These are real things. These are all facts.
But I'm saying even if you're thinking about it from
the perspective of attacking civilians, Okay, wrong in my opinion,
but when you don't have if you look at actually
ere another another fact, right, look at what the Chbella
is doing. Okay, they were considered terrorist organization. Their armed

(02:25:26):
to the teeth. Israel scared shitless of the Isabella threat.
I'm hearing it from people on the ground. Right, they're
attacking military targets. They're showing the world that they can't
because they can. They used to not be able to,
Now they can. So they are when a population is oppressed,
suppressed to the level that the Gosins are, what military

(02:25:49):
do they have? Do they have F sixteen fighter jets
that they can go and bomb? I don't know the Kiriyah,
did you guys know that the biggest military base in
Israel is in the middle of the televis.

Speaker 14 (02:26:00):
Yeah, in a residential area.

Speaker 5 (02:26:02):
In a residential area. So what if, what if? What
if the Gosins had f sixteen fighter what if Kamas
had sixteen fighters? They wouldn't want to bomb that? Yeah,
Like people are people that dense like that. They don't
understand how this thing works and what what oppression looks like. Right.
A lot of my Pastinian friends always say the world
wants us to be the perfect victims. Yeah, and in

(02:26:23):
a lot of in a lot of senses, the burden
is always on the victim, right in these oppressive scenarios.
So I always tell them, guys, like, we have to
be smart. We have to make sure that you know, again,
I like, it's it's trauma that I can't you know,
I feel in my bones. But but it's not it's
not directly happening to me, and and and so I can't.

(02:26:46):
I'm not. It's not from a place of judgment. It's
from a pragmatic perspective. We have to understand that that's
the trap that they're setting for us. The Kamas enacted
the Kamas did exactly with the right wing government wanted
them to do in order to justify the plan that
they had all along. I'm not going to go so
far as to start perpetuating conspiracy theories because it's not

(02:27:08):
my place. So I'm not going to say that they
planned this and it was, you know, an inside job.
I'm not going to say that. But what I will
say is it served the interests of the right wing government.
And the one thing I wanted to say, because I
keep going off on tangents and I apologize, But to
your point about the Knakba, I said, in the last

(02:27:30):
ten years, it's pretty crazy to see the narrative shift.
Israel has so been so emboldened. They feel so invincible
because of the international support that they have. Now they
acknowledge a knakoba. Now they acknowledge the knob, but we
know how they acknowledge it. They say, yeah, the Knackba happened,
Let's do a second one, yep, right, And so now

(02:27:52):
they're now all of a sudden the knock by existed, right,
and they're basically saying, hey, let's do a second one.
All the like, all the right wing government of Mine
officials are saying, second knof but let's do it now.
Let's let's that's what they try to do. Yeah, they're
trying to do in Gaza.

Speaker 14 (02:28:09):
It feels like the first one just ended, right.

Speaker 5 (02:28:11):
That I always I always say that I agree, but
I'm saying, like I'm talking about mass expulsion right now.
They're trying to They're trying, under international on everyone's noses
to utilize genocide and ethnic cleansing to displace millions of
Palestinians from Gaza. And God knows, I don't. They don't
have a they don't. This was like a biblical idea, right,

(02:28:32):
like the Judean Samaria. This is not like a there's
no like specific plans that people had, Like this is
a biblical, fervent, ideological idea. They don't freaking know what
they're doing. They don't want to go to they don't
want to go to war with Iran. They're scared of
the Like these are real things, these are real threats,
Like Israel hasn't fought a real opponent since the seventies

(02:28:55):
and the Young pol War. That's what I'm trying to say,
Like this showed how vulnerable they are and they're scared.
I'm telling you, like I know the sentiment on the ground,
like people are scared out of their minds. They don't think.
They're not very confident in Israel's military, right, Like that's
why they're bombing the shit, and like that's why they
haven't invaded. They said they're going to invade, babes talking
this big game. They haven't done yet because they're scared.

Speaker 14 (02:29:15):
Remember, also, is that the IDF that's all. It does
not actually act in the best interests of the civilians,
if anything. Like there was like a report from an
Israeli woman who survived the massacre at the music festival
that said a lot of them were shot by like
their own forces. It was like indiscriminate shooting.

Speaker 5 (02:29:33):
The biggest casualties for Israeli soldiers up until this was
friendly fire.

Speaker 7 (02:29:39):
Yeah really, that's that's.

Speaker 14 (02:29:43):
I mean, I just think that's so hard to remember
because it's a they're framed as this very like ideal
warrior bullshit and it's so far from the truth.

Speaker 5 (02:29:55):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Their eighteen year old kids. Yeah,
these aren't like US, like marines that are career assassins.
Like have you ever seen in a US marine and
next to an Israeli soldiers. I'm serious, like like.

Speaker 14 (02:30:09):
I know, there's become a trend to be a soldier
of anything. It's like very like you see these like
young people talk like yeah, exactly, it's like a very
cool thing to.

Speaker 5 (02:30:21):
Do because there's never a threat though Israel. Israel has
been You've grown up in Israel believing that you're the
most powerful entity and you can do whatever you want
whenever you want, right, and that notion has been shaken
to its core. And if you're part of the propaganda machine,
if you if you're caught in the propaganda machine that
is kind of Zionist Israeli ideology, you're basically now your

(02:30:42):
whole world is crumbled beneath you. Right, you're completely in
survival mode. Everyone's posting, everyone's like you have to eradicate
come us. They're not even eradicating comas. What are they doing,
They're just emboldening come ups Like this happens all the time.
It's just happening on a much bigger scale right now.
Every any Hamas leader that they basically looking for, like
a big like a major Hamas leadership, you know, attack

(02:31:05):
and once they're able to neutralize, you know, in their words,
numerous high ranking officials. I think they'll declare victory even
though they're not going to be victorious. They're not going
to bring back the fourteen hundred people.

Speaker 14 (02:31:18):
They're also going to kill the hostages at this rate,
you know what I mean, Like they're not like.

Speaker 7 (02:31:22):
They've already killed more than twenty two.

Speaker 14 (02:31:24):
That's how much do you actually care about your civilians
and the hostage like the foreign hostages either like it's
your but but I don't know those clearly showing their ass.

Speaker 5 (02:31:33):
In my opinion, I want to have a clear message
though to kind of people that are on the fence
in the West that are being fed propaganda through Western
media outlets. That is quite clear at this point. And
some of them recognize this, and that's why they come
to my page and they're like, oh, you know, thank you.

(02:31:53):
I didn't I didn't know. I didn't know. In Israel,
there are many people, not even ideologically that want to
bring the hostages back and don't understand why Israel is
doing what it's doing before and not even talking to
them about the hostages.

Speaker 14 (02:32:11):
Yeah, it complete being like pleads just yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:32:16):
I'm not talking about left wing activists. I'm talking about
like average israelis right. Natania has failed the Israeli people
that attack the fact that and again this I don't
enough people know this right, people who know know, but
maybe some some don't. That attack was a complete military
failure on behalf of Israel. And that happened because over

(02:32:38):
the last six to nine months since the right wing
government took place, took power, they've been using the idea
to support, empower, embolden and protect settlers in the West Bank.
And that's why settler attacks have increased. That's why settlements

(02:33:00):
have increased, that's why they're more settlers than ever before.
And what they were doing on that very day people
don't already know. I hope they do. But if they
don't already know, the IDF was in the West Bank
on Sukquot, which is a Jewish holiday, and they were
protecting settlers in building a sukkah, that structure that people

(02:33:21):
sit in in the middle of Juara, a Palestinian village,
and they were protecting them and chaper owning them so
that they can break into Palestinian village to build a
sukkah in order to antagonize Palestinians. That's say what you
may about anything else. The fact that that is the
priority of the government. You know you're doing the oppression.

