It Could Happen Here Weekly 193

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. - The Fight for Trans Youth Healthcare at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center - Post Woke Cinema - AI Minstrel Shows feat. Bridget Todd - Community Preparedness Basics with Live Like the World is Dying - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #27 You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone Sources/Links: The Fight for Trans Youth Healthcare at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center https://givebutter.com/Uj0NLs https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-upmc-to-reinstate-healthcare-for-trans-youth-and-young-adults?source=direct_link& https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-upmc-to-reinstate-healthcare-for-trans-youth-and-young-adults?source=direct_link& @providers4transjustice on IG Community Preparedness Basics with Live Like the World is Dying https://www.tangledwilderness.org/live-like-the-world-is-dying http://www.tangledwilderness.org http://www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff Douglas Rushkoff https://www.theguardian.com/profile/douglas-rushkoff https://www.tangledwilderness.org/features/ready-for-anything https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/its-time-to-build-resilient-communities https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmargaretkilljoy.substack.com%2Fp%2Fits-time-to-build-resilient-communities&data=05%7C02%7CIanJohnson%40iheartmedia.com%7Cac970a9d2e3a40dfa49508ddcfd5ef64%7C122a527e5b714eba878d9810b495b9e3%7C0%7C0%7C638895239956961080%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=fWKXkNpT%2FZFDzP2fsd%2BCmamCWz%2Flvnz6rJaPDJ0g4iE%3D&reserved=0 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apocalypse https://www.liveliketheworldisdying.com/s1e1-kitty-stryker-on-anarchist-prepping/ Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #27 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/one-person-killed-every-12-minutes-july-now-gazas-deadliest-month-early-2024 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/7/27/live-israel-intercepts-gaza-bound-handala-5-palestinians-starve-to-death https://www.npr.org/2025/07/23/nx-s1-5477365/israel-gaza-aid-casualties https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/countries-in-focus-archive/issue-133/en/ https://www.propublica.org/article/venezuelan-men-cecot-interviews-trump?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=propublica-bsky&utm_content=7-30 https://www.propublica.org/article/venezuelan-men-cecot-interviews-trump?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=propublica-bsky&utm_content=7-30 https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.238.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tnmd.104622/gov.uscourts.tnmd.104622.97.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.tnmd.104622/gov.uscourts.tnmd.104622.98.0.pdf https://abcnews.go.com/US/deputy-ag-blanche-set-meet-2nd-day-ghislaine/story?id=124064062 https://www.npr.org/2025/03/17/nx-s1-5330709/autopen-biden-pardon-void https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/07/white-house-unveils-americas-ai-action-plan/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 01

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• 0:42Speaker 02

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• 0:45Speaker 03

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• 0:49Speaker 04

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• 0:54Speaker 05

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• 1:38Robert Evans?

  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 you can make your own decisions.

• 2:02Speaker 07

  Welcome to What Happened Here, a show about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. I am your host, Mia Wong, for another It's Both episode. And when I say both, I mean, we are talking about something that we've been covering, kind of to some extent, in a bunch of different cities, which is a bunch of hospitals incredibly cowardly decision to not provide trans youth with gender-affirming care for what they need out of a combination of fear, greed, and malice. And with me to talk about one of the places where this has been happening and how people have been trying to resist it. And this in this case is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

• 2:43Speaker 07

  And so we're talking to two people who have been fighting back against their just hideous cowardice. One is Selena Binnick, who is a therapist at UPMC, and then also Dina Staley, who's the executive director and founder of Transuniting. Both of you two, welcome to the show.

• 3:00Speaker 08

  Thank you for having us. Thank you, yeah.

• 3:03Speaker 07

  And thank you for doing this genuinely really critical work to try to get this hospital to not severely harm their trans patients.

• 3:15Speaker 07

  Oh, good lord.

• 3:16Speaker 08

  Yeah, who knew we'd be fighting this battle, right? Right.

• 3:20Speaker 07

  Yeah. So, okay, I guess the place I want to start is, can you explain sort of the exact situation of what happened after the sort of recent Supreme Court ruling and what the hospital decided to do and would not do?

• 3:39Speaker 08

  Yeah, so from our understanding, what's been going on with UPMC or the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is they've decided to end all gender-affirming care. This includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, surgeries for people under 19. And this is in response to an executive order that was put out in the spring by the Trump administration, saying that providers who continued to prescribe these medically necessary treatments would be at risk of felony charges. And that providers who supported accessing this type of care could also be in trouble as far as getting felony charges for aiding and abetting. So that's the way that the hospital system is interpreting this executive order.

• 4:23Speaker 08

  So there has been a lot of pushback from multiple providers, people throughout UPMC, and...

• 4:31Speaker 08

  The biggest issue is that they created a deadline of making these changes starting June 30th. This is an arbitrary date that they decided within the hospital system. The state was not given to them by any kind of federal proceeding or legal mandate. And after that time, they're no longer going to be prescribing these medications. So, starting in April, UPMC stopped taking any new clients who are under 19, who were looking for hormone replacement therapy or any kind of gender affirming care. And starting June 30th, they are slowly tapering off all clients from their puberty blockers or hormone therapy over the course of three to six months, depending on what their current medication course is.

• 5:13Speaker 08

  So, what is happening and the thing that I think a lot of people aren't saying out loud is that they're forcing these teens and young adults to detransition or to halt or reverse their gender transition, which the fear is that they will start seeking non-medically advised care to obtain and get the treatment that they're seeking for. So, that is kind of our understanding of what's been going on behind the scenes with UPMC.

• 5:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, I also just want to say like, I've had like insurance bullshit where like, I've been taken off of my stuff for like a month and a half and it sucks. It is awful. It is psychologically painful in ways that are like difficult to describe. Like, it really sucks.

• 5:55Speaker 08

  Right, from a physical standpoint, you're gonna get side effects, you're gonna have issues while coming off these medications. But from a mental standpoint, right, it's these people who are not your doctors are determining what your care is and it's incredibly harmful in both the physical and the mental aspect of it.

• 6:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 09

  And again, we're just talking about health care for trans youth. At the end of the day, and a lot of them were on puberty blockers and just a therapy, they're taken away. Any person's over 18 years old, they're legally, you know, able to vote, should be able to make their own decisions if they want to with their health care. So, it's really disgusting and disheartening what is happening. And here in Pennsylvania, UPMC was the first large health provider, which is one of the largest in the state, to start this domino effect of stopping care for trans youth.

• 6:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I mean, it creates this hideous situation where just like because of a combination of like some gender bureaucrat at the White House was like, I get to decide what your gender is now, and I get to decide what your healthcare is because of that. And then you have this like cascading effect of like some like hospital admin was like, well, I don't know, I think it would be easier for like me personally, if you didn't have healthcare. And it's just like it's cascading to the hospital system. It's horrible.

• 7:14Speaker 08

  It's horrible. And I appreciate that Dina makes that point of we use this phrase gender affirming care to specify what's going on, but it's healthcare. It's, you know, not that different from someone being forced to come off diabetes medication or medication for a heart problem, you know, this medication that makes people be able to function in their life and feel safe and physically well, that's what's being forced out of their lives. So it is healthcare, absolutely.

• 7:39Speaker 09

  And going into spaces that are affirming for them, you know, as kids, you know, so now that they don't have this affirming space, have to go into spaces that are not affirming, they will further damage their mental, you know, when they're going to spaces being this gender and all of the other things that happen. You know, this is what we're talking about, just a safe affirming place where you can access safe affirming healthcare.

• 8:04Speaker 07

  I think it's worth expanding on that a little bit in the sense that like, a space that's not affirming, isn't like a neutral space, it's one that's actively hostile to you?

• 8:15Speaker 09

  Absolutely.

• 8:15Speaker 07

  And that also just sucks. Like, it's hideous. And it's just like, they've decided to inflict this on a bunch of children because they're mildly afraid.

• 8:26Speaker 08

  Right. They're afraid and they're afraid of losing money. And there's no way to say that it's a neutral space, right? It's affirming or hostile. And that's the risk where kids can't go to the doctor and feel safe at this point.

• 8:37Speaker 07

  And it has like cascading issues too, right? We've been talking about this a lot in like the context of some like the Medicaid cuts, but it's like anything that deters people from going to the doctor prevents them from going in for like other stuff that, you know, could be treated pretty easily. But then suddenly if it's like, okay, well, my hospital's now in a hostile space, people just like stop going in altogether until something really serious happens that could have been prevented if the hospital wasn't being assholes to them, like.

• 9:05Speaker 08

  You know, I think the fear is what we're gonna see as the side effects or the consequences of this, you know, we've been told by our supervisors or management at UPMC that we should expect an influx of suicidal teenagers or young adults, teenagers who are struggling with greater symptoms of depression, or even psychosis, like acute psychotic symptoms are a studied side effect of abruptly coming off your hormones. So not only do you now have these teens and young adults who will be scared to access their care, feel like they can't use their name, their pronouns, get the care that they need, but they're struggling with mental health crises that are due to the changes that we're seeing

• 9:47Speaker 08

  due to the withdrawal of their healthcare. So you're seeing this in so many different aspects hitting them. And then the providers in this hospital system, and I'm sure we're seeing this all over the country, the providers are here to pick up what's happening that's a decision based on administrative opinions. And like we said before, fear.

• 10:06Speaker 07

  Wait, so that was straight up hospital admin told you that that was what was going to happen?

• 10:10Speaker 08

  So basically, after this went into place, I work in a suicide prevention clinic. So we were told by the people that we work with to be ready and just start having meetings and having discussions on how to better support these kids, knowing that through research, we found that coming off of hormones can cause increased risk of suicidal thoughts, psychosis and depression.

• 10:33Speaker 07

  Sure as fuck does that.

• 10:35Speaker 08

  Yes. And so it's like physical side effects, but also if you're forced to detransition, you're going to be physically unsafe in a space where you're no longer maybe passing or you're no longer able to be yourself. So you're at greater risk of harassment and bullying, which then in turn can cause higher risks of suicidal thoughts.

• 10:51Speaker 07

  It's just like so hideous that there's people like you in the hospital system who can just tell them that this is going to happen and they're doing it anyways?

• 10:59Speaker 08

  It's hard because it's coming down so many layers, right? So we're hearing it maybe from our direct management who hearts are in the best place. They didn't make these decisions, but where they're being told to follow up our management who are making these decisions. And yes, because they work in the hospital, they know the implications of it, but the fear is outweighing the risks and that's what we're trying to fight against.

• 11:18Speaker 07

  The lightest possible response that I have to this is I'm thinking about that Lord Farquaad line from Shrek where he goes, "Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make." It's like, these House of Lords are literally doing that. They're like, "Yeah, no, some of these kids may die, but like, whatever, that's fine. I don't have to deal with like, maybe a lawsuit in like, three years."

• 11:38Speaker 09

  But they will absolutely still have to deal with lawsuits.

• 11:42Speaker 07

  Yep, yep.

• 11:43Speaker 09

  At the end of the day, these are people's basic human rights. They're a bunch of dumb ones. So there will be lawsuits that happen because of that. Again, what the president did was not law at all whatsoever. It was just a directive to say, "Hey, this is something that we should do." This is not nothing that he can actually put into law. So what they're doing is obviamente. The feds are just fishing to see what they can get away with and what they can't get away with. This is all about having autonomy over our healthcare and our own at the end of the day. And they're starting with the most vulnerable population of people, which are trans youth.

• 12:21Speaker 08

  Yeah, they're just testing, right? This is a test to see what else they can get away with.

• 12:25Speaker 09

  Absolutely. This is the test. And they're failing miserably. Instead of fighting them back, you want to fight us back. Instead of standing up and saying, "We're not going to do this." Because it's not going to stop with trans kids. It never stopped with trans people at all whatsoever. It starts with trans people.

• 12:42Speaker 08

  And Dina makes a good point. I mean, I know, Mia, you aren't based out of Pennsylvania, but in Pennsylvania, gender affirming care remains legal from a state level. And the city of Pittsburgh, which we are located in, has been working really hard to protect trans youth. So the executive order that was put in place by Trump, one, is not a federal law, and two, is not at all supported by state or citywide laws. So from a legal standpoint, you know, what we've learned from consulting with people like Dina, who have been doing this work much longer than we have, we've talked with our local ACLU and other government organizations that this would not hold up in court. So, you know, that's why the fight, I think, is starting here and hoping to get bigger.

• 13:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, a lot of the way this administration does stuff is just by like writing it down on paper and then hoping that they can just sort of shock and awe terror people into complying. But like if you don't comply, they can't make you like it's, you know, I mean, this is only seen across issue areas, right? Like if people don't comply with ICE agents, it suddenly becomes incredibly hard for them to just like carry out mass deportations. If people don't comply with their hospital crackdowns, it's actually really hard for them to stop kids from getting gender affirming care. But if you give up, then yeah, it's really easy.

• 13:57Speaker 09

  Right, right. Giving up before the fight really starts. Yeah. At some level of this, this is what they want. They're okay with it. You know, because it doesn't really matter. Like, you know, it doesn't matter which way it goes. Do we really want to fight it? No, we don't want this. It's just a small group of peoples. We're not going to fight it. And if they fight it and they win, then we'll give it back, whatever. Like, and they have armies of lawyers. UPMC has armies of lawyers that can really go and really attack this from all different angles. Bring in community ad kids, bring together all these, you know, the Women's Law Project, ACLU, all these different folks to come in with them

• 14:38Speaker 09

  and really hammer it to this administration. But they choose to not do that and choose to be complicit in the bull crap.

• 14:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, 100%. Okay, so we unfortunately need to go to ads. When we come back, we will talk about how we're going to fight back. And yeah, it'll be great.

• 15:06Speaker 07

  We are back. So remarkably quickly after this stuff all started, there's a pretty large protest like outside of the hospital to get them to stop doing this. Can you talk about how this all sort of started to come together and how these efforts got organized?

• 15:24Speaker 09

  So I started hearing rumbles about this in December. And in January, you know, once he got into office and things, you know, immediately, he signed that executive order, I think like a little bit after that. And by April, we start activating and figuring out what we wanted to do because UPMC had made that first directive to not accept any more trans youth at all whatsoever, using young adults, anyone under the age of nineteen. So we did our first action in April, I may start following up, getting information out, disseminating the right information out to community members and doing all of the behind

• 16:05Speaker 09

  the scenes work, connecting folks to the necessary resources that they need so we could, you know, start fighting back at UPMC.

• 16:14Speaker 08

  Lo and behold, us, Dina and Transuniting have been doing a lot of work to kind of set the stage for us to get involved, which is really awesome. We were made aware of what's going on with UPMC well after, you know, Dina and some of the community members have been. So I believe it was early June, maybe end of May, some of my really amazing coworkers and I decided, you know, we can't really just sit back and do nothing. And I think at the clinic I work in, there was a big feeling of helplessness. You know, what can we do? How do we fight back on our bosses? You know, we were feeling stuck and we are a suicide prevention clinic. We're not specifically a gender clinic, but because we know that there's a higher proportion of trans and gay youth who are at risk of suicide than the general population, we work with a lot of trans youth. So we were seeing

• 16:59Speaker 08

  this impact us directly in the sense of the work that we do. So some of my coworkers wrote a letter to UPMC explaining the way that we're feeling about this, asking them to reverse this decision. The letter discussed several local laws and state laws that would protect them as well as hit them where they hurt as far as discussing the money that they have and the available funds they have to fight this. The letter was incredibly signed by almost four hundred, actually I think at this point, over four hundred staff at the hospital system we work in. That's amazing. It's amazing, yes. And while this letter was being drafted, Some of my coworkers met with consultants through the ACLU and other local organizations to one make sure what we were doing was okay, that we were

• 17:44Speaker 08

  not jeopardizing too much of our own safety as far as employment goes, but also to get their opinions and start to rally organizations. So the ACLU has to put us in touch with Dina and Transuniting and Dina jumped on it and less than two weeks she and her coworkers had created and built up a rally for us, which we had outside of the UPMC building downtown just a couple of weeks ago and we had local lawmakers speak. I spoke along with my coworkers who helped write the letter. Dina spoke and Dina, if you want to speak more about that rally, I think that'd be awesome.

• 18:18Speaker 09

  Sure. I just want to say this is what allyship looks like, you know, accomplices in the fight against this, you know, heinous crime because this is exactly what it is, you know, it's an attack on trans lives, but we brought a lot of folks together, community members, politicians and workers from UPMC all together. We had about three hundred and some folks that showed up when we were on the steps of UPMC's headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh. And we also coordinated with some statewide folks that are actually doing a couple of actions throughout this month, but they, there were two actions that happened that same day as well. And, you know, what is happening is not right. So we had to make sure that the community is being

• 19:02Speaker 09

  educated and we're activating community members at the same time. We also wanted them to know about this fund that we were launching to help the kiddos in this situation because folks are still going to need that, you know, be able to access some type of healthcare. So, you know, making sure that they are aware of their options and making sure they're able to have funds to do so because, you know, with everything happening, they are probably going to get cut off of their healthcare insurance as well. You know, and that is a real scare. I mean, if that happens, then what, you know? So that was kind of what happened with that situation and it was amazing, you know, everybody was amazing, but I just, you know, definitely want to shout out to Dina and the whole team because

• 19:48Speaker 09

  listen, we need more accomplices like that in this fight, you know, we are a small but mighty community and we will not be able to get the things done that needs to be done to protect not just us, but all of us if we're not all united.

• 20:02Speaker 08

  Yeah, thank you, Dean. I mean, we couldn't do it without you guys and the power you've got and the beautiful voices that you bring to the fight. It's truly awesome.

• 20:10Speaker 07

  I think one of the things that we're seeing from this and, you know, that we've seen from all of the anti-trans repression is that, like, on the one hand, yeah, trans people are like one and a half percent of the population and we're disproportionately like the most broke and fucked up percentage of that population. And also, we are significantly better organizers, like person for person than all of the people fighting us. It's like, yeah, like, they have unbelievable amounts of resources. However, comma, we are really good at, like, this specific thing of organizing and fighting back and.

• 20:45Speaker 08

  Yeah, well, sadly, like, trans people have had to fight for so long, right? They've learned how to do it. And their loved ones, man, like, they were there when we were at the rally a couple of weeks ago. I had parents of trans kids hugging me, you know, like, they show up and they fight for their people and it's really empowering.

• 21:02Speaker 09

  We don't have no choice but to do that, you know? We don't have no choice but to show, we don't have no choice but to fight because we had to all of our lives in order to, you know, continue to walk in our truth, you know?

• 21:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, and like, I mean, you know, I could talk about sort of the structural factors that make that true, but there's also just, if you're gonna be trans, at some point, you have to choose to accept it. And like, the fact that it's an identity that, like, you have to make a choice to be like, I'm gonna fucking do this. And like, okay, I am this person that I've always known that I am, etc., etc. I think that also just like, it selects, for like, a small extent, for people who are willing to just like, fuck it, let's go. And, I don't know, that's been a thing I've always, like, appreciated about the way that, like, these kind of organizing efforts unfold.

• 21:53Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 07

  Okay, so let's talk about what the reaction has been to the protest, to the actions, both from the hospital and from the community at large.

• 22:13Speaker 08

  Looking at both of those things, I guess, one of the coolest reactions we're seeing is a lot of people coming out in solidarity who work at the hospital system. So the people who originally wrote the letter, who were part of this rally, we are trying to organize more community meetings, more town halls, contacting people through email, and Dina has been very involved in that, along with some other local organizations. But the word is spreading and we're getting in touch with a lot of people in a lot of different departments throughout the hospital who are here and want to show up. You know, we're seeing physicians, social workers. UPMC is also, of course, a massive insurance conglomerate, and we're seeing people who work in the insurance side of things come out to support this. So that's been really amazing.

• 22:57Speaker 08

  As far as what things are looking like as administration feedback, we are being told the same response repeatedly, that UPMC is doing what they have to do to quote unquote abide with the law. And they're making the decisions that they are making because of the quote unquote law. And they will continue to offer behavioral health support to trans youth and young adults to support them through this crisis. So, you know, we are trying to meet together and talk a lot about what that means. Of course, there is some fear of will that be stripped away? You know, we actually saw not that long ago, I think it was only last week, that in Ohio, they built into their state budget

• 23:39Speaker 08

  that Medicaid can no longer cover quote unquote trans-affirming therapy. So this isn't even puberty blockers, it's not hormones, it's talk therapy. And what will that mean? You know, we hope that we're protected here in Pennsylvania, but there's always risks that this can come into place at a federal level. So these talking points that they're sticking to, it's not so black and white as they're presenting it. You know, they're not abiding with any certain law. They, we don't know that therapy is protected, but that's what's kind of, they're sticking to, and that's just what's repeatedly being stated throughout various press contacts that are being made through the hospital.

• 24:13Speaker 09

  They're doing whatever the fuck they want to do.

• 24:14Speaker 07

  Yeah. To put it lightly, yes.

• 24:17Speaker 09

  Yeah, this is what's happening. And like, we just have to continue to fight. Because they want to take us back to the nineteen fifty's. And that's not gonna happen. That's not gonna happen at all whatsoever. This ain't nineteen fifty, this is two thousand twenty five. And you can take away all you want to. We're gonna fight and we're gonna put it back in place. A lot of times it is so much harder to take things away and try to get them back. But, you know, unfortunately, we're here. And a lot of Americans didn't think that we would be in this predicament. I mean, it's not gonna get nothing but worse. So hopefully it opens up people's eyes. And we have to unite as a people. That's it, that's it, that's all around all of these issues.

• 25:01Speaker 09

  There's so much happening, so much being thrown at us at one time. But we have to unite as minority people. Or we will be in a place like nineteen fifty's. Because, I mean, we're about to be in a great depression. By January, we will be in a great depression. Everybody get ready. Hope you got your car good.

• 25:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 25:24Speaker 07

  Well, and I think there's another element of this too, which is that like, you can look at them doing the like, oh, we're just following orders thing. But there's no actual orders, which makes it even more pathetic than like the original. We're just following orders people, which again, and I want to note this, just following orders did not prevent you from being tried at Nuremberg. Like that was found to not be a defense. So like.

• 25:46Speaker 09

  Right.

• 25:47Speaker 07

  remembering of where that went down history. But the second thing too is like, in terms of like, there being so many different things where like, everyone needs to sort of pull together and fight this. The other advantage that we have that's different from like thirties Nazi Germany, right? Is it like, this stuff is all really unpopular? Like, everyone hates it, everyone hates Trump. His approval ratings are terrible. The approval ratings for everything he's doing across the board are just really bad. The thing about the Nazis was that like,

• 26:13Speaker 07

  Nazi Germany people wanted.

• 26:16Speaker 09

  They were unified.

