Speaker 1: Pie. Well, yeah, like of dolphins, but in this case
Speaker 1: also of casts, a cast of pods, for example, like
Speaker 1: Attorneys General podcast. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: a show where we talked about I do have a
Speaker 1: lot of podcasts, thank you, Jamie. As you might notice
Speaker 1: in my show about talking about bad people, I have guests,
Speaker 1: and today that guest is Madam Jamie Loftiest. I'll take that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that lofts lofts US. Mhmm, lofts US. Yeah. That's when
Speaker 1: there's more than one of us in the room, it's
Speaker 1: loss and and and then there's Sophie's Lichtman. It's it's
Speaker 1: all we should Attorney's General. All plurals is what? What
Speaker 1: the statement I'm coming into. It's a complicated language. But
Speaker 1: but beautiful, Jamie, how are you doing? Uh? You know?
Speaker 1: All things sooner? Good? I learned question. I have HPV.
Speaker 1: I have HPV. I learned, Oh, I have HPV. Sorry, No,
Speaker 1: it's fine. It's a it's a fun it's a fun
Speaker 1: middle non threatening HPV. Uh that yeah, first, it was
Speaker 1: a fun. It's nice to have some suspense in your
Speaker 1: life that is, like, you know, not a little less
Speaker 1: existential where They're like, is it good HPV or bad
Speaker 1: HPV And they're like, well, it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: middling HPV. Well, I'm going to ask our listeners. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask all of our listeners when this episode drops
Speaker 1: to tag us on Twitter and tell us if you
Speaker 1: have HPV as well have HPV. It's just fill our
Speaker 1: Twitter mentions. Individual threads don't comment on the episode like
Speaker 1: tag us individually each time. Absolutely over Walmart twitters everyone
Speaker 1: that so many people have HPV and I know it's
Speaker 1: so but my my dad did see my Twitter post
Speaker 1: about it, and then he was just he was shocked.
Speaker 1: He thought HPV was really going to get me, and
Speaker 1: then I just had to tell him, it's not going
Speaker 1: to get This is We're going to raise awareness about
Speaker 1: HPV by overwhelming and making our Twitter's unusable for several
Speaker 1: days with a lot of people discussing their presence or
Speaker 1: lack thereof of of HPV. Um. So that's my since
Speaker 1: between the last Updade the last episode I was on
Speaker 1: in this I I learned I at hpd I don't
Speaker 1: think I got it. Then I just went to a
Speaker 1: ganacologist for the first time in four years because it's
Speaker 1: good to have health insurance. I've been to a gynecologist
Speaker 1: in a long time. Well, that's you really got to
Speaker 1: get your pap. Every couple of every comple careful. Huh,
Speaker 1: paps and bagels both need schmir swish sailed it with
Speaker 1: the swish. All right, well we should talk. We should
Speaker 1: do the thing that is our job to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the only thing that matters in this world. What's fun
Speaker 1: about this episode, Jamie, is that this is an episode
Speaker 1: about disasters and how human beings respond to them, and
Speaker 1: we're recording it right before the election, and by the
Speaker 1: time it drops, the entire world could be a radically
Speaker 1: different place. And that's fun. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to listen back to this episode later and feel absolutely
Speaker 1: sick to my stomach. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be so good. I can't wait. We're talking today
Speaker 1: about elite panic. Oh yeah, that's the bastard of today.
Speaker 1: So I want to start our story are our episode
Speaker 1: today with the story of a man named one Peel Piva.
Speaker 1: He was born on September in Kazappa, Paraguay, and while
Speaker 1: he is most definitely a bastard, he's not the bastard
Speaker 1: of our episode. We're gonna start with him though. Um
Speaker 1: One grew up working class in a town two fifty
Speaker 1: kilometers or fake miles southeast of Paraguay's capital was his now.
Speaker 1: His dad was a bus driver, and he started working
Speaker 1: at age sixteen selling tickets on his father's bus. His
Speaker 1: family also owned a butcher's shop, and he worked there
Speaker 1: as a young adult until he had enough money to
Speaker 1: open a small butcher's shop of his own in the capital,
Speaker 1: which is again scion now, which I'm I probably pronouncing
Speaker 1: somewhat wrong. Well, you famously pronounced everything, but I famously
Speaker 1: pronounced everything right. I know. By the time he was thirty,
Speaker 1: he owned two butcher shops uh, and through frugal money
Speaker 1: management and a keen sense of finances, One was able
Speaker 1: to open his first grocery store in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: He named it Kua Bolognios, which means well of water
Speaker 1: and was a reference to a mythical healing spring near
Speaker 1: his hometown. Now One's business was successful, but his growing
Speaker 1: wealth was met by a growth in the stingy tendencies
Speaker 1: that had helped him rise above his humble origins. He
Speaker 1: kept his own accounts, and he paid suppliers himself. He
Speaker 1: forced his employees to work under what one local paper
Speaker 1: described as an enslaving regime. H yeah, so that's not
Speaker 1: you know, nice. You get one butcher shop and look
Speaker 1: what happens. It's funny too, because like the positive articles
Speaker 1: that you'd read about them would call him like, say
Speaker 1: he came from a peasant background. But it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess, like you're not rich just because your family
Speaker 1: owns a butcher's shop, but like you're not like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, peasant seems weird for a family that is
Speaker 1: a business owner. I don't know. Yeah, Like, not not
Speaker 1: that there's anything wrong with owning a butcher's shop, but
Speaker 1: like peasant is anyway. Whatever. One kept his office behind
Speaker 1: the cashiers so he could watch them at all times
Speaker 1: through the large glass windows that he had installed and
Speaker 1: intervene at once if he was unhappy with their performance,
Speaker 1: which he frequently was. Um, it's kind of a dick boss.
Speaker 1: You know. We've all I mean, I guess most people
Speaker 1: who have worked in the service industry have had a
Speaker 1: boss like that, really unnecessarily obsessed with your what you're
Speaker 1: doing at all times. Now Quotlannos became a modest chain
Speaker 1: of supermarkets, with two full grocery stores and one hyper
Speaker 1: market just kind of similar to them, all multiple restaurants, shops,
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of you can hold a shipload
Speaker 1: of people, like a really big grocery store, right, like
Speaker 1: a normal grocery store in the United States, but big,
Speaker 1: you know at the time. Again we're talking like the
Speaker 1: eighties here. Yeah. His company's slogan was Quablan, synonymous with
Speaker 1: quality and low prices. One whose nickname was apparently the Baby,
Speaker 1: expanded his business and to a Yeah what, Jamie, he's
Speaker 1: the baby. He's the He's the baby, and you gotta
Speaker 1: love him. Why is there any reason? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've only found out that baby unless you're
Speaker 1: the rapper. I think that's what people call him. The baby.
Speaker 1: The baby is from Dinosaurs, that TV show, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the baby that come on continue. I know the baby
Speaker 1: from so what he's called the baby. And then he's like,
Speaker 1: but don't ask why I'm called the baby. No, just
Speaker 1: only a lot of so for because of the story
Speaker 1: we're about to tell is primarily there's some international stories
Speaker 1: because it's wild, but most of the good stories were local,
Speaker 1: and so I had to Google translate them, and I
Speaker 1: was not able to find anything else about why he
Speaker 1: was called the baby. But his nickname was the baby. Okay,
Speaker 1: the baby. I'm gonna struggle getting past this. But but
Speaker 1: but I'm here, I'm here. Yeah, So he's the baby. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he expands his business into a joint stock company.
Speaker 1: So he makes it into a corporation with like stock
Speaker 1: and shareholders and ship and he starts soliciting investments. Now,
Speaker 1: the number of Yukwa Bolanos hypermarkets increased after this point,
Speaker 1: because now they have a bunch of funding. In two
Speaker 1: thousand one, one opened his largest store yet, Yukuo Bolanos Botanico,
Speaker 1: named for its proximity to the Capital Botanical Gardens. This
Speaker 1: massive new building was twelve thousand square feet with a
Speaker 1: dining area that was capable of seating six d people alone.
Speaker 1: So very big fucking store. He's he's it's a big baby.
Speaker 1: It's a big old baby. It's old botanical baby. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he gets he gets things going on, um
Speaker 1: and everything's yeah, he's making a lot of money. He's
Speaker 1: got a bunch of stores. His net worth climbs to
Speaker 1: more than eight million dollars um. And at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, he's too busy and has too many employees
Speaker 1: to watch over each of them. And like the slightly
Speaker 1: creepy stalking way that he had before, this caused him
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety because he was always terrified that
Speaker 1: his employees might steal from him. To ensure that the yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go now, to ensure that the crowning jewel
Speaker 1: of his empire didn't lose a single centavo that was
Speaker 1: due to it, uh One appointed the only man he
Speaker 1: could trust to the job of stalking his employees, his son,
Speaker 1: Victor Daniel. Now Victor had always been something of a
Speaker 1: disappointment to one. The father had hoped his son might
Speaker 1: one day play for the national soccer team, but Victor
Speaker 1: tended towards obesity and was not at all athletically inclined. Still,
Speaker 1: he was able to earn some amount of his father's
Speaker 1: pride by being every bit the miser and tyrannical enforcer
Speaker 1: that Juan had been. One journalist described him as tough
Speaker 1: on employees and stingy on suppliers, but they go him.
Speaker 1: The little baby, the baby's baby, the baby baby, the baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's I've settled the son of the baby. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so. Stingy was kind of an ongoing theme in
Speaker 1: the growing empire of one Peel Piva and his son.
Speaker 1: While the Ukua Bolanos Botanical was a massive structure in
Speaker 1: the pride of his corporation, corners were cut at every
Speaker 1: single stage of construction. The ducts from the grill in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, the bakery and the rotisserie did not vent outside. Instead,
Speaker 1: they pumped smoke and gas into a chamber between the
Speaker 1: ceiling and the roof of the building. The roof had
Speaker 1: no hold on. Yeah, okay, okay, So there's just there's
Speaker 1: just a pollution room. There's a fire room. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a room to cause a fire. Yes, there
Speaker 1: there is a poison room. They like like our recording
Speaker 1: studio in our in our in our beloved place, that
Speaker 1: we can't record it anymore because of the plague. There's
Speaker 1: a poison room in the Yukua Bolanos Botanic. Oh miss
Speaker 1: poison room. I miss it too. I miss it too.