(02:33:43):
You're already committing the oppression. You're already subjugating the Tastinian people.
You know that Hamas is comas, you're going to remove
security forces from the border to embolden and empower settlers instead.
It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 14 (02:34:00):
It's I mean, that's why the most unsettling things I've
seen coming out of Israel are those right wing protests
where they're like death to Arabs and whatever, or like
they're attacking people and the ideaf is like either helping
them or standing by. If you're on the fence about this, still,
you are literally for genocide. Those are the two differences.
It's either your for genocide or you're against genocide. And

(02:34:23):
if you're considering the options, examine yourself. That's not right.
I was just sent this tweet apparently yesterday, the twitter
for Israeli Prime Minister at Israel PM said this is
a struggle between the children of light and the children
of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.

(02:34:45):
Are you fucking kidding me? That's like Nazi Hitler shit?
Are you there are so many lives I've already been lost,
and the ones that have not been lost are never
going to recover. They've lost so much other than their life.
There are so many terarrifying and horrific videos that I've
seen that no one should have to go through, And

(02:35:07):
not only are they going through it, they're getting funded
and encouraged by most of the world. I cannot accept that.
I sorry, I don't want to cry, but I might.

Speaker 5 (02:35:20):
I mean, it's that's where we're at at this point.

Speaker 14 (02:35:24):
No, but I appreciate you being here to get through
to people who might still be considering what's happening as
a both sides thing or a justification for anything. When
they see tweets like that, or when they see justification
for killing all the people because they're all barbarians or
whatever it is. I urge you. I urge you to

(02:35:46):
seek out Palestinian sources of news, actually see what's happening
in Gaza, listen to people who are not advertising anything
to you, and it's like pleading for their lives. I
just this can't be how we end up as a people.
I'm it's extremely unlike no words to describe how devastating,

(02:36:14):
and I think if you are listening and you are
wondering what to do, there are places you can donate to.
I can put some links in the description of sources
that I trust of people to follow and all that stuff,
so you can look at the description for that. I
think what's very important that people maybe aren't taking too
seriously is how important social media and like spreading awareness

(02:36:37):
has been, because the only reason the resistance has come
this far is because of that, because more people are
aware about what's going on. People aren't accepting that Israel
is doing this. So I think we just can't stop.
Like as much as they want the world to forget
that Palestinians were even there, we cannot forget Palestinians, and

(02:36:57):
I'm not going to stop talking about it neither he is.

Speaker 5 (02:37:02):
This is why I'm speaking on I just got a
message on Palestinian friends. You are our voice now. We're
not allowed to spit out a lip. They are arresting
anyone who speaks or shares the truth. Please, I beg
you don't give up on our people in Gaza. We
need your voice to stop the genocide. Thousands of lives
have already been taken. We can't stand this anymore.

Speaker 14 (02:37:25):
Please listen to that, everybody, please.

Speaker 5 (02:37:28):
It's very hard to fathom and internalize what's happening.

Speaker 14 (02:37:35):
Yeah, it's a lot, and we're privileged enough to think
about it that deeply. People in Gaza Palestinians, they don't
have the luxury of no of anything other than their
nightmare of a reality.

Speaker 5 (02:37:49):
No, I want to add in just yea, because I
think that the biggest kind of pushback that we keep
hearing is homas Yes, please yet. And I think that
again remembering what we kind of mentioned earlier in the call,
how liberation movements for occupied peoples have always been deemed

(02:38:13):
terrorist organizations and you know, even targeted civilians. Right, So
not only like by the definition of terrorist organizations are
terrorist organizations. So even if that's what we believe, and
let's just say that that's you know, we accept and
agree that that's what Hamas is, I think it's important

(02:38:34):
to understand that terrorist organizations have become political organizations time
and time again. And I think that it's also important
to understand historically the Hamas As as an entity again
remind you was created and partially created and funded by

(02:38:55):
the State of Israel, emboldened by the State of Israel.
Because I want to be very clear, up until the nineties,
right al slow accords to the peace process. People say, oh,
the Palestinians didn't want peace. To your point earlier, the
Palestinians were willing to take almost anything. At that point, Arafat,
who was considered a terrorist before he became a statesman, right,

(02:39:16):
was on the table with Robbin had an agreement in place. Okay,
and then people don't know. If you're not a scholar
and you don't know, you should know. Oh, Goldstein, an
Israeli terrorist came in to a mosque I believe it
was in Hebron, I don't remember exactly, and he killed

(02:39:36):
more than thirty people during prayer, just indiscriminately shot innocent
people in a mosque. So the biggest, one of the
biggest tragedies. Right, and then he was not only did
they the response you know Overban's response to that was
it was locking down Hebron, Palestinians in Hebron, so because

(02:39:59):
he was fearful of what the Palestinians would do in retaliation.
The immediate response by Rabine was locking down the people
of Hebron. Okay, instead of going and doing something about
the settlers that committed the crime or that emboldened the
person committing the crime. That's number one. Number two, that

(02:40:21):
sparked the retaliation because when people don't have justice, they
take justice in their own hands. So that sparked this
series of attacks in Israel, right, devastating attacks in Israel.
But it was that that did that, And it was
his He could have he could have handled that differently,
but he didn't, right and and and that was what

(02:40:42):
sparked the response. Then in turn, okay again who putting
that aside? Right? And sorry, little tidbit. His grave Hu
Cochtain's grave is go uarded by the IDF as some

(02:41:03):
and many many many consider him a national hero.

Speaker 14 (02:41:07):
Yeah, I've seen photos of people like crying at his
grave like it's yes, save their family or something. When
he's not just you literally just like went into a
mosque with a gun and shot thirty people who were
fucking praying.

Speaker 5 (02:41:19):
Yes, And that's wrong.

Speaker 14 (02:41:21):
People are idolizing exactly.

Speaker 5 (02:41:23):
It's rotten to its core, is my point. This is
what you're supporting when you support the state of Israel. Okay,
this is part of part of this is part of
what you're supporting. Now taking a second step, Robin was
assassinated by a Jewish Israeli, not by Pastinian. Even in
spite of everything, the peace process was still going on

(02:41:46):
because they did everything to foil it, right, and then
they assassinated the Israeli Prime minister. And ever since then,
right then you had Ariel's your own and whatever that
to continue a peace process and you know, some capacity.
But ever since then, for the last twenty three years,
no one has been talking about a peace process. They blamed,

(02:42:09):
they blamed the Palestinians for every act of resistance. They
don't listen. They believe that they talk the way that
politicians discussed the Palestinian kind of oppression is managing the occupation, Okay,
managing the oppipation. No one's talking about peace, not left left,

(02:42:29):
pseudo left, whatever you want to call it, not liberal,
zionis left or center or right. No one is talking
about peace. No one is talking about any semblance of peace.
I find it very particular, right, and this is why,
this is why I'm saying we live in the twilight zone.
That Donald Trump's four years in office, okay, he had

(02:42:53):
Kushner that that say, what all the bad things right
about his about his behavior. He was and through normalization
deals with their world, trying to get a deal for
the Palestinian people, albeit the most absurd sort of deal
if you ever read what the Abraham Cords actually entailed,
right like weird like highways and weird, right like not

(02:43:14):
a deal that anyone should have accepted. But putting that aside,
he was talking about it. There was discussion, there was
Palestinian like the word Palestinian was being said by the
Office of the President. In the last four years that
Biden was in office. No one said anything, no one
did anything to advanced piece. No one even brought a

(02:43:35):
bogus deal like Darrek Kushner to the table. I don't
make it make sense. I don't understand. They basically bought
into the Zionist idea that we can just live, continue
living while millions of people are being oppressed and occupied.
This is the Democratic Party. And that's why we see

(02:43:56):
the media now the way it is, because they're rolling
the media narrative too. Right, So open your eyes see
it for what it is, right, don't get cloud don't
let your judgment get clouded by this. Two side bs
aspect hold space for the killing of innocent civilians, including

(02:44:17):
the killing of Israeli innocent civilians, while simultaneously understanding that
this is all because of the aggression of colonialism and
specifically a perpetuation of the Zionist project as a colonialist,
nationalist ethno state. And that is what I ask of
you guys to do, right, Yeah, thank.