• 26:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, like at least to some extent, they were able to smash like, you know, they were able to sort of wipe out everyone who was opposing them, but like significant portions of the population wanted all of that shit to happen. And that is just not true here.

• 26:27Speaker 09

  Right.

• 26:28Speaker 07

  And, you know, our job is to make sure that like the fact that nobody wants the shit to happen actually turns into it not happening. Instead of just, you know, this unhinged autocratic, like your king is like writing decrees on a piece of paper. And suddenly hospitals are following them, even though there's just nothing behind it.

• 26:46Speaker 09

  Nothing, nothing but bull crap. But again, we just have to band together. I think folks still, in a sense, they're in that mind frame of 2024. It's like, this is not 2024 at all whatsoever. And if you don't get with it, I don't know. Yeah, but we're going to continue to fight. That's not going to stop. We're going to continue to, you know, make waves and activate, educate people about the right and, you know, create spaces or trans youth be and be safe as much as possible. And do it all, but as much as we can do, we will.

• 27:25Speaker 07

  Yeah. And I think that also raises a question for people listening to the show, which is that what can people do to put pressure on this hospital or their local hospital to do this? And how can people sort of help the effort to get UPMC to fucking give kids their healthcare?

• 27:47Speaker 09

  Absolutely. So what they can do is they can go visit TransUnitedPGH.org. They could sign a petition that we have up. You can donate to the fund that we have going currently locally. What they can do is, you know, work with their borough or city councils to create legislation to protect trans kids and youth and adults and on statewide levels as well. But what we have to do is we have to put pressure from the top and from the bottom, you know, on the government to, you know, the state government. To make these changes, because again, there are no laws in place at all whatsoever.

• 28:30Speaker 09

  So now we have to take that and we have to make laws statewide in each state to protect not just trans youth and young adults, but trans individuals and any minority groups that are being attacked by this orange man's regime.

• 28:47Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's a lot of rallying together. And I think what we've seen here is amazingly, we were all able to come together as a community and fight. And I think reaching out to your local organizations, I mean, if every city had a Dina Stanley, they would be in a much better position to fight this fight. But, oh, you know, working together with the people who know how to organize and fight, but also not be afraid to get your feet wet in that act of organizing. You know, we have been working with Action Network to open up letter writing to our community so that you don't have to be a UPMC staff to let UPMC know how you're feeling. We're trying to host more town halls and community meetings. We

• 29:29Speaker 08

  hit Instagram. We have an account called Providers for Trans Justice where we're trying to get the word out so we can rally more together. I think a big piece is if you're able to contribute financially, Transuniting has their Youth Healing Fund, I believe, Dina, that's what it's called, where people can financially support trans youth who are having trouble accessing their care. And especially knowing what we know, what's going to happen with Medicaid, this is even more important. So, I mean, if you want to support us in our fight against UPMC, I think it's be loud, it's not stop. I believe that the hospital is just waiting for everybody to quiet down. But we're only going to get louder because these taper plans just started for these teens and young adults. They're

• 30:11Speaker 08

  still on their medications. And the further away that gets, the louder we're going to be because the risk is really going to increase as the months go on.

• 30:20Speaker 09

  Absolutely. So, don't stop. Be loud all the time. Be accomplices in this fight because no matter what, know that you're next. So you can either join in or you can wait for your turn. And by that time, it may be too late and there won't be no one to be able to stand up and fight.

• 30:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, and the thing I've been saying on the show a lot is it's not even just that after they come for us, they're going to come for you. It's that in order to come for us, they are going through you first. Like, that's what this whole administration has been. They are willing to destroy the entire global economy. They are willing to turn the US into a police state. They are willing to, again, just grab people off the street. In order to destroy very, very small groups of people, they are willing to immiserate the lives of every single person in this country. And the good news is that means that because we're all targets, we all have the capacity to resist together and to beat them. And we're going to.

• 31:18Speaker 09

  It's just that people have to understand that, you know, that we are targets. May understand what is actually happening. Like, these attacks on trans folks, it's not about trans individuals. It's about autonomy of a woman's body. The attacks over immigrants, it's not about the immigrants. It's about citizenship for black and brown people that have it. You know what I mean? So this, again, is just about having control over folks, period. And as soon as people understand that and know that you will, you know, be a slave of this country in a way that you've never been, because we all are. But a slave of this country like you've never been before, you better get with it and open your eyes up and stand up and fight back.

• 32:00Speaker 09

  Or you will be in a situation that you would just be sitting there thinking like, I should have, could have, but you did.

• 32:09Speaker 09

  So stand up now.

• 32:10Speaker 08

  The fight we're having with UPMC, I mean, of course, it's important. It's, this is my employer, this is where I live, but it is just a small fight in the broader scheme of the fights we have. And, you know, this brings up a good point of. We fight for trans youth because of what might come next, but it's already coming, right? We have a lot of people of color who are already scared to leave the country because they don't know if they'll be allowed back in with their passport status. We have, you know, women who are no longer able to access abortion care or reproductive care in many places in this country. I mean, it's not if it's gonna happen, it's when, and it already is. So the more we fight and the louder we can be, for the people who are hit the most, the more likely that this fight will drag on and hit them. So less fights can

• 32:53Speaker 08

  start in the future. But it's happening. We're seeing it everywhere.

• 32:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think that's an amazing place to end. Thank you two both so much for coming on and for fighting this fight.

• 33:05Speaker 08

  Absolutely. Thank you for having us. I think it's really awesome to get the platform to show what we're doing and hope people, hopefully people will feel less scared, right? There's power in numbers, there's power in solidarity. The more people we have fighting along us, the easier it gets to fight. The power is the people and we are the people.

• 33:23Speaker 07

  I am incredibly looking forward to talking to you two again when we fucking win this.

• 33:27Speaker 08

  Yeah, I love somebody.

• 33:30Speaker 07

  It's gonna be great.

• 33:31Speaker 08

  I will be back. Yes, we'll pop champagne over the microphones, right? Okay.

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• 35:57Speaker 13

  This is It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, we're talking about movies, one of my favorite topics that I never get to talk about on the show, but I'm able to talk about it this week because I found a way to talk about how movies are covering the death of woke. And to help me in this doomed endeavor, I have recruited artist designer Bailey Newposter. Welcome. Hi, it's lovely to be here. Bailey also is behind the new Stop Cup City show art, which will eventually go public, maybe in a few weeks, whenever I finally finish that episode. So keep pounding me about it. So, we're gonna talk about two films that came out this past July,

• 36:41Speaker 13

  Superman and Eddington, which I think are actually very closely related despite being very different from each other. I believe they're kind of equal and opposite films. And I realized this after I saw Eddington at a theater in Brooklyn and walked outside to the posters for Superman and Eddington being right next to each other, which are very different. And then I realized this is actually kind of the same movie, but doing like, or they're, they're very related films, right? Now, I, I think they really are like the equal and opposite of each other. Both are like uber contemporary, they're very online, they have a sort of like gestural politics.

• 37:23Speaker 13

  And I think they're both reactions to a conflicting view of American decline. Both have surprise Tucker Carlson appearances and both have failed cancellations. There's, there's a lot of overlap in some of the, uh, plot points of this film. And, and I think what they're actually kind of saying about current American culture, current, current American politics and how it like relates to social media. I think we should first talk about Superman to get over that so we can, I discuss Eddington, because I need to discuss Eddington in relation to Superman in some ways. So, I guess people have been enjoying this film. I think a big part of why is how the film tackles geopolitics, oddly enough.

• 38:08Speaker 13

  The geopolitical conflict in the film was most likely, based on when it was written, trying to pull from like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But because the film took a long time to write, by the time they shot the film, there was a whole other geopolitical conflict happening, which influenced, at the very least, the visual language of the film, which, which pulls from Israel and Palestine.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  It's nice to see it like represented, I guess, on a blockbuster film. Like, that's what it feels like. It felt like nice to see it, you know?

• 38:39Speaker 13

  It's like an acknowledgement of the atrocities happening.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:43Speaker 13

  Like, essentially, a Benjamin Netanyahu stand-in is basically like the secondary villain of the film. And at this point, I guess we'll just have to talk about hashtag spoilers. If you haven't seen these and you want to, you can go see them. If you're okay with hearing us talk about it, and that might make you want to see them more, then feel free. I don't think spoilers actually ruin a movie. But yeah, like Netanyahu dying in the film gets like a massive, a massive crowd reaction, at least when I saw it opening night. And people definitely feel a degree of like catharsis, like watching superheroes stop the IDF from massacring civilians, who were, you were like, you know, like Arab civilians.

• 39:25Speaker 13

  Like, at that point, they transcend like the Russia-Ukraine aspect, and it's like very, very clear what they're visually pulling from.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think the falafel cart guy is the one that like, that's crazy.

• 39:38Speaker 13

  Lex Luthor executes a falafel cart owner. And I'll talk about more about how the film like riffs on Palestine in a bed. There's other aspects, I think, of how Superman is reacting to what James Gunn sees as like American decline. Because I think Superman as a film is kind of a partially vapid take on like the corruption of sincere, positive futures and like the loss of hope. It honestly feels very like Biden 2020. It's like a battle for the soul of America type thing. And I also see this as like a reaction to the victory of toxic masculinity, especially among like the Twitch streamer class and like manfluencers like Andrew Tate.

• 40:20Speaker 13

  And instead, you have Superman as this like goody-two-shoes boy scout, the way he like, he should be. And this is the aspect of the film I think works the best, is honestly is their characterization of Superman. The cast is phenomenal. David Cornswett does a really good job. And I do like this version of masculinity. It's still funny to see like posts online of people being like, "Wow, I'm actually gonna try, you know, being nice to my neighbors now that I saw Superman." I'm like, what the fuck?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  I'm gonna pick up my girlfriend today and be happy when I'm around her.

• 40:53Speaker 13

  Yeah, so that feels a little odd, but like, I guess it's good that people can feel like Superman when they're doing good things, helping an old lady cross the street or whatever. I think that aspect of like decline, I sympathize with this, this, this like loss of like positive masculinity. And I think Superman can be a symbol for that, for, for new people who are addicted to watching like Sneako or whatever.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 13

  I think that's probably good. And in some ways, I, I think this film, honestly, like the exact same film would have been received a lot worse if Kamala Harris was president. I think that the fact that everyone feels so

• 41:28Speaker 02

  hopeless.

• 41:29Speaker 13

  Like depressed, hopeless and defeated because of Trump. I think this actually contributes to the positive reception this film is taking. And, uh, myself and a few other people kind of even predicted this like back in November, trying to like forecast like the reception of Superman and like Fantastic Four and like all these companies who are trying to like save the superhero genre from like eating itself right now.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 13

  But for me, at least there is a more insidious aspect of Superman that I, I do not see being discussed as much. Uh, beyond, you know, James Gunn still, still obviously upset that he got canceled. Um, and it's, and it's making that a core plot point in this film is he's actually Superman and he shouldn't have been canceled.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  He shouldn't be canceled and the people canceling him were monkeys at typewriters. And

• 42:16Speaker 13

  Which we honestly, that, that part is true.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 13

  The people trying to cancel James Gunn were monkeys at, at, like on typewriters.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  I, I thought that bit was great. I thought that bit was very, I was like, that's very like one panel gag in a comic, which is, you know, wonderful, very, it, the movie felt very Grant Morrison.

• 42:34Speaker 13

  Totally. Those, those are the aspects that I really liked.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Staying on the, on the political subject, I think you could draw a very good analogy between this and, or not, just this is, feels like this year's Barbie, if that makes sense.

• 42:49Speaker 13

  Sure.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Like the kind of like corporate political, not girls get it done this time, obviously, this is like more of like, uh, anti, not even anti-toxic masculinity. I think it's just pro this form of masculinity, which I think is more productive.

• 43:02Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Uh, but I also think, yeah, there, there is like neoliberal stuff going on. And also the fact that the movie, because it's a blockbuster, can't properly handle anything. Like, it kind of has to just leave everything at the road.

• 43:15Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  On the side of the road by the end of it. Yeah, I don't know.

• 43:18Speaker 13

  This is very much similar to Barbie, in which I kind of had the same reaction to. It's like, they're like, okay, movies, but I find the political posturing actually slightly insulting in a certain way, uh, based on how

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 43:32Speaker 13

  shallow it is. And, and, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually get into that more on Superman here. I've seen people talking about how like emotional they got during the, the scenes, like very evocative of the Palestinian genocide, like people like, you know, crying and, and tearing up and, and feeling so seen. And on, on again, on one hand, that's good, but that also gives me a bit of an icky feeling. And someone else expressed this very well, that the co-host of the Hit Factory podcast, at Deep Impact Crier on, on, on Twitter, uh, she's the host of the podcast Hit Factory, which is about 90s cinema. I think her name's Carly. And, and she, she expressed this kind of soft disgust that was growing in me, but

• 44:17Speaker 13

  both kind of during some of these scenes and, and frankly, watching people's reaction to it. She said, quote, "That's the point, isn't it? To immerse you in a fantasy where civilian life matters, to distract you from the reality where civilian life does not matter, to offer you abstractions of already abstracted images of imperial violence, so that you can experience catharsis, escape, and absolution. A movie like Superman exists to take the literal spectacle of genocide, filling our feed for two years, and further mediate slash abstract the spectacle, so it can be transposed onto another product of empire, and strategic interpassivity to keep us ideologically and emotionally confined to its order. Any empathetic impulse engendered by forms and aesthetics of imperial violence

• 45:00Speaker 13

  and memetic rhythms of technology it trades in confines us to the limits of the language of empire. It keeps us operating on its terms. We need cinema that ruptures familiar imperial forms and its rhythms." So movies like Superman and the way that they depict atrocities actually like make us more indebted to the imperial system because the imperial system can give us a product to make us feel catharsis about the violence that the empire actually does. And that catharsis keeps us going like that's what allows us to not like fucking destroy everything around us because we get enough of that catharsis that it makes us able to keep living. And that's in the end what products like Superman are kind of doing.

• 45:43Speaker 13

  They're making us feel just good enough by expressing the displeasure we have at what our government is doing, but still making us like fully married to the existence of that empire. Like we can't live without it because of the comfort it provides us, including this cathartic comfort, watching fucking Guy Gardner stop the Palestinian genocide.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 46:05Speaker 13

  If you told me that sentence like five years ago, I would have not believed you. I would have not believed that a cinematic depiction of Guy Gardner is going to stop the Palestinian genocide, that hot girl is gonna is gonna kill Netanyahu. I would have I would have not believed you for a single second. And that kind of shows the the level of absurdity that we're kind of dealing with. And that aspect, I think, is what makes what Superman is doing actually far more insidious than any of the controversial politics in something like Eddington.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  I also think that the whole like indebted to empire thing, I think this is like the case in point example of that, considering Superman is literally a symbol of American values.

• 46:46Speaker 13

  Or certainly has like become that and like, you know, had a more positive version of that in some ways during his like birth in World War II as a way as like a symbol of like Nazi resistance, but instead now is, you know, very much turned into like truth, justice and the American way to the point where a lot of his, you know, like immigrant aspects have been have been kind of undercut in the in the past, in the past few years.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw an article I didn't actually end up fully reading because it was on the I forgot what it was than the Washington Post or maybe it was the New York Times where it was it was like blocked or something.

• 47:18Speaker 13

  One of the big two, yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was an author who I think was an immigrant and it was like talking about how Superman undercuts the immigrant experience and that he is like literally born on the planet anyway. So it's not really like it's not necessarily, he doesn't go through any like cultural conflict, I guess, you know?

• 47:39Speaker 13

  Totally.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  I also wondered about, well, you know, I guess it doesn't, I guess it doesn't, I was gonna, I was gonna think about the, taking the immigrant aspect and then talking about one of the main parts of the movie, which was his parents are like, you need to go and make a harem on Earth? Or whatever is sort of interesting.

• 48:00Speaker 13

  Yes. The aspect that his immigrant background has been very corrupted in this film, like, there's like a certain like, like foreign evilness associated with Superman now. Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  You're an immigrant and like, that's good and that's great, very American, but you shouldn't be what your parents were, be your like foreign parents because they wanted a harem of lovers and to like conquer the West or whatever.

• 48:24Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Which, you know, considering the fact that this was written during the Russia-Ukraine thing and not mainly during the Israel-Palestine thing, I don't know if that's like, but because that's in the movie, I have to think about it. You know what I mean?

• 48:39Speaker 13

  Yeah, I don't think James Gunn was conceptualizing of that when he, when he wrote it.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  I think it's an unfortunate product of what happened aesthetically, but it's not that big of a deal, but it is weird. Like it's something to think about.

• 48:50Speaker 13

  That aspect did not bother me as much as it did like for some other people.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 13

  For my overall thoughts in the film, I think it's basically as good as every other James Gunn film, which frankly just is not my cup of tea. I've never really loved the Guardians films. I don't think James Gunn's a very compelling filmmaker. I thought it was just fine. It definitely felt like episode 13 of a TV show that doesn't exist.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 13

  Which as a comic book appreciator, I like. As a film appreciator, I don't like. But certainly the more campy aspects, I enjoyed a lot. I think now is time to go on a quick break and then we will return to discuss the anti-woke cinematic masterpiece of the 2020s.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Eddington.

• 49:39Speaker 13

  All right, we're back. So I would like to now talk about Eddington for the rest of the episode, essentially. But like I said before, Eddington is the equal and opposite of Superman. Both are very contemporary, very online, both are politics gesture, and I think they're reactionary, but they're specifically reactionary in very different ways. I think they're reacting to two very different types of decline in America, or like perceived decline in America. So Eddington is directed by Ari Aster, who made Hereditary, Midsommar, and Boz Frayd. I'll talk more about my thoughts on Ari Aster at the end in a conversation with Jenny Danger. But I think Eddington is not anti-woke, actually.

• 50:24Speaker 13

  I was lying. I think Eddington is a post-woke expression of kind of scared nihilism, or like a depiction of the nihilism inherent to American politics right now. Like, everything is a conspiracy theory, there's this specter of cancellation around the corner, and like, speaking of specters, I think so much of both Superman and Eddington, for me, is like, there's this specter of woke-ism that's haunting America. And both films are trying to deal with that specter. I think Superman partially mourns that wokeness, and Eddington deals with its more like actually like haunting and like a ghostly quality, some of its more like uncanny qualities sometimes.

• 51:07Speaker 13

  More than anything, Eddington digs into how we have created a profoundly antisocial culture, which even leftists contribute to, and in some cases, actually conceptualize that, as a form of like based praxis, and how we've all become just reflections of our internet feeds, and use politics as a justification for personal cruelty, or at the very least, use politics as an outlet to channel antisocial behavior in a way that you can self-perceive as being morally good. And I think both the left and the right do this. Obviously, like, the right does this with their like pedophile crusader shit, never mind the whole Epstein thing, just ignore that, ignore all of the actual right-wing pedophiles. But.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  It was entirely about aesthetics. It's about.

• 51:47Speaker 13

  Absolutely.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Who looks like a pedophile to me? And it's the gay person.

• 51:53Speaker 13

  Aestheticized politics, right? Which is huge on, I think, political extremism in general. Politics start developing more aestheticized forms. You know, this is true among anarchists. And I think fascism more purely, I think, is actually like politics aestheticized to the point where you're aestheticizing, you know, like, like people and like culture and like race, right? Like that is a whole, a way different version than, you know, like crust punks or like.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 13

  Like, like, you know, Black Bloc.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Did you see the, I don't remember what the account was. It was like something of Defense tweeted like some AI, like from one of those like military fiction like accounts or something. There was like a picture of like a white dude holding like a fucked up looking M4 because it was AI generated. And he's got like a bald eagle on his head.

• 52:39Speaker 13

  No, but that sounds great.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  It got tweeted today. It's like the fucking lamest thing I've ever seen. And like, I just don't even know, like, not only the fact that he's like, obviously, he's using a photo of somebody else, but it's not even a real picture of anybody. It's like a fake image of somebody that somebody else made.

• 52:59Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Like that he got off of like one of those like Gun LARP aesthetic accounts. I just found that very interesting. I don't know.

• 53:07Speaker 13

  Bailey, what did you think of Eddington?

• 53:10Speaker 02

  I adored it. I loved it. The moment that I that I knew that I was going to enjoy it was probably where it's revealed. The the energy plant is called Perfect Gold Magic Carp or whatever, which is like so funny. Like all those AI guys making all their products, like they're calling it Sauron's Eye or whatever.

• 53:30Speaker 13

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  So good. But I adored it. I think that Joaquin Phoenix is wonderful in it. He's a great actor. I think Ari Aster is like one of the few directors that can perfectly slot him into this like just neurotic, impotent man role, you know?

• 53:48Speaker 13

  Very impotent, yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Yes. So the scene that I really like, that I, I think about probably the most, or the character I think of probably the most is the, the homeless guy.

• 53:58Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  The, the homeless guy who wanders into the film and is the, you know, he's this, a stranger walks into a strange town, like, opening of the film. And then, all of the scenes where he's like, he kind of bothers everybody.

• 54:12Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Like, he's, you know, like in Gavin Newsom's, like, anti-homeless policies, you know, it's a, it's a very bipartisan, we have a bipartisan anti-homeless thing going on, obviously. And, he is also, like, even when his character, like, snaps and kills somebody, he, like, kills the homeless guy first, which I found very interesting.

• 54:35Speaker 13

  Yes, I think this is really crucial, that when, when, when the sheriff starts his murder rampage, the first expression of violence that he feels personally justified in doing, or feels catharsis in doing, isn't, isn't like, the fake woke mayor, it's not Antifa, it's the homeless guy. That is the first target of acceptable violence.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 13

  In, in the mind of, of, of the sheriff. And I think that is a very accurate look at American politics, and that's not something I've seen discussed very much in relation to the film.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  No, and I, I, in a way, he's still impotent after that. He's like, he's, he's not even enacting, I wouldn't even label that as political violence, I'd just label that as violence.

• 55:16Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Right? Like, earlier in the movie, all the, the, like, teen woke protesters are, like, sitting out in the street, and the homeless guy's kind of just standing, and like, he's like, "Hey, man, I don't have any money." Like, he's not even asking for anything.

• 55:28Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  He's just kind of standing there and making them all uncomfortable. You know, he's, he is, he is the specter of the other wandering into this town, and then everybody has to, like, and he's like, the, you know, the beginning of conflict, you know? Yeah, they're, they're like, the easiest group to other is the homeless, and the mentally unwell.