Speaker 1: As soon as this plague is over, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: more poison into it room. I'm ready. Yeah, yeah, We're
Speaker 1: all ready for the poison room, a workplace poison room.
Speaker 1: Now I feel more connected. Yeah, except for in there's
Speaker 1: they're venting all of the gas and smoke from their
Speaker 1: many ovens cooking for tens of thousands of people on
Speaker 1: a weekly basis. Uh, into this room. And the roof
Speaker 1: of the room has no wind extractors. Also, you know else,
Speaker 1: they don't have Jamie, what smoke alarms? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: what do you have smoke alarms in your death trap?
Speaker 1: There's no sprinklers either. All of the stop cocks on
Speaker 1: the fire hoses were closed. Um yeah, so again, absolutely
Speaker 1: no safety measures taken in this building meant to hold
Speaker 1: thousands of customers. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. So it's the
Speaker 1: Titanic of grocery stars. Yes, it is the Titanic of
Speaker 1: They no lifeboats on this business. Uh oh god, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's so fucking funny. It's not because what's about to
Speaker 1: happen is one of the worst things I've ever heard about.
Speaker 1: One skimped on any emergency training that might have prepared
Speaker 1: his employees in the event of a fire as well,
Speaker 1: because if you're not going to take any other preparations
Speaker 1: for a fire. Why would you even think about it?
Speaker 1: You know, start now, Yeah, that would be speaking it
Speaker 1: into being Jamie. It's like the secret. You know, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, it will come to you. You
Speaker 1: don't think of fire. Yeah, I don't want to manifest
Speaker 1: a gigantic, devastating grocery store fire. Yeah. Yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: I cut out the seat belts on all of my cars.
Speaker 1: You know, absolutely, Otherwise you're just inviting t You're inviting
Speaker 1: an accident. In exactly, I don't want to have an
Speaker 1: accident when I'm drunk driving my Forerunner through a trailer park. No,
Speaker 1: And that's why you've never gotten into trouble that way.
Speaker 1: And that's why I've never gotten into trouble that way.
Speaker 1: I've been saying that for years. I've been saying that
Speaker 1: for years, shouting it at police officers chasing me in
Speaker 1: my Forerunners for years, as you drunk drive your your
Speaker 1: fore Runner. I admire It's it's fairfully admired. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: so yeah, one takes again like not like aggressively takes
Speaker 1: no safety precautions for his massive building meant to cook
Speaker 1: and hold thousands of people. Um, yeah, I mean obviously
Speaker 1: like if he had done things like train his employees
Speaker 1: given to have some sort of fire safety plan, that
Speaker 1: would have distracted from the time they could spend working,
Speaker 1: which would be the same as them stealing from him.
Speaker 1: And one is not going to allow that to happen.
Speaker 1: Show them included a hose or two. These are all
Speaker 1: unnecessary time sucks disabled the hoses that there were, Like,
Speaker 1: that's so funny, more work than not, Like that's so aggressive, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So he's begging for this leading for an explosion. Now,
Speaker 1: the question, Jamie, of how One's company was able to
Speaker 1: get away with blatant violations of local fire codes. It's
Speaker 1: an important one because again, Paraguay is a country they
Speaker 1: have laws about making death traps, right, you're not supposed to.
Speaker 1: So there's a good question like how did he get
Speaker 1: to make a death trap? And it may have had
Speaker 1: something to do with the fact that he had a
Speaker 1: cozy friendship with one Carlos was Mossy, the president of
Speaker 1: Paraguay from in two thousand two. Was Mosy was convicted
Speaker 1: of stealing six million dollars from the government's Social Welfare
Speaker 1: Institute and diverting it to his personal bank account. So
Speaker 1: the odds are quite good that one bribed him to
Speaker 1: make concerns over the building safety go away, right, Like
Speaker 1: the guy who we know was crooked as ship probably
Speaker 1: was being crooked as ship. And one Carlos was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's the baby. Yeah, you gotta love of especially if
Speaker 1: you paid you really totally thousands of dollars. Yeah, baby,
Speaker 1: son a baby. Let them do whatever they want. Let
Speaker 1: him do whatever they want. I often say that about
Speaker 1: babies and about owners of grocery stores. We've given enough
Speaker 1: passes to the baby. So unfortunately, Jamie, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're aware of this, but you cannot bribe the
Speaker 1: laws of physics. Uh yet, I'm working on it. Life
Speaker 1: finds a way, as Ian Malcolm said. So for three years,
Speaker 1: the many ovens of the Qua Bolognas Botanica ran all
Speaker 1: day long, venting smoke and gas up into the roof
Speaker 1: without any way for it to escape. Eventually, more than
Speaker 1: nine thousand cubic meters of flammable gases had accumulated up there,
Speaker 1: turning the whole roof into of the massive complex into
Speaker 1: a ticking time bomb. And then, sometime in the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand four, one of the buildings, ovens got plugged,
Speaker 1: and timely action was not taken to unplug it, like
Speaker 1: fix the jam, and unbeknownst to Victor, a fire burned
Speaker 1: behind the obstruction in the ovens. They weren't cleaning the ovens.
Speaker 1: There's a blockage and there's imber's burning behind the blockage,
Speaker 1: so they don't realize that there's embers burning behind it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, obviously, like so this fire catches on all
Speaker 1: of the grease, and the grease starts to burn behind
Speaker 1: the obstruction this oven, and it sends in burns into
Speaker 1: the sea. Yeah, no one sees it. They think the
Speaker 1: oven is just blocked and dead. But behind the obstruction
Speaker 1: there are embers burn naing that catch onto the grease
Speaker 1: and embers start to float up into the ceiling, which
Speaker 1: is again an enormous bomb. Yeah. Yeah. On the morning
Speaker 1: of August one, one of those embers finally ignited the
Speaker 1: pocket of gas in the ceiling. It happened while more
Speaker 1: than a thousand people were inside the business, Most of
Speaker 1: them were mothers, many of whom had their children with them.
Speaker 1: One male customer who was present later recalled, we were
Speaker 1: entering the supermarket when there was an explosion I could
Speaker 1: see how bodies, especially little ones, flew through the air, arms, legs.
Speaker 1: Another customer later told press it was raining fire when
Speaker 1: I was finishing to pay at the cash register. By miracle,
Speaker 1: I got out before they closed the doors, foreshadowing of
Speaker 1: what's about. Yeah, that's what we're about, the talk the door.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, great question, Jamie on that horrible August morning.
Speaker 1: Victor Daniel Piva, who's again one son and the guy
Speaker 1: who's job it is to make sure nobody steals from
Speaker 1: the baby one son. Victor had arrived late for work
Speaker 1: because he had been buying his father tickets for an
Speaker 1: upcoming soccer match. It's very likely saved his life because
Speaker 1: of where his office was located and where the explosion happened.
Speaker 1: But if it did save his life, his survival damned
Speaker 1: many more people. Once he arrived on scene within minutes
Speaker 1: of the explosion, Victor gave his first order to his
Speaker 1: security guards, don't let them out without paying. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: why holy shit? And the security guards didn't say no. No.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a we could talk about Germans here, um,
Speaker 1: but I think everybody knows, like the thing that people
Speaker 1: do when they're given orders. Yeah. By the son of
Speaker 1: the baby. Yeah. The victor was concerned that the hundreds
Speaker 1: of customers attempting to escape the Yuko Bologna's botanic a
Speaker 1: death trap wouldn't hang outing thing were leaving the flaming building.
Speaker 1: He was worried they were going to leave with arms
Speaker 1: full of groceries and consumer goods. Victor Jesus Christ. So
Speaker 1: the idea that to Victor that his dad might get
Speaker 1: angry at him for letting customers get out with free
Speaker 1: goods of his exploding supermarket was more important to him
Speaker 1: than the thoughts of the lives of the thousand people
Speaker 1: still inside. So he ordered his guards to close and
Speaker 1: bar all ten exits to the store. Jesus Christ. Okay,
Speaker 1: And they do, and they do that, they do the
Speaker 1: ship out of that, okay. So I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: a journalist in the local newspaper called Nacion quote. Outside
Speaker 1: in front of the hypermarket, Victor Daniel Piva could not
Speaker 1: stop sweating. He called insistently on the phone for the
Speaker 1: employees to get the money out of the boxes while
Speaker 1: dozens of people scratched the windows to get out. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's pretty bad, right, this is like so
Speaker 1: this is bad writing. This is horrible. If you made
Speaker 1: a if you made a bad guy in like a
Speaker 1: movie or a TV do this, people would be like,
Speaker 1: nobody would like. And then you're like, no, no, no no, no, wait,
Speaker 1: and they call the boss the baby and Jesus that
Speaker 1: steal while the building is actively exploding. Yes, okay, it's
Speaker 1: going to get so much worse, Jamie. But let's pause
Speaker 1: for just a moment. Let's pause for just a just
Speaker 1: a split second, with that horrible vision in our heads
Speaker 1: of people scratching on the windows of a burning grocery store.
Speaker 1: And let's have a little conversation about how money affects
Speaker 1: the human brain. Okay, yeah, you want to do that.