Speaker 14 (02:44:41):
You for that. That's I think a great place to end.
Thank you again for joining me. You are just as
your Palestinian friends said in that message, your voice is
really critical because people will more likely listen to you
than to a Palestinian. So I very much thank you
for your activism. And I don't know, it's we're not

(02:45:07):
living in a just world and so we just have
to stick together. I also want to mention the other
reason why social media is so important is like, one,
there's a reason they cut electricity to Gaza. They don't
want anything coming out of there. They want them to
die in a blackout. And two they are literally arresting
people for following Palestinian accounts. Now yeah, so I mean,

(02:45:29):
if that's not sutalitarianism, like what the fuck is? I
don't but anyway, so, uh, that's it for today. I
can't I don't think I can do anymore. But again
I'll put some sources in the description to donate to
to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your
circles that are still hesitant about having a stance on this,

(02:45:52):
like have conversations. It shouldn't be complicated. It really shouldn't be,
because it's not. And that's all. That's all I have.
Thanks everybody, thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:46:02):
For having me.

Speaker 1 (02:46:18):
Welcome back to it could happen here, a podcast about
things falling apart, And speaking of falling apart, when we're
talking about the crumbles, the slow and sometimes rapid erosion
of institutions in this country, nothing is quite as relevant
as the tech industry.

Speaker 2 (02:46:37):
I'm Robert Evans.

Speaker 1 (02:46:38):
Obviously on the line with me is Garrison Davis, and
we also have someone new with us today who's going
to be talking talking tech and particularly talking about the
NFT crash and some of what that has to tell
us about both how the tech industry functions now and
about how kind of our economies of hype contribute to

(02:47:00):
a state of what Ed Zitron, who was our guest here,
tends to call the rot economy. Ed welcome to the show. Hey,
thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (02:47:09):
Yeah, I'll just hand it over to you at this point.

Speaker 3 (02:47:13):
So you may remember two years ago where kind of ghoulish,
half wit libertarians emphatically told you that NFT's non functible
tokens would change everything, that people wanted to own a
unique digital object, and indeed that the said uniqueness of
said object, say a picture of an ape or an
animated gift of a sports moment, would be worth millions.

(02:47:36):
The hypeia was insane. Justin Bieber paid one point three
million dollars for a board ape, which is one of
ten thousand procedurally generated pictures of a monkey, and celebrities
like Milakounis and Lindsay Lohan would fund and create their
own NFT projects. In fact, multiple celebrities raised millions of
dollars for these kind of noxious little creations. Their logic

(02:48:01):
entirely hinged upon the idea that something being a one
of a kind somehow made it valuable, and that a
digital token connected to a picture or a video was
the same as say, a rare baseball card or a
comic book, or the sense that owning part of a
digital entity like a game was somehow valuable. I personally
do not think owning a sword from World of Warcraft

(02:48:21):
a unique one means anything. I do not think that's
meaningful in any way. But listen, got a bit of
advice for anyone listening. When any one tells you to
ignore your eyes in your ears, it's the Duller voice
in your head that says, huh, that sounds really goddamn stupid.
Or to of course, put a bunch of money into
an unproven asset. You should always try and work out

(02:48:42):
how they're going to get paid in the end. But nevertheless,
it's important to know the fundamentals of this crap, this
noxious industry. Now, of course we're talking about cryptocurrency, so
these are tokens on a decentralized blockchain. In this case,
a non fungible token or not as an n FT

(02:49:05):
is a unique digital identifier on a blockchain like Ethereum
or Polygon, one that cannot be copied, substituted, or divided
like a regular token. Ownership in this case, who owns
the n FT is based on whoever owns the wallet.
That said, that the NFT in question is actually stored
and meaning that if someone tricks you into sending your
board ape to somebody else they technically own it. These

(02:49:28):
NFTs of images, say the board Ape, Yacht Club, Pudgy penguins,
what have you, are connected to images. So by which
I mean you are quite literally buying a jpeg, you
are buying a tokenized jpeg. These images are kept on
something called the Interplanetary File System IPFS, and you have

(02:49:49):
an IPFS address that attached to each token. What's important
to know about this is this is another decentralized project
where there's no real proof that your IPFS dress isn't
going to disappear in ten years. So you could end
up buying one of these tokens and be left with
bugger roll. Like I said, you're effectively buying a very

(02:50:10):
expensive jpeg that may or may not be an image
of something in ten, fifteen, twenty years, or even five years.

Speaker 11 (02:50:17):
So like I used to buy a whole bunch of
digital games for my Nintendo Wii system, right, and these
were not physical games, And now I cannot re download
any of these things even though I bought them, because
the digital system is just Nintendo is no longer supporting
it is because it's kind of like a similar mechanism
here in terms of there's like all this necessary internet

(02:50:40):
infrastructure to like host these digital assets, but we don't
actually control it infrastructure, right, So it's different than holding, like,
you know, a disc or, in the case of an NFT,
like an actual physical picture of a monkey.

Speaker 3 (02:50:54):
What's really funny is the example you just gave is
one of the few examples of where NFTs could actually
be used.

Speaker 6 (02:51:01):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (02:51:01):
Digital games right now are in this position where, like
you said, and you find this a lot with streaming
products as well, where you can buy something, you buy
a video game, you buy a movie, and you own
it on Apple TV. Apple has complete power to pull
that down if indeed there was a non fungible token
that contained the video in question, that might be quite useful.
That might be really useful. In fact, unlike NFTs in general,

(02:51:26):
which are not useful at all. You are just buying
a jpeg that leads to an image, and owning this jpeg,
this NFT might get you inside a discord, perhaps a
special discord, of like minded people who have spent a
lot of money on something very silly.

Speaker 7 (02:51:44):
Sounds like a party.

Speaker 3 (02:51:46):
It's so good and it's it was really something. These
things have been around since at least twenty fourteen. I
think crypto Kitties was one of the original ones. You
could breed horrible looking cats. These horrible cats have sex
and create horrible looking cats. Well you didn't get to
see the sex. Don't worry.

Speaker 7 (02:52:05):
Okay, what's the only reason I invested? Well, I let
me google crypto kitty rule thirty four. I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (02:52:15):
I'm sure that there is a crypto kitty hen type.

Speaker 1 (02:52:18):
But now make sure to put Reddit in the in
the search RaSE.

Speaker 13 (02:52:22):
There.

Speaker 2 (02:52:22):
You gotta you're gonna get better results that way.