• 55:46Speaker 13

  No, I, I, I think that, that part of the film works really well, and I guess, this film has received a mixed reaction, which I talk a little bit about with, with Jay and E, which you'll, you'll hear in a sec, and- I guess I'll start by talking about how I believe Eddington works as a, as a piece of post-woke cinema. And I was talking about this with someone and they asked me what post-woke was. And I was a little confused because that's a term that I feel like I understand really well, but then I failed to accurately describe it to them. And I think it relates to like this whole cultural moment that we're in now, especially after the 2024 election, where we're facing this larger cultural backlash against, you know,

• 56:29Speaker 13

  woke TM and how that highlights like the limits of diversity, representation, and complicated language to explain topics that might actually be, you know, reasonable, but by expressing them, you sound very unreasonable. And I think what post-woke is, and the reason why Eddington is post-woke, and is not anti-woke, like Eddington's not a centrist movie. I think it actually is fairly political, but it's post-woke in such that it is a continuation of radical politics, which incorporates critiques of the woke era, what critics would describe as an overreach or excessive focus on language or singular identity, trading inaccessible

• 57:10Speaker 13

  education in favor of in-group signaling to prove personal political purity. I think post-woke eschews a shallow performative politics adopted to provide social capital, and instead may deliberately flaunt humor, camp, or reverence in ways that may have been labeled problematic or taboo during the peak of 2010's online activism, but often in a way that signals both accurate awareness of social issues as well as an exhaustion with or a playful rebellion against socially alienating language and ideas. And this can include using irony, parody, and camp to engage with social issues without the existential gravity or earnestness of prior education-focused eras. There may

• 57:54Speaker 13

  now be jokes, themes, or performances that skirt or playfully violate previous norms of cultural sensitivity, but not out of ignorance, but as a conscious reversal or escalation, while actually emphasizing material support over linguistic gestures and systematic pressure. Over individual, personal action. So that's what I mean by post woke. I had to workshop this definition with a friend earlier this morning. But I think that works for both like what Eddington is doing. I think that works for what events like Twinks versus Dolls is doing. How it's not, it's not anti woke and it's not purely reactionary against woke. It is, it is actually a continuation and an escalation while adapting to fit the current political climate.

• 58:39Speaker 13

  And, and still like reflecting on some of the shortcomings of the quote unquote woke era, which we see throughout Eddington a lot in the form of like, you know, performative politics, especially that like one like zoomer guy character.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:51Speaker 13

  Who, you know, goes on that whole rant about like abolishing whiteness to his parents. And based on like Googling these concepts like 30 minutes ago. And now feels like he has like an academic level understanding of whiteness as a concept.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  The intro to him, or I guess it's the second, it's the second time you see him, but he's at the, he's at the party or whatever. And like, he gives kind of an opinion to this girl that he has a crush on. They're talking about like, you know, whiteness and like privilege and stuff like that.

• 59:21Speaker 13

  And he. Class.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and class is the really like, cause clearly he, I think, I think he's supposed to kind of be like a lower class like character that then.

• 59:32Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Jumps up the ranks through political opportunism, right?

• 59:36Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  But yeah, he brings up class and is immediately shut down.

• 59:38Speaker 13

  And Googles Angela Davis seconds before.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:41Speaker 13

  But only, but only so that he can flirt with the girl more effectively. Which is very funny.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Incredible. It's so good.

• 59:50Speaker 13

  Other small bits like that, I really enjoyed that the like fake woke mayor, who's actually just like a tech company shill, has he him pronouns on his Zoom profile. Very, very funny to me.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  There are, there are so many little things in this movie.

• 1:00:06Speaker 13

  A lot of little stuff.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 13

  And like, very obviously, this is a film that Ari Aster wrote while like way too online during 2020. Like he was in like specifically Twitter, right? This is a extremely Twitter movie, which is both works for the movie and sometimes works against the movie. I have no idea how this film is going to age. Maybe it'll age very well because we'll use it as like a cultural artifact to like look back on and be like, yeah, that's kind of what 2020 felt like.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  In a couple of years, we're all gonna be looking back on it and saying, how dare they made fun of our new currency crypto, our new Bitcoins, everybody has Bitcoin.

• 1:00:41Speaker 13

  All of the Bitcoin stuff is really good.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  I like, I do also, I like that they gave the, I don't remember his name, the black police officer, who's like, kind of another like main through line for the movie.

• 1:00:55Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  But he, his only other thing is that he's really into crypto.

• 1:01:00Speaker 13

  He's so funny.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  So good.

• 1:01:02Speaker 13

  If, if anything, I think Eddington is really good at, at showcasing types of guy. There's so many like type of guys in this film, and I think that's, that's one of the real highlights. And at least for me, like I'm, obviously I've been very politically aware and engaged since, you know, 2018 or so, especially starting in 2020. So like, knowing this film is set in 2020, and knowing it kind of gets into what that year was like, I, I actually was able to go into the film pretty, pretty blind. And I was able to start calling shots really fast, as soon as, as soon as I realized like what, what Ari was doing. So like, the film starts off as this like political satire on like the absurdity

• 1:01:47Speaker 13

  of, of, of COVID lockdown America. And then we get into this like crime thriller genre, then it concludes with this action genre. But, but at the very start of the film, when it's just like this kind of, kind of quaint, like, like, like parody of lockdown America, I was like, okay, so at like 45 minute mark, we're gonna get George Floyd, right? At, at one hour in, there's gonna be riots, hour, you know, hour 15, there's gonna be some like Antifa type situation. And I, I called so many things, they just started happening like exactly what I thought they were going to. So I was not really surprised by anything in this film necessarily. I saw everything it was doing, like I, I, I saw it coming because I, you know, lived that for so much of 2020, especially like the 2020 protests

• 1:02:32Speaker 13

  in Portland. But also my familiarity with it was also, I was also able to then like diagnose how the film was subtly like diverting from reality and just showcasing what 2020 Felt like and like what 2020 was the minds of like people who believed in conspiracy theories more so than the actual reality of 2020, which I will also discuss more with Jenny Danger later. But I think specifically like the genre switching and then setting up all of these like 2020 hallmarks. I think the film does really well, doing like pretty solid foreshadowing and and hitting all the points that you're gonna have to hit if you're gonna make a film about 2020.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. We have the Wayfair pedophile closets.

• 1:03:10Speaker 13

  Totally. QAnon cults, child trafficking. Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  So I watched the movie Network like for four days before I watched this.

• 1:03:18Speaker 13

  I need to, I need to see Network.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:03:22Speaker 13

  Robert's been trying to get me to watch it for years. I just have never found the time, I guess. I don't know.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Ari Aster like explicitly brought up Network and said like he was thinking about it while making this movie, but that he wanted it to be more, um, because the network is definitely more like it tells you what it means.

• 1:03:37Speaker 13

  Sure.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Kind of thing and like what it thinks is the right way to do things.

• 1:03:40Speaker 13

  And this film purposely does not get into that too much. It it lets its own depiction tell you. Like it doesn't, it doesn't like stop you and explain.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:03:50Speaker 13

  Whatever like, you know, like what its politics are. I think the movie does the politics.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Yes, but I also, I, I, I thought in comparing it to Network, which I, I will try my hardest not to spoil the network. But there, there is definitely a theme in this and in the network of like forces above this. This movie is about political puppets, about like non-political actors, right? Joaquin Phoenix's character talks about how like he's not for the government, he's for the people kind of thing. So he's clearly doing like a populist thing.

• 1:04:23Speaker 13

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  And then by the end of the movie, he's all the more like he's literally a puppet, right? Like he's, he's like just a sack of meat.

• 1:04:33Speaker 13

  Yes.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  That is like, has to watch his mom is is not even his mom, mom.

• 1:04:38Speaker 13

  His mother-in-law?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Mother-in-law.

• 1:04:40Speaker 13

  Ex, ex, ex-mother-in-law.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Just incredible. One of the most horrifying concepts. But this movie is about like, yeah, a bunch of stuff happens, like stuff that's like they're, they're trying to kind of throw off the balance.

• 1:04:54Speaker 13

  Yeah, people are trying to make political change while dealing with this problem that politics is both very real, it's physical, it determines almost everything about our lives. But it's also very vague and nebulous and removed. So like, how do you exert agency over something that is both real and non-real? To be a political actor, you have to literally be like an astroturfed paid actor. The people that seemingly have the most political agency aren't even acting on any personal agency, but instead are just furthering the interests of other entities.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the corporations, the big money people, whoever's like in the background, right? The plane with the giant hand holding the globe and the

• 1:05:43Speaker 13

  The Antifa globalist jet, yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the, well, so, okay, here's a question. Cause, cause when I watched it, I thought that it was, um, it's, it's like paid actors, right? Like they're paid, like a paid militia group. That's, that's what I read it as.

• 1:05:57Speaker 13

  I think it's left for audience interpretation, whether, whether or not this is like the George Soros funded, Antifa like spec ops crew who are genuine about their beliefs, or if they're like a false flag crew, who's just going around sowing chaos to promote like political discord.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 13

  But not for like ideological reasons, like just, just through like false flag attacks. I think it's intentionally left up to the audience. And I think it's, it's depicting that because of all of like the Antifa conspiracy theories going around in 2020. I, and I view that as like, it's like a manifestation of, of how the right wing viewed this concept of Antifa, even though Antifa is actually just teenagers wearing black hoodies.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 13

  But they treated it as if it was this like organized group going around.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Doing pushups on their private jet.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Smoking big cigars, getting airdropped into, into small towns to go and like blow things up is like

• 1:06:52Speaker 13

  Exactly.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  So funny.

• 1:06:54Speaker 13

  Bustloads of Antifa are coming in.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then that leads into what I think is the best joke in the movie. The TikTok zoomer guy shooting while holding his phone. And then like it cuts immediately into like a now this, uh, like TikTok about the Antifa of like militia time is, and then he's like a hype guy and he's got like a Podcast where he's talking about if Michelle Obama is gonna run for president or whatever. So good. What did you, what did you think of, of kind of the, the semi cliffhanger conclusion of some of the, the threads, I guess? Because, and I'm only thinking about this as a cliffhanger because he's talked about it, him making a sequel, if that makes sense.

• 1:07:42Speaker 13

  Yeah, like a, like, like a loose sequel.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. With like some of the same characters, I guess.

• 1:07:48Speaker 13

  Um, I don't know. I, I have felt pretty satisfied with how this wrapped up because, I mean, 2020 did not have a real ending. We are still living in the shadow of 2020. There still is loose threads. Like COVID still is a thing that exists. We're still living with like the way political violence escalated and never fully went away with especially like January 6th. And how even the concept of pedophilia still runs almost all of politics. Like this is what politics is about is like deciding who is and isn't a pedophile.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Speaker 13

  Like the whole conspiracy theory angle, more people are conspiracy theorists now than I think they were in 2020, including like liberals.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, no.

• 1:08:25Speaker 13

  The whole like, like blue and on conspiracy theories, the alt national park, blue sky accounts, the Trump assassination was, was staged. Like all of that kind of stuff is like, this has just become all of what politics is.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  It's what your mom does. It's what like your mom or like your, your, every one of your parents does.

• 1:08:45Speaker 13

  And not just your right wing mom now. Like this is, this is like everybody's mom.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Speaker 13

  And I think that's the sort of American decline that Ari Aster is depicting as opposed to the type that James Gunn is depicting.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  I think it's much more accurate.

• 1:08:56Speaker 13

  I agree. And it's much more holistic.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Yes. I don't think you could, I, obviously I don't think you could kind of really hold the schizophrenia that the, the post 2020, post lockdown, political schizophrenia that we exist in currently.

• 1:09:12Speaker 13

  I agree.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Where like, everything is ungrounded. You know, you can't do a superhero story like that. I don't think, there's like no way to do that.

• 1:09:19Speaker 13

  No. Unless you use my favorite superhero, The Question.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:24Speaker 13

  In which you could do that. And James Gunn, if you're listening, I will write you a question film and it will be crazy.

• 1:09:32Speaker 13

  But in terms of filmmaking, I think, I think post-woke as a filmmaking style and like what Ari Aster is doing here is a reaction to the past like 10 years of liberal self-aggrandizing movies as content slop, right? Which tries to get points for like diversity casting without having any actual substantive politics or will like gesture to things relating to class, even though it's made by these big, you know, multi-billion dollar corporations. And I think that whole era produced this sort of schizophrenia because everything feels so paradoxical and self-contradictory. And I think part of the feelings that evokes is what Eddington is trying to pull on. And depicting those feelings as a subject itself, not just as like a background thing

• 1:10:17Speaker 13

  that we try to either like acknowledge sort of, or try to like not acknowledge and like ignore. I think viewing that that cultural schizophrenia as a subject, if anything, that's like the main character of Eddington. And I think that's the part that that worked the most for me.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  I, yeah, I think structure-wise, a lot of people were talking about like, it feels like too scattered of a movie. I think I saw that a lot in like the critiques of it. And I think like, sure, if we're talking about like just, you know, does it become a little confusing to follow? Maybe, but it's like, that's the point. Like, and not to say like, that's the point, so it washes that away, but like, I don't think you could, I don't think you could make a movie accurately.

• 1:11:00Speaker 13

  You can't make a movie about that era without it feeling scattered like that.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's why I really respect Ari Aster. I think, I was talking to my partner yesterday about, who's the guy that made like Nosferatu and all those movies?

• 1:11:14Speaker 13

  Robert Eggers.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  Robert Eggers. Robert Eggers, a very good filmmaker, but he's explicitly talked about how he doesn't ever want to do-

• 1:11:21Speaker 13

  Not wanting to do modern films.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, a modern film. I guess, I haven't seen The Shrouds, but I've heard very good things about it.

• 1:11:28Speaker 13

  Me neither, me neither.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I want to see that movie because I think Cronenberg is another one who's like, I also watched, I watched a great lineup for this movie. I watched Cronenberg's, what's the, Videodrome?

• 1:11:39Speaker 13

  You saw Videodrome recently?

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:11:41Speaker 13

  I can definitely see Eddington kind of being a grandchild of Videodrome in some ways.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  I would also recommend, I've also, I've been reading Mark Fisher's Flatline Constructs.

• 1:11:52Speaker 13

  This is a very Fisher movie.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, very Fisher. Yeah, I literally, I listened to the stupid Russell Brand audiobook of capitalist realism.

• 1:12:02Speaker 13

  Oh, no. Oh, that sucks.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  I know, Russell Brand sucks, but I was at work and I just needed something to listen to, so I didn't like blow my head off. And it didn't end up working out actually, because I was working my shitty job and listening to capitalist realism.

• 1:12:18Speaker 13

  Russell Brand.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, Russell Brand.

• 1:12:20Speaker 13

  Russell Brand's capitalist realism.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:12:23Speaker 13

  What a bummer.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:24Speaker 13

  Truly Mark Fisher's only L.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is unbearable to have to listen to his voice, but it's a great book. I would definitely recommend reading that. If you want to go into Eddington even more like locked in, I guess. But this is a very like, yeah, like, you know, capital can convert anything into the image of something else. There was one shot that I really, I found very evocative, which was the shot of like him, Joaquin Phoenix's character is having his haircut by his whatever stepmom, ex-stepmom. And she's talking about like conspiracy theory while filming it.

• 1:13:04Speaker 13

  That's good.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  For TikTok. And it's like, this is so perfect and so morbid and like.

• 1:13:10Speaker 13

  Yeah, no, there's, there's a little bit of like, Baudrillard's book on America here. There's certainly a lot of Gita board in this. And I think that also is part of what relates it to me to Superman is how much like Superman is accidentally doing Gita board regarding the genocide in Palestine and how much I think that critique is actually built into Eddington.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  No, absolutely. Yeah, I. Superman is such an interesting movie to take on that subject because obviously in a way you're kind of like, well, good for James Gunn for doing something daring, I guess, daring, I say with air quotes, but it's also like you have the Israel Palestine stuff placed right after a scene where Superman saves a green baby from a river of like cosmic sludge.

• 1:13:59Speaker 13

  Of like CGI squares.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, which by the way, what I I'm sure I I don't know if this is the general consensus, but I thought that that scene was ugly as sin and I kind of hated it.

• 1:14:10Speaker 13

  I also I hated the whole pocket dimension.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 13

  Uh, aspect. I don't I don't know why they shouldn't do a quick like 10 minute interlude into the Phantom Zone, keeping that. But no, I think that that whole pocket dimension, uh, like 40 minutes deep, like derailed and stagnated a lot of the film for me and did not look very good.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  He's doing like Lex Luthor's Peter Thiel, Lex Luthor is Elon Musk, Lex Luthor's.

• 1:14:33Speaker 13

  Which could work.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Which I think I think I found it funny, at least. I said like, I watched it and I thought like, oh, I know what he's doing, you know, that he's Peter Thiel shut down Gawker or whatever.

• 1:14:45Speaker 13

  Crying Man baby.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So it's like, I I get it. Uh, but I also, I mean, it's been done before kind of thing. Like, I don't find it, you know, that, uh, I don't know. But he hey, his performance is great. But then the whole Palestine stuff is also capped off with a scene where Lex Luthor gets like bullied by a dog, you know, it's sandwiched between two things that are just like, I don't know if you can do this or if you should do this. Like, I don't know.

• 1:15:13Speaker 13

  No, it it I think it's it's part of that sort of cultural schizophrenia that I that I think that I think that Eddington is is pulling on.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 13

  Is is moments like that in in in the David Zaslove Warner Brothers Discovery Superman 2025.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  Eddington just is, you know, it's a film that is like its entire thesis is that is is the is the jumping around the just like his car is covered in shit for the entire movie.

• 1:15:40Speaker 13

  I love it.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  So funny. All the all the slogans are like, kind of like, they're all trying to put in their own little thing, you know, like, he's like, can we make it about Bitcoin? Can we make it about?

• 1:15:51Speaker 13

  It's like a 2020 conservative Facebook feed brought to life.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. It's a great movie. I love Eddington. I think that this movie will age very well.

• 1:16:01Speaker 13

  Well, what would you like to plug Bailey Newposter?

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  Uh, I think you should follow me. If you have an X, you should follow me on at, what is it called? At newposter2 on X. If you're on Instagram, you should follow me at postliticalbling, which is a terrible username, but I made it was my Reddit username like ages ago, I think. And then on Blue Sky, if you use that, you should follow me at, what even is my Blue Sky? I don't even I'm gonna be honest, I don't use Blue Sky, but if you.

• 1:16:35Speaker 13

  We gotta fix the vibes on there, Bailey. We got it. We got we got we gotta get more like crazy, crazy unhinged art on Blue Sky.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  You're right. It's it's newposter dot bluesky dot social or whatever. So.

• 1:16:48Speaker 13

  There you go.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  If you need that, there there's the there's the plugs.

• 1:16:53Speaker 13

  Well, thank you for coming on to talk about Eddington and Superman.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for inviting me. This has been wonderful. I love Eddington. I enjoyed Superman. So this is a a good talk.

• 1:17:04Speaker 13

  There you go. Lovely, lovely.

• 1:17:16Speaker 13

  For the last segment of our post-woke cinema episode, I'm gonna play a conversation I had with Atlanta musician Janie Danger, who we talk about her thoughts on the film Eddington and the way it manifests 2020's hyperreality.

• 1:17:34Speaker 14

  Just a little background, I guess. Like, I really like Ari Aster. I remember talking with you about Bo is Afraid a while ago. I remember you weren't a huge fan of it.

• 1:17:44Speaker 13

  Not so hot on Bo is Afraid. I'm afraid. I wanted to like it too. Because whenever people talk about this like, like, like off-putting, long, slow cinema about like anxiety. Like, I want to like that. Like, Inland Empire is, is one of the best films ever. There's other, other, other films that do, that, that also tackle it. It's not just like David Lynch.

• 1:18:05Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:18:05Speaker 13

  And like, the rest of Ari Aster, I was always like lukewarm to kind of positive on. Like, I don't hate him as a filmmaker. I don't have that as part of my personality, the way some people do.

• 1:18:16Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Speaker 13

  Um, I think his movies are just fine. I think he does dabble in. Or I guess he like over relies on a degree of shock value, which you can even see in his earlier like student films.

• 1:18:25Speaker 14

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:18:25Speaker 13

  I think are like very juvenile and, and not interesting. I think Hereditary is fine. So Ari Aster's always like been there, but I've never been like a Ari Aster in bio.

• 1:18:35Speaker 14

  I, I think he's kind of cool to hate now. Like, I, I think with, uh.

• 1:18:39Speaker 13

  He's very cool to hate now. People, people, people really like hating him. But Eddington, I think, has done him a lot of favors, though, among the people who used to hate him.

• 1:18:46Speaker 14

  I, I've kind of noticed that. It seems like with Hereditary and Midsommar. Those were generally like very well received by like the A24 crowd.

• 1:18:54Speaker 13

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:55Speaker 14

  And it was kind of like, I guess the cool opinion would be to be like, those movies are mid. And then like Bo was afraid is a masterpiece or whatever. I like his horror movies. I think they're slick, well-made films with good stories. I love Bo was afraid, though. I think it's incredible. But it is not the kind of, it's the kind of movie that like, as much as I love it, as much as it means to me. As, as seen as I feel by that film, it's not the kind of thing that like, if you don't like it. I'm not gonna like convince you, you know, like, there's prob, like, if you told me you didn't like Mulholland Drive. Like, I'd be like, you're fucking stupid and wrong.

• 1:19:32Speaker 13

  You're dumb.

• 1:19:33Speaker 14

  But like, if you tell me you don't like Bo was afraid, it's like, fair enough. It's, it's.

• 1:19:36Speaker 13

  Sure.

• 1:19:37Speaker 14

  Certainly the kind of thing that's not for everyone. I bring it up mostly because I I think with Bo and Eddington, it's a very interesting thing he does that is kind of, I guess I'd compare it to maybe like French New Wave directors, maybe like something like Celine and Julie Go Boating, where the protagonists are living in like a fake insane reality, where in other directors, like most other films, like you'd have someone who's like going insane and hallucinating and like everyone's trying to kill them, etc. And then maybe there would be like a cut.

• 1:20:18Speaker 13

  Which is kind of what happens in Bo is Afraid.

• 1:20:20Speaker 14

  Yeah, but but in in other movies, there would maybe be like a cut away for someone else where they see like the character like arguing to a shadow.

• 1:20:28Speaker 13

  Like the quote unquote real perspective. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:31Speaker 14

  Exactly. And I think that Bo is afraid. It's like, it's no, this is real. And I think Eddington does a very similar thing where the beliefs of the characters are real. And that's why, like, you know, all the conservatives, like, I mean, if you remember 2020, they're like, there's Antifa super soldiers that are going out and doing terrorism. It's like, so in this world, in the Eddington universe, it's like, what if that was real? Like, what if Fox News was actually in motion here? And I think that's very interesting.

• 1:21:05Speaker 13

  The approach that he does in Eddington, I think, is a little bit more subtle than the way it is in Bo is Afraid, because you start the film way, way more as like a, as like, you know, a political satire on the absurdity of like pandemic era America. And then the reality starts diverting from what we can agree as like, as like a shared consensus reality.