Speaker 1: You like that? Like talking about this. I love talking
Speaker 1: about how money affects the human brain. Is my It's
Speaker 1: my favorite thing to do. Is my kink me too. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of fun studies on this. For
Speaker 1: today's purposes, I want to start with a series of
Speaker 1: experiments conducted in two thousand six by Dr Kathleen Vose
Speaker 1: of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 1: She led a group of Actually, let me mispronounced Minnesota
Speaker 1: because I probably mispronounced something in Paraguay and I want
Speaker 1: to be fair Mini sati uh in Minnisati and the
Speaker 1: University of Minnesoti. Now she led a group of researchers
Speaker 1: to conduct nine experiments, all of which primed half of
Speaker 1: their students with thoughts of money. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from Live Science about how they primed people to think
Speaker 1: about money. A few methods were used to get the
Speaker 1: participants thinking about money, and some experiments a stack of
Speaker 1: play monopoly money was within a subject's peripheral view, or
Speaker 1: a subject would unscramble word phrases dealing with money, while
Speaker 1: in others, a participant would sit in front of a
Speaker 1: computer screen savers showing pictures of floating money. So one
Speaker 1: and again, they were not telling the people who were
Speaker 1: being who are the subjects of the experiment, that money
Speaker 1: had anything to do with it, like they were solving puzzles, basically,
Speaker 1: and the experiment found that the group who had been
Speaker 1: primed to think about money persisted longer at solving difficult
Speaker 1: puzzles than subjects who weren't. And that's probably not so surprising,
Speaker 1: right The thought of money makes you willing to kind
Speaker 1: of like work harder long or at an otherwise meaningless task. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's like not unsettling, right, It's pretty natural, like normal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other experiments were a bit more unsettling. Quote. In
Speaker 1: one test, a participant sat in a lab filling out
Speaker 1: a questionnaire when a supposed student walked into the room
Speaker 1: and said, can you come over here and help me?
Speaker 1: She explained that she was an undergraduate student and needed
Speaker 1: help coding data sheets, each of which would take five minutes.
Speaker 1: Some of the participants didn't help at all. Of those
Speaker 1: said the control group volunteered an average of forty two
Speaker 1: point five minutes of their time, whereas the money group
Speaker 1: gave about twenty five minutes. That's interesting. Another experiment gave
Speaker 1: participants the opportunity to lend a helping hand in a
Speaker 1: situation requiring no skills. In a staged accident, a random
Speaker 1: person walked through a room where a participant sat filling
Speaker 1: out a questionnaire and spilled a bunch of pencils. The
Speaker 1: money participants picked up far fewer pencils than the controls.
Speaker 1: To understand how money affects in her personal relationships, the
Speaker 1: scientists told each participant they would have a conversation to
Speaker 1: acquaint themselves with another participant while the experimenter went to
Speaker 1: retrieve the other subject. The participant was to set up
Speaker 1: two chairs for the engagement. The subjects in the money
Speaker 1: group put more physical distance between themselves and new acquaintances
Speaker 1: compared with control subjects. Again, interesting stuff, Interesting stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: the right up I found made a point of note
Speaker 1: in that the experimental results showed no difference as a
Speaker 1: result of socioeconomic status or gender of the participants. It
Speaker 1: seems like just pretty robust. The only real difference was
Speaker 1: who had been primed to think about money, which is
Speaker 1: again interesting. Now, this is just one study, obviously, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about some other studies because a lot of
Speaker 1: people have all all monopoly based studies are very funny
Speaker 1: and terrified because people just turned into cartoon villains. Would
Speaker 1: give it a money. It's fun because the next study
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about is a U. C. Berkeley
Speaker 1: experiment that involved a hundred pairs of strangers playing monopoly,
Speaker 1: with one player getting double the money of the other.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from tea, Yeah it's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from a ted write up of the
Speaker 1: psychologist behind the study. A guy named Paul piff quote,
Speaker 1: the rich players move their pieces more loudly, banging them
Speaker 1: around the board, and displayed a type of enthusiastic gestures
Speaker 1: that you see from a football player who's just scored
Speaker 1: a touchdown. They even eight more pretzels from a bowl
Speaker 1: setting off to the side than the players had been
Speaker 1: assigned to the poor condition, and started to become ruder
Speaker 1: to their opponents. Moreover, the rich players understanding of the
Speaker 1: situation was completely warped. After a game, they talked about
Speaker 1: how they'd earned their success even though the game was
Speaker 1: blatantly rigged and their wind should have been seen as inevitable.
Speaker 1: And that's really really incredible insight into how the mind
Speaker 1: makes sense of advantage. Pif says, yeah, it rocks. Did
Speaker 1: you see Did you see the videos of it? The
Speaker 1: videos of it are very, very funny. It's just a
Speaker 1: bunch of like scrawny college freshmen being like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I did it, so that's why. And then just like crunch, crunch, crunch.
Speaker 1: It's it's brutal, but I love that ship. Another study
Speaker 1: in California, which is the sensible place to go if
Speaker 1: you want to study rich people being assholes, looked into
Speaker 1: I find this one really interesting. It looked into how
Speaker 1: likely drivers of expensive cars were to stop at crosswalks
Speaker 1: for pedestrians, which they're legally required to do in California,
Speaker 1: and they found that again, I find this very fascinating,
Speaker 1: the more expensive the car, the less likely the driver
Speaker 1: was to stop for pedestrians. No one driving, not a
Speaker 1: single person. Because they studied the different categories of cars
Speaker 1: and they like categorize them by their cost, Not a
Speaker 1: single person driving cars in the least expensive car category
Speaker 1: failed to stop at a crosswalk. Almost almost fifty of
Speaker 1: drivers and expensive cars did. Ye. Corollas, Yeah, like, obviously,
Speaker 1: if you drive, you know that somebody in a thirty
Speaker 1: five year old fucking Corolla is going to let you
Speaker 1: in on the highway and someone driving an Infinity is
Speaker 1: going to run you and your children off the road
Speaker 1: if that's what it takes to get out out of
Speaker 1: the exit three seconds faster. And then if you see
Speaker 1: someone in a Tesla, they'll run you over, run your
Speaker 1: family over, and then ask for thank you. My personal
Speaker 1: favorite thing I've seen and just of the joys of
Speaker 1: living in West Los Angeles for a while, was to
Speaker 1: a Lamborghini rereinding a lenother Lamborghini. It was a real
Speaker 1: let them fight moment. This I forgot. You lived in
Speaker 1: like the worst possible area for for pedestrians to just
Speaker 1: get run over by tech millionaires. It was great. I
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun jogging. Oddly enough, I will
Speaker 1: I will say this, not all rich people this way
Speaker 1: because dogging I had. I had Sean Penn uh would
Speaker 1: drive through my neighborhood a couple of times, and he
Speaker 1: was always very good about stopping and giving people time
Speaker 1: to move. So I'll say that about Sean pin problematic man,
Speaker 1: was polite driver. He congrats to Sean Penn for stopping.
Speaker 1: Not congrats to Sean Penn for hitting women and marrying
Speaker 1: Val Kilmer's daughter. I love that marrying Val Kilmer's daughter
Speaker 1: is an equal crime to the violence violence against women
Speaker 1: is the is the worst crime. Marry Val Kilver's twenty
Speaker 1: five year old daughter is. It's also not right to do.
Speaker 1: It's not you know what it is right to do.
Speaker 1: He doesn't run down joggers. I'll give him that. But
Speaker 1: but but it's a it's ad time, it's sad time.
Speaker 1: It's sad time, all right, and we're returned It was
Speaker 1: really fun because I did live in a very nice neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It was right on the edge of of Santa Monica.
Speaker 1: And the only way I could afford to because my
Speaker 1: rent was actually very cheap. I pay like nine bucks
Speaker 1: a month, which is cheap for that. Yeah, it's because
Speaker 1: the building was was very illegal. The landlord had illegally
Speaker 1: subdivided at the half of our power was the like
Speaker 1: came the another unit, and half of their power came
Speaker 1: from our house, so like when power would go out,
Speaker 1: we'd both lose half of our like it was we
Speaker 1: had the city coming once and be like, you realize that,
Speaker 1: like you could sue your landlord because of all of
Speaker 1: the dangerous fire hazards in this apartment, because of how
Speaker 1: illegally she subdivided it. And we said, yes, but here's
Speaker 1: how much we pay in rent And they said, oh,
Speaker 1: I get it. Take your life in your hands every day.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I would risk my life too for
Speaker 1: a place that cheap. Fuck God, what a great country, God,
Speaker 1: what the best best place in the world. No notes,
Speaker 1: Yeah over Sean Penn. I hate Sean Penn. I'm glad
Speaker 1: he's a terrible person. The only way he could be
Speaker 1: worse as if he ran you over with his car.
Speaker 1: So there's that. So you upset, Jamie. I'm sorry, Jane,
Speaker 1: it's okay. I just I hate Sean Penn. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: speak of you know what, Sean Pinn is a rich person.
Speaker 1: Let's keep talking about how bad that is for you.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, again another study, because again, you know,
Speaker 1: reading one of these studies, there's things to criticize, you
Speaker 1: know about all of them, as there are with all studies.
Speaker 1: You keep reading all of the many studies that have
Speaker 1: been done on this, and they all make a very,
Speaker 1: very consistent point. A two thousand ten study from UCSF
Speaker 1: asked three D participants mixed between upper and lower income
Speaker 1: individuals to analyze facial expressions of people in photos and
Speaker 1: emotions of people in mock interviews. Poor people were consistently
Speaker 1: better at reading the emotions of others. But this is neat.
Speaker 1: If upper class participants were told to imagine themselves in
Speaker 1: the position of poorer people, it boosted their ability to
Speaker 1: read other people's emotions. Oh yeah, interesting, right, that's fascinating
Speaker 1: to me to really hold a rich person's hand to
Speaker 1: get them to empathy. Now, imagine other people were capable
Speaker 1: of feelings. I know this is gonna be hard for you.
Speaker 1: Just it's just a creative experiment. Yeah, it's not real.
Speaker 1: It's not real. The poor don't feel but imagine they did,
Speaker 1: But imagine they Okay, So there's a lot more research
Speaker 1: on of this type out there, if you're interested in
Speaker 1: finding it. To conclude this portion of the episode, I'd
Speaker 1: like to read one last quote from Dr Piff summarizing
Speaker 1: a significant body of research into how wealth effects behavior.
Speaker 1: That's kind of this guy's deal quote. As a person's
Speaker 1: levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy
Speaker 1: go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deserving this,
Speaker 1: and their ideology of self interest increases. M hm neat
Speaker 1: huh net nets. Now, let's return to the equabolagno botanica
Speaker 1: to the supermarket actively in flames with its doors boarded
Speaker 1: u or yeah, yeah and locked, while Victor in his
Speaker 1: guards kept the doors barred and rescued the precious cash
Speaker 1: from the registers. Again, he's an getting the cash out. Well,
Speaker 1: he's preventing human beings from exiting. That is absertain, but
Speaker 1: you have to imagine they're seizing the cash from the
Speaker 1: hands of customers and employees who are on fire like.