Speaker 7 (02:52:25):
Will I get in trouble for sending these results in
the group chat? Will people get mad?

Speaker 3 (02:52:30):
I feel nothing anymore.

Speaker 11 (02:52:32):
Yeah, honestly, there's not as much as I thought there
would be.

Speaker 7 (02:52:36):
I'm kind of disappointed.

Speaker 3 (02:52:38):
Well, there's a vampire. So the thing about this is
the gold rush, This huge multi billion dollar NFT industry
that kind of popped and dropped in the last couple
of years, was something created by a kind of perfect
storm of post lockdown financial hystery. You saw it with
like AMC and game stop stocks, you saw it with

(02:53:00):
crypto in general, and it was the sense that you
were getting in early on something, and it kind of
resembled in a funky way, like beanie babies baseball cards,
but also with the kind of stench of the fine
art industry. But I also think that during the pandemic,
and I'll get to a little more of this later,

(02:53:22):
people really got this defined sense of how unfair everything is,
how you can't just go to college anymore, you can't
just work really hard and get a mortgage. You have
to effectively find a way to cheat. And this seemed
like a cheat they had got in on early. The
problem is they didn't, and I'll kind of get into
that later. But another part of it, the part that

(02:53:42):
really stank to me, was that they were selling this ugly,
obviously rotten dream that you were owning part of a
future media property, being at the yeah, like you were
going to be part of Disney or Marvel the board apes.
When you bought a board ape, you allegedly got the

(02:54:03):
rights to distribute it and build a show or merchandise,
And in fact, Seth Green bought an ape that he
tried to build a TV show around, Classic twenty twenty
two idea building a TV show.

Speaker 1 (02:54:16):
Around Oh you guys, did you guys see the show?

Speaker 7 (02:54:20):
By the way, we waked in the first few episodes.

Speaker 1 (02:54:23):
No, no, no, that was a different NFT show.

Speaker 7 (02:54:25):
Yeah, that was a different board ape show.

Speaker 2 (02:54:27):
I can clarify here.

Speaker 1 (02:54:28):
There was a there was a show called The Red
Ape Family that was about an adjacent property that Red Apes,
but other NFTs. But then Seth Green was also trying
to make a show that was like almost like a
Who Framed Roger Rabbit where it's a mix of like
cartoons and like real background sets. But it's just like

(02:54:49):
about Seth Green, who is a monkey as a bartender,
Like it looked like dog shit.

Speaker 3 (02:54:55):
What's funny is someone scammed him out of that ape
so he I had to pause He had to pause
production on his show.

Speaker 7 (02:55:04):
This is the future of entertainment fucks.

Speaker 3 (02:55:07):
Because he didn't have the intellectual property rights anymore. And
then he ended up having to pay one hundred grand
to get it back and the show never I cannot
find the show anywhere. But this is the thing putting
that aside. People genuinely thought they were buying, like amazing
Fantasy fifteen, first appearance of Spider Man, stuff like that.

(02:55:28):
They thought that they were buying something that would give
them access but also some degree of ownership over a
future IP and frankly, I can understand how they were
scammed because you had people like Alexis o'hanian, the founder
of Reddit, who threw his VC firm seven seven six
sunk fifty four million dollars into an NFT project called Doodles,

(02:55:51):
claiming in January of this year, twenty twenty three, that
Digles this year, this year. H In fact, now, to
be clear, the funding was last twenty twenty two. Okay, okay,
but he claimed this year. And to be clear, Doodles
is a collection of NFTs and an associated cut in
that kind of looks like Adventure Time, but significantly worse.

Speaker 7 (02:56:10):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (02:56:12):
Alexis said that Doodles wanted to build the next generation
of Disney and a whole world of IP that is
giving people a state and a sense of ownership.

Speaker 7 (02:56:21):
Sure so, sure, buddy, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:56:24):
Exactly, Thank you, Alexis. I one hunch, how does being
rich feel? So to be clear, what Doodles was is
still it was a collection of ten thousand NFTs of
Doodles procedurally generated, like most of these, and it's worth
taking a step back here. Why are so many of
these projects ten thousand images? It's because there's absolutely no creativity,

(02:56:48):
not even a little. They just is it's.

Speaker 11 (02:56:51):
Like a is there like a false scarcity aspect which
is trying to like inflate value. Is that like another
reason for why they would have like these limitatches becase
I know the original board ape ones were like around
around ten thousand as well, at least initially.

Speaker 3 (02:57:06):
Yes, there's always like a couple thousand ten thousand, but
when you take a step back and really think about it,
that's actually a huge amount. It isn't the scarce good
It isn't It may be to the people who are
pumping and dumping them, but ten thousand isn't creativity. There's
what like it's maybe thirty different spider men, so that's

(02:57:30):
not ten thousand of them. And none of these have
a name, none of these have a character. I will
get to the two characters and Doodles, because there are
just two.

Speaker 1 (02:57:41):
The more that you talk about this and just kind
of based on my paying attention to it, I kind
of feel like part of what we're seeing is like
the intersection of two cultural myths, right. One of them
is like the myth about how I mean, it's not
entirely myth, largely accurate about what happened with Apple when
it went public, right, and you have all of theseundreds
of like nerds who had just been like working class

(02:58:03):
kids who become worth hundreds of millions of dollars overnight, right,
which has become part of kind of like our our
cultural memory of like how tech is supposed to work
ever since. And then the other is like Star Wars, right,
and the way in which George Lucas revolutionized capitalizing on
every silly idea you've ever had, Like a lot of NFT.

(02:58:25):
A lot of the NFT hype is based on the
belief that like you could be you could you could
buy into the next like Glurf, stream Bow or whatever
fucking weirdo George Lucas character, and it could get a movie,
you know, because yeah, it's all infinitely capitalizable.

Speaker 3 (02:58:39):
Yeah, the kind of Buckshittos of the world. Yeah, yeah,
I mean you're actually right as well, because I don't
know if you remember when episode one Star Wars Episode
one came out, they deliberately made the box to look
like the old Return and the Jedi figures, which were
now worth thousands, well a lot.

Speaker 7 (02:58:55):
Of money, a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (02:58:57):
But there is that full scarcity aspect, and it is.
It is like that, except even worse because there's less
value to it. Because when you buy a doodle, as
you will putting thousands of dollars into something called a doodle,
one might wonder what exactly is the value of this,
Because doodles do not actually convey any intellectual property. Board

(02:59:19):
apes kind of do. The legalities muddy. You can merchandise
your doodle for up to one hundred thousand dollars of
physical goods, So T shirts. You know why you would
buy a doodle T shirt? I'm not really sure, but
you could sell it. Just the theoreticals here are amazing. But Doodles, really,

(02:59:40):
at it's call, was sold on the idea that it
allowed you to steer the company to vote on the
future of Doodles, which is kind of similar to Board
Ape Yacht Club. You could get ape coin if you
had NFTs of the apes or the mute apes, and
you could then vote in these votes about the few
true of the Board eight Yacht Club, but not Yuga Labs,

(03:00:03):
who owns the board ep Yacht Club. So really you
were just controlling a vague sense of nothing. In the
case of Doodles, you could vote on what they may
do in the future. It was never really obvious was
doodles a doo. Doodles is a dow okay, okay. And
the funny thing to remember about almost all of these

(03:00:24):
as well is not in the case of Doodles, but
in the case of like the bord Epe Yacht Club
and the ape chain, I hate this crape and Joyson
Horowitz owns fourteen percent of all ape coin of their
initial drop. They own multiple cryptoproducts, large chunks of these
total tokens, and so they can control these votes if

(03:00:44):
they need to. But what's also important to know is
none of this stuff involves the actual goddamn company. Nobody
owns a thing. These decentralized autonomous organizations doos are always
framed as this kind of democratic process, carefully leaving out
the fact that demo crack system with transactable votes is
by definition of goddamn kleptocracy. But on top of that,

(03:01:05):
you don't own anything. You don't have anything with these companies.
You don't get stock, you don't get anything. You just
have one of ten thousand images that may in ten
years not actually go anywhere. It's farcical. The only thing
dumber than that, however, is the fact that Doodles is

(03:01:26):
no longer an NFT project and will no longer cater
the speculators. According to a statement from marsh by the
co founder, Jordan Poopy Castro, Poopy is oh wow.