• 1:21:26Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Speaker 13

  And then it it it diverts from that, the same way reality diverted away from that in 2020 for for people. And we created this like

• 1:21:32Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:21:32Speaker 13

  massive like reality fracture point.

• 1:21:34Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Speaker 13

  Like, the first time I noticed this in the filmmaking was there was like a news clip about like a Portland riot in 2020, and it had people like exchanging gunfire on rooftops.

• 1:21:45Speaker 14

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:46Speaker 13

  And it was played next to actual news clips of like The third precinct burning down like it was played off as like a real legitimate news clip.

• 1:21:53Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Speaker 13

  And like I was, I lived in Portland in 2020. I know that's not real, but to many people viewing, they might not catch that.

• 1:21:59Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:21:59Speaker 13

  That that might just be like, that might just go into like, go into like the background. So at that point, I realized that actually the way that reality is getting diverted in the film is way more subtle. And then of course, you get like the Antifa super soldier private jet later and it's more obvious like what, what, what he's doing.

• 1:22:14Speaker 14

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:22:15Speaker 13

  But even like small things like that, I started to really appreciate. You're like, no, you're like getting into the mind of people who believe these things. And that's what we're, that's what, that's what's being depicted. Like the feelings of 2020 are more important than the reality of 2020. And, and that is what he's trying to, to show.

• 1:22:31Speaker 14

  That, that's even kind of like a meta in a sense, because it's like, if you watch that, that scene of like the, the footage of the, uh, the Portland like shooting and stuff, and you as the audience are like questioning if that was real. Then it's like your consensus reality is also

• 1:22:49Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 14

  diverging from the regular consensus reality. It's like, it kind of makes you a cipher for the characters. Which, which also leads me to, um, something, something else. So, uh, something I don't see a lot of people talking about, but the, uh, the, the vagrant character that, that starts the film.

• 1:23:07Speaker 13

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:07Speaker 14

  Where he comes in and he's just like mumbling like messages. And if you've ever like been around like a, you know, like a homeless person on a bus or something, they, they, they, they like to mumble and, um, it's, I, I read that as someone who's like just essentially doing what everyone else in this movie eventually comes to do.

• 1:23:29Speaker 13

  Totally, yes.

• 1:23:30Speaker 14

  Which is just taking all of your like internalized like messages, traumas, like things you've heard, things you believe. And just like grumbling it, spitting it out. And so anyone who talks to you, you just incessantly just like messages, messages, messages.

• 1:23:47Speaker 13

  The similarity of that character to like the mom character, who does the same thing, but is seen in a very different way.

• 1:23:54Speaker 14

  Yeah, she has a house.

• 1:23:55Speaker 13

  She has like a home to live in and has like family.

• 1:23:57Speaker 14

  Yeah, absolutely. And then there's no, There's no place for a person like the vagrant in this world, but there is a place for all these other types of insane people. And they're all able to find their little little niches and such. When maybe in a world before that, in a world before, it was so easy to find such niches. It maybe like you would, I don't know, go to therapy. Maybe like, maybe your family would would be concerned. It is very interesting because people very are are very prone now. And it's like, that's because they're able to like get pulled into these cults. They they find their own kind of Austin Butler figure.

• 1:24:41Speaker 14

  Who's able to talk to them directly and be like, no, come with me. You're okay. And just to go back to the point of like messages and stuff, I I think that the uh. The Joaquin Phoenix character, I think he starts out as a very like uh, like Hank Hill, like very. I mean, he does, yeah, he doesn't want to wear a mask. He's obviously leans a bit conservative, but.

• 1:25:04Speaker 13

  But he's like trying to kind of be like a reasonable guy.

• 1:25:06Speaker 14

  Right. And I I I see him as someone who's trying to like avoid the messaging from everyone. Like even when people tell him about like certain news stories and stuff, he's like, I I don't know, like he just doesn't know. And.

• 1:25:21Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:25:21Speaker 14

  In the process of him like avoiding all these messages, what does he do? He buys a truck and covers it in fucking messages.

• 1:25:30Speaker 13

  In messages. He starts broadcasting his reality to everyone around him.

• 1:25:33Speaker 14

  Exactly. It's like, uh, I don't know. I think that normally, normally I would call it bad writing for like every character to be like a cipher. But I I think the what what he does in this is is really, really interesting. Like I I think it's a, I don't know. I guess like one more thing that I really like do want to say is like Ari Aster did an interview with uh, Will Minnaker and Hessa. Of like Chapo and um, he said that he kind of wanted to make this movie like a Rorschach test of sorts. And I think he maybe. Overly succeeded in that.

• 1:26:12Speaker 13

  Definitely.

• 1:26:12Speaker 14

  And in fact, if I had one criticism, it's that maybe I wish there was like a few things like tied together that and I just wish Austin Butler and Emma Stone got a little more meat to do things. But aside from that, one of the biggest criticisms that I'm I'm honestly just going to dismiss outright is people saying that this is like a centrist movie.

• 1:26:32Speaker 13

  Totally.

• 1:26:32Speaker 14

  Or comparing this to South Park or something like that. And if you view this as a centrist movie, I mean, the liberals in this are like, kind of annoying, ineffectual. A lot of them don't really believe what they do. Some of them do. I think the girl character is very sympathetic, but like the younger girl. But Joaquin Phoenix, the ostensible, like, you know, right wing version of this kills a child.

• 1:26:58Speaker 14

  He kills three people, including like a teenager.

• 1:27:01Speaker 13

  Like, the woke characters engage with politics in a vapid and self-serving way to mask their own insecurities and shortcomings and for their own personal benefit. The right wing characters murder and have rape cults and.

• 1:27:17Speaker 14

  Yeah, right. Like, I don't I don't see how you could look at the actions of the characters in this film and just be like, yeah, I guess everyone is stupid. I guess everyone is wrong. Because it's like, no, like, I mean, I guess everyone is a little stupid and everyone is kind of wrong about things, but like, that's not like what it's getting across. I think that's a very

• 1:27:39Speaker 13

  No.

• 1:27:39Speaker 14

  shallow read of the film.

• 1:27:41Speaker 13

  This is what people outside of the Brooklyn Theater were complaining about when I eavesdropped for like nearly forty five minutes after the film, just to hear what people were talking about. I love eavesdropping. I love snooping, so I was really feasting out there. And yeah, a lot of people upset at how quote unquote little this film had to say. It's just it's just depicting these things, but doesn't have the audacity to actually like say anything about them or like take a quote unquote stance and like

• 1:28:07Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Speaker 13

  That's so not what the film is trying to do. That the film is is pointing out like this, the social media style engagement with politics is this incredibly self-serving thing and it's this. That we put on for other people and sometimes put on even for ourselves. And 2020 was a way because of the conditions of the lockdown. The internet and real life combined in a way more like totalistically than they had ever before. And then that combination grew pressure and shot outwards into into physical reality in a very bombastic way, both for the 2020 protests and then eventually something like January 6th, right? Both these things, I think you can you can look at a similar like a political pressure like building and manifesting. And it's not saying these things are like equal.

• 1:28:53Speaker 13

  It's not the centrist, I'm better than thou for look at all these crazy guys. But it's it's it's talking about how we as a culture associate with politics now. And like how as like American culture, we associate with politics now. And maybe that's kind of troubling and kind of scary. That's like the horror of the film is the way that we associate with social media politics now is really frightening, which isn't like a revolutionary thing to say, right? This isn't like, you know, breaking new ground here. But he is expressing something that everyone, I think, has felt at a certain point.

• 1:29:24Speaker 14

  Sure.

• 1:29:24Speaker 13

  But it's it's it's presented in a way that I think is it very much is a Rorschach test for a lot of people.

• 1:29:31Speaker 14

  I think a lot of people are uncomfortable. I think some people just see too much of themselves. And like I was speaking specifically to like liberal audiences. I think a lot of them are seeing something of themselves and they feel like they're being made fun of and they don't appreciate that. I'll just say I was I was at the Black Lives Matter protests and stuff. I was there and I don't feel that way.

• 1:29:53Speaker 13

  No, I don't think I was being made fun of.

• 1:29:55Speaker 14

  Yeah, I don't like like I think that like that's kind of on you as a viewer for like expecting a movie to like look directly in the camera and be like, I believe the same things you believe. You know, because that's, I mean, that's bad filmmaking, that's bad writing.

• 1:30:13Speaker 13

  Explains the exact type of communist that I am.

• 1:30:15Speaker 14

  Right, yes, I am the exact kind of leftist you are. We are on the same side and we're all laughing at the same things together. It's like.

• 1:30:22Speaker 13

  No, and if if your engagement with like social justice and anti-police brutality protests is shallow enough to feel called. Out in a film like this, I think that is cause more for self-reflection for why you participated in those things.

• 1:30:36Speaker 14

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:30:37Speaker 13

  Not a fault of the film, or it's not the film taking a stance against those things. I think it's it's showing there's certain types of people who participated in an extremely performative and like self-serving manner.

• 1:30:50Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:30:51Speaker 13

  And like specifically, the way that like the main like like like zoomer guy character, who in the end becomes a right wing grifter.

• 1:30:58Speaker 14

  Kyle Rittenhouse.

• 1:30:59Speaker 13

  It's like, I think this manifests this like like like perfectly. And like, I think his his character, I think is is one of the funniest characters in the film.

• 1:31:09Speaker 14

  I do so.

• 1:31:10Speaker 13

  One of the best jokes is just him like liking a tweet.

• 1:31:12Speaker 14

  And Googling Angela Davis.

• 1:31:16Speaker 13

  So I think that kind of stuff is is more what it's talking about. And when you have those types of people being some of the most vocal people at these events, it contributes to this like kind of psychosis.

• 1:31:27Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:31:27Speaker 13

  And and that I think that's what the film is specifically saying.

• 1:31:31Speaker 14

  I mean, did we forget that people like Shaun King were like popular in 2020? Look, if you see this and like the the portrayal of like these liberal characters doesn't apply to you, I don't know why you're mad. I don't know why you would like look at that and being like, oh, they're making fun of me and everything I believe because if it doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you. And that was how I watched the film. Like, I didn't feel like any of these characters applied to me, so I don't really care. And I guess a final point is like, I haven't heard anyone else say this, but like, Sheriff Joe at the end of the film is, I feel like it's very

• 1:32:15Speaker 14

  unsubtle symbolism to say that he's lobotomized.

• 1:32:19Speaker 13

  100%.

• 1:32:20Speaker 14

  With a vice stabbed in the in the head with a knife.

• 1:32:23Speaker 13

  That's what happened to all of us in a way.

• 1:32:24Speaker 14

  And I mean, it's funny that Ari Aster avoided a lot of mother-related trauma up until the very, very end of the movie.

• 1:32:33Speaker 13

  The very last scene, he had to squeeze it in there.

• 1:32:36Speaker 14

  I know, I know, it was, I know, and he's being like raised in the bed and it's very, this kind of like angelic, like ascension kind of thing. I don't know. I, I, I think that it's, I, I think it's a pretty unsubtle and funny way of saying that like, there's really, for some people, after going fully there in like being insane, after like just plunging yourself into the heart of all of this like chaos and unreality, that the only thing that is gonna save you is a lobotomy. If nothing else, I think that's very funny.

• 1:33:15Speaker 14

  So, yeah, I, I enjoyed it a lot. I've wondered, uh, after about a week after I saw it, I was kicking it around in my head more, and I was wondering like, will this grow on me? Will this age well? And I think it definitely has grown on me the, the more I've thought about it.

• 1:33:33Speaker 13

  Same. It has also grown on me more over time. Once I got out of the theater, I was sorting through a lot of different feelings about what I just saw, and it has definitely grown on me over time. Where can people find you and your work?

• 1:33:46Speaker 14

  Uh, yeah, so I'm a musician. You can go to janedanger.com and find most of my links and stuff. I have a new song and video out. I'm working on a new album that should come out later this year, and if you're in the Atlanta area, I'm playing a show at the end of August at Boggs Social and the Mainline Music Festival in, uh, September. But if you follow me on like Instagram or whatever, you should have all your, all your updates there, and you can follow me on Letterboxd at @janedanger. So, yeah, thanks for having me.

• 1:34:18Speaker 13

  Thank you, Janie. That does it for us at It Could Happen Here. Thanks once again to Janie Danger and Bailey New Poster. Follow them both online. They do great work. If you want some good music, listen to Janie. If you want some cool art, look up Bailey New Poster. Oh, boy. I guess I will hopefully see you on the other side of this post-woke nightmare. Bye-bye.

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• 1:37:04Speaker 13

  Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. And today, the thing falling apart is the internet. And today, we have a special guest episode with Brigitte Todd. Hello, Brigitte.

• 1:37:17Speaker 15

  So, Garrett, it's kind of funny that we are talking just a few days after the Trump administration put out their woke AI executive order.

• 1:37:26Speaker 13

  Yes, I have not read this yet. I have to for next week's executive disorder. I'm not looking forward to it.

• 1:37:33Speaker 15

  I like that the Cool Zone team kind of sections off all the Trump federal nonsense, so you don't have to be mired in it all the goddamn time.

• 1:37:43Speaker 13

  I still kind of am. I just schedule it throughout my week, I guess. There's certain days where I have to do it.

• 1:37:49Speaker 15

  Yeah, you got to pepper it in. You got to pepper it in. Well,

• 1:37:51Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Speaker 15

  not to give you a spoiler for when you dive into it yourself, but it's all nonsense. Basically, the Trump administration is saying that right now, the biggest threat regarding AI is it being too woke and essentially telling folks who make AI tech leaders essentially to be more like Elon Musk and Grok and make sure that your AI models, the only AI models that we will accept in this country are the non-woke ones, ones that don't incorporate DEI. Would love to know more about what he thinks that means, but that's a little preview for you.

• 1:38:24Speaker 13

  Fantastic. You know, seems like the most important issue facing our nation right now.

• 1:38:29Speaker 15

  Definitely, definitely. And so it's funny that we're talking about AI because I don't know if you're on TikTok, but there have been these kind of shockingly racist AI-generated videos all over TikTok, to the point where I would say that we are witnessing the revival of The Minstrel Show using AI on social media. This is not a claim I use lightly. That is how extreme some of this content is.

• 1:38:56Speaker 13

  I'm not on TikTok, but I think I've seen some of this content permeate across platforms, certainly even on like Instagram reels and even even bits of X, the everything app.

• 1:39:10Speaker 15

  I love that you call it that.

• 1:39:12Speaker 13

  That's the full name.

• 1:39:15Speaker 15

  So for folks who don't know, I want to ground the conversation in what a minstrel show is. So the minstrel show was a incredibly popular form of American theater and entertainment in the 19th century where mostly, but not all, white performers would wear blackface makeup to make themselves look like these exaggerated racist versions of black people and essentially portray very racist stereotypes of black folks being lazy buffoons. And a common trope in these skits was black people trying and failing to gain American citizenship because at the time, black Americans did not have full citizenship. And so a big plotline would be like, oh, we had to take a test for citizenship, but we were too stupid

• 1:39:58Speaker 15

  to figure it out. Or we spaced a date and overslept because we're very lazy. When these shows would depict black women, we were often shown as what you might think of as like a sapphire caricature, which is rude, loud, malicious, stubborn, and overbearing. Kind of like the angry black woman trope that you probably are familiar with in media today. So these skits were incredibly popular entertainment, but they also served the purpose of reaffirming political and social ideologies. And so, you know, the dominant way that people consumed media regarding black people showed us as lazy, stupid, angry, loud, and importantly, not really able to conform to the dominant culture of like mainstream, hardworking, white

• 1:40:41Speaker 15

  Americans. That is obviously an incredibly powerful tool to uphold and reaffirm the idea that black folks should not be given full citizenship, should not be given full rights, cannot be, you know, integrated into polite white society. And it almost kind of became this for their own good attitude that provided like a polite justification for things like segregation. Well, like, oh, well, you know, I've seen in minstrel shows that black folks are very lazy and stupid. So it's honestly for their own good that we treat them like shit in society. You feel me?

• 1:41:13Speaker 13

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a sort of like infantilization.

• 1:41:16Speaker 15

  Exactly. And so even though the minstrel show did die out, I would argue that we are kind of seeing a little bit of a comeback using AI in the digital realm. And just like the minstrel shows of yesteryear were used to affirm political and social ideologies under the guise of just being entertainment, or just being jokes, or just being funny, I really think it's not a coincidence that we're also seeing the rise of digital blackface, where non-black creators are using AI to create these viral racist skits that are steeped in black stereotypes and that they're really taking off all over social media today.

• 1:41:53Speaker 13

  That sounds not fun to hear about, but I'm excited for you to explain it to me.

• 1:41:58Speaker 15

  Yes. So I will say, initially, the first iteration of one of these videos that I saw was not really racist. It was made by a black creator, I think, trying to use AI to create sort of humorous skits. But when that first video took off, people on TikTok started using AI to create more and more extreme, more and more racist iterations of these kinds of videos, which is what we're seeing today. So I will play a little snippet of an example for you. What's up, bitches? It's Bigfoot, what's happening? The baddest bitch in the woods, part-time cryptid, full-time problem. Don't follow me if you scared of fleas. So this is a TikTok that got over 2 million views, and it basically uses AI to generate

• 1:42:40Speaker 15

  this black woman stereotypical version of Bigfoot. And this account is so popular that has generated so many copycats. Like, this is a format that has really hit with TikTok. There also is another kind of bucket of these that people call slave talk, where it uses AI to sort of reimagine enslaved people on plantations if they had social media and were doing vlogs. And so a lot of those videos were taken down by TikTok, which is, I think, good. But essentially, it would reimagine these AI-generated enslaved people basically saying like, oh, well, yeah, I do have to work out here in the cotton

• 1:43:22Speaker 15

  fields, but at least I'm gonna get meals. At least I have a roof over my head. Essentially really affirming the idea that like slavery wasn't that bad. One of the more heinous examples that I saw of these that was removed from TikTok was a TikTok shop sponsored video that showed an AI generated enslaved person working in the fields, wearing a solar powered hat with a sand in it. And basically he was like, oh, this work in the fields would be so horrible if I did not have this hat. And then there's a little link to the TikTok shop and you can buy the actual hat, which is just some really dystopian awful shit.

• 1:43:59Speaker 13

  No, that is like quite literally is like evocative of like cyberpunk tropes that people I would assume would not want to use due to fears of insensitivity. But it's just on your phone like as like a real thing.

• 1:44:12Speaker 15

  Yeah, I completely agree and I love that comparison. And I think like, I would imagine if I were running a TikTok shop that using the AI generated image of an enslaved person, I would think like, oh, well, this is certainly not something that I would use to like sell some cheap sand hat. But I mean, I think it is exactly what you're saying that I think that the extreme quality of these videos, people are just like, well, it'll get views and then I'll get more eyeballs on my TikTok shop. I don't think there's any kind of.

• 1:44:42Speaker 13

  Sure.

• 1:44:43Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 1:44:43Speaker 13

  No, like it's a very gross way of doing like outrage farming for engagement, I guess. Like, because like surely they know that these are not going to like go over easy. Like I think a part of part of this is generating some some degree of like attention based on it being offensive or extremely gross and knowing that people will like comment things of that nature.

• 1:45:06Speaker 15

  Exactly. And it's funny that you mentioned that because the AI component of this is sort of what makes this novel and new, but that kind of thing has been all over social media for the longest time.

• 1:45:16Speaker 13

  Sure.

• 1:45:17Speaker 15

  I remember how big stuff like skit culture was on TikTok and I don't mean skits like Saturday Night Live or Portlandia. I mean, skits where they are trying to get you to think this is somebody's cell phone footage of something that happened. But really it's like, well, that those are two actors. And there was a, there was a type of these skits that would really take off on TikTok where it was purporting to be. Oh, this is a parent who is going off on a trans teacher for trying to indoctrinate their kid. And all the comments would be like, good for them, good for that mom.

• 1:45:48Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Speaker 15

  And then the screen flips and it's like, oh, well, the woman you were just telling me is the trans teacher. Now she's the mom who was.

• 1:45:55Speaker 13

  The next video.

• 1:45:56Speaker 15

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:45:58Speaker 13

  No, I, I, I like the ones that are set on airplanes where they all use the same airplane set.

• 1:46:02Speaker 15

  Yes.

• 1:46:02Speaker 13

  And they get into like fake fights on, on airplanes, uh, using the same like five actors playing different roles. Yeah.

• 1:46:09Speaker 15

  And then if you look carefully in the background, you start thinking, well, airplanes don't have those strip LED lights that you can buy on Amazon. Like this is not actually a plane.

• 1:46:20Speaker 13

  The Tik Tok lights in the hallways like five feet wide. Yeah.

• 1:46:24Speaker 15

  Exactly. And listen, I am not above getting taken in by the, those kinds of skits. And I guess like, I don't love the idea that someone will be dedicating energy and brain space to getting upset about a set of circumstances that never really happened.

• 1:46:39Speaker 13

  But it's the internet. Come on. That's, that's like, that's half of the internet.

• 1:46:42Speaker 15

  Yes. Like, you know, I don't love it, but when the stakes, like when the stakes are low and it's just like a random fight on an airplane, fine. When the stakes are higher and it's like, this is a skit meant to like attack or demonize trans people, queer people, black people. That's where I'm like, well, what are we really doing here?

• 1:47:11Speaker 15

  I think whether or not this kind of content, like when it's AI generated, we're, we're looking at things that never actually happened. Even though these, these circumstances and these situations never really happened, they still very much affirm the worldview of the people who are consuming it. Right? And so if you are consuming a skit involving whether it's human actors or AI generated black people. If that skit reaffirms your worldview that these people cannot be trusted, these people are bad in some way. It kind of doesn't matter if it's real or not. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:47:43Speaker 13

  Yeah. Yeah, totally. That's like the concept of like hyperreality.

• 1:47:48Speaker 15

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:48Speaker 13

  Where you're, you're trying to like. Blend the internet's exaggerated version of reality with our like physical lived existence and how these things start combining into each other to create this idea of reality in our heads. That's more real than it actually is to the point where we take things on the screen to be more accurately reflective of what's going on in the world than what we actually experience in our day to day lives. And so much of that concept is what drives like American like reactionary politics.

• 1:48:13Speaker 15

  Exactly. And when you actually go into the comments of these videos, which in my opinion are very clearly AI generated. People are leaving comments. Well, I mean, I will, I mean, that whole other thing, but like.

• 1:48:24Speaker 13

  Easy for you to say. I, someone who spends their time like researching what's going on on the internet. I'm not sure if me ma and Papa are finding these videos. They're gonna be like, well, this one's obviously AI generated.