Speaker 1: People are literally describing paying being forced to pay for
Speaker 1: their groceries while fire reigns from the ceiling. Guess it's
Speaker 1: it's it's fucking wild. Yeah. So, while this goes on
Speaker 1: for a while, and eventually the ground floor of the
Speaker 1: supermarket collapses into an underground car park where dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of people were trying to flee in their vehicles.
Speaker 1: Um and of course those people all burned to death.
Speaker 1: The food court was completely engulfed in flames. A lot
Speaker 1: of people were just incinerated. Cyanide gas given off by
Speaker 1: toxic paint used on the building's roof because they used
Speaker 1: poisonous paint that they weren't supposed to be using on
Speaker 1: the building's roof, began to suffocate. Panic shoppers, the ones
Speaker 1: who are closest to the doors and windows, started breaking
Speaker 1: them with whatever they could find. People outside the supermarket
Speaker 1: realized was happening and spring into action, gathering sticks and
Speaker 1: poles to try to batter down the locked main entrance.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, human beings who aren't pieces of ship do
Speaker 1: attempt to come to the rescue of their fellow human beings.
Speaker 1: As always, happens. We'll keep talking about. Liliana Hernandez, who
Speaker 1: lived next door to the market, told reporters we couldn't
Speaker 1: get inside and people couldn't get out. When the firefighters arrived,
Speaker 1: they too were stymied by the locked doors of the
Speaker 1: Yuqua Bolanos, and eventually they had to go into Liliana's
Speaker 1: home and batter holes through the walls of her home
Speaker 1: in order to get into the supermarket. By the time
Speaker 1: they finally breached the building, there was little for them
Speaker 1: to drag out but corpses. I'm a quote now from
Speaker 1: a rite up in The Guardian. Some victims were found
Speaker 1: hugging each other, one of them a woman with a
Speaker 1: smile child in her arms. A firefighter told local radio
Speaker 1: a disco opposite to the supermarket was being used as
Speaker 1: a makeshift morgue. Overnight, army troops unloaded truckloads of wooden coffins.
Speaker 1: Early today, tearful relative were filing into identify bodies. There
Speaker 1: are no words for this, said Orlando Korea, weeping. After
Speaker 1: identifying the corpse of his six month old nephew. He
Speaker 1: then searched for his sister among the lines of charred bodies.
Speaker 1: This is a moment of great anguish, said the Paraguayan President,
Speaker 1: Nicanor Duarte, who declared three days of national mourning. Officials
Speaker 1: said it was the worst tragedy in Paraguay since a
Speaker 1: failed military insurrection in nineteen forty seven had left around
Speaker 1: eight thousand people dead. Francisco Barrios, who had been shopping
Speaker 1: at the store but managed to escape, told of the
Speaker 1: confusing scene minutes after the fire started, with people rushing
Speaker 1: for the doors. There were sparks as if fireworks were
Speaker 1: going off. He said. The store quickly caught fire and
Speaker 1: filled with smoke, triggering total confusion. I lost my wife
Speaker 1: and kids as I rushed to get out. Now I'm
Speaker 1: trying to find them. God. By the time the fires
Speaker 1: were finally extinguished and the last charred corpse was identified,
Speaker 1: at least four hundred and twenty four people had died.
Speaker 1: That's about half of the folks who were in there.
Speaker 1: Four hundred twenty four people. More than three hundred were injured.
Speaker 1: Three quarters of the people in Yokua Bologno's Botanica at
Speaker 1: the time of the fire failed to make it out
Speaker 1: of the death trap of a market unharmed. Three quarters
Speaker 1: of the people in there now obviously a nightmare of
Speaker 1: the scale demands some sort of vengeance, and I immediately
Speaker 1: turned to Wan and Victor Piva. Both father and son,
Speaker 1: of course, denied that they had ordered the doors locked
Speaker 1: and barred. Victor immediately blamed the store operations manager, Vincent A.
Speaker 1: Ruise forgiving the order, since Ruise had died in the fire,
Speaker 1: he was a pretty good escape can No. I was like, please,
Speaker 1: don't say he blamed a person who burned up when
Speaker 1: it was his fault. Holy shit, Yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 1: It is. It's horrible, it's not good, it's that's I
Speaker 1: can't even like wrap my head around that. That's and
Speaker 1: and just like a store so obscenely large to have
Speaker 1: no oversight is yeah, it's I it's pretty good, Jamie.
Speaker 1: I know, like I say that, but like I was
Speaker 1: fucking in tears reading some of these stories, like so
Speaker 1: many little kids burnt to death in the arms of
Speaker 1: their mothers trying to shield them from the flames, dozens
Speaker 1: of them, like an out like like this is this
Speaker 1: is like a war crime level tragedy. But it was
Speaker 1: a supermarket fire, like like you could it couldn't be
Speaker 1: a more unsuspecting group of people. And there you have
Speaker 1: to imagine all like ordinary. I just I can't even
Speaker 1: wrap my head around that that's so. And then they
Speaker 1: and then they blamed someone that they had killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like okay, it's honestly, I think to most people,
Speaker 1: it is an incomprehensible level of evil, like and in fairness,
Speaker 1: to most people who own supermarkets, it's an like you
Speaker 1: have insurance, why are you It's like it's one thing
Speaker 1: if you're like, you know, fucking big Oil did something
Speaker 1: like that, But it's a supermarket. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: Jack sounds a supermarket, but but super I don't think
Speaker 1: of supermarket owners as supervillain. You're watching dying people pound
Speaker 1: on the windows of your store as you rescue their cash,
Speaker 1: like it's amazing. I just the also just like the
Speaker 1: level of brain dead, like, yeah, how does he think
Speaker 1: he's going to get away with that? He's like, well,
Speaker 1: at least I'll have escape money. At least I'll have
Speaker 1: the scape money. It's it's it's super villain like cartoons supervillain,
Speaker 1: Like honestly, not because the cartoon supervillain wouldn't do this, No,
Speaker 1: they would, they could disappear Captain Planet villains had more nuance.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Um. Yeah, so these obviously they get charged
Speaker 1: with gross negligence and a bunch of other crimes alongside
Speaker 1: force rty. Guards from jail want issue to proposition to
Speaker 1: rebuild his supermarket and make the families of the victims
Speaker 1: into shareholders. He also offered to give them jobs, which
Speaker 1: some might call him mixed offer at best. Oh, he
Speaker 1: really is like the world's dumbest person. There's God the
Speaker 1: son that rich people are horrible, but the children of
Speaker 1: rich people are worse because they don't they don't even
Speaker 1: have a skill. It's that's fucking that's so. I can't
Speaker 1: wrap my head around this story. This is so, it's
Speaker 1: pretty fun. So Paraguayans were not enticed by the proposition
Speaker 1: of a store to profit the families of the dead people.
Speaker 1: They that's a very hardcore libertarian answer for like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we just make a store that they can
Speaker 1: profit from, that we build over the ashes of where
Speaker 1: their loved ones died, and my supermarket fire could be
Speaker 1: a fun second act. Yeah, amazing, Yeah, it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you do with other people aren't people to you,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, uh so, yeah they obviously the people
Speaker 1: of Paraguay of Socion were not enticed by this proposition.
Speaker 1: They filled the streets of the capital with graffiti de
Speaker 1: grning the pivos as murderers. In December of two thousand six,
Speaker 1: one victor and one security guard were convicted of manslaughter,
Speaker 1: receiving maximum sentences of five years. Several company shareholders had
Speaker 1: been tried for negligence and they were all acquitted. This
Speaker 1: did not make people happy. And the citizens, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: are they killed four people? Are you kidding me? They
Speaker 1: should be killed in the town square. Yeah, they should
Speaker 1: be publicly executed, okay with that in this case, yeah,
Speaker 1: the people of Asuncion, led by a family member of
Speaker 1: the dead, immediately rioted through the streets, breaking things, lighting
Speaker 1: police cars on fire. Doing totally justified it. Right, This
Speaker 1: is absolutely the time to riot. Right. We can debate
Speaker 1: over what justifies a riot, this sure does. This is
Speaker 1: you know, this is the yardstick to use. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this is like the clearest justification. I can imagine a
Speaker 1: lot of things justify riots, but for sure, this you know,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, so yeah, they rioted and Eventually, the government
Speaker 1: was forced to retry the case because people lit enough
Speaker 1: cars on fire. Oh good, well that might be a lesson.
Speaker 1: They're letting cars on accomplishes things. One could argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, could I mean, it's it certainly did in
Speaker 1: this case. You know, I like cars on fire in minecraft,
Speaker 1: and it's really accomplished a lot locally. It got the
Speaker 1: job done here sort of h better than things have
Speaker 1: been before. One was re sentenced to twelve years in prison,
Speaker 1: victor to ten, the security guard to five, and one
Speaker 1: company shareholder was sentenced to two and a half years, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's better. It's still like not how many
Speaker 1: cars need to be set on fire to get a
Speaker 1: reasonable sentence, Jesus exactly. The people of Paraguay, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: had been agitating for a twenty five year sentence, which
Speaker 1: is the maximum that like they're like is allowed. Um now.
Speaker 1: One of the leaders that evolved out of the protest
Speaker 1: movement was a guy named Dr Roberto al Meron. He
Speaker 1: treated many of the burn victims of the fire, all
Speaker 1: the while unaware that his own son had perished in
Speaker 1: the blaze. Um so you see why this guy, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Dr Almron told reporters. This is the country we have
Speaker 1: where the institutions do not fulfill their function, where the
Speaker 1: businessmen are capable of creating a crematorium for innocence. A
Speaker 1: drawer with two doors is a roof of a karrat
Speaker 1: and closed with fences and jail like bars for a
Speaker 1: few dollars, just in a country with an absent state
Speaker 1: where assistance to the victims was only media and temporary.