Speaker 1 (03:01:37):
See this is where I'm putting, you know what, Garrison,
I'm putting the whole company pension plane behind this guy.
Poopy's got to be the one who makes those cars
from now on.

Speaker 3 (03:01:47):
It's really going to suck as well. If you were
like a speculative investor in Doodles already and you find
out that your whole thing is going to be worthless
because of a guy called Poopy, I think that that
that's just very special to me. So yeah, continue, I'll continue. So,
just to be clear, less than the year before this,

(03:02:09):
according to their investor, this company was positioned to continue
to define the NFT industry and onboard millions to the
blockchain and become one of the most inclusive, creative, joyful
media brands in Web three and beyond. This is the
same company that had now officially rug pulled their entire
customer base. And by the way, if you'd have invested

(03:02:33):
at the time that the fifty four million dollar funding round,
so towards the end of twenty twenty two, you would
have lost money. You would not have gained money. There
was no liquidity event that had given would give you anything.
Also important to recognize with so other than Alexis o'hanian,
the other investor in Doodles was FTX Ventures. So in

(03:02:57):
March of twenty twenty three, you kind of sat down
with morning coffee and you read the announcement from Jordan
Poopy Castro and found out that your FTX back to
n FT project had lost about eighty five percent of
its value and now the company was not backing you
in any fucking way.

Speaker 11 (03:03:11):
Yeah, but I mean FTX is putting out Super Bowl ads.
They seem stable, they seem like Alliam, that'd be fine,
what could.

Speaker 3 (03:03:18):
Happen'd be fine. But what's great about this is it
is probably one of the largest rug pools I've ever seen.
And nobody is in trouble. Nobody's mad at Alexis Ohanium.
Doodles sold people on a dream, a stupid dream, but
a dream, yes, yes, yes, very very goddamn stupid one

(03:03:40):
that you'd be investing in participating in the future of
intellectual property and have some industry over its future. You
would theoretically, though obviously when you read this now it
sounds dumb. And also when you read it at the time,
it's you were meant to be buying into the next Disney,
the next Marvel, Yes, what was sold?

Speaker 7 (03:03:58):
That is another huge aspect a thing.

Speaker 11 (03:04:00):
There's like, I think a lot of people who are like,
you know, grew up with like pop culture and want
to take part in like the creation of like culture
and media. But you know, Hollywood systems feels so foreign
and unattainable. So this thing comes up and this looks
like like a democratized way that you can like get
in on some like new version of what the entertainment

(03:04:21):
like landscape will be. And you're like, oh, this is
this is like my chance I can be one of
ten thousand people to like contribute towards this next big,
you know, cultural thing in ten twenty years. I mean,
obviously that's like in retrospect, it's very clearly a scam
for some people, like probably myself and many people listening.
Initially this sounded like a scam, but it certainly was

(03:04:43):
alluring for a good deal number of people. I mean,
I'm this is kind of reminding me that there was
this very similar kind of DOW, big big failure around Dune.
They were wanting to put out.

Speaker 1 (03:04:58):
Oh yeah, they wanted to buy, they wanted to buy
the deck and the rights to Yodorowski's Dune, Yes yeah.

Speaker 11 (03:05:05):
And and and put out media and put it like
their own like animated series, which is funny because initially
they just they weren't even gonna bother with like the
intellectual property, which is really funny because you know, a
big part of of this this NFT stuff is like
you own the IP of each NFT character, right, And
as they as this kind of project progressed, they slowly

(03:05:26):
started to realize that what they've done was probably just
commit massive fraud, and they completely collapsed. Like this Dune
like NFT DOW project was being was being boosted by
a lot of like very mainstream publications. It was it
was extremely hyped up, which can lead people to like
assume this is like a legitimate, like entertainment project that
you could like participate in by buying this small little piece.

(03:05:51):
Last year, very very clearly kind of fell apart. Yes,
was kind of pre predestined.

Speaker 3 (03:05:58):
And what's really sad about this is we can laugh
at these people. I'll get to this in a bit
and laugh at these people. We should, It's very funny.
But at the same time, a lot of people got
screwed here because they trusted in people like Alexis Ohanian,
founder of Red unscathed despite the horrifying things that Reddit

(03:06:19):
has done. Alex Ohenian insanely rich, married to a tennis star,
God bless him. Oh they're happy. But nevertheless, Alexis has
managed to fairly easily escape all blame for the fact
that he misled everyone with this and other things. But
this in particular because the dream of doodles. God that

(03:06:41):
sucks to say out loud, by the way, the dream
of doodles was that you would buying one of these
ten thousand things, and that you'd be part of a
community and you'd be able to steer the doodle's movement.

Speaker 11 (03:06:52):
The doodles community is christ I know, the doodles revolution
I think is more more accurate.

Speaker 7 (03:06:59):
And the doodles no, that's not term no, no, no,
I like that.

Speaker 2 (03:07:02):
I like that this.

Speaker 3 (03:07:06):
Dood least as doodlers. They're all the doodoos.

Speaker 2 (03:07:09):
Yeah, but you would be.

Speaker 3 (03:07:10):
Investing in the future VIP, you'd have part of this
and you'd be you know what, put aside the money,
put aside all the cash, because they're not doing speculation anymore.
It's not about that. Let's just focus on the community,
which is dying, which is completely dead, I would argue.
So fairly recently, Doodles had to remove the fifty quorum,

(03:07:31):
which would require fifty percent of NFT holders to interact
with the project to push a vote through. They had
to remove that in say why they had to remove it,
and I guess because nobody gives a shit, because nobody cares,
nobody gives a rap fuck about any of this, and
then voted to appoint a founding Community Council to make

(03:07:52):
decisions about where the doodle bank, oh my god, Jesus
christis would be would be spent in the future. So
the doodle bank was where some of the revenues went
from the secondary sales of these NFTs, because the companies
always take a cart because let's seeking baby anyway. So
if you were interested in the community aspect of Doodles,

(03:08:13):
you're kind of shit out luck because they've now entirely
deleted their Visions and Guidelines document, which is the part
of the website that tells you how any of the
community shit works, and they nothing is happening right now
with them. There's nothing going on. This is the ninth
most popular NFT project, and they have attempted to and

(03:08:34):
indeed succeeded in removing their association with NFTs. Now one
would think, okay, maybe they have a discord. Of course
they did find it eighty five thousand members, oh wow,
except it felt more empty than my discord, which has
six hundred people in it eight seven hundred and sixty

(03:08:56):
members as of when I opened it last. And the
newest stands section did not have a post in it
since August thirtieth, which was announcing that the Doodle's Crops
collaboration had sold out, terrible news to the least buckable
people alive, and their other official channels really hadn't been
updated since mayor August. The General Hall channel, which is

(03:09:17):
where everyone was talking, was mostly just bots and people's
saying the words Dude's rule, that's dods rule. No real communication.
It felt like several chat bots kind of what you know,
how you see Oblivion or Skyrim MPC's walk up to
the other Yeah, kand greetings to you. Imagine that with

(03:09:39):
NFT's eighty five thousand bloody people. I even tried to
I'm not going to say antagonize them, but I did
ask them, are you happy with your investment? No responses.
I was like, how'd you feel about? No response? Someone
responded with Dude's rule once and it's insane because you

(03:10:00):
won't believe this. The valuation of this company in their
fifty four million dollar funding round was seven hundred million
goddann dollars, and their chatroom as the charm and vibrance
of a dying more. This is meant to be the
next generation of Disney, and yet it has no fans.