• 1:48:38Speaker 15

  No, and that's my point is like, I, I don't even think they're thinking about it that way. And I don't think they care that it's not real.

• 1:48:43Speaker 13

  No.

• 1:48:43Speaker 15

  In the comments of these videos, it'll be a video, an AI generated video of a black woman behaving in this very stereotypical racist way. And the comments will say they're all like that. And it kind of misses the point of like, well, there's, there's no they in this video because it's AI generated.

• 1:49:00Speaker 13

  This is just a computer puppet. This isn't real. Like, yeah.

• 1:49:03Speaker 15

  I completely agree, but I think when you see something online, whether it's obviously AI generated or not, if it reaffirms your worldview, it kind of doesn't matter. It's the same reason why when there's like four legged veterans in AI slop, holding a sign that says, everyone forgot about me, wish me happy birthday.

• 1:49:23Speaker 13

  Three billion likes on Facebook.

• 1:49:25Speaker 15

  Yes.

• 1:49:27Speaker 15

  I mean, what do you, what do you think is going on there? I find that so fascinating.

• 1:49:31Speaker 13

  Oh, I mean, I'm not a psychologist, um, but I don't know. I, I think it isn't just the simple reaffirming of someone's previously held view. People are very receptive to, and we even see this with like, you know, with like fake news headlines, right? And people might point out that this story isn't, isn't actually real. And when people are confronted with this idea of that they've been tricked by unreality, they'll be like, no, maybe this one isn't real, but it could be real. And that's, and that's what really matters is that this, this feels true, not that it is true, but the fact that I feel it resonating is actually more important than any kind of physical

• 1:50:08Speaker 13

  trueness out inside like the flesh world, like that, that, that is honestly, that that matters far less than how it impacts how I feel and how, how it reflects the world as I see it.

• 1:50:19Speaker 15

  So I did an episode of my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet, all about the sort of weird economy of AI-generated disinformation, essentially fanfiction that came out of the trial of Sean P. Diddy Combs.

• 1:50:33Speaker 13

  Oh, that sounds incredibly upsetting.

• 1:50:35Speaker 15

  It was so upsetting. And the reason I looked into it is because I have to be honest and say, one of these AI-generated videos got me, right? It was a video that claimed that the late musician Prince was able to testify in Diddy's trial from beyond the grave and that they played a video that Prince made, warning everybody that Diddy is this bad guy, right? I am probably the world's biggest Prince fan, so I was like, Prince, oh, like, it got me. It totally affirmed what I want to be true, but it was all a lie.

• 1:51:06Speaker 13

  It is compelling because I guess it's trying to like, it's trying to impact you emotionally, especially for people who, who like Prince, who, who miss, miss Prince. This could be emotionally compelling and like, that's, that's what they're like intentionally going after. I think that's, that's why something like that could work so well.

• 1:51:21Speaker 15

  It got me. And when I looked into kind of how these videos are cranked out on YouTube. So basically, any celebrity that you can imagine, there is an AI-generated video on YouTube saying that they were somehow involved in the Diddy trial. And what's so interesting is in the comments of these videos that are, again, pretty obviously AI-generated or not real. And even the, the description of the YouTube account will say, this is just for entertainment. Nothing here is supposed to be true. People won't read that part. Basically, if you've ever had a bad feeling about a celebrity, which who hasn't?

• 1:51:54Speaker 13

  Totally.

• 1:51:55Speaker 15

  There was a video that, that affirms with that worldview that is like, well, did you know they were involved in the Diddy freak-offs? And everybody's like, I knew it.

• 1:52:02Speaker 13

  That person always gave me the ick. And fine, I knew it. I was smart enough to pick it up. Not everyone else was smart enough, but I was. And that's, that, that's a whole other emotional feeling that is being targeted by these like AI slop creators. Where they're trying to, yeah, like affirm people's like, like narcissism about their ability to judge the moral character of strangers.

• 1:52:23Speaker 15

  That is so it because the people, the celebrities they choose, it's people that maybe you would have, like, I have no real reason for this, but I hate Kevin Hart. And so in the videos, don't even ask me why. I don't even have a real reason. I don't like him.

• 1:52:36Speaker 13

  Well, he's short.

• 1:52:37Speaker 15

  He is short.

• 1:52:38Speaker 13

  There you go.

• 1:52:39Speaker 15

  Love to my short kings. I think one of the reasons I don't like him, this is just me speculating, like, he just does a lot of ads and you can't get on social media without his cryptocurrency ad, his DraftKings ad. I just like hate seeing his face.

• 1:52:51Speaker 13

  Sure. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 15

  And then in the AI-generated video claiming that he was mixed up in the Diddy trials, every comment is like, I knew it. I always hated him. And that's affirming. People like feeling like they knew something that other people didn't see and they knew it early on.

• 1:53:05Speaker 13

  Well, and I think what's something that's similar to this that's happening right now is there's a massive media campaign right now against Pedro Pascal with, with, with AI-generated videos of him like touching his female co-stars. And these, these videos have been, have been digitally altered and it's in service of this, this big harassment campaign against someone who's like very vocally pro-trans rights. There's other possible reasons for why he's, he's being targeted by these videos, but, but no, similarly, it's trying to create this like ick around Pedro Pascal using AI-altered media and it's, it's gaining a lot of traction right now. And it's something that people need to be like very, very cautious of. But yeah, it's, it's trying to affirm whatever. Maybe you for some reason have never liked Pedro Pascal. I can't imagine why. But if you find a video like this talking

• 1:53:50Speaker 13

  about how, how he's using a, a social anxiety diagnosis to inappropriately touch his co-stars, you're like, I knew it. I knew it. I never trusted Pedro Pascal and I don't like that he's pro-trans rights. And you're like, there you go. They've completely got you. They've been able to like automate and monetize internet hate campaigns against people that you don't know.

• 1:54:12Speaker 15

  Garrett, literally right before you and I got on this episode, I saw a video on Reddit and it's a, it's a scene from an episode of Always Sunny where one of the guys is like essentially lifting Dee, the female lead, up by her crotch. And the caption was Pedro Pascal when he feels anxiety next to his female co-star.

• 1:54:31Speaker 13

  There you go.

• 1:54:32Speaker 15

  And I remember thinking like, this is such a weird fucking video. But what corner of the internet have I wandered into? But it's, I didn't, I did not know that there are forces trying to make me get the ick about Pedro Pascal.

• 1:54:43Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:54:44Speaker 15

  Coincidentally, he is someone who speaks up for LGBTQ rights.

• 1:54:47Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:54:48Speaker 15

  You know, progressive causes.

• 1:54:49Speaker 13

  Palestine.

• 1:54:50Speaker 15

  Of course.

• 1:54:50Speaker 13

  Yeah, no, it's a huge thing sweeping the internet right now.

• 1:54:54Speaker 15

  And I think it really goes to show how kind of easily we can be manipulated using digital content, whether it's AI-generated or AI-manipulated or not. Like, our understandings of the sort of general temperature of what's going on are so much more tenuous than we think and so much more easily manipulated than we realize.

• 1:55:14Speaker 13

  No, absolutely. No one is immune to propaganda.

• 1:55:17Speaker 15

  That is a great way of putting it.

• 1:55:29Speaker 15

  I'm happy that you used the word propaganda because that's what I really do think these AI-generated, essentially menstrual show videos are. I think it's not a surprise that we are seeing them the same way that back in the day, menstrual shows were very popular at a time when there was an active campaign of attacking black folks and saying they weren't smart enough and did not deserve, full citizenship, did not deserve rights, all of that. I think we're basically seeing the same thing today. I think the rise of popularity of this kind of content is against the backdrop of a very real attack on marginalized people from this administration. You know, there was just this very meaty piece from ProPublica about how Trump and

• 1:56:13Speaker 15

  Musk, their dogged stuff, really was an attack on black women specifically, like, black women with stable federal jobs.

• 1:56:21Speaker 13

  Totally.

• 1:56:21Speaker 15

  And that these attacks, essentially it was like, you were able to smear black women, career civil servants, as, you know, they were DEI hires, they were undeserving of these jobs, they really just deserved to be fired. And, you know, really, black women just became these easy targets for an administration hostile to marginalized people. So if we have all of that happening against the rise of this form of digital media that is using AI to reaffirm these stereotypes about black women that we aren't able to behave ourselves in polite society, cannot figure out a way to solve conflict without resorting to violence, are loud and obnoxious, then when you hear about real-life, human black women getting pushed out of their employment or attacked by this administration.

• 1:57:03Speaker 15

  You might think, well, maybe it's for the best because they're not suited for that work anyway, because of the kind of content that I have been consuming on TikTok. And I think it just reaffirms this worldview that real life, human, black folks are not self-actualized human beings. We're just a collection of tropes and stereotypes and caricatures.

• 1:57:22Speaker 13

  I, I don't know what to say there, uh, but I agree. Yes.

• 1:57:26Speaker 15

  And I do think there's a kind of platform accountability question in all this because

• 1:57:32Speaker 13

  Oh, most certainly.

• 1:57:33Speaker 15

  Yeah, like one of the reason why we're seeing the, the rise of these videos is because of the recent introduction of Google's VO3 Creator. It came out about a month ago and it's Google's latest AI video generation model. And essentially it's designed to create these realistic looking videos from text prompts. And the thing that kind of makes it a step above is that you can incorporate things like synchronized audio, dialogue, sound effects, music. It is really taken off with creators online who are using this tool to create everything from these AI skits to AI influencers to AI mukbangs, you know, where people eat tons and tons of food.

• 1:58:08Speaker 13

  Oh, this is so upsetting.

• 1:58:11Speaker 15

  It is. And then like another kind of offshoot of this is you have people who use VO3 to make content like this and they get tons of views. And then they're like, oh, if you want to learn how to make this yourself, pay me and I'll teach you how to do it too. So it's, it's like, there's always a weird like MLM grift in there somewhere.

• 1:58:32Speaker 13

  That is the content creator classic is like a mid-tier influencer who's not like that good at what they do, but is able to supplement their income by offering courses to people to teach them how to make similarly sub, subpar content. And it's interesting that we've reached the full AI automation aspect of this, right? This is, this used to be a big thing among like YouTubers. I was not aware that this is now a thing among like AI TikTok influencers, but that, but that makes sense because this is like the easiest thing to automate. So of, of course there's going to be like an influx of, of people trying to make a quick buck on racist AI slop.

• 1:59:08Speaker 15

  It makes me so sad. And I do think, I mean, when, I guess, I would be curious how Google feels about the fact that like, this is what their, their tool is being used for, right? I, I wonder like, if leaders have a sense that this is harmful, not just harmful to black women like me who, who are depicted in this kind of content, but harmful for the internet as a whole. It makes the internet experience worse for everybody. And I guess, I, I guess I would imagine that like, Google probably doesn't care that this is what their, their technology is being used for. Like, if I had a direct line to Sundar Pichai, the head of Google, I would show him these clips and say like, is this what you had in mind for VO3? Or is this a misuse of this tool that you just put out and unleashed on all of us?

• 1:59:51Speaker 13

  Yeah. And are you going to dedicate some, like, millions of dollars of research into stopping this from happening? No, of course not. Like, they're not going to build comprehensive tools that prevent platform abuse like this. Like, that's not going to happen as long as people are using it. And then people are hearing about it and it's spreading. Like, that's, that's what they want. If there, if there happens to be offensive use cases of it. If anything, that's good, because that drives engagement. It gets people to know about the product.

• 2:00:16Speaker 15

  And I think that's another one of the reasons why Trump's, you know, executive orders on AI that we saw early-

• 2:00:24Speaker 13

  Woke AI.

• 2:00:24Speaker 15

  Woke AI. I mean, like, I will be the first person to admit that we have very deep problems when it comes to AI. Anybody who listens to Better Offline knows this. Like, this is not a secret. AI is often biased. AI is often wrong, because it is trained on us, humans, the bias little fucks that we are, right? And so that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. I also will say, like, some of the solutions of how we fix that are complex and not super simple. But with Trump's executive order, he basically is signing an order saying, "All AI must be objective. It must, it must adhere to the objective truth of the United States." And it's like, well, who determines that?

• 2:01:02Speaker 13

  Who, who determines the objective truth of the United States? The president?

• 2:01:08Speaker 15

  I mean, if you ask Trump, yes, him. And I guess that's the thing that pisses me off, is that there actually are complex issues and problems when it comes to AI. But this executive order just is like, oh, the problem is, is that it's woke. The solution is me signing an executive order saying, "No woke in AI." And rather than getting any kind of actual solution or having the conversation, we just get fucking nonsense.

• 2:01:34Speaker 13

  No, it is worrying from multiple levels, including the fact that the president thinks he is the orbiter of objective truth and thinks he can legislate that or thinks he can executive order that into being by either benefiting or punishing tech companies who follow his policies.

• 2:01:53Speaker 15

  Yeah, I mean, spoiler alert for that executive order. That's exactly what he's saying. And, you know, you used the word propaganda earlier and that really is, if there was like a thesis statement of what I wanted to say in this episode, is that that is exactly what I think is going on here. It really does remind me of minstrel shows because even though minstrel shows back in the 19th century were this popular form of entertainment, it also was an entire manufacturing enterprise where people made very good money selling racist blackface figurines as novelties and all of that. David Pilgrim, the founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan, put it like this. They were everyday objects which portrayed black people as ugly, different, and fun to laugh at. They were in a word propaganda. And I think

• 2:02:38Speaker 15

  that's exactly what's going on here. Like, people like to think about racism as if it's just this thing that hangs in the air as opposed to a system that specific people are personally and intentionally perpetuating because they are cashing in on it. I don't see how Google letting creators use their tools to create content like this is any different. Like, yeah, that is exactly what's going on in my book.

• 2:02:59Speaker 13

  That's flatly, like, that's just like one to one. Like, you're using tech to create like unreal depictions of racist caricatures to please audiences, to reaffirm their own biases, to reform their own racism, and you're monetizing it and you're automating it to create hashtag viral moments. Like, it's the most explicit and like gross, blatant form of this that I have like seen. Like, I think Robert a few years ago reported on people using AI to like make like, you know, like true crime videos of like, like animating like victims of crimes or like murder victims and talking about how they were killed or something, which is very gross and very, very disgusting. But this sort of like organized,

• 2:03:43Speaker 13

  like racist video propaganda stuff can lead to a lot more like actual, like real world damage.

• 2:03:49Speaker 15

  I completely agree. I mean, those true crime videos, I remember that imagine if your kid was murdered and then

• 2:03:56Speaker 13

  No, it's so gross.

• 2:03:57Speaker 15

  20 years later, someone is like, oh, I've made an AI depiction of your murdered child telling their story.

• 2:04:02Speaker 13

  No, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's evil, but I think the damage that can do is, is kind of limited. The, the damage that this whole altered reality where racism can get affirmed leads to, I think, a lot more actual like the political and personal consequences.

• 2:04:17Speaker 15

  Completely agree. And I also think just taking a step back in the conversation about AI, we're all being told how the proliferation of AI is going to be the linchpin of our economy. It's so important. It's going to change everything. And then you actually look at some of these use cases that are taking off. And it's like, well, was this really worth all the fucking climate degradation to make this racist AI version of a Bigfoot that looks like a black woman?

• 2:04:41Speaker 13

  No more rainforest, but at least we get racist Bigfoot. So.

• 2:04:46Speaker 15

  Oh, my God. Well, Garrett, I think that's a good place to end. Thank you so much for letting me rant at you about this. I really appreciate it.

• 2:04:53Speaker 13

  Where else can people find your work, Bridgette?

• 2:04:55Speaker 15

  Well, you can listen to my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. You can listen to my other podcasts with Mozilla Foundation about ethics in AI called IRL. And you can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marine DC.

• 2:05:06Speaker 13

  Fantastic. Oh, the internet.

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• 2:07:27Speaker 17

  Hi, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a very special edition of It Could Happen Here in which we are very lucky to be joined by Inman from Live Like the World is Dying in what will be the first of many crossover episodes where the folks from Stranger Tangled Wilderness are going to share with us some of their preparedness advice. Welcome to the show. Would you like to introduce yourself?

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks so much for having me, James. I'm Inman Narwin, and I use they/them pronouns. And I'm one of the hosts of Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times, which is a lefty prepper podcast about community and individual preparedness for disasters of all kinds. And really excited to.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  Be on the show with you.

• 2:08:17Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  On a different show, because you're on that show with me sometimes, which is great. I don't know.

• 2:08:23Speaker 17

  Yeah, I'm bringing together the two, like, I'm sure there's a superhero reference I could make here, but I don't really understand that world, so I won't.

• 2:08:33Speaker 01

  I don't either.

• 2:08:34Speaker 17

  No, great. Okay, that's it. Two people talking about a thing they don't understand. That is what podcasts are sometimes. But not today. What are we going to talk about today?

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Well, what I'm really excited to talk about today is preparedness in general. How community preparedness differs from some more conventional modalities. I'm being really nice with that phrase.

• 2:08:58Speaker 17

  Yeah, that's one way of saying it.

• 2:09:00Speaker 01

  Of how individual preparedness fits into community preparedness and kind of about my own journey into prepper stuff or preparedness, which might be a new term for some people.

• 2:09:13Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:09:13Speaker 01

  I like to call it preparedness over like prepping as a term, sort of because like, I don't know, like if I say I'm into prepping, then people start to give me funny looks and think I want to live in a bunker with a thousand cans of beans and more guns than I know what to do with.

• 2:09:30Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:09:30Speaker 01

  But if I say I'm into preparedness, people are like, ew, I know who to call if I need help with something or get in a jam, you know?

• 2:09:39Speaker 17

  Yeah, 100%.

• 2:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's kind of exactly that sentiment that I want listeners to think of when they think of preparedness is what connections and resources we have for when things go wrong and how we are going to respond to disasters of all kinds when we're faced with them. Because having a plan kind of makes things less scary, you know?

• 2:10:03Speaker 17

  Yeah, definitely. I feel safer approaching bad things because I've approached bad things with my friends and we have gone through them and we've helped other people get through them.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I also think a lot of people engage in preparedness without really realizing this. I feel like I'd ask these questions to you on a less rhetorical basis if I didn't know them to be true. But for instance, listener, do you keep tools and a snack in your car in case you break down on the side of the road? Or if your car won't start, do you have a friend that will take a look at it for you and help you fix it? If so, then congratulations, you're into preparedness for a very specific kind of disaster. And now we just have to figure out how to apply that to other disasters, whether it's your car breaking down, the climate breaking down, or the world as we

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  know it breaking down. Because unfortunately, with the world as it is right now, as Margaret has said before, we're all preppers now. Yeah, I don't know. It's something that makes thinking about disaster just less scary. And I think that's ultimately kind of one of the best reasons of like, why we should get into preparedness is because it makes things less scary.

• 2:11:26Speaker 17

  Yeah, definitely. And I think it gives you, if you're doing it right, and I think this is something we can get into, like, you realize how much your community can get through if you all have each other, rather than necessarily the alternative to the other modality that you talked about is theoretically thinking how much you could get through whilst never helping anyone.

• 2:11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:46Speaker 17

  And those are very different things.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, totally. And I don't know, listeners, we're talking about kind of more traditional, like bunker mentality prepping, which we'll get into.

• 2:11:58Speaker 17

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  A little bit later. But that is my euphemism so far is a more conventional modality.

• 2:12:04Speaker 17

  Yeah. So like, can you give some ideas of like, why people might want to get into preparedness, what they might want to be prepared for?

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So many things. The list is kind of endless, which is, which is unfortunate. And I don't want to overwhelm overwhelm people, but there's just a lot of things and new things are emerging every day. But the first step of preparedness is kind of identifying what your threat model is, or really just asking yourself, you know, like, what are you personally worried about for yourself or for your community?

• 2:12:45Speaker 01

  And some kind of like larger categories that we can lump that stuff into is I feel like what comes to mind for people immediately probably is natural disasters. They're ever more frequent, they're growing in intensity and happening in more places. People who never thought they would become climate refugees are now becoming climate refugees. I used to live on a chunk of land and like we got flooded out. We lived in a hundred year floodplain and like,

• 2:13:12Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:13:13Speaker 01

  I know it's not once every hundred years, that's not how it works, but like our time came and we got flooded out.

• 2:13:19Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  There's migration. This could be due to climate change, political upheaval, economic reasons, family bigotry.

• 2:13:29Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  An obvious tie into this right now is everything going on with ICE raids where a lot of people are being displaced and either trying to return to their homes or find new ones. And there's also like, I don't know, there's like a lot of people like in more conservative states in the US who, for instance, are trans or have trans people that are in their family or in their close friend group and are deciding whether they need to move somewhere else or at least come up with an escape plan if things get worse where they are.

• 2:14:04Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  And the same is true for like, I don't know, maintaining access to abortion. Everything is very different in very different places or very close spaces even in the United States. And so I think a lot of people who never thought they'd need to think about migration are now thinking about it.

• 2:14:22Speaker 17

  Yeah. A big problem with how migration is reported on in America is that like people who are migrants are seen as like some kind of subcategory of humans, you know?

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah.

• 2:14:32Speaker 17

  Like if you're a person who can get pregnant and you're a person who might consider in whatever circumstances accessing abortion, then in some states you need to be prepared to become a migrant like at

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:48Speaker 17

  relatively very short notice, right? Like it's, it's something that we're, we're all closer to than we think.

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:14:57Speaker 01

  Another big one is kind of like larger economic, social or political collapse, you know, simply meaning that like the structures of the world no longer mean what they used to mean. This could mean the collapse of capitalism or capitalism turning more into like literal corporate feudalism. Another big one is I'm just have this broad category of war. This could be an invasion, a civil war, a revolution, a rise in right wing militias, another rise in right wing militias, whatever. I'm kind of neglecting some more fantastical apocalypses that I'm sure we can all imagine, but there are those we might wake up as fungus, you know, who can say?

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  And then lastly, there's the current disaster that is late stage capitalism. And this one is the one that I spend the most time thinking about because it's the one that's ever present in our lives currently and kind of informs and maybe creates a lot of the other larger threats I just mentioned.

• 2:16:00Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  Except becoming fungus.

• 2:16:02Speaker 17

  Well, yet.

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe.

• 2:16:04Speaker 17

  Yeah, I know we're doing a lot with the, the old whatever RFK is in charge of Ministry of Health. It's not called that. Health and Human Services. Yeah, I think this is the one that like this is a disaster that people don't often like see because it's slow.

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:19Speaker 17

  It kills us slowly rather than quick and kills us quickly.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:23Speaker 17

  Talking of killing us slowly, I mean, my obligation to pivot to adverts is slowly killing my soul. But I have to do it anyway.

• 2:16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, this is new for me. We don't have these. I'm a little like the world is dying.