Speaker 1: After that, everything remained the same, the same country where
Speaker 1: the judiciary and the municipality itself are buildings that do
Speaker 1: not have a fire riskape, devoid of values. In a
Speaker 1: terminal stated, I mean he's talking like, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we can all identify with what he's saying, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the state and the judiciary are buildings with no fire escape.
Speaker 1: Yes I don't. Yeah, it's like, what an unfortunate metaphor,
Speaker 1: But I I see what you're saying. Yeah. The lyrics
Speaker 1: of a rap song broadcast on Paraguay and television after
Speaker 1: the verdict were more succinct. Let no one leave without paying,
Speaker 1: and so it was they paid with their lives. Yeah, yep, Oh,
Speaker 1: well that's fucking devastating. You know what's not devastating, Jamie,
Speaker 1: what products products? And that's you know, I think that
Speaker 1: that if there's anything we just learned, it's that the
Speaker 1: power of products and services, that's what's going to pull
Speaker 1: us through the people. That's what's going to save us
Speaker 1: as products and or services and our services. I'm so sorry,
Speaker 1: he ads. We're back. We're back talking about how funny
Speaker 1: it is that attorney general. The plural of it is
Speaker 1: is attorneys general. And we were talking about Sun's glass.
Speaker 1: It's very it's very silly to me. I know it's
Speaker 1: correct grammar, but it's silly. If I cloned Sunny. It's
Speaker 1: Sun's glasses? Is it Soun's glass? Son's Attorney's general, Son's class?
Speaker 1: Mother's fuck? They should they should really change that. It's funny.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not funny, Jamie. Oh, whatever you're about
Speaker 1: to say for the next hour, the Equablanio supermarket fire
Speaker 1: was not was not funny. It was a nightmares tragedy
Speaker 1: enabled by greedy shareholders to craven manager, complicit security guards,
Speaker 1: and a profoundly selfish company founder, One Piva. I meant
Speaker 1: what I said earlier. One is not the primary bastard
Speaker 1: of today's story. Our bastard is in staid, a phenomenon,
Speaker 1: a concept, the deadly serious thing that he represents in
Speaker 1: his actions. It's a phenomenon sociologists call elite panic. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a boutique store where they charged to where
Speaker 1: they charged forty for a pair of socks. But what
Speaker 1: is it well, it's a term that was coined by
Speaker 1: sociologists Karen Chess and Lee Clark of Rutger's University in
Speaker 1: a two thousand eight study they published under the title
Speaker 1: Elites and Panic more to fear than fear itself. It
Speaker 1: opens with these words. Sociological research on how people respond
Speaker 1: to disasters has been going on for more than fifty years.
Speaker 1: From that research comes one of the most robust conclusions
Speaker 1: in sociology. Panic is rare, And of course they mean
Speaker 1: that panic from regular people directly affected by a disaster
Speaker 1: is extremely rare. The normal human behavior, regardless of body count, type,
Speaker 1: or duration of tragedy, is compassion and collective action. Mutual
Speaker 1: aid is far more common and panic. Think of the
Speaker 1: people outside of the Quabolania supermarket, right, the ones who
Speaker 1: rushed to help their fellow human beings by trying to
Speaker 1: batter down the doors with poles that they found nearby.
Speaker 1: That's a bunch of people. One person made the decision
Speaker 1: to lock the doors, you know, right, So that's so
Speaker 1: the argument that mutual aid is is the more natural
Speaker 1: instinct than the panic, okay, is the documented by extensive research,
Speaker 1: most common reaction of people and disasters. Think of the
Speaker 1: people during Hurricane Katrina who used their boats to search
Speaker 1: for food and other supplies and abandoned stores that they
Speaker 1: could then distribute to their fellow citizens in need. A
Speaker 1: lot of times they were called looters by the news.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like the people being like, well, this
Speaker 1: place is flooding everything and it's going to go bad,
Speaker 1: and people are hungry. Perhaps the food out of it
Speaker 1: sold that, don't you They didn't pay for it. It
Speaker 1: is it is the same instinct that led to that
Speaker 1: all of those people burning to death in the UK.
Speaker 1: Bolagnia is like, well, but they're not paying. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that it's all wasted because the buildings on
Speaker 1: fire or flooded. They're not they're not paying. You know,
Speaker 1: who would they pay? Their story now, The main argument
Speaker 1: of Chess and Clark's study is that governments should include
Speaker 1: the citizen remore in their disaster plans, rather than assuming
Speaker 1: danger will cause the citizen read will collapse into an
Speaker 1: unruly mob who need to be controlled by armed men,
Speaker 1: because that's basically all government plans for disasters, Like everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna panic and the cops will have to beat them
Speaker 1: into responding properly, right, Like that's how we or the
Speaker 1: National Guard or whatever. Quote, classic classic approach, classic elites. Berkland,
Speaker 1: who has conducted extensive is another researcher who has conducted
Speaker 1: extensive research on the matter, argues that the disaster plans
Speaker 1: of policymakers and emergency management personnel assume it is likely
Speaker 1: it being panic. Planners and policymakers sometimes act as if
Speaker 1: the human response to threatening conditions is more dangerous than
Speaker 1: the threatening conditions themselves. Politically, the problem with panic endures because,
Speaker 1: as Tyrney argues was another researcher, it resonates with institutional
Speaker 1: interests operating on the assumption that poll panic and disasters
Speaker 1: leads to a conclusion that disaster preparation means concentrating resources,
Speaker 1: keeping information close to the vest, and communicating with people
Speaker 1: in soothing ways, even if the truth is disquieting. As
Speaker 1: Tierney points out such an approach of advance as the
Speaker 1: power of those at the top of organizations. Oh okay, okay,
Speaker 1: good stuff. This is yeah, this is tracking. But you
Speaker 1: don't hear it. Phrases me a lot all scans in
Speaker 1: a two thousand and six and again, one of the
Speaker 1: fun things about this is that, like, there's very little
Speaker 1: disagreement about from people who study disasters on this subject.
Speaker 1: In a two thousand six study of disaster responses conducted
Speaker 1: by Dr Clark, they noted rather cautiously that disaster plans
Speaker 1: only ever assumed panic on behalf of the general public.
Speaker 1: People in positions of authority, including the cops, are assumed
Speaker 1: to keep a cool head at all times. The powerless,
Speaker 1: not the powerful, are said to panic, but the reality
Speaker 1: is generally the exact opposite. It's great if rules we
Speaker 1: had a ton of documented evidence of this being exactly
Speaker 1: the case, If only people had devoted their lives to
Speaker 1: proving that this was not the case. Quote. The image
Speaker 1: of panic is generally associated with large numbers of people
Speaker 1: in elites do not congregate, making it hard to transfer
Speaker 1: the image of panic to them. Was one does not
Speaker 1: see collections of chief executive officers amassed in a stadium,
Speaker 1: and so it is unlikely that a story will ever
Speaker 1: appear about CEO panic in response to a soccer stadium fire. Still,
Speaker 1: this is not a sufficient explanation for panic to be
Speaker 1: so rarely attributed to people in positions of authority. For
Speaker 1: one could, in principle, explain the actions of chief executives,
Speaker 1: heart surgeons, army generals, or university officials by a legend
Speaker 1: that they panicked in certain situations. Yet such explanations remain rare.
Speaker 1: So Jamie, let's talk about some of those examples. We
Speaker 1: opened this this episode with the story of a CEO panicking,
Speaker 1: and I think perhaps we should talk about an army
Speaker 1: general panicking next. Yeah, let's get a wide john of
Speaker 1: people in power losing their ship, losing their fucking minds.
Speaker 1: At five twelve am on April eighteenth, nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: the city of San Francisco suffered a massive earthquake. For
Speaker 1: a full minute, the ground shook, tossing tall buildings to
Speaker 1: the ground like discarded legos, cracking the streets, breaking gas lines,
Speaker 1: crumpling street cars. It also sent chimneys crumbling to the ground,
Speaker 1: and when one mixes falling chimneys with punctured gas lines.
Speaker 1: It's perhaps not surprising that the next thing to strike
Speaker 1: San Francisco was a Titanic fire. By the time it
Speaker 1: was done, twenty eight thousand structures had been incinerated, and
Speaker 1: nearly five square miles of the city was just gone.
Speaker 1: More than three thousand people died, and obviously, like this
Speaker 1: is six we've ever gonna know the death toll um.
Speaker 1: Half half the city was left homeless. People couldn't even
Speaker 1: count to five thousand back then. No, no, no, they
Speaker 1: hadn't invented numbers larger than three thousand. That's why it
Speaker 1: was three thousand right there, Like, well, we've stopped out.
Speaker 1: I guess after it comes to head, we had our
Speaker 1: scientists were trying to count to see how high numbers went,
Speaker 1: but they kept dying of old age at three thousands.
Speaker 1: So that was that was the ceiling of numbers at
Speaker 1: this point that this is very sad. It's a horrible disaster. Yes,
Speaker 1: thankfully they're further away from us in times, so it's
Speaker 1: it's easier to say, but their clothes are so silly. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: distance creates sociopathy, which is why the rich and powerful
Speaker 1: act the way they do and why we're going to
Speaker 1: tell jokes about a fire that killed three thousand people
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. So where were distant from it? We are?
Speaker 1: Every human beings are the problem. Yes, power is the problem.
Speaker 1: Hierarchy is the problem. Distance is the problem. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so half of the city's left homeless, which is exactly
Speaker 1: the sort of situation you'd expect to generate a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of panic. There are walls of fire eating the city,
Speaker 1: people's homes are gone, they've just had an earthquake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would expect panic, right like that? That that Yeah, Instead,
Speaker 1: the very opposite occurred. In her masterpiece, A Paradise Built
Speaker 1: in Hell, Rebecca Soulnett tells the story of miss Anna
Speaker 1: Amelia Holehouse, or a middle aged woman who's home wound
Speaker 1: up in the path of the fire. So she loses
Speaker 1: her house and she winds up. She travels calmly with
Speaker 1: thousands of other people to Golden Gate Park, where they
Speaker 1: are able to hide from the fire basically, and she
Speaker 1: pretty much immediately decides to establish a mutual aid kitchen
Speaker 1: quote whole Houses started a tiny soup kitchen with one
Speaker 1: tin can to drink from and one pie plate to
Speaker 1: eat from all over the city. Stoves were hauled out
Speaker 1: of damaged buildings. Fire was forbidden indoors, since many standing
Speaker 1: homes had gas leaks or damaged flues or chimneys or
Speaker 1: primitive stoves were built out of rubble, and people commenced
Speaker 1: to cook for each other, for strangers, for anyone in need.