Speaker 7 (03:10:16):
There are people who will shoot.

Speaker 3 (03:10:18):
You to death for insulting Spider Man. There are people
who will scream at you for not liking the latest
Star Wars thing. These are superfans. Yeah, there are people
who will do that with obscure video games you've never
heard of. But for Doodles, this barly billion dollar enterprise,
the future of Disney. Not one of these people cared

(03:10:39):
anything about this. All it was there's like, there are
no superfans no loyalists, no evangelist, nobody excited, no one
even expressing an emotion. Just a bunch of freaks who
got con saying GM every two minutes or hours. Actually,
it was so strange because I've been in chatrooms since

(03:11:00):
it was like eleven. I've seen varying levels of chat
rooms in various games. Even the smallest community was kind
of hopping at some point. This then had no life.

Speaker 7 (03:11:10):
It was so strange. It's just like a digital ghost town.

Speaker 3 (03:11:14):
And the reality is what I said earlier. There's ten
thousand of these goddamn things, these featureless, procedurally generated things.
There's nothing to them. These NFT companies, these ones that
allegedly want to replace Disney, they're incapable or unwilling to
do anything approximating world building or law development. Lore Doodles,

(03:11:40):
which is worth seven hundred million goddamn dollars, which got
fifty four million dollars, has three characters that I can find.
There's hap Is cap Mellow, and there was another one
which I could not find a name for. There is
maybe ten minutes of footage in the years that this
thing is meant to exist. It's just so bizarre. It's

(03:12:03):
so utterly craven and half fast. It's people attack Disney
and Marvel through Disney obviously in Star Wars that oh
they're just ah, they're pushing this crap out, They're just
churning this shit out and saying people are buy anything.
In comparison, Disney are steadfast or teurs. They are creative

(03:12:24):
agents like likened to Salvador Dally. They are the compared
to the NFT people, they're gods. Because even Disney's least
likable properties get more attention and have bigger fans than this.
There are Disney adults who would like crying and falling
on their knees when the lockdowns ended. Oh yeah, now
these people would care. Now these people of Jordan, Poopy

(03:12:47):
Castro died tomorrow, nobody would shed a tear or even remember, apparently,
And it's just I think the way to look at this,
and especially Doodles, is that there is just within the
NFT world and actually within the tech industry, writt large
just this deep deep seated loathing for creativity, storytelling and
the customer Pendleton Ward who made the original avengue time

(03:13:11):
don't if you remember, which is very clearly where Doodles
is ripped off from Just compare them. They look very similar.
He made it over a decade ago. It's a five
minute long video. He made it on his own, without funding,
without anything, and it's beautiful and it's weird and it's great,
and you're like, Wow, I'm so glad this guy did this. Doodles,
which has tens of millions of dollars sitting around, has
put out seven goddamn minutes of teasers and advertisements for

(03:13:35):
brand collaborations. That's it.

Speaker 7 (03:13:37):
That's all.

Speaker 3 (03:13:38):
Something about Pharrell, something about Crocs, something about allegedly Doodles
having a cartoon. I don't goddamn know, but my theory
is that none of this was ever about creating anything.
This was an attempt to go back to what you
were saying earlier, to recreate that sense that I just
bought the Star Wars toy that will be worth three
thousand dollars and ten years.

Speaker 2 (03:13:58):
That's all.

Speaker 11 (03:13:59):
This works well, and I'm pretty sure they're well on
their way, because I'm looking at the Doodle site right now.
You can buy a rug featuring my favorite Doodles character
hap for one hundred dollars.

Speaker 3 (03:14:12):
So are you serious that these not the focus is
selling a rug.

Speaker 11 (03:14:16):
Yes, yes, the crops are sold out. Unfortunately, I know,
I know you were really wanted to get those.

Speaker 7 (03:14:24):
They're sold out. They were one hundred and twenty bucks.

Speaker 11 (03:14:26):
They're selling. They're selling little Vinyl toys for one hundred
and eighty five dollars. They have a cat mush, they
have a cat plush for forty bucks, they have a
puzzle for twenty two dollars, and they finally have the
before mentioned rug.

Speaker 3 (03:14:43):
So yeah, it's it's just wonderful.

Speaker 11 (03:14:47):
It seems like a good investment. These things are selling
out fast. You want to, you gotta, you gotta get in.
Your character is gonna be the next one?

Speaker 7 (03:14:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:14:56):
But I think that the ultimate thing is none of
this was about creating anything that really is it. It
was creating just enough to sell securities, the suckers, and
now all of it is falling apart. The SEC just
sued a group of celebrities for an NFT cat cartoon

(03:15:16):
called Stoner Cats.

Speaker 2 (03:15:18):
Yeah. No, I was really excited about Stoner Cat.

Speaker 3 (03:15:21):
I was really pumped up for seeing Stoner Cats. But
sadly the SEC changed the creator for unregistered offering of NFTs,
which are securities, and they raised eight million dollars. It's
just very sad, very funny by the way that the
SEC now was to get in like Garyginsters, to look

(03:15:42):
at stoner cats and say all right, let's let's take
a look at this, or that's not good. How a
test is going to have fun with this? But I
think NFTs were and are probably one of the more
nihilistic parts of the tech industry. Yeah, because they did
the bare minimum to convince people. They made up all

(03:16:06):
of It's kind of like that episode of The Simpsons
where they remake Flanders's house and it's just a facier
and it effectively falls poster. Yeah, yes, exactly, and it's
just enough to make people believe this could be worth enough,
because it's never really obvious what actually makes something worth something.
In the collectible's market, there are established artists whom I

(03:16:27):
personally own a bunch of original comic artwork, a lot
of it by Arthur Adams, and that market is fairly
small because there's only so much one man can do,
and the value comes from what people are willing to pay.
But in that case, it's beautiful pencils and inks and
it's gorgeously you want on your wall. In this case,
it's I'm buying something that sounds like it might be valuable.
There's not really a fundamental community that sounds fine, but

(03:16:51):
when you push past even the first layer, it all
falls apart. And that's because, in my opinion, the NFT
hype was just a long come on customers in the media.
It's a scam, a scam where companies built the appearance
of value without but actually generating anything. There's nothing to
old some vinyl figures. Who cares. Nobody's done. The boord

(03:17:12):
Ape Yacht Club has the world's shittiest cartoon. They did
a flash game called Dookie Dash.

Speaker 7 (03:17:19):
Yes I did, I did see Dookie Dash.

Speaker 3 (03:17:22):
What was great was.

Speaker 7 (03:17:23):
Game of the Year twenty twenty two.