• 2:16:37Speaker 17

  Yeah, I know. I, I thought I'd take the first one. I'm going to leave the second one up to you. You can have a swing at it.

• 2:16:55Speaker 17

  All right. Thank you products and services for supporting this show. We are back. Amin, let's break it down for people on like a very basic sense of those. Okay. How do we start being more prepared? Like, I imagine the first step would be to immediately go to a federal firearms licensee. Is that right?

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  Yes, that is. That is the first step. It is to fill your bunker with guns. No, that's, that's not the first step.

• 2:17:27Speaker 17

  Because you can eat them.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  Yes. No, jokes aside. So the first step, we just talked about it before that break is determine your threat. You know, in the case of, let's use earthquakes as an example. If you live somewhere with earthquakes, then your threat model should probably include earthquakes. You might prepare for earthquakes more than you might prepare for wildfires too. The second step is make a plan, which means like when there's an earthquake, you're going to do X and Y and meet so and so at blank.

• 2:17:59Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  You can also include not living somewhere with earthquakes anymore as part of your make a plan. Cause maybe that's just the one thing you don't want to deal with. The next part is acquire the parts of the plan. And so like if your plan includes resources, which everyone's plan should include a go bag, an escape route and any kind of equipment that you need. And at this point, you're mostly ready. I maybe would add to collaborate with others. And then this step gets missed a lot, but at this point, since you're mostly ready, hopefully you can let go of some anxiety and despair. You've done the hardest part, which is to get started.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  And hopefully you can, we can feel comfort in that if we can't forestall a disaster, that we can at least be ready for it. And then. Act on the plan, do the thing and assess what you can do better next time. Yeah, that's, those are my basic steps.

• 2:18:59Speaker 17

  Yeah, that is, uh, makes it seem all so simple.

• 2:19:02Speaker 01

  It's so simple.

• 2:19:04Speaker 17

  Yeah, obviously, we will spend a lot of time in the next few months, breaking down each of those steps and explaining them for people.

• 2:19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:11Speaker 17

  But yeah, like, like I live in a place where wildfires are common. In my time living in California, I've been evacuated for a couple of fires. I've had an earthquake, you know, I've had fewer than natural disasters. Of course, earthquakes can also become fires, they did in San Francisco, but uh, yeah, it would not make sense if you live where I live to not have a plan.

• 2:19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:32Speaker 17

  For that, you would be being naive.

• 2:19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:35Speaker 17

  Is there like a story like that for you? Like, is there a thing, did you, did you like, uh, you know, have to evacuate for, for a wildfire and you couldn't find your shoes? Like what?

• 2:19:45Speaker 01

  So one of my funny things was I'm living on this land project and like, we were, we were experiencing a flood. We were experiencing what could have very easily been a flash flood.

• 2:19:55Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  And I was trying to just convince people to leave and um, I had a hard time convincing people to leave.

• 2:20:03Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:20:04Speaker 01

  Like, there was like water up to our chests and this is my answer now, but um, my answer that I wrote up out for this episode is um, so a little bit of prelude, in the first episode of Live Like The World Is Dying, Margaret talks with Kitty Stryker about anarchist prepping. And Margaret talks about the possibilities that she's preparing for, which she identifies as kind of these four possibilities. Living like the world is going to end and that we might not survive, living like the world is going to end and we can try to survive, living like we can prevent the end of the world and then maybe trying to live like the world isn't going to end after all.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  And I got into preparedness for a lot of reasons, some of which evolved over time. It went from something that felt scary to something that feels comforting. And I hope that it can become comforting for other people. I hope that's where a lot of you can land who are listening, who are either new to the concept or think that prepping is only for people who expect to need to survive for 30 years in a bunker after a nuclear zombie bioapocarev or whatever, eating canned beans. I'm really harping on this image because I think it's what a lot of people think of when they think of prepping, you know, beans, bunker, a little baddie, and the fourth, maybe

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  lesser known one, billionaires, or the four Bs of the apocalypse, as I want to think about them. To kind of confront this as like a word, this like apocalypse.

• 2:21:37Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:21:38Speaker 01

  There's a lot of different kinds of apocalypses, and whether we like it or not, if it isn't already here, it's coming. And for some people, it's coming swiftly. For others, it's slowly, but it is coming. And billionaires are preparing for it, even if they want us to think their tech will save the world. They have all the money and resources, and they are still worried. And while they'll try to use their money and power to kind of escape the consequences becoming a billionaire has had on the world, most people probably don't have access to those kinds of resources.

• 2:22:10Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  But what we all do have access to are social and community ties, even if it might not seem like that now. And oddly, these social ties are things that billionaires often lack or doubt the authenticity of, or just can't comprehend.

• 2:22:24Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:22:25Speaker 01

  There's this article by Douglas Rushkoff, this tech consultant who gets flown out to the desert to talk to rich people about collapse, and he's surprised because they don't really ask him about tech stuff. They ask him about like maintaining social control over the people that work for them when money no longer means anything. And I'm like, I don't know, do you maybe make like more authentic friendships, you know?

• 2:22:49Speaker 17

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe don't rely on having people subservient to you.

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I think this kind of air quotes conundrum speaks a lot to people's fears about collapse and is what gets people into a bunker mentality. You know, everyone's worried about roving bands of armed people taking what they've prepared for their own survival. And I think that is a fantasy that we don't really see happen in real life as often as we might think.

• 2:23:17Speaker 17

  Yeah, I've reported from plenty of natural and and human created disasters. Uh, actually, it is the opposite of that. Like, uh, we can talk about this another time, but, uh, it's one of the reasons I can keep doing it, like despite it being hugely traumatic is it's actually incredible how much people go out of their way when they're thoroughly miserable to help other people who they see as needing help.

• 2:23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's a really beautiful thing.

• 2:23:47Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:23:47Speaker 01

  To be a little bit of a word nerd real quick, I feel like everyone who talks about prepping has talked about the etymological origins of the word apocalypse, but it is very interesting. And I think it's relevant, which is like, okay, it's from these two Greek words, oppo and caliptin, which means like off and to conceal.

• 2:24:05Speaker 17

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:05Speaker 01

  And so like a more literal translation of it is a revealing. And I think that disaster really reveals things. It reveals the ways that society has really like failed. It reveals the consequences of what living in a corporate oligarchy looks like. And it also reveals like what beautiful and powerful things people have built as communities and prepared for.

• 2:24:34Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:24:34Speaker 01

  To give like a little bit of a positive spin on a grim, grim, grim word.

• 2:24:40Speaker 17

  Yeah. No, like when I think about that, I think about like two years ago, I was in the Marshall Islands, right, where like the apocalypse has come, right? The, the, the atomic bomb has dropped on the Marshall Islands, the United States, we did that. And the sea levels are rising such that like children born there today won't die there, right? They probably won't even have their own children there, you know, 20, 30, 40 years left. And I didn't see like, like people fighting each other for, for the highest point of land.

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:08Speaker 17

  I, I saw people taking care of one another, thinking about how like, not just like their individual, you know, they could maintain their assets, but how their community could survive, how their culture could survive and, uh, you know, how they could keep the things, the incredible hospitality that's so special to them, which I thought was like very revealing compared to this sort of. Mindset that like you see, you see more conventionally in like prepper spaces.

• 2:25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And to finally get to my own kind of little journey into preparedness.

• 2:25:40Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  I wasn't a prepper until like not that long ago, really.

• 2:25:45Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  When I first heard Live Like The World Is Dying, it was 2020, COVID was still new. There was like extreme civil unrest because there was an uprising going on. And the same fascist that's our sitting president now was our president then. And he was backed up by people like Kyle Rittenhouse, who were gunning people down in the streets for protesting a racist murder. Where I lived, an entire mountain range was also on fire.

• 2:26:11Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:26:12Speaker 01

  And the idea that it was the coolest summer I might ever remember was still setting in. And then I heard about Margaret doing Live Like The World Is Dying. And I actually refused to listen to it because I knew with every fiber of my body that things were irrevocably different and I wanted to stick my head in the sand. You know, like, not because I was scared, but because getting prepared is overwhelming. And I didn't have any clue where to begin. I like I, I was a scrappy punk. I didn't have like thousands of dollars to spend on gear and stockpiling food and, and guns and shit, you know?

• 2:26:49Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:26:50Speaker 01

  And so it felt for a while like preparedness was only for people who had a lot of money and that I'd be left behind. But I did eventually listen to the show because Margaret's my friend and I trusted she had good things to say and because it was a show about beginnings and I needed one. And so as I listened, I slowly started to warm up to the idea that preparedness wasn't just necessary, but that it was also very much within my reach, especially in the framework of community preparedness.

• 2:27:21Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:27:22Speaker 01

  And you know, who can tell you a lot about community preparedness?

• 2:27:25Speaker 17

  Who's that?

• 2:27:27Speaker 01

  I think these lovely sponsors or advertisements or products that we're about to hear about.

• 2:27:33Speaker 17

  I sure hope so.

• 2:27:45Speaker 17

  We are back. There was a fantastic ad transition, first of many. Hopefully it wasn't like, apparently we're beginning ads for like some kind of gold company that is also sanctioned by God.

• 2:27:56Speaker 17

  That is just, just to be clear, not the way to go in terms of community preparedness. Precious metals route is one. We're not advising here. Can you like explain that difference between those two modalities? Cause I think, yeah, like I still, when Margaret was asking me if I wanted to do Live Like The World Is Dying, she was like, oh, cause James is like, oh, when we did an episode together on Go Back, she's like, oh yeah, James is a big like, like a lefty prepper, a community prepared. And I was like, whoa, that's not me. I, I, I'm not going to be on the Discovery Channel show, you know, like where the people shoot themselves on camera, but no, they don't too clear. Yeah. Kill themselves. They, they handle their firearms in an unsafe manner and hurt themselves.

• 2:28:39Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 2:28:39Speaker 17

  So let's explain, like, let's break down the good and the bad.

• 2:28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there, there's kind of a tension between them.

• 2:28:46Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  And between like what I'll call community preparedness and like bunker syndrome prepping.

• 2:28:52Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:28:53Speaker 01

  So the image that prepping brings to mind for a lot of people is like a right wing alpha dude in a bunker with a dragon horde of preserved food and more guns than anyone could ever use. It's like an image of one person against the world. And I'm kind of like, okay, your, your fantasy apocalypse happens, you survive the nuclear apocalypse. Armed gangs rove the wastelands, food is hoarded and fought over, and you're protecting your bunker. And then what? You know, what happens next? How do you build back a world alone? What is the world if you're alone?

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  And not only, like we've talked about, we mentioned this earlier, but like, I don't, I think this is not only like a fantasy, but I, it's not what happens, I think historically in disasters. And the way that we can make it through disasters, I think, is not based on how many resources we have hoarded, but based on our abilities to make and maintain community, friendship and connections, you know? It's a trope, but the real horde in the bunker was the friendship all along, you know? I don't know. Yeah. But, you know, we do need to learn how to produce and preserve food and build stuff. We just don't have to do it alone. In a disaster, our greatest resource is help from people that we care about and potential new friends.

• 2:30:12Speaker 01

  And it's sort of the overwhelming amount of skills that come with the bunker syndrome that I think causes a lot of people to become overwhelmed by starting to prepare. And the traditional prepper community, it's very right wing conservative and it really makes it seem like every single person has to learn every skill they could possibly need in order to get prepared.

• 2:30:33Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:30:34Speaker 01

  And I think part of that kind of bunker syndrome is also maybe that you have to learn all that stuff on your own because you low key think that everyone you know is going to turn on you, you know?

• 2:30:46Speaker 17

  Right, yeah, because you've been an odious piece of shit for your entire life.

• 2:30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and again, make better friends, you know?

• 2:30:54Speaker 17

  Yeah, like, I used to think that like preparedness was a lot of people who'd never really experienced genuine hardship, wondering what it might be like.

• 2:31:00Speaker 01

  It probably is, yeah.

• 2:31:02Speaker 17

  A lot of it is, right? Because like, if you've been just like poor or otherwise facing like the trans folks right now, right? Even like anyone really in the LGBTQIA area, like, it's scary right now and you've probably found that the things that are keeping you going are other people.

• 2:31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:23Speaker 17

  And not your pile of beans. And like, I certainly have not experienced what trans folks are experiencing, but like I've had some difficult times and I've been poor and like, it's always been like other people who have come through for me, not stuff I had or even skills I have, really.

• 2:31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think there's this real divide between like, there's people who are in fantasy bunker land and then there's people who are like, either too afraid to think about preparedness or feel too overwhelmed to think about it or think that

• 2:31:54Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:31:55Speaker 01

  they can't possibly do it because it's too far gone already.

• 2:32:01Speaker 01

  And I think preparedness is for everyone, you know, like we say, start small, put food away every week, start to get your go bag together, just start.

• 2:32:11Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:32:12Speaker 01

  And so to maybe now define like what community preparedness is, is I think that it's what we get when we take a lot of different principles and mash them together, you know, there's like, it's like part mutual aid, it's part individual preparedness, it's principles of autonomy, solidarity, direct action and collective decision making, and it's all synthesized into a kind of a beautiful little alchemy.

• 2:32:36Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  It's kind of the most like anarchistic thing you can do, which is really fun to me.

• 2:32:41Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:32:42Speaker 01

  And I think it really means investing in the people around you so that you can all invest in collective survival. I don't know, we mentioned this earlier, but like, there's this thing that happens during disasters that gets referred to as disaster communism.

• 2:32:56Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:32:57Speaker 01

  Have you heard that one?

• 2:32:58Speaker 17

  Yeah, yeah. It doesn't mean that like Lenin emerges and leads a vanguard group to show you where the soup kitchens are.

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. It means that the logic of capital is kind of temporarily suspended and people just help each other for free, not even for barter, for free. And like people like go out and just give out stuff they have in excess, even if they purchased it. And even if they're like, you don't look like the kind of people I like, just give it out.

• 2:33:27Speaker 17

  Yeah, a hundred percent like.

• 2:33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:29Speaker 17

  I think like I can think of a few, like I can remember when thousands of people were being housed outside in the cold and weren't wet at the border. Housed is not the word I would use.

• 2:33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:40Speaker 17

  Corralled in the desert. I was out there with my friends and like we looked like dirty crust punk people, right? Like we, we're not like clean and well put together in that sense, right? Like we just scruff.

• 2:33:51Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 2:33:51Speaker 17

  Um, and that's fine. I like being scruff.

• 2:33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:54Speaker 17

  It's nice. But like. Yeah, it was amazing to see like folks who one hundred percent do not have the same politics as me. Like roll out in whatever like setups, you know, they had and like be like, yo, this is fucked. Uh, luckily, like I have some stuff that I was gonna use for a barbecue next week, so I'm gonna drag my barbecue out here and cook for people.

• 2:34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:17Speaker 17

  You know, people who cook for their churches bake sale being like, yeah, I have a giant ass pot. Like, let me make some beans for you guys, you know, like.

• 2:34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:25Speaker 17

  I think people would be so surprised, and it's great that people have not experienced that. Like, because I think it's quite a traumatic thing to experience, but like, yeah, you'd be so surprised how, uh, how much. Or like, I remember one time just building shelters with a bunch of people. And like, everyone was pretty miserable, right? It was cold and windy and like, there were some Kurdish guys, some Uzbek guys, some Chinese guys. We're building these shelters together and like, all of these people who didn't even share a language and were going through very difficult times. We're just like nerding out on knots together.

• 2:34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:57Speaker 17

  And and just helping each other and then not doing that so they could sleep inside, doing that so little children wouldn't have to sleep in the cold. But.

• 2:35:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:05Speaker 17

  That is, that is the way humans behave in these situations and capitalism or YouTube might have convinced you it's not, but like it, it is.

• 2:35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think like more traditional preppers really like get into it too, like they'll show up, they're like, I got forty chainsaws or like. Like, it's like every like chud truck's time to shine to like haul away wreckage and like, I don't know, you know, it's like, I'm making it sound exciting. But what's exciting is when people collaborate autonomously and collectively for like more good than their own.

• 2:35:39Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:35:39Speaker 01

  And then kind of the problem is that like capitalism comes back in, the initial fallout fades from sight. And, yeah, just because the disaster kind of fades doesn't mean it's gone. And there's a lot of people who kind of still have to deal with it for potentially ever.

• 2:35:57Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:35:57Speaker 01

  And that's kind of like the disaster of late stage capitalism is similar. We, we have people who are.

• 2:36:03Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:36:03Speaker 01

  Constantly invisibilized, even though it's part of their regular lives.

• 2:36:08Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:36:10Speaker 01

  Can I maybe break down some of these terms that are maybe? I think it'd be good for people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because I think they get thrown around a lot, right? Totally. So mutual aid is knowing that any help that we give our community helps us by strengthening our strengthening our community. Autonomy is deciding what's best for us based on what we know about ourselves and our needs. Solidarity is unity through action and knowing that like, it's like the, you know, I got your back even if you don't got mine, you know? Yeah. Direct action is working directly to achieve our goals instead of waiting for someone else to do it. You know, we see this in disasters, like, don't wait for FEMA. There's like so many people who are just out there doing autonomous relief efforts and it's incredible. Yeah.

• 2:36:55Speaker 01

  Collective decision making, finding ways to make decisions together in ways where power isn't being like abused or accumulated. Mm hmm. And then there's individual preparedness, which is kind of the last little thing that I want to talk about. So individual preparedness is kind of like the ways that we prepare individually so that when a disaster strikes, we have our basic needs met. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot to learn. So it's like, we, it's easy to get lost back in that overwhelm mentality. Yeah. But I think we can really think about it in terms of disasters, since we're on that track. Like if there's a disaster and power goes out, then the roads are less traversable.

• 2:37:36Speaker 01

  If you have all of your needs met through individual preparedness, then you're in a really good position to go help others. And if everyone in your community already has prepared for their basic needs, then your whole community is prepared to take kind of the next step towards Yeah. recovery. And it means that your community can now help other communities that were less prepared or more impacted by a disaster, even if they thought they were prepared. Community preparedness is like what happens when we kind of mash all of these ideas together and start doing it not just as an individual, but as a community. And this can look small or it can look big, you know?

• 2:38:18Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of people's biggest hurdle is just like, kind of making a plan. And like, I don't know, your, your disaster plan might include you and the people you live with. It might include you and your polycule. It might include you and your whole block. And it might include your whole neighborhood. And I think there's just this like big, beautiful spectrum. And to kind of carry an example through like some interviews that we've done on Live Like The World Is Dying, someone's measure of individual preparedness might include having a radio when cell networks go down. And another's might include building communication infrastructure that they can distribute.

• 2:38:58Speaker 01

  And another, maybe smaller groups, idea might be agreeing on a place to meet up because they don't have radios, can't afford them, don't know how they work. And they've just said, when shit hits the fan, we're meeting at the library.

• 2:39:16Speaker 17

  Yeah, that's still a whole lot better than like dashing around town, wondering where the people you love are.

• 2:39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it's that easy, you know, we get overwhelmed by tech, but there's so many low tech solutions to a lot of these problems.

• 2:39:32Speaker 17

  Yep.

• 2:39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:33Speaker 17

  That's why we're doing an episode on carrier pigeons.

• 2:39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, carrier pigeons. Aren't they extinct?

• 2:39:38Speaker 17

  That's passenger pigeons, different pigeon.

• 2:39:41Speaker 01

  Passenger pigeons.

• 2:39:42Speaker 17

  Yeah. So like, what are some basic ways we can, we can think about preparedness? And we're going to cover these in more detail, right? We'll do episodes on each of these, but maybe someone's like, well, shit, I would like to get on that. What are some things people can work on?

• 2:39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it does start with kind of individual preparedness. And when I say individual, I mean like, you know, for ourselves. But that doesn't mean we can't do individual preparedness parallel and like with other people. So don't, don't think of individual as being alone. It's just we're thinking about your specific, basic needs.

• 2:40:21Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:40:22Speaker 01

  And so here's kind of a checklist that we put out in a zine for strangers in a tangled wilderness called Ready For Anything. There's documentation, you know, get or renew documentation, like passports, DACA, other status cards, whatever. Get a driver's license from your state if you are undocumented. If you have other kind of permits, like concealed carry permits or medical documentation for you and your pets, get all of those together. And you want to think about having both physical and digital backups of those things.

• 2:40:59Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:40:59Speaker 01

  Because digital might not work.

• 2:41:03Speaker 01

  You want to do some kind of basic just supply preparedness, which is store three days or three weeks of food, store three days or three weeks of water, store enough portable power to keep your phone and other essentials charged for three days or three weeks, build yourself a go-bag, stockpile prescription medication you need, keep your vehicle in good running condition with at least half a tank of gas, and get kind of any equipment stuff that you might want now, because it's going to be wildly unavailable when a disaster does come.

• 2:41:39Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:41:40Speaker 01

  And then on the community side, get to know your neighbors, plan with them, help them with documentation and preparedness components. Make sure vulnerable neighbors know that you are a potential resource. Connect with activist groups locally. Build an affinity group. Maybe you and your friends are really into communication infrastructure. And when a disaster does strike, you just have that ready to go, while, you know, some other affinity group is making sure that everyone's fed.

• 2:42:12Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:42:13Speaker 01

  Divide and conquer, I don't like that phrase, but it it works right now.

• 2:42:17Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:42:18Speaker 01

  Make a plan for securely communicating and make plans for meeting up when things go wrong. And even when things kind of go wrong with your plan, you know, have a backup plan.

• 2:42:30Speaker 17

  Yeah. Primary, alternate, contingency and emergency plan, if you want to use the cringe military acronym.

• 2:42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then these are some kind of questions that I think you can ask your community when you're trying to think about building resiliency. What disasters or dangers do you feel like you're likely to face? How can you maintain access to food, water, and communication? How will you interact with other groups? What skills do you currently have? What skills do you wish you had? Can you learn those skills? How will you foster care and address specific needs of individuals in your community? How will your community defend itself? And how can we resist despair and maintain access to joy? Which I think that last one really gets lost a lot.

• 2:43:18Speaker 17

  Yeah, people forget about that one, but it's important. And even in like really dark places, like I've attended civil wars, right? Like, like maintaining access to joy is important. Like, I've sat with people in Kurdistan and sung songs and played tambour, which is like, I think the English word is oud, it's an instrument. And while drones were bombing, and so we didn't want to go outside at night.

• 2:43:41Speaker 01

  Golly.

• 2:43:41Speaker 17

  And like, let me tell you, it's a lot better if you have people to sing songs with than sitting on your own.

• 2:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm putting a songbook in my go bag now. That's, that's happening.

• 2:43:52Speaker 17

  Yeah. Yeah, these people had a folder. They came equipped with like laminated shit. Like, they were ready to rock.

• 2:44:00Speaker 01

  Golly.