Speaker 1: Her generosity was typical, even if her initiative was exceptional.
Speaker 1: Whole house or got funds to buy eating utensils across
Speaker 1: the bay in Oakland. The kitchen began to grow, and
Speaker 1: she was soon feeding two to three hundred people a day,
Speaker 1: Not a victim of the disaster, but a victor over
Speaker 1: it and the hostess of a popular social center. Her
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters keeper. Some visitors from Oakland liked her
Speaker 1: makeshift dining camp so well they put up a sign
Speaker 1: this hotel, naming it after the burned out downtown luxury
Speaker 1: establishment that was repeatedly once the largest hotel in the world.
Speaker 1: And this was the norm. She was one of hundreds
Speaker 1: and thousands of people who made like One of the
Speaker 1: stories that she tells in this book is of like
Speaker 1: a local cop who the earthquake kids he sees people
Speaker 1: looting and instead of doing anything about that, he starts
Speaker 1: a kitchen to feed people, like and yeah, like that's
Speaker 1: what people do, that's what Yeah, even cops when they're
Speaker 1: at Crown zero can act that way moment for cops
Speaker 1: nineteen o six cops, they weren't trained yet, so that
Speaker 1: was helpful. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, mutual aid networks were
Speaker 1: incredibly common in San Francisco. Butchers opened up their shops
Speaker 1: and started handing out free meat and mass for kitchens
Speaker 1: like the Palace Hotel to turn into stew because they
Speaker 1: were like, well, it's gonna go bad, we might as
Speaker 1: well just give it away to people. And like, there
Speaker 1: were some large butcher shops who stopped, but there were
Speaker 1: at least a couple of very large like businesses that
Speaker 1: were like massive butcher who were who not only gave
Speaker 1: away their meat, but use their employees and resources and
Speaker 1: vehicles to try to to cart it around the city
Speaker 1: for free to hand out to people. Again, again, we're
Speaker 1: not I'm not saying that like rich people businesses always
Speaker 1: react the way that the Qua Bolognas guy did because
Speaker 1: they were at ground zero of the disaster. They were
Speaker 1: affected by it, and they immediately sue, like my house
Speaker 1: has gone to my city's fucked up, Like this isn't
Speaker 1: about money. People need to eat, you know, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: very different situation. But I feel like we've even seen
Speaker 1: some of that this year, and like, yeahs that are
Speaker 1: highly affected by COVID where some businesses that you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have expected this business to have sent it up,
Speaker 1: but they're just in the middle of it, so it
Speaker 1: makes more sense that they would actually do something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: during the worst of the of the police and federal
Speaker 1: riots in Portland, there was a free rib restaurant that
Speaker 1: started and was given like donated like three and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars um and then there was an armed coup
Speaker 1: that took it over. But like that's a long story
Speaker 1: where I look forward. I look forward, so uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was this is like but again, like this is
Speaker 1: just what people started doing. They started collect people, like
Speaker 1: groups of young men spontaneously organized to pick through the
Speaker 1: ruins and ruins of stores and buildings to grab warm clothing, blankets,
Speaker 1: medicine and food that they could then take back and
Speaker 1: give away to their fellow people to whoever needed it.
Speaker 1: Selling of such items was all but unheard of during
Speaker 1: this period, as one man who operated a mutual aid
Speaker 1: food delivery wagon later recalled, and the reason he did
Speaker 1: this is because he had a horse in a cart
Speaker 1: and he was like, well, obviously the thing I should
Speaker 1: do is use my resources to give food to people
Speaker 1: for free, right Yeah, as this guy said quote, no
Speaker 1: questions were asked, no investigations were attempted. Whatever the applicant
Speaker 1: required was given to him or her if I had it,
Speaker 1: and the plan seemed to work excellently. Again, no means testing,
Speaker 1: No do you really need this? Just like you say
Speaker 1: you need it? Here you go, here you go, Like
Speaker 1: here you fucking go. This is what I have. You know,
Speaker 1: if I have it, it's yours. Despite the horrors of
Speaker 1: the quake in the fire, many San Franciscans who survived
Speaker 1: described the city in this period as something of a utopia,
Speaker 1: with people coming together to take care of each other
Speaker 1: in a way that everyone seemed to find more fulfilling
Speaker 1: than their daily lives had been. The writer Mary Austin
Speaker 1: noted that the people of her city became houseless, but
Speaker 1: not homeless, for it comes to this with the bulk
Speaker 1: of San Franciscan's that they discovered the place and the
Speaker 1: spirit to be home rather than the walls and the furnishings.
Speaker 1: No matter how the insurance totals foot up, what landmarks,
Speaker 1: what treasures of art are vanished? San Francisco are San
Speaker 1: Francisco is all there Yet fast as the tall banners
Speaker 1: of smoke rose up and the flames reddened them, rose
Speaker 1: up with it, something impalpable, like an excellation. That's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: I feel bad, I mean, I mean I felt I
Speaker 1: feel that I made fun of them. Timis, Yeah, it's beautiful. Yea.
Speaker 1: The tech industry wasn't there yet, so people were better
Speaker 1: before got there. It sounds like a beautiful place. There
Speaker 1: was a community spirit at one point. Yeah not. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: San Franciscans. I know a lot of people who will
Speaker 1: anyway we should do in the right thing, and I
Speaker 1: keep doing it because there's yeah, there's too many of
Speaker 1: the other ones. Yeah. So hundreds of plumbers worked free
Speaker 1: for a full week to like stop broken pipes so
Speaker 1: that like there wouldn't be water flitting everywhere. One automobile
Speaker 1: dealership lent all of its cars out as ambulances for
Speaker 1: the sick and wounded. Was just like, take all of
Speaker 1: our fucking cars as ambulances, like to do whatever with them,
Speaker 1: Like like, we trust that you will use them as
Speaker 1: they need to be used. Clearly, people need vehicles right now.
Speaker 1: The manager of the dealership later gave a quote to
Speaker 1: a reporter that was essentially an early summary of the
Speaker 1: concept of elite panic. I find this fascinating quote. All
Speaker 1: the big hotels, such as the St. Francis, the Palace,
Speaker 1: and others were filled with Eastern and other tourists who
Speaker 1: seemed to have lost their heads entirely. Indeed, the only
Speaker 1: really scared people that I can remember having seen through
Speaker 1: the first three days of the fire were people of
Speaker 1: this class. In many cases, these would come to the
Speaker 1: garage offering to pay any price for the use of
Speaker 1: an automobile that would take them out of the city. However,
Speaker 1: we at salutely refused to accept money from any such applicant,
Speaker 1: and as long as we saw that the petitioner was
Speaker 1: able to walk, we refused to furnish a machine. Hell yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But it's the rich people trying to prioritize their needs
Speaker 1: over yeah people, over ambulances. Yes, yeah, fucking great. The
Speaker 1: people of San Francisco by and large did not panic.
Speaker 1: But Brigadier General Frederick Funston, the commanding officer of the
Speaker 1: Presidio Military Base, was a different story. According to Rebecca
Speaker 1: Soul that he quote perceived his job as saving the
Speaker 1: city from the people, rather than saving the people from
Speaker 1: the material city of cracked and crumbling buildings, fall in
Speaker 1: power lines, and towering flames. Uh So what other people
Speaker 1: saw is it millennial good fellowship, which is one of
Speaker 1: the things ways that, like the spirit in San Francisco
Speaker 1: was described Funston and others in power saw as a
Speaker 1: mob to be repressed and a flock to be heard.
Speaker 1: It sounds familiar, funds. Yeah, Funston did the only thing
Speaker 1: that a guy with an army at his beck and
Speaker 1: call generally thinks to do, which is sin soldiers in
Speaker 1: about it. Now. He had no legal right to do this,
Speaker 1: because it's illegal to do this without under very specific circumstances. Um.
Speaker 1: But he forced the city under martial law again illegally. Now,
Speaker 1: in Funston's eyes, the civilians who picked their way through
Speaker 1: ruined shops to save precious food before it's spoiled, we're
Speaker 1: not engaging in mutual aid they were, in his words,
Speaker 1: an unlicked mob, licked meaning like them and beaten. You know,
Speaker 1: we need to beat them to stop this bank, these
Speaker 1: these lawbreakers. Yep. The city mayor, Eugene Schmitz was a
Speaker 1: working class labor union supporting populist, but he wound up
Speaker 1: reacting no differently than Funston, a man whose prior work
Speaker 1: experience had mostly consisted of violently suppressing the International Workers
Speaker 1: of the World, a quasi anarchist workers union now mere,
Speaker 1: Schmidts issued a proclamation, the federal troops, the members of
Speaker 1: the regular Police Force, and all special police officers have
Speaker 1: been authorized by me to kill any and all persons
Speaker 1: found engaged in looting or in the commission of any
Speaker 1: other crime. No wait, people are feeding each other, and
Speaker 1: he's like, shoot him again. This is the populist, working
Speaker 1: class labor union supporting mayor. This is it's just what
Speaker 1: happens when you're in power. That's that's a that is
Speaker 1: a more extreme example than I was expecting. Just do
Speaker 1: a hell turn on every Actually I've had a change
Speaker 1: of heart. Kill them, like you know, when the looting starts,
Speaker 1: the shooting starts, because as we all know, property is
Speaker 1: the same as human life. Yeah, when once you got
Speaker 1: once you're in charge of a lot of property, that
Speaker 1: just just how you start to think, Wow, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a that's a bad one. Yeah. Well, obviously, being
Speaker 1: again people following orders, the federal troops did as they
Speaker 1: were old as soliman rites quote in treating the citizens
Speaker 1: as enemies. The occupying armies drove residents and volunteers away
Speaker 1: from scenes where fire could be prevented. In many parts
Speaker 1: of the city, only those who eluded the authorities by diplomacy, stealth,
Speaker 1: or countering invocation of authority were able to fight the blaze.