Speaker 3 (03:17:25):
Game of the Year twenty twenty two. Immediately, by the way, scammed,
just immediately someone broke it and they had to like
they were like, what, how did this happen? But that's
the thing, you go, Labs worth a couple billion dollars,
Doodle's worth seven hundred million, nothing to them, not a
single interesting idea in any of them. But they existed

(03:17:47):
to con people into believing this completely thin view it
and also the nihilistic part is it was talking about
people collecting art and collecting creative things without actually ever
seeing the value in the object. The objects creativity was

(03:18:08):
only as valuable as it was sellable, but not even
sellable to an enterprise. It was just like to another
person who could continue the chain of shit.

Speaker 11 (03:18:17):
I think there is a large untapped market for this though,
that Doodles is actually trying to exploit, because I just
found probably one of the most upsetic things I've discovered today,
which is saying something because I've seen a lot of
a lot of best stuff today, today's footage, a lot
of workime footage is But there is a Doodle's immersive

(03:18:37):
experience in Chicago for children. Oh No, children create their
own Doodles and you can pay twenty eight dollars per
person to spend an hour in this Doodles themed art
installation in Chicago. I'm looking at I'm looking at the
availability there is.

Speaker 2 (03:18:57):
Yeah, looks like we can book one for the team.

Speaker 7 (03:18:59):
There is ten slots open each day.

Speaker 11 (03:19:02):
All the slots are open tomorrow, so I think we
should get a flight like tonight.

Speaker 2 (03:19:06):
Yeah, right now, I want to book this asap.

Speaker 3 (03:19:10):
Yeah, that's gonna sound I'm gonna send you this like
because it's the most one of the more disturbing things
I've found. I don't want to go to the Doodles camp.

Speaker 15 (03:19:20):
Every It's twenty twenty eight dollars per kid for one
hour of walking in this one Doodles themed room where
first your kid creates a Doodle's character so you can
enter doodle World.

Speaker 11 (03:19:35):
You go through a rainbow portal, you slide down rainbows,
play in puffy clouds, and crash a spaceship, and then
you romp through a limpsical world until your hours up,
and then you leave after spetting twenty eight dollars per child.

Speaker 1 (03:19:48):
It's like if a committee designed fucking U Meal wolf right. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's a committee of people on thorazine.

Speaker 3 (03:19:58):
But if you watch this video, is well of this
Doodle's world. Here's the thing. You don't see anything of anything,
there's none. There's a picture of the guy who I've
already forgotten the name of Hop.

Speaker 7 (03:20:13):
I can't believe forgot Hop's name.

Speaker 3 (03:20:15):
I can't believe I've forgot Hop.

Speaker 11 (03:20:16):
But one and eighty five dollars to get a figure
you have to remember.

Speaker 3 (03:20:22):
God damn it. And but that's that's the thing. This
is just it's a masterpiece of emptiness. It is a
meaningless thing. There is nothing to doodles, no.

Speaker 7 (03:20:38):
It's it's it's vapid, there's nothing to any of it.

Speaker 3 (03:20:41):
And NFT investors was sold this dream of kind of
an access to wealth or for both sides that like, oh,
the artist will make money because every NFT sale you
get some royalty, some residuals, which theoretically is a cool
thing that when an artist has a piece sold on
someone else. I like that idea I always have. And

(03:21:03):
in turn, by buying into this quote unquote art, you
can generate your own wealth and you can be part
of this positive chain where everyone wins. But you're also
early so you get to feel smart. Except the problem
is that you're more than likely left with a worthless
piece of shit. You're left with nothing. So fundamentally there

(03:21:29):
will be and I don't believe more than a couple
thousand people made any money on NFTs. Now, the majority
of the people who bought NFTs are going to be
left in the red, and every new entrant is just
another sucker to hopefully dump an investment onto. Because there
are no NFTs that have a fundamental value. There's not one.
It's not like No, it's that Disney, Marvel, none of

(03:21:52):
these major things. Notice that none of them got involved.
They didn't want to fucking touch as DC did a
vague idea of buying comic covers, but even then it
was half us because why why would you do it.
I've been saying this since twenty twenty one, that these
things had no value, that it was just an attempt
to sell people this vague sense of participation in a

(03:22:13):
new economy. And in fact, there was a study that
came out an analysis of seventy three two hundred and
fifty seven NFT collections. Ninety five percent of NFTs on
the market are now totally worthless. The value of these
collections is zero ethereum. Almost every single person encouraged to

(03:22:33):
invest them by The New York Times, by CNBC is
a victim of a massive legal fraud peddled by Internet
charlatans like Alexishenian. I'm not saying he's one of them,
but there are people within the NFT industry who also
washtrade these things, which means that they effectively sell them
to themselves. And there's actually increasingly impressive research that suggests

(03:22:58):
that most NFT set were just washtrading, just people pumping
and pumping and pumping. That's why justin Bieber's ape that
he blet for one point three million dollars is worth
about sixty grand. Now he'll be fine, but other people won't.
And that's what's really anger inducing. That's what fills my
veins full of poison. And if these were never worth anything,

(03:23:18):
and the majority of the industry is made up of
fake goddamn transactions, and the people who will suffer on
the majority, and the majority are not rich, the majority
are not anything other than desperate people who were manipulated.

Speaker 1 (03:23:33):
It's like with fucking the FTX collapse, which is funny
in a lot of ways, but also one of the
big bag holders wound up being like a teacher's pension fund.
Like that was massive, and obviously I think that like
an addition to going after sam people, regulators should be
looking at who the fuck made the call to put
people's pension money in fucking brain genius kids gambling din

(03:23:58):
But it is like there is like real harmed it
and that was like always the plan. Everyone who was
involved in pushing this is was trying to, Like the
whole game plan was create this critical mass of hype
that broke people's ability to actually analyze what they were doing.

(03:24:21):
That just kind of made them panic and throw money
in because they felt like otherwise they were going to
miss out on their chance to retire, right That was
the whole thing, and that's why, like the entire social
media hype around this was all based on you're going
to stay poor forever if you don't get in on
this right now, Like it's so disgusting, and yeah, just evil,

(03:24:43):
evil people.

Speaker 3 (03:24:44):
And they were never a great investment. They were never
in the future of IP. They're just a vehicle to
extract capital from retail investors, from regular people who to
your point earlier, who didn't invest in Apple earlier, oh
Google early, they didn't get the chance, they didn't buy
the Star Wars toy. So this was their chance to
get ahead. And if these are just an exploitative scam,

(03:25:05):
they create just enough it's a true scam as well.
They create just enough to get people in the door
and just enough to make that investment defensible. They and
it honestly shared a lot of the language of the
Joe Oldsteins and conspiracy theorists and other teller evangelists telling
people to your point that oh, you're not gonna make it,
Oh have fun staying poor. What a noxious fucking thing

(03:25:26):
to say, What a disgusting thing to say to someone.
And what's funny is they use the other scam that
some companies in the tech industry used FDx, for example,
where they would raise rounds a venture capital which gave
the appearance of a real enterprise where things were actually happening,
and then they sold them this dream of oh, you
could own a piece of this, despite the fact that

(03:25:48):
not a single goddamn NFT actually granted stock options, voting rights,
or anything else because if they did that, it would
immediately become a security, so they'd never do that. You
don't have consequential votes. You don't have any industry over
this industry. You just have a thing that can be

(03:26:08):
It may not be fungible, but the operating environment for
it is absolutely fucking fungible. If doodles was truly not fungible,
they wouldn't be able to change the doodle's quorum.

Speaker 2 (03:26:19):
They would just have to.