• 2:44:01Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:44:01Speaker 01

  That's kind of what I got, you know?

• 2:44:04Speaker 17

  Yeah, it's a great place for people to start. And we're going to be covering a lot more of this stuff. So like, you will hear more about water and food and all the other things that we spoke about. Uh, we'll try and do at least one of these episodes a month. And then where can people find you if they have questions? If they want to listen to other episodes, maybe of Live Like the World is Dying or otherwise reach out?

• 2:44:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you want to hear more about anything that I've talked about, then you can listen to Live Like the World is Dying wherever you get podcasts. We're an entirely listener-supported podcast with zero ad breaks. And you can find more of what our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, does, including books and other podcasts we put out at tangledwilderness.org. Or you can support us on patreon.com slash strangers in a tangled wilderness. And if you want to ask me personally about things, you can find me on Instagram at ShadowtailArtificery, where you can see other stuff that I do that isn't this.

• 2:45:05Speaker 17

  Beautiful.

• 2:45:05Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah, thanks.

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• 2:47:29Robert Evans?

  Holy balls, it's executive dysfunction. That's what we call this, right?

• 2:47:34Speaker 13

  That's not what it's called.

• 2:47:36Robert Evans?

  Executive disorder, erectile dysfunction?

• 2:47:39Speaker 13

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:47:40Robert Evans?

  What do we do? Who are we?

• 2:47:42Speaker 13

  This is, it could happen here, executive disorder. Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you, Robert Evans.

• 2:47:52Robert Evans?

  I'm sorry, Garrison, I thought we were anarchists. And being an anarchist means never knowing what you're doing or why.

• 2:47:59Speaker 17

  Yes, can confirm.

• 2:48:01Speaker 13

  I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans and Sophie Lichterman.

• 2:48:06Speaker 03

  I wasn't planning on being in Mike, but I was very appalled.

• 2:48:09Speaker 13

  Well, it happened.

• 2:48:10Speaker 03

  I was very appalled.

• 2:48:11Speaker 17

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't plan for shit, Sophie. It's always chaos here.

• 2:48:17Speaker 13

  This week, we are covering the week of July 23rd to July 30th. Robert Evans, how are you doing?

• 2:48:25Robert Evans?

  You know what? I'm chillin' like Gillen. I'm not, because I am not in a maximum security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. A federal prison. It's actually not maximum security. So let's, let's talk about friend of the pod, Gillen Maxwell. We all love Gillen, you know?

• 2:48:41Speaker 17

  You speak for yourself there, mate.

• 2:48:42Robert Evans?

  You love her, I love her, Jeffrey Epstein loved her, uh, what?

• 2:48:46Speaker 03

  I, I don't love her.

• 2:48:48Robert Evans?

  So Gillen Maxwell is the daughter of a guy named Robert Maxwell. We've done a Behind the Bastards on him.

• 2:48:54Speaker 03

  It was a fun one, partly.

• 2:48:56Robert Evans?

  Amazing character, basically a guy who, in his early life, was a character from Inglourious Basterds, like a Jewish refugee who signed up to fight the Nazis for the Brits and killed his way across Western Europe, murdering dozens of SS men. And then after the war, he became a financier and destroyed Scientific Publishing and also tried to ignite a rivalry with Rupert Murdoch and failed so badly at it that he stole a billion dollars from his company's own pensions funds and then killed himself when all of that was coming out.

• 2:49:28Speaker 13

  So he really is like the average Quentin Tarantino character.

• 2:49:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:31Speaker 03

  Literally.

• 2:49:32Robert Evans?

  What I would describe him as, if Quentin, for some reason, did a sequel to Inglourious Basterds and it was just based on Brad Pitt's character becoming like a crooked finance executive in the 70s.

• 2:49:42Speaker 13

  Becoming like the Wolf of Wall Street type guy.

• 2:49:45Robert Evans?

  Yes, exactly. Like, that, that's, that's his backstory. Didn't you used to murder Nazis? Yeah, but now I'm like foreclosing a children's hospital.

• 2:49:53Speaker 03

  Anyways.

• 2:49:55Robert Evans?

  So Gillan had a rough upbringing because like her older brother had a car accident when she was very young and he was in a coma for years. Her mom basically spent a whole year just at the hospital with him. She was ignored for a period of time and then her parents tried to overcompensate and massively. Anyway, she has the kind of upbringing you would kind of expect for a socialite who winds up both poor as a young adult when her dad dies, not real person poor, but rich person poor when her dad dies and the family is disgraced and all their businesses fail. And she flees to New York to try to start a new life. And the thing that makes sense to her based on her background, being the kind of person

• 2:50:34Robert Evans?

  that she is, is to find a rich man and cling to him. And that rich man happens to be Jeffrey Epstein, who starts off by kind of renting her a luxury apartment. They begin dating. At some point, they stop dating. It's unclear to me how they would have defined their relationship at any point internally. The way they would always say it is they dated for a while. And then Jeffrey had a thing where he would say like, he never, he doesn't have exes. He promotes his exes to friends, right? And Gillan Maxwell was like his best friend and his business partner. She helped him run not his actual businesses that made money, the finance stuff,

• 2:51:14Robert Evans?

  but his life, right? Like she ordered his houses, she managed his housekeepers, and she helped recruit girls and women, because they recruited both for the stuff that Jeffrey is famous for, right? Both to give him massages and in the context of Epstein, a massage always means sex, and also recruit the girls that they flew around on the Lillie Day Express and, you know, handed off to different prominent men who wanted to have sex with teenagers or very young women, right? Gillan was intimately involved in all of this. She was convicted in 2022 after Epstein's suicide and sentenced to 20 years in prison for all

• 2:51:55Robert Evans?

  of, you know, the sex crimes that she had a part in. She was transferred to a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. In July of 2022, she was initially held in the normal dorm, like, like in general population, right? And the, the prison wing that she was in is, was kind of colloquially known as the snake pit, because it was a very nasty place with quite a lot of violence. Uh, to quote from an article in the Tallahassee Democrat, quote, Maxwell created a ruckus when, uh, she had a falling out with several women after Maxwell reported two other inmates known as Las Cubanas for trying to extort her. Epstein's partner in crime refused to use the shower stalls where violent attacks are

• 2:52:36Robert Evans?

  more common, and was escorted by a guard to and from her prison library job. So she has a kind of rough early time in prison, because she's in general pop. She rolls on these other inmates, and that starts the process of her getting special treatment. She has since been moved because of her good behavior to an honor dorm, where there are 30 or 40 quarters for the best behaved inmates. She's, we don't really know for sure, but it's very likely that she has a private room with like, storage. She's teaching yoga classes at the prison. Uh, she has, at some period of time, volunteered at the library. And she also teaches etiquette classes. And I, I want to make it clear, I don't have an issue actually with the fact that she's

• 2:53:20Robert Evans?

  teaching yoga or doing etiquette classes. I think if we're going to have prisons, prisoners should have access to stuff like that. I think that's all perfectly fine. I think her getting special treatment for good behavior, I don't really love, but I also don't think we should have prisons that can be described as a snake pit. So I'm kind of on the mixed end here. Yeah. Another thing that's kind of come out during her time in prison is that she has become a vegan. Uh, she was not for most of her life, but she did when she came to prison. She's complained a lot about the quality of the food, which is never spiced, and it's just kind of like unflavored tofu. And PETA has advocated on her behalf, which is pretty consistent for PETA. She's also said, and there's, there's significant evidence, uh, that this prison regularly serves rotten food that is bad for inmate health. It is a Florida prison.

• 2:54:05Robert Evans?

  When Gillan talks about it, she has in several interviews, the bad conditions in her prison. She's not lying or whining. These, these prisons are not. Acceptable quality, right? Like the Florida Department of Corrections and the Federal Department of Corrections are horrible. Uh, and they're doing a horrible job of running these places. The fact that I don't feel specifically compassion for Gillan Maxwell doesn't mean I want to like minimize the reality of the conditions in these prisons because most of the prisoners there were not massive sex, child sex traffickers, you know? Yeah, sure. So anyway, uh, FCI Tallahassee, which is where she's at. She's now in the prison's honor dorm and is still trying to get out of prison.

• 2:54:47Robert Evans?

  So she's made a couple of claims prior to the most recent stuff that is in the news right now that we're talking about. One of the things she's tried to argue is that the terms of Jeffrey Epstein's when he was initially prosecuted back in like 2007, 2008, the terms of his plea bargain should apply to her. Basically like she, she was included in that. And so she shouldn't be liable for the things that she got sentenced for more recently. I am not familiar with the exact legalese her lawyer is using to make that argument, but that is the gist of the argument her lawyer is trying to make. It's not going to work. What might work is her getting a pardon. So that's probably the thing you've seen about Gillan in the news most recently is that

• 2:55:30Robert Evans?

  she is basically asking Congress, if you want me to testify about Epstein and about the client list and everything. I can't talk openly if I'm in prison. And there's a degree to which like, again, I don't, I don't support this at all. But she's not wrong that like, well, yeah, you, you really couldn't talk to like, it really isn't reasonable, unreasonable to say, yeah, it's someone's probably not going to be able to talk openly about all of the wealthy, powerful people they saw committing sex crimes while they're locked up in prison, right? Not that praying is the right thing to do either. I'm just like, yeah, I mean, I, I bet someone could have you killed. I bet there are people that you have dirt on that could have you killed in that prison. Yeah.

• 2:56:08Speaker 13

  Well, and she's currently appealing her conviction to this room court and she's arguing

• 2:56:12Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 2:56:13Speaker 13

  that if she were to testify in front of Congress, she would need immunity for anything that she says.

• 2:56:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right. So, so that's what she's asking for. Now that said, she has already very recently been talking with the Department of Justice.

• 2:56:26Speaker 13

  Yes, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch.

• 2:56:28Robert Evans?

  Yes, Todd Blanch had nine hours of meetings over two days.

• 2:56:32Speaker 13

  Wow, okay.

• 2:56:33Robert Evans?

  Yes, now, there are no public statements about what she said during this, like, we don't know what this was about. We do know there was some sort of immunity agreement.

• 2:56:44Speaker 13

  A limited immunity agreement for those meetings and what she was saying in those meetings.

• 2:56:48Robert Evans?

  Okay. And we don't know precisely what it covered, but it probably means that basically, you're already in for 20 years. If you talk to us about stuff that may implicate you in crimes you haven't been charged for yet, we, you'll get immunity on that, is what I would guess, right? But we don't actually know precisely, like, what, what was happening here. And, yeah, there's, um, Barrett Berger, a former federal prosecutor in New York, told NBC News that he thinks that the interviews Blanch did were probably performative. Quote, "It may just be a way of being able to say, look, we dotted every I and crossed every T. Uh, there's value in being able to say that we've tried to speak to everyone that we possibly could, including the co-defendant," right?

• 2:57:30Robert Evans?

  So that's her argument, is basically, yeah, Blanch met with Gillan so that they could say they're talking with her because she's not going to talk to Congress and they're probably not going to offer her immunity.

• 2:57:41Speaker 13

  And it's hard to imagine that, like, Donald Trump's own Department of Justice is going to be investigating Donald Trump's connection to Jeffrey Epstein. So whatever is comes of these meetings, I do not, do not think that through these meetings, she is going to incriminate Donald Trump and that's going to be handled in any serious way. If, if anything, something like the opposite is happening, where she's talking about people who are not Donald Trump.

• 2:58:07Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 2:58:07Speaker 13

  And in doing so, trying to gain some sort of favor with the president. As Trump has said, like, last week, that he's quote-unquote "allowed to pardon her."

• 2:58:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:19Speaker 13

  Not saying that he will, not saying that he plans to, but that he's quote-unquote "allowed to." I can, I can play that clip here for the audience.

• 2:58:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, let's do that.

• 2:58:40Robert Evans?

  And in addition to that, he's made a couple of weird comments about Gillan over the years. When he's asked about Jeffrey now, he's pretty negative about him. He tends to be like, look, we knew for a while, like, we were never close and, you know, we had a falling out. He's a bad guy, right? That's what he said more recently. He's never really been negative about Gillan more recently. The thing that I recall him saying is that, like, he wishes her well when she was sentenced.

• 2:59:09Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:59:10Robert Evans?

  Which is kind of weird, right? And I don't know if it's kind of a result of the fact that she has something on him and he's trying to, you know, I don't know, that seems unlikely. That seems less likely to me than like, maybe he actually just kind of liked Gillan Maxwell. But I don't actually know. And anyway, that's the situation. We don't know, is Trump going to pardon her? He hasn't said he's going to, but as Garrison noted, it's weird of him to insist that he has the right to, just kind of randomly, why would you do that if you weren't thinking about it?

• 2:59:43Speaker 13

  Yeah. You could just say no.

• 2:59:44Robert Evans?

  You could just say, no, I'm not gonna, like, I'm not going to pardon her.

• 2:59:48Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 2:59:49Speaker 13

  Well, and Trump has continued to make weird comments about, like, Epstein and has elaborated on his falling out with Epstein the past week, first stating that they broke up their friendship because Epstein was just poaching hotel staff, which contradicts earlier statements Trump made. And then on July 29th, he had this, this much more elaborate conversation on Air Force One about how Epstein was taking employees from his spa and specifically, like, naming known victims of sex trafficking.

• 3:00:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he specifically named Virginia Jeffrey fairly recently, too, when talking about, like, people.

• 3:00:29Speaker 13

  This was, yeah, on the 29th.

• 3:00:31Speaker 17

  I think a reporter asked if she was one of the people and he said, yes, I believe she was, right?

• 3:00:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:37Speaker 13

  He says, I think so. He stole her, is the quote.

• 3:00:40Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:00:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:41Speaker 17

  There was a reporter who introduced the name into the conversation, just to be clear.

• 3:00:45Robert Evans?

  So, you know, do I think she's going to get pardoned? It seems really unlikely to me, and it seems really unlikely to me in part because how would the, like, I have trouble imagining even that not causing huge problems for him, right? I'm not one of these, this is guys who's constantly like, ah, Trump's, Trump's finally, you know, we've got Donny on the ropes.

• 3:01:08Speaker 13

  Finally got him.

• 3:01:09Robert Evans?

  But, but this is, this is a big one, right? This is a big one to his followers, to just Americans in general, something like 70% of the country or more is following this story actively and has a strong opinion on it, and there's zero electoral gain in pardoning Gillian fucking Maxwell, right? Like, it's a, it's a, it, it strikes me as unlikely because it seems like a serious damaging risk.

• 3:01:35Speaker 13

  The only thing they might try to do is if they try to paint, like, her herself as like a victim of Epstein.

• 3:01:41Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 3:01:41Speaker 13

  And there's, there's been like a Newsmax segment trying to argue this, like, you can see some sectors of the right who are trying to, like, create room for Trump to maneuver here, but I, I don't know if that will be a compelling narrative nationwide. He's gonna lose some people if he does that.

• 3:01:57Robert Evans?

  It, it seems unlikely.

• 3:02:01Speaker 13

  And I know, he, he seems annoyed that this is still a news story. He had this little Scotland vacation to finish a trade deal with the EU, which we'll talk more about next week, but throughout this Scotland vacation, he was quite upset that reporters there were still asking him about one Jeffrey Epstein.

• 3:02:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:20Speaker 11

  Mr. President, was part of the rush to get this deal done to not Jeffrey Epstein's story happening?

• 3:02:26Speaker 18

  Oh, you gotta be kidding with that. No, had nothing to do with it. Only you would think that. That had nothing to do with it.

• 3:02:34Speaker 03

  Is that, is that why he cheated at golf?

• 3:02:36Speaker 13

  You know, that's a good, a good call, Sophie. Maybe he was off his game because of all of these Epstein questions, and that's the only reason why he cheated at golf this one time, and definitely no other times ever. Truly, his, his most heinous crime.

• 3:02:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, I guess that's kind of where we, we end off. I'm not gonna say he wouldn't, right? I'll never say there's no way Gillian Maxwell gets pardoned, because this is 2025, and it's like, there's, there's credible evidence that he is considering a pardon for fucking P. Diddy.

• 3:03:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, Deadline reported that yesterday.

• 3:03:08Robert Evans?

  And again, if it is, right, if he does, we know why. It's because P Diddy probably has some shit on Trump, right? And P Diddy has the kind of resources that he could have like a deadfall system set up, right? That like if something happens to him, the info gets out like he that that is not beyond the kind of guy that P Diddy is. Whereas I don't know that Epstein ever really prepared for that eventuality.

• 3:03:31Speaker 13

  No, I don't think so. Like Mark Epstein, Jeffrey's brother, was interviewed by the BBC last week and mentioned how Jeffrey was talking about like possible information he has regarding to the 2016 election. But it did, it does not sound like there was any kind of like system for this information or that even any other people knew besides Jeffrey. I can play that clip here, too.

• 3:03:56Speaker 11

  Did he tell you who he knew things about?

• 3:04:00Speaker 19

  Well, in the 2016 election, we were talking about the election and Jeffrey told me that if if he said what he knew about the candidates, they would have to cancel the election. That's a quote. It's exactly what he told me. He said, if I said what I knew about the candidates, they'd have to cancel the election. He didn't tell me what he knew, but that's what he said.

• 3:04:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, in general, Epstein was like a very compartmentalized guy. And I, I don't know. We'll see what happens with all of these cases. It's going to be worth following, but it doesn't seem to be going away the way that a lot of Trump stuff does because, I mean, it's Epstein, right? You've gotten too much of your base hooked on this story for them to just give it up because it's inconvenient now. So I don't know what's going to happen, but we'll keep watching and you keep listening to these ads.

• 3:04:49Speaker 11

  Beautiful.

• 3:05:02Robert Evans?

  Oh my God, those ads were so good. I feel like that picture of Bill Clinton getting a back massage from, nope.

• 3:05:11Speaker 13

  Ooh, I don't know if we should do that in this episode, Robert.

• 3:05:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Anyway, what's

• 3:05:17Speaker 13

  What are we talking about next? Speaking of pardons and Epstein, I'm gonna play one other clip from Trump's Scotland vacation where he's trying to reiterate his whole Epstein hoax narrative and in doing so invokes something that relates to our next topic, but I'll play this clip here.

• 3:05:38Speaker 18

  It's a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion. I can say this, those files were run by the worst scum on earth. They were run by Comey, they were run by Garland, they were run by Biden and all of the people that actually ran the government, including the Autopen. Those files were run for four years by those people. If they had anything, I assume they would have released it. The whole thing is a hoax. They ran the files. I was running against somebody that ran the files.

• 3:06:13Speaker 13

  The Autopen, that's gonna be our first mini, mini story this episode. So, the Autopen is this tool that helps with the signing of documents. It automates the process by replicating a signature, and this is a machine long used in the White House. It's for like hundreds of years. Barack Obama was the first one to officially use it to sign legislation, but this is a regular tool. Yeah, right. And the past few months, Trump has been increasingly obsessed with the Autopen in trying to attack Biden's administration and somehow like take some of the blame away from Biden and onto the people who Biden was surrounded by.

• 3:06:54Speaker 13

  In June, Trump ordered an investigation into Biden's alleged use of the Autopen and if other figures in Biden's White House were using the Autopen without Biden's knowledge, acting as shadow president. I'm gonna play a clip here from Fox News discussing the possible ramifications of the Autopen's use.

• 3:07:14Speaker 20

  Mr. Chairman, you mentioned that you're looking at some of the pardons that were done under President Biden and the use of the Autopen, Dr. Fauci being one of them, talking about whether they were legitimate or not. Are you also looking into Biden's judicial appointments as well?

• 3:07:29Speaker 21

  Absolutely. Everything that was signed with the Autopen, especially in the last year of the Biden presidency. This is when all the books that are being written, all the tell-all interviews that are being recorded from his former disgruntled staffers and staffers who are trying to preserve their reputation for future employment, they're all saying that Joe Biden was in a deep mental decline. This raises an issue whether these pardons, whether these judicial appointments, and whether these executive orders are legal. I believe that if this investigation keeps going in the way that it's going, that's going to raise serious concerns about whether or not Joe Biden even knew what was going on around him, much less whether he authorized

• 3:08:14Speaker 21

  the use of his signature on all of this stuff. I think all of these are in jeopardy of being declared null and void in a court of law. And that's a big deal for the Trump administration because so much of what Trump is up against in court now with these liberal biased Biden-appointed judges is the fact that they're using and citing some of these executive orders as reason to throw out President Trump's agenda and President Trump's executive orders.

• 3:08:42Speaker 13

  So that gets into the scope of things that we're dealing with here. It's not just pardons. This started by talking about Biden's pardons. This past March, on Truth, on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Biden's preemptive pardons of members of the January 6 investigation House Committee are, quote, "hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force of effect because of the fact that they were done by Autopen," unquote. And like, this just isn't true. There is no constitutional requirement that pardons even be signed. He cannot void pardons like this, allegedly, right? Who knows what they'll try to like do by like enforcement, but according to like the legal, the legal systems currently

• 3:09:25Speaker 13

  in place, this like isn't real. But if they do try to legitimately go after like judicial appointments and try to create this conspiracy of this like shadow cabinet that was secretly running the government, I will be interested to see where that goes and the extent to which they think they can pull that off, especially as a way to like bypass judges who are blocking various Trump policies from being put into effect.

• 3:09:49Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:09:50Robert Evans?

  I mean, I've just always been of the opinion that we shouldn't even be allowing these people to use pens. You know, cuneiform, we, we already had the perfect way of, of putting law on the books and we need to go back. We need to return.

• 3:10:02Speaker 17

  Yeah. Did books exist then or was it all in clay tablets that was God intended?

• 3:10:07Robert Evans?

  No, all clay tablets, James.

• 3:10:09Speaker 17

  That's where we've got him, Robert.

• 3:10:10Robert Evans?

  The whole internet, clay tablets.

• 3:10:12Speaker 17

  Yeah, because none of these laws are actually written on clay and therefore I for one believe that it do not apply to me.

• 3:10:18Robert Evans?

  That they're not valid, you know? You've heard of e-ink screens, we need e-play.

• 3:10:23Speaker 17

  No, that is the, the only way that a law can be passed in these United States. Otherwise I retain my sovereignty as a citizen.

• 3:10:30Robert Evans?

  Uh huh. That's, that's what it's about.

• 3:10:32Speaker 13

  Trump does pride himself on, on always using the pen to sign things himself, except for like fan mail and like thank you cards in which he gets his staff to use the auto pen to sign those to get mail out to supporters. But for all serious matters, he prides himself on only using the pen.

• 3:10:49Speaker 17

  And not just the pen, Garrison, I believe he has a special Trump edition Sharpie. He has a big bucket of them on his desk, if I recall correctly, that he then, uh, did they sell them off afterwards?