Speaker 1: Those who did saved many homes and work sites. There
Speaker 1: are no reliable figures on mortality in the earthquake, but
Speaker 1: the best estimates are that about three thousand died, mostly
Speaker 1: from the earthquake itself. One historian suspects that as many
Speaker 1: as five hundred citizens were killed by the occupying forces.
Speaker 1: Another estimates fifty to seventy five. Again, we'll never know,
Speaker 1: because when they would shoot people, they would throw their
Speaker 1: corpses into burning buildings. This is the US Army. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: good stuff, holy sh it, okay. So that so that
Speaker 1: three thousand number you know, yeah, Jesus again, who knows
Speaker 1: how many people they actually shot to death. The soldiers
Speaker 1: didn't only kill people. In many cases, they made the
Speaker 1: fire worse. So, you know, you have these fires raging
Speaker 1: through the city, and one of the things you do
Speaker 1: in that situation is you would demolish a bunch of
Speaker 1: buildings in order to create a firebreak. Right, It's the
Speaker 1: same thing you if you've got like a fire in
Speaker 1: the woods, you might like like burned down. You might
Speaker 1: do a controlled burn to destroy like a strip of
Speaker 1: trees in order to create a break that the fire
Speaker 1: that's is uncontrolled can't spread through. It's a pretty normal strategy.
Speaker 1: It's a fine strategy, and would be demolition buildings to
Speaker 1: stop a fire not a bad thing to do when
Speaker 1: you have a situation like this. However, when you are
Speaker 1: doing this in a massive urban fire, dynamite is the
Speaker 1: preferred or at least at that point, was the preferred
Speaker 1: thing to use, because dynamite is less likely to start
Speaker 1: fires outside of the blast area, just because of the
Speaker 1: way that dynamite works. Instead, the soldiers barrels of gunpowder. No,
Speaker 1: and again you're just like, this is the army, this
Speaker 1: is supposed to be there. But you're supposed to and
Speaker 1: you probably have dynamite because you're the army. Where was
Speaker 1: all the dynamite at spoken? Obviously, the armies failures like
Speaker 1: massively spread fires and destroyed thousands of buildings that might
Speaker 1: have otherwise been saved. I really do recommend reading like
Speaker 1: and there's there's other ship that they did too. Like
Speaker 1: one of the things that most fucked up, but maybe
Speaker 1: least obvious, is that they started establishing soup kitchens to
Speaker 1: feed people in some cases like pushing other ones out
Speaker 1: of operation. But when the military did it, everyone got
Speaker 1: like ration cards and you had a very strict limited
Speaker 1: set that you could get and you could only come in,
Speaker 1: and it was like they were basically like they were
Speaker 1: almost like treated as prisoners while they were getting their
Speaker 1: food and stuff, because they didn't want to encourage dependency
Speaker 1: by giving out too much free food or making it
Speaker 1: be pleasant, as opposed to the mutual aid kitchens that
Speaker 1: were like eat your phil you know, yeah, like eat
Speaker 1: what you take, what you need and people will do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I honestly I didn't know that about this book.
Speaker 1: And I'm a soul knit head she's great, have no
Speaker 1: idea what this is, what I'm I have very favorite books.
Speaker 1: I really do recommend reading A Paradise Built in Hell.
Speaker 1: She goes into tremendous and fascinating and it's again for fairness,
Speaker 1: like the army did other stuff that was like they organized,
Speaker 1: like medical ambulances and ship like. There were good things
Speaker 1: that soldiers did and that like individual local leaders did,
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of bad things and I
Speaker 1: in my head it kind of outweighs the good. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Soulnet's book has been very influential. It's I think
Speaker 1: uh was influential. One of my favorite books Tribe by
Speaker 1: Sebastian Younger, which delves into some of the same topics.
Speaker 1: UM is more about PTSD, but talks a lot about
Speaker 1: why like um, why U S soldiers probably suffer PTSD
Speaker 1: at a higher rate than any other soldiers in the
Speaker 1: history of warfare and it it his The kind of
Speaker 1: conclusion he comes to is that it's because of the
Speaker 1: society they come home to, rather than the specific details
Speaker 1: of modern combat. Um, it's because of how fucked civilization is.
Speaker 1: It's because like when when you break down, as when
Speaker 1: you head home to an empty apartment. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not when you're out in the field with your buddies
Speaker 1: and ship. It's when you come home and you're in
Speaker 1: an empty building, the way that we tend to live
Speaker 1: alone and isolated. Then you shatter into a thousand pieces. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Also a good book tried, Yeah, soul Nets book has
Speaker 1: been very influential to a number of people who I
Speaker 1: think are pretty darn smart. One example would be Corey Doctoro,
Speaker 1: who I like quite a lot. Yeah, and he wrote
Speaker 1: this on the subject of elite panic quote. Elites tend
Speaker 1: to believe in a venal, selfish, and essentially monstrous version
Speaker 1: of human nature, which I sometimes think is their own
Speaker 1: human nature. I mean, people don't become incredibly wealthy and
Speaker 1: powerful by being angelic necessarily. They believe that only their
Speaker 1: power keeps the rest of us in line, and that
Speaker 1: when it somehow shrinks away, our seething violence will rise
Speaker 1: to the surface. That was very clear in Katrina. Timley
Speaker 1: garden Ash and Maureen Doubt and all these other people
Speaker 1: immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started writing commentaries based
Speaker 1: on the assumption that the rumors of mass violence during
Speaker 1: Katrina were true. A lot of people have never understood
Speaker 1: that the rumors were dispelled and that those things didn't
Speaker 1: actually happen. It's try Jake now I found another write
Speaker 1: up in Commentary magazine that continues Doctro's line of thought
Speaker 1: with more concrete examples, both from Katrina and from our
Speaker 1: present disaster. Quote elite panic frequently brings out another unsavory
Speaker 1: quirk on the part of some authorities, a tendency to
Speaker 1: believe the worst about their own citizens. In the midst
Speaker 1: of the Hurricane Katrina crisis in two thousand five, New
Speaker 1: Orleans Mayor Ray Nagan found time to go on Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey Show and lament Wholigan's killing people, raping people in
Speaker 1: the Superdome. Public officials in the media credulously repeated rumors
Speaker 1: about street violence, snipers shooting at helicopters, and hundreds of
Speaker 1: bodies piled in the Superdome. These all turned out to
Speaker 1: be wild exaggerations or falsehoods, arguably tinged by racism, but
Speaker 1: the stories had an impact Away from the media's cameras.
Speaker 1: A massive rescue effort made up of freelance volunteers, Coastguard, helicopters,
Speaker 1: and other first responders was underway across the city, but
Speaker 1: city officials, fearing attacks on rescuers, frequently delayed these operations.
Speaker 1: They ordered that precious space and boats and helicopters be
Speaker 1: reserved for armed escorts. Jesus Christ, if that doesn't sum
Speaker 1: up America failing to rescue people because you needed more
Speaker 1: room for guns, is like we love guns more than
Speaker 1: we love our own since that's such a strange thing
Speaker 1: to even like here repeated back, because it's like, I
Speaker 1: mean in certain circle that it's like known that that
Speaker 1: is not something to happen. But I clearly remember when
Speaker 1: I was a kid when that was happening, that being
Speaker 1: just fully the only coverage you would really see. It
Speaker 1: was like that first saw off there there was a
Speaker 1: horrific tragedy, and second off that the citizens were being
Speaker 1: blamed for a thing like that was so there was
Speaker 1: more of that and you didn't really hear the other
Speaker 1: side at all. Nope, No, why would you. Again, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing that is Twitter's purpose, which is so
Speaker 1: that you can tell a lie and then corrected with
Speaker 1: the truth. But nobody reads that second Twitter. It's there,
Speaker 1: it's all there, it's there, but we don't read it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue that quote from Commentary magazine as
Speaker 1: it moves into the present day. Too often, the need
Speaker 1: to avoid panic serves as a retroactive justification for all
Speaker 1: manner of official missteps. In late March, as the coronavirus
Speaker 1: pandemic was climbing towards its crest in New York City,
Speaker 1: Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared on CNN State of the
Speaker 1: Union to defend his record. Host Jake Tapper pressed the
Speaker 1: mayor on his many statements as recently as two weeks
Speaker 1: earlier urging New Yorkers to go about their lives. Tapper
Speaker 1: asked whether those statements were at least in part to
Speaker 1: blame for how the virus has spread across the city.
Speaker 1: To Blasio, didn't give an inch. Everybody was working with
Speaker 1: the information we had, he explained, and trying, of course,
Speaker 1: to avoid panic. How advising people to avoid bars and
Speaker 1: Broadway shows would have been tantamount to panic was left unexplained.
Speaker 1: And again, yeah, it's the same thing. Right. People had
Speaker 1: shut down earlier, it would have meant less money. It's
Speaker 1: locking the doors and saving the money from the cash
Speaker 1: registers while people burned to death. That's the It's the
Speaker 1: same thing. They all do it, ever the period of
Speaker 1: days and months instead, and then people still pray it
Speaker 1: is de Blasio for his you know whatever. He did
Speaker 1: a terrible job. He's a monster, like he's yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're all, they're all trash. That's the point, you know. Like,
Speaker 1: and the fact that he's better than someone who has
Speaker 1: actively pretended that the virus isn't a problem doesn't say
Speaker 1: anything good about him. It's just me. It's like the
Speaker 1: bar is beneath the floor, the bar is in the
Speaker 1: parking garage. Like it's like if you step on a
Speaker 1: rusty rake and it goes through your foot, and then
Speaker 1: the person ten feet away steps on a land mine,
Speaker 1: like like you're like, well, I'm glad I didn't step
Speaker 1: on the land mine, but you're not happy, you know,
Speaker 1: but I'm still gonna die if I didn't get my tea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you still have a problems rake tenness rake v land mine. Well,
Speaker 1: the election of our lives. Well, it's like, well, this,
Speaker 1: this horrifying metaphor has has really come full circle. Thank you. Now.