Speaker 3 (03:26:20):
Sit there and do nothing. But what's also important to realize,
and as I've said before, but I'll say it a
goddamn again, is they really didn't try very hard. The
board ape Yarch Club, which is the biggest one the
ten thousand horrifying looking apes owned by a company called
Yuga Labs. They were valued at four billion dollars in
twenty twenty two. Despite the fact that they said they

(03:26:44):
were going to go Hollywood, they've not actually created anything.
They They said they were going to do a metaverse product.
They sold NFTs of this metaverse thing that they've never shown,
called other Side. I believe. Yeah, it crashed.

Speaker 1 (03:26:59):
Ethereu, but they have not the video game where you
travel through a toilet looking for poop, Dookie Dash.

Speaker 2 (03:27:07):
Yeah, this is the new Disney everyone, This is it.

Speaker 3 (03:27:11):
This is the new Disney. It's the metaverse that will
never get built. It's the cartoon about monkeys and toilets
that actually advertise Dookie Dash. The rich, deep lore of
the bored A Yacht Club, by the way, is that
a monkey did a poo so bad that a key
came out to another dimension. But then the monkey somehow

(03:27:31):
put that key in a beer that the monkey drank,
and then the monkey did another poo where it put
it into the sewer pipes, thus making it necessary for
you to pilot another monkey to go and get the key.
Very fucking stupid, very bad, ugly, like the designs suck.
That's the other thing. These aren't even good looking. And
this is a company worth.

Speaker 16 (03:27:50):
Four billion dollars, four billion dollars, and all they've done
is not make a metaverse, but make a lot of money,
make a terrible he is looking of cartoons that may
or may not go anywhere, and an Ebulum's World clone that.

Speaker 3 (03:28:07):
Got scammed almost immediately. Someone found a way to exploit
it immediately because it's a flash game. These are not
creative enterprises. These are not entertainment companies. They're shell corporations
for ill godden revenues for secondary market sales of ten
thousand bullshit pictures that were hyped up by the media
who could not analyze it properly. They just saw the

(03:28:30):
large amounts of money that were being made, the crooked ways,
by the way, the ones which were clearly pumped everyone
covered them. World of Woman. Do you remember that one
World of Woman? The NFT That was my favorite one
because there were so many guys in the crypto world
who like Yeah, I bought a world of woman entity.
I support woman. That's I love it. No, it's so good,

(03:28:52):
And it's because all of it's exploitative. NFTs are vehicles
to exploit people, particularly Americans, who so desperate and fairly
questioning their place in the world that is continually turned
upon providing basic social services and the ability for its
citizens to thrive. There are a few honest ways for
the average person to accumulate wealth anymore. It's nearly impossible

(03:29:12):
to buy a house. Returns on the market suck. Market's
already confusing, And yeah, all of that's quickly outpaced by
the fact that you have student loans, health insurance, and
inflation is making things more expensive than ever. And I
would argue that that is really the root of what's
so evil about crypto.

Speaker 7 (03:29:31):
Yeah, it's inherently exploitative.

Speaker 3 (03:29:35):
It is inherently linked in all of these ways to
religious dogma that you're buying into something that you're finally
part of, something meaningful, something that will grow, something that
will make you whole in a way that your predecessors
might have been just through living normally. This industry it
took root because most people can't thrive. Everyone has to hustle.

(03:30:00):
Everyone has to struggle. You can't do the things that
people even twenty years ago could. You can't work a
normal job and buy a house anymore. You can't get
a mortgage. In many cases, you can't just go to
college and probably pay those loans off in five years.
God no, that shit's going to follow you decades and

(03:30:22):
nobody's helping you. And then along comes these Along comes
this very technological, cool sounding, non fungible token, this thing
where oh, I could be part of this new art market.
I can be the smart one for once. I could
be ahead of everyone, and the people on the other
side of that transaction are telling you everything you want
to hear. Then the next Disney, then the next Marvel.

(03:30:45):
You're gonna be part of something. You're gonna make it.
That's what you'll do if you buy into this. All
of those crypto people are totally fine, all of them,
the Winklevosses like Sohanian Mack Andresen Christi, they're all doing great.
They are multi millionaires several times over. The people on

(03:31:06):
the other side are victims, victims of what I would
argue any just society would decide was a financial crime.
And I think that every single venture capitalist who put
money into these products and who pumped them should be
held accountable. They won't because that is the modern tech industry,
because that is the modern government. There is no justice

(03:31:29):
for the victims of NFTs. And it's really horrifying to watch.

Speaker 5 (03:31:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (03:31:37):
I know, sometimes it can be hard to be sympathetic
for these folks because we imagine them being like, you know,
freedra Reddit, you know, chriacters. But I think if you
have the capacity to feel sympathetic to like former cult members,
this is kind of the same thing. This is like,
this is it's really the same process and a big

(03:31:58):
part of actually beating cults is the ability to be
sympathetic to former cult members. That it's actually like a
crucial part of getting people to like get past this
sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (03:32:09):
Yeah, and that's that's going to include not just the innocent,
but some people who did some pretty ugly things. And yeah,
I think that's and that's hard critical.

Speaker 3 (03:32:21):
Yeah, And I always try and push people to think
of that because it is very easy, to your point
to look at the fedoras, to look at the wag
me guys, we're going to make it people and say
these are the majority. I would argue most people, and
I'll say this haven't been in too many telegrams of
too many rug pulled projects just watching the vast majority
of people are desperate. They just want their investment to turn.

(03:32:43):
They just want something because there really isn't much way
out for most people. There really isn't. Most people get lucky,
and that's how they live what used to be, what
used to be just like the general purpose good life,
two point four children, house, white picket fans just doesn't
happen for anyone anymore. And you're left with this. In

(03:33:07):
a society where that happens, where there's so there are
so few opportunities to thrive for people, you get things
like this, you get these massive cons and I think
that it will be hard for this to take root again.
I don't think cryptos unscrewing people. I think that they

(03:33:29):
will find a way to pump this in the future.

Speaker 1 (03:33:32):
Yeah, which is why you should buy our new cool
Zone coin, you know, for just the price of forty
five dollars a coin you can ape in and we're
recommending right now just kind of transferring your whole four
oh one k over into cool Zone coins, which which
you can do by just sending it to our mailing

(03:33:54):
address in the form of a check. Well, we'll get
your coins to you.

Speaker 3 (03:33:57):
Don't worry, no problem, I will personally take care.

Speaker 2 (03:34:01):
Well.

Speaker 1 (03:34:02):
Ed, thank you so much for putting this together. I
think it's important to kind of look at this sort
of stuff in retrospect, especially as the next con builds
up scheme. You know, interest rates will drop eventually and
then there will be another attempt to fleece large numbers
of people, possibly using Larry David, although he may have

(03:34:22):
learned this lesson this time. Ed, do you want to
give the people some some notes on where they can
find you if they want to read your stuff?

Speaker 3 (03:34:29):
You can find letters your ed dot at that's my newsletter,
where's your red app? And you can find me on
Twitter or x the Everything app or rate. My newstop
business will be called soon at ed Zitron. I'm also
on blue Sky. You find me a zitron, C I,
t R O N.

Speaker 1 (03:34:47):
Well, check ed out any of those places and check
us out here. You already found us once, so presumably
you will not forget how to find us the second
time until next time. You know, don't invest money in
unregistered securities. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes

(03:35:09):
every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 14 (03:35:12):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (03:35:15):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 14 (03:35:24):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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