• 3:10:59Speaker 13

  My, my mistake. He uses his special Sharpie to sign all documents, including the next two topics, which are some executive orders.

• 3:11:08Robert Evans?

  Ah shit.

• 3:11:09Speaker 13

  So there's been a number of executive orders the past few weeks that are forming what's, what the White House is calling the AI action plan, which largely seeks to loosen restrictions and regulations on AI and accelerate the building of data centers to power AI training so that American companies can better compete in the global market. But there was another AI executive order signed last week on July 23rd, which is titled Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government. Wow. Incredible. I'm going to read the, the first two sentences, which are, which are long sentences of the AI executive order on, on woke AI.

• 3:11:53Speaker 13

  Quote, "In the AI context, DEI includes the suppression or destroy-

• 3:11:59Speaker 13

  A factual information about race or sex, manipulation of racial or sexual representation in model outputs, incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism, and discrimination on the basis of race or sex. DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes, and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI. For example, one major AI model changed the race or sex of historical figures, including the Pope, the founding fathers, and Vikings, when prompted for images because it was trained to prioritize DEI requirements at the cost of accuracy. Another AI model refused to produce images

• 3:12:44Speaker 13

  celebrating the achievements of white people, even while complying in the same request for people of other races. In yet another case, an AI model asserted that a user should not, quote unquote, "misgender" another person even if necessary to stop a nuclear apocalypse, unquote. Official White House executive order documents.

• 3:13:05Speaker 17

  The last one is one of the fucking funniest things I've ever heard.

• 3:13:09Speaker 13

  Would you suck off 100 apes to save one human life?

• 3:13:12Robert Evans?

  Absolutely not, absolutely not. But I would do the reverse.

• 3:13:18Speaker 13

  This is, this is like, this is crazy stuff, right? This is, this is stuff that you would see, like, Daily Wire posters talking about, like, four years ago.

• 3:13:26Speaker 17

  This is like, debate me, bro, like, blue-tick Twitter stuff now.

• 3:13:30Speaker 13

  Yeah, but even, even talking about, you know, like, how, like, things like unconscious bias and systemic racism cannot be mentioned, right? Those are things that, specifically Ben Shapiro has, like, led the charge on attacking in mainstream, in mainstream, like, political disagreement for a while now, like, arguing that systemic racism is not a thing.

• 3:13:49Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:13:50Speaker 13

  And now you have orders specifically targeting systemic racism being used in AI outputs. So, part of what this executive order actually seeks to do is make it so that the government can only use large language models that are developed with the principles of, quote unquote, "truth-seeking and ideological neutrality", requiring that these are nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI. In effect, the order seeks to use government contracts as bribes to make companies

• 3:14:28Speaker 13

  Ensure that their AIs are not woke, with the Trump administration serving as the judge of what is and isn't woke, and threatening to pull contracts and force companies to pay cancellation fees if their AI language model is deemed to be too woke. I never want to hear the word woke again.

• 3:14:47Speaker 17

  Yeah, I'm so fucking tired.

• 3:14:49Speaker 13

  It's exhausting.

• 3:14:50Speaker 17

  Yeah, it's Jim Crow for the for the computer, is what this is.

• 3:14:54Speaker 13

  As a part of this AI action plan, one of like their like third or fourth main principle is quote unquote, "upholding free speech in frontier models, updating federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias." That's the opposite of free speech. What are you? We will like make sure that they only do the specific thing that we want, and we're calling that upholding free speech. Just say you want mecha Hitler, Grok. Just, just, just, just. He has. Grok has indeed said that. I know, I know. So that's the first executive order that I want to talk about.

• 3:15:37Speaker 13

  The next one is less brain-rotty and more horrific. Actually scary. Like, I'm sure the woke AI one will will turn out to be bad. But this next one is like extremely, extremely fascistic, and I don't use that word lightly. This order is titled, "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets." I'll start by quoting one paragraph. Quote, "Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe. Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.

• 3:16:22Speaker 13

  The Attorney General shall prioritize available funding to support the expansion of drug courts and mental health courts for individuals for which such diversion serves public safety."

• 3:16:35Speaker 17

  Unquote. Yeah, this is bad. This is

• 3:16:38Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 3:16:39Speaker 17

  Some, yeah, again, people like to like to use fascism a lot, but yeah, this is some Nazi shit. Like, this, this is a thing that that the Nazis did.

• 3:16:48Speaker 13

  Yep. Let's get more into what this order outlines. So this executive order directs the Attorney General to reverse, quote unquote, "judicial precedents prohibiting involuntary institutionalization and to seek the, quote, "termination of consent decrees that impede the United States' policy of encouraging a civil commitment of individuals with mental illnesses who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets," unquote. It starts by, you know, if someone's at risk to themselves and then expands that to just include everybody, if they're deemed to be at risk to the public or just happen to be living outside.

• 3:17:27Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:17:27Speaker 13

  You can now get put in what is essentially Trump's new version of a Seine Asylums.

• 3:17:34Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:17:35Speaker 03

  That's really scary.

• 3:17:37Speaker 17

  Yeah, I think like we shouldn't not mention that a lot of this shit is directly downstream from Democratic mayors in large cities and especially in California pushing for involuntary commitment of unhoused.

• 3:17:51Speaker 13

  No, this is like Gavin Newsom's wet dream.

• 3:17:54Speaker 17

  Yes. Yeah, this is Todd Gloria shit.

• 3:17:56Robert Evans?

  Honestly, this is unfortunately very bipartisan when we are at least talking about the political elite and to a sizable extent when we're talking about the electorate, right?

• 3:18:03Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 3:18:04Robert Evans?

  This is an issue on which the left has catastrophically lost, just like immigration. Unlike immigration, it is not an issue in which we're starting to see the pendulum swing back because, number one, I mean, I guess we have not yet seen the kind of violence deployed against the houseless by agents of the state at scale in public that we're seeing right now on migrants, right? Like, there's not a federal agency going to war on the houseless. It's the same kind of violence that's existed previously. But also, like, there's a huge amount of propaganda against this, like, every city business association, you know, is constantly complaining because they see this as like, oh, this is why people don't want to come into stores anymore. It's the houseless, you know?

• 3:18:48Robert Evans?

  It's not fucking Amazon or whatever.

• 3:18:50Speaker 17

  Yeah, it's absolute bullshit, yeah.

• 3:18:53Speaker 13

  I mean, some of that might change, though, because Trump is seeking to mobilize federal resources to start doing enforcement.

• 3:18:59Speaker 17

  Yes.

• 3:19:00Speaker 13

  The order directs Trump's cabinet to be giving grants to state and local governments to help enact civil commitment and institutional treatment with the priority of grants being directed to states and municipalities that already have and enforce strong anti-homeless policies. The order allows for emergency federal law enforcement assistance funds to be used for encampment removal and directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to remove federal funding from quote-unquote "harm reduction" or quote-unquote "safe consumption" programs, as well as quote "ending support for housing-first policies that deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency."

• 3:19:41Speaker 13

  So not only are they increasing law enforcement capacity to apprehend mentally ill or house these people and put them into institutional facilities, but they are cutting all federal funds from programs that are deemed to be harm reduction or safe consumption, which are programs that have been shown to work across the globe.

• 3:19:59Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:19:59Speaker 13

  As well as ending housing-first policies, which is what most homeless advocates actually push for as a way to solve homelessness.

• 3:20:07Speaker 17

  Yeah, because they're evidence-based and they work.

• 3:20:10Speaker 13

  The order also requires that recipients of federal housing and homelessness assistance to force participants who suffer from substance abuse disorder or serious mental illnesses into quote-unquote "treatment or mental health services as a condition of participation", unquote, and that the recipients of these federal funds are now required to collect quote-unquote "health-related information from everyone who has provided assistance and is required to share that data with law enforcement, quote, "in circumstances permitted by law."

• 3:20:41Speaker 03

  Don't love that. That's horrible.

• 3:20:43Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:20:43Speaker 03

  That's really just not a line we want to cross. That's so scary.

• 3:20:47Speaker 17

  Yep.

• 3:20:48Speaker 13

  The weaponization of health data for law enforcement.

• 3:20:51Speaker 17

  Yes.

• 3:20:51Speaker 13

  Services. Yeah.

• 3:20:52Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:20:53Robert Evans?

  And unfortunately, it's exactly the thing that like for years advocates for mental health care have been trying to get across, like, hey, it's okay to go in to seek treatment, like this is, stuff isn't going to be weaponized against you and.

• 3:21:07Speaker 17

  That's not true anymore.

• 3:21:08Robert Evans?

  Like the degree to which, outside of the actual danger of law enforcement getting this data and using it, the setback to mental health care, to people feeling, having any chance of feeling safe to pursue it, is like incomprehensible. Like it's, it's so bad.

• 3:21:24Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:21:25Speaker 13

  And not only are they seeking to go after users, the recipients of federal housing and homelessness assistance that operate drug injection sites or quote unquote "safe consumption sites" will be reviewed by the Attorney General for violation of federal law and bring civil or criminal action in appropriate cases. Literally going after people who try to create environments where people who use drugs can do so in a method that will not kill them.

• 3:21:52Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:21:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, people who are handing out clean needles, you know, safe injection sites, that sort of thing, any kind of harm reduction.

• 3:21:59Speaker 13

  Which will now be under investigation by the Attorney General.

• 3:22:01Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:22:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah, which is going to get people killed. It's going to imprison people who have been doing nothing but helping other people. Like, it's just comprehensively a nightmare.

• 3:22:11Speaker 17

  It's going to lead to more communicable diseases spreading that we don't like. Some of these safe injection sites have prevented spreading, right? Needle exchanges have prevented, like, when we combine it with RFK stuff, like, this is going to be a major public health issue on top of everything else.

• 3:22:27Speaker 13

  So on top of expanding drug courts and mental health courts, I will, we'll end with, with one final quote from the order. Quote, "They will ensure that homeless individuals arrested for federal crimes are evaluated to determine whether they are sexually dangerous persons and certified accordingly for civil commitment." And finally, Trump's cabinet is directed to, quote, "assess federal resources to determine whether they may be directed towards ensuring that detainees with serious mental illnesses are not released into the public because of the lack of forensic vet capacity at appropriate local, state, and federal jails or hospitals." Unquote. It remains to be seen the scale in which this will be implemented. Usually, these orders have a, have a series of months

• 3:23:11Speaker 13

  in which the cabinet members will then propose actual implementation policies.

• 3:23:17Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:23:17Speaker 13

  That then can be implemented across the country. But certainly, what is in the order itself is incredibly worrying.

• 3:23:25Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:23:26Robert Evans?

  Yep. Uh, we probably shouldn't have let this guy become president again. Yeah. Oh, well.

• 3:23:31Speaker 13

  Do you know what we should do right now?

• 3:23:33Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:23:34Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:23:34Robert Evans?

  Ads.

• 3:23:34Speaker 13

  Just go to ads.

• 3:23:36Robert Evans?

  Share. Have fun with that, everyone.

• 3:23:51Speaker 17

  Talking of shouldn't have let that guy become president again. One of the reasons that guy did become president again is because the Democrats were incapable of fielding a candidate who could say genocide bad. Yeah, that might have helped. I mean, it's a fucking low bar and they failed to clear it. It might have helped.

• 3:24:11Speaker 13

  It might have helped. According to new data from New York, where two thirds or more of New York Democratic primary voters agree with Zohar Mumdani's positions on Israel and arresting Benjamin Netanyahu. And the 57% say that they might oppose Democrats who do not endorse Mumdani for mayor.

• 3:24:28Speaker 17

  Yeah, because fuck.

• 3:24:29Speaker 13

  So it seems like, yeah, maybe the Democrats should have done something about that. It seems like the majority of their base wants that.

• 3:24:35Robert Evans?

  Well, I'm not one of those. I always hate it when people like try to reduce the loss to one thing because there's a number of reasons why they lost. But like one, like Michigan, we can probably blame the loss of Michigan on Kamala's failures to call Gaza a genocide or to take any kind of a stance separating her from Biden on that matter, right? Like, there's a decent amount of evidence to suggest that. Maybe other states, you know, other things went wrong, but like this, this, that was a significant reason why the Democrats failed.

• 3:25:07Speaker 17

  Yeah, look at, look at the way, as we're about to discuss, how the entirety of Canada, while we have been recording this, is announced that it is joining the UK and France in plans to conditionally recognize a Palestinian state. Yeah. And the reason that is happening is because Israel's genocide in Gaza is continuing. Yeah. July has been the deadliest month for the past year and a half. One person has died every 12 minutes. 199 people have died every day. 401 of them have been injured. We saw this week 19 people died of starvation. None of these people are dying because of a famine that's caused by the weather or some other natural causes, right? This is entirely a choice and it's made by people in the Israeli state, very chiefly

• 3:25:52Speaker 17

  by Benjamin Netanyahu. To quote Netanyahu, Israel has been forced to allow some aid into the Strip, but only a tiny fraction of the required aid has made its way in. One in five children in Gaza is suffering from acute malnutrition. That figure has tripled since last month, according to the World Health Organization. Not only is there not enough food, but there are also not enough medical supplies to treat people with acute malnutrition, right? When somebody is acutely malnourished, you can't just like hand them a sandwich and fix a problem.

• 3:26:25Robert Evans?

  This was a major problem when liberating the concentration camps at the end of World War II. American soldiers would see these people who were just, I mean, you've seen pictures of Auschwitz survivors and stuff, and just act with immediate human compassion and give them whatever they wanted, right? And then people got sick and died, because you literally can't, you have to, there's a very specific way when someone is that far gone, that you have to slowly re-nourish them, whatever.

• 3:26:54Speaker 17

  Yeah, re-feed them, ensure that they are maintaining adequate hydration levels, right? Therapeutic formula for babies that are malnourished.

• 3:27:05Robert Evans?

  It's more, I think there's this misunderstanding that starving people are just hungry, so you just feed them, and like, past a certain point, no, they're not just hungry, something else is going on.

• 3:27:14Speaker 17

  Their bodies are failing and beginning to die, and that requires medical attention because they have a very serious medical condition. Those medical supplies are not getting into Gaza. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, generally referred to as the IPC, issued an alert for what it calls, quote, "the worst-case scenario of famine in Gaza" this week. In their alert, they said, quote, "Over 20,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, with more than 3,000 severely malnourished." Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since the 17th of July. There's not really much that I think we can say about this, other than it's absolutely

• 3:27:59Speaker 17

  despicable and disgusting. As a result of Israel carrying out genocide in the open, the UK, France, and Canada have indicated, as I said, their willingness to recognize a Palestinian state with some conditions.

• 3:28:16Speaker 17

  Statehood will not feed these children, right? These people will be dead long before the state is recognized unless something changes.

• 3:28:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the whole recognizing statehood for me is less meaningful because I care about states than it is as a symbol of the fact that France, you know, and the UK and an increasing number of nations who were not like, like imagining them 10 years ago.

• 3:28:43Speaker 17

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:28:43Robert Evans?

  Like, taking the stance of being as critical of Israel as they are would, would have been a stretch, right? Would have been difficult to comprehend. And I think what it really does showcase is how rapidly international opinion has changed. And the, the very dangerous situation Israel has gotten itself into where

• 3:29:05Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:29:05Robert Evans?

  I don't think it is a matter of immediate danger because the weapons aren't going to stop flowing and no one is going to stop them militarily. But they are sabotaging the ground underneath themselves. And I, I do think, I mean, maybe this is me being unreasonably hopeful here, but yeah, like, this is, I, I think they're setting up their own downfall here, you know? Not quick enough to save any of these lives, but like, this is not a good position for them to be in a country that's this dependent upon foreign trade, upon foreign weapons, uh, upon foreign support for its survival, like it, they're, they're sabotaging themselves.

• 3:29:46Speaker 17

  Yeah, they're becoming a pariah state, um, far too slowly, given what's happened over the last couple of years, but, but it's happening. I'll just finish, I guess, by saying that Israel has agreed to make tactical pauses, which is, I don't know what that really means, to allow aid to enter. The IPC report suggested immediate actions to protect life, but it concludes that, quote, "None of this is possible unless there is a ceasefire and there is no sign of that in the immediate future." Let's talk about immigration, shall we? Something, something that is also pretty much a downer, I guess. The State Department has rolled back its visa interview waiver. This was a pandemic era thing, right? That people didn't have to come in to the consulate and actually do an interview with a

• 3:30:30Speaker 17

  physical human for their visa. This will result in massive delays at consulates around the world and will mean that visas are inaccessible for some people entirely, right? Because getting to a consulate alone is a barrier for them, right? Or another expense. And it's a risky expense if you think you might be turned down. The government has been cancelling hearings, according to NBC Miami, of people in the Everglades Detention Facility, aka Alligator Alcatraz, right? Inmates are also being denied the right to meet with their attorneys. The government asserted that everyone there has a final removal order. However, at least one attorney with two clients there that NBC Miami spoke to said that this was not the case for their clients. They don't have final removal orders.

• 3:31:15Speaker 17

  But nonetheless, they are not able to access their due process rights. There is a lawsuit challenging this and many other issues at the detention centre that will be held on the 18th of August. Talking of removals, we are beginning to see firsthand accounts from the Venezuelan people who were detained in Secot. 230 Venezuelan detainees there were traded with Venezuela in a three-way trade for US citizens detained in Venezuela, right? Three-way trade, I mean, very clearly the people in Secot were really under US custody, right? So it's, it's, it's just a workaround for a direct trade.

• 3:31:57Robert Evans?

  Well, or at least, I mean, they were under the custody of a US contractor, right? Like, that's, I think, the accurate way to describe this, yeah.

• 3:32:05Speaker 17

  Yes, I think that's probably, yeah, yeah, like, the, the US had control over their comings and goings. As is demonstrated by this prisoner exchange, right? "These reports indicate that the plane landed and immediately Sabatarian police entered and beat the men so severely that flight attendants on the plane cried. An ICE agent told them in Spanish, quote, 'This will teach you to enter our country illegally.' Many of the men, I should point out, did not enter the country between ports of entry or without inspection. They entered via CBP One, the only legal way for them to claim asylum at that time." The men said they were beaten, kicked and shot with rubber pellets. They were never allowed outside and guards would mock them and refuse to tell them the time when they asked.

• 3:32:47Speaker 17

  Several of them mentioned a fellow detainee who began cutting himself, writing messages on the wall in his own blood. Those messages include, "Stop hitting us, we are fathers, we are brothers, we are innocent people." Shortly before their release, they say they were treated better, allowed to shower and shave and given medicine. When one of the men returned, his neighbors clapped together to raise twenty bucks for his mother to decorate the house and make him a meal of chicken, rice and plantains. Okay, that one was particularly hard for me to read for some reason because like that specific meal is one I've eaten with the people I live with in Caracas, the people I was with in the Darien Gap, right? It did just seem very personal to me. They also noted that many of the men while detained prayed and read the Bible.

• 3:33:32Speaker 17

  They used food packaging and even food to make dice and playing cards to play games. The things that I read in this are actually look really heartbreaking because I've seen folks from Venezuela go through really horrific things, right? They were in the Darien Gap, when I was in a Darien Gap, I've seen him in outdoor detention. I've also spent time living in Venezuela and throughout that, like people, Venezuelan people have shown incredible capacity to continue to smile and have joy and have a joke and have a laugh. So like seeing these men so thoroughly beaten down by the Salvadorian state is really hard. I'd encourage you all to read the ProPublica piece, which I will link in the show notes.

• 3:34:14Speaker 17

  But yeah, it's, yeah, it's as bad as we expected it to be, right? Like I don't think for a minute that El Salvador expected them to leave. So it treated them like I'm sure it treats everybody else there.

• 3:34:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right. Like that's, that's, that's what you have to assume. And that's why it's important not to limit the discussion or the anger to the case of, you know, the Garcia and, you know, this couple of, of people who are quote unquote, obviously innocent. Individual people, yeah. Like, nobody should be in Secot. And quite frankly, Hunter Biden's right, you know, we should, we should invade El Salvador. If that's what it takes to close this place down.

• 3:34:54Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 3:34:55Robert Evans?

  Like, fuck them. Like, it's, it's, I, I mean, or someone should invade us. I don't fucking know. Whatever it takes to stop this shit, but like, it's unacceptable.

• 3:35:04Speaker 17

  Yeah, it's inhumane. Like, a world where this exists is not a world we should want.

• 3:35:08Robert Evans?

  No.

• 3:35:09Speaker 17

  I guess maybe I'll end with some good news and a little fundraiser if people want to donate. Good news is that a judge has ordered the release of Kilmar Abrego.

• 3:35:18Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 3:35:18Speaker 17

  Uh, I guess he prefers to just use the first part of his last name, right? Um, Spanish last names come from your mother and father. Some people use both, some people use one.

• 3:35:27Robert Evans?

  Oh, I hadn't caught that, actually. Thank you, James.

• 3:35:28Speaker 17

  Yeah, um, you are welcome. Judge Zinnis ordered that he be returned to Maryland, not be immediately detained by ICE on his release, and seventy-two hours' notice be given if they try to remove him. I have seen reporting that says today she has ordered that he can't be deported. That's not true. Uh, she ordered that he have his due process rights if they attempt to remove him. Right? I've also seen reporting that he is like out and about on the street. That is not true. A Tennessee judge did deny the government's attempts to detain him while he awaits criminal trial, but at the request of his legal team, his release has been stayed by thirty days. I believe this is to prevent ICE grabbing him and deporting him immediately when he's released

• 3:36:11Speaker 17

  or thereafter, right, until they got that clarification from Judge Zinnis. This comes after Trump administration or the DOJ has failed to persuade any four federal judges that he was a leader of MS-13. His lawyers have also asked the judge to stop DHS posting about this and prejudicing a potential jury pool. So, at least in this one case, right, this man is moving closer to being back with his family. Let's talk about a fundraiser and then we can finish up.

• 3:36:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:36:40Speaker 17

  So I want to talk about Jose Giron and I will just read here from the fundraiser page. Jose was taken from his family and detained at Ojai Mesa Detention Center over thirteen months ago. Like many friends, parents and siblings, imprisoned at O M D C, Jose has received no medical care despite having concerning symptoms for colon cancer. Visibly in pain during his previous hearing, Jose showed the judge a jar with one point five to two inches of blood that he reported had come out of his rectum. No one should have to suffer these indignities. If you would like to support Jose, you can go to give butter dot com slash free Jose Giron.

• 3:37:21Speaker 17

  That's F R E E J O S E G I R O N.

• 3:37:27Speaker 13

  I think that's all for us. We reported the news.

• 3:37:32Robert Evans?

  Goodbye.

• 3:37:33Speaker 08

  We reported the news.

• 3:37:39Robert Evans?

  Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

• 3:37:45Speaker 03

  It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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