Speaker 1: That Commentary magazine article goes into detail about another disaster,
Speaker 1: a nine point to magnitude earthquake, off the Alaskan coast.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen sixty two, Anchorage, the state's largest city,
Speaker 1: was devastated. Thousands were rendered homeless, Whole neighborhoods fell off
Speaker 1: of cliff sides, and then the thing that happens in
Speaker 1: every disaster happened. People spontaneously organized search and rescue teams
Speaker 1: to find their trapped neighbors. Meanwhile, the people in charge panicked.
Speaker 1: In order to protect local businesses from looting, the police
Speaker 1: immediately deputized a crowd of volunteers, many of whom had
Speaker 1: been drinking in bars and instant like right before the
Speaker 1: quake hit. So they find a bunch of drunk men
Speaker 1: and give them arm bands with the word police written
Speaker 1: on them in lipstick. No, no, it's very funny. They
Speaker 1: also gave a lot of them guns. But it's Alaska.
Speaker 1: Everybody was already packing. I mean, let's be honest here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Yeah. Now, in doing this, cops were
Speaker 1: acting in accordance with the science of the day, as
Speaker 1: embodied by the work of social scientist Richard Titmus, which
Speaker 1: let's just let's take a moment for Titmas. Like Titmus,
Speaker 1: it's like a boob based Christmas. That sounds like either
Speaker 1: really terrible disease or oh she's got the titmos yeah,
Speaker 1: or very titmus, and then you're like very aggressive. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he believed Titmus believe that any major disaster would
Speaker 1: cause quote a mass outbreak of hysterical neurosis among the
Speaker 1: civilian population. Civilians traumatized by death and destruction, he thought
Speaker 1: would behave like frightened and unsatisfied children. The only way
Speaker 1: for authorities to avoid such horror was to use force
Speaker 1: and the threat of force immediately. And again, this was
Speaker 1: very heavily influenced over the Cold War. Right, people are
Speaker 1: every one of the governments thinking what's going to happen
Speaker 1: when the nukes fall? In The assumption is everyone will
Speaker 1: panic and we'll have to shoot a bunch of them
Speaker 1: in order to maintain order. The fun thing about this
Speaker 1: is they don't even have the excuse of like, well,
Speaker 1: they didn't know at the time, They hadn't done as
Speaker 1: much research. The bombing of London had happened, like the
Speaker 1: Blitz had occurred, right, and they had going into the blitz,
Speaker 1: we talked about this and it could happen here. Younger
Speaker 1: talks about it and tried going into the blitz. Everyone
Speaker 1: had expected that the entire city would panic and people
Speaker 1: be like eating each other and like committing rape and murder.
Speaker 1: And instead everyone did the thing people always do in
Speaker 1: disasters and took care of each other collectively cared. Okay,
Speaker 1: but nobody listened, you know, no one, No one had
Speaker 1: charge paid attention because they just can't imagine that that's
Speaker 1: the case. It's you have to imagine it actively benefits
Speaker 1: them to make people afraid of each other. Yeah, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: because then other things might happen that they wouldn't like.
Speaker 1: So the elite panic over the possible chaos outweighed any
Speaker 1: obligation to protect the citizens of Anchorage. The police chief
Speaker 1: immediately suspended the search for survivors in the rubble, like
Speaker 1: because he's worried about chaos. Now, we don't have time
Speaker 1: to look for any survivors. Like, we have to get
Speaker 1: these lipstick cops out on the street, give guns to
Speaker 1: more drunk that's what's gonna protect people. Okay, I would
Speaker 1: see a movie called lipstick Cops. Lipstick cops, especially if
Speaker 1: they're police who only police the quality of people's use
Speaker 1: of lipstick. Right, and that was the same violence as
Speaker 1: modern cops. Yeah, with the same amount of baseless judgment
Speaker 1: and violence as a model swat teams just opening up
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles malls. There's whole corners of YouTube devoted
Speaker 1: to this, this very ellipstick copery. Not after the lipstick
Speaker 1: cops get in it, there won't be purged. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so again, everyone in charge, a lot of them at
Speaker 1: least panic. The people, of course do not. And since
Speaker 1: the police chief has called off the search for survivors,
Speaker 1: the citizens of Anchorage spontaneously organized groups of citizens and
Speaker 1: pull every single survivor from the ruins. And in fact,
Speaker 1: they had done it by the time the police chiefs
Speaker 1: like like by the like. While the police chief was
Speaker 1: like panicking about chaos like, people were actively like finishing
Speaker 1: the search for survivors. It's very funny quote. By the
Speaker 1: morning after the quake, more than two volunteers were jammed
Speaker 1: inside the Anchorage Public Safety building and they brought equipment.
Speaker 1: Earth movers and dump trucks lined the street outside. Two
Speaker 1: volunteers took it upon themselves to organize the crowd. They
Speaker 1: wrote down names and skills carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and started
Speaker 1: matching people to the tasks that were pouring in. Somebody
Speaker 1: hung up a sign manpower control. In little more than
Speaker 1: twelve hours, the gangs of shatting pastors by pulling victims
Speaker 1: from the wreckage had turned into a workforce where authorities
Speaker 1: expected panicked crowds. Instead they found gun hole volunteers, skilled workers,
Speaker 1: asking only to be pointed towards jobs that needed doing.
Speaker 1: In the end, and this is the writing of a
Speaker 1: social scientists named Muallam who studied this. In the end,
Speaker 1: this diffused wave of unofficial first responders had reclaimed almost
Speaker 1: all the cities engine dead before nightfall on Friday morning.
Speaker 1: All over the city, ordinary people urge surged into action,
Speaker 1: teaming up and switching on like a kind of civic
Speaker 1: immune response, which is how Muallam describes this, which I
Speaker 1: really find. Yeah. When reporters from what Alaskans call outside
Speaker 1: and reaching the city, many were openly skeptical of the
Speaker 1: low fatality numbers being reported by Davis's search crews. At first,
Speaker 1: twelve four believed to be lost, but survivors kept turning up. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the Anchorage death tolls settled in an almost miraculous five people,
Speaker 1: so thankfully not another supermarket fire. Now. This situation fascinated
Speaker 1: a team of social scientists from Ohio State University who
Speaker 1: arrived a day and a half after the disaster, and
Speaker 1: there they were studying people's disaster response under funding from
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army because the military, like it was
Speaker 1: the Cold War again, the defense industry had a deep
Speaker 1: and abiding interest of knowing, like if there's a mass
Speaker 1: disaster in the city, how do people react? Um, And
Speaker 1: they had the military had sent them there basically being like,
Speaker 1: tell us how they panic, Like, so we can figure
Speaker 1: out ways to like violently corral the citizenry once they
Speaker 1: panic and a disaster. Some blame tactics were always looking
Speaker 1: for new material. Here, give us, give us like who
Speaker 1: tell us who we need to shoot next time this happened?
Speaker 1: They suck, right, go on, tell us how bad they sucked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Researchers though, like again they come, so they come expecting
Speaker 1: chaos and violence, and instead they find like people taking
Speaker 1: care of each other the way they always do. Researchers
Speaker 1: approached citizen after citizen in the work groups and asked
Speaker 1: them each variations of the same question, who told you
Speaker 1: to do this? And the answer always boiled down to nobody,
Speaker 1: like someone needed to do this. So here, I am
Speaker 1: just I'm a person. Yeah, I'm a person doing the
Speaker 1: thing that people do. Minimum what about Yeah? Yeah, why
Speaker 1: aren't you fucking helping you put the fucking clipboard down? Dude?
Speaker 1: Question is that? Yeah? Yeah, there's people who are hurt. Like,
Speaker 1: what do you fucking mean? What am I who told
Speaker 1: me to do this? Yeah? Quote from commentary. The team
Speaker 1: stayed for a week and interviewed nearly five people, and
Speaker 1: we Coo Quarantelly. This leader of the study was particularly
Speaker 1: interested in Anchorage. A small civil defense office, it should
Speaker 1: have been in charge of search and rescue, but Quarantelly
Speaker 1: noted it had quickly become bogged down over questions of
Speaker 1: bureaucratic protocol. Of of course, the amateur mountaineers, the people
Speaker 1: who would like basically volunteered to do search and rescue,
Speaker 1: had taken over that function almost immediately. Quarantelly used the
Speaker 1: term emergent groups to describe teams of self organized volunteers
Speaker 1: like Davis's searchers. He didn't miss the irony that the
Speaker 1: agency created to protect civilians soon became an obstacle. That
Speaker 1: this emergent group of rescuers had to work around God. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you argue, especially in times of this, the state's really
Speaker 1: just an obstacle for people, you know, trying to do
Speaker 1: important work. Yeah, they're just getting in the way of
Speaker 1: people doing the work that needs to be done better
Speaker 1: and for free. Yeah you could argue that. I could
Speaker 1: argue that, But then arguing that would lead you to
Speaker 1: other things that are very radical, and so we will
Speaker 1: let's never continue this line of thinking. Definitely, don't continue
Speaker 1: this line of thinking in your own house. Don't read
Speaker 1: a Paradise Built in Hell and Tribe and then think
Speaker 1: about the implications of that in terms of like how
Speaker 1: a polity should actually function. No, I wouldn't. I would
Speaker 1: never lead with empathy. I think that that's actually kind
Speaker 1: of a dangerous path to go down. Oh horrible, horrid.
Speaker 1: Find yourself doing things thinking thoughts, you might find yourself
Speaker 1: as part of an emergent group, taking the responsibility for
Speaker 1: the safety and security of your fellow citizens into your
Speaker 1: own hands. And I would never Yeah that, then we're
Speaker 1: then we're really fucked. Then we're fucked. We start banding together,
Speaker 1: we're fucked. Yeah, my god. If we're taking care of
Speaker 1: each other instead of letting the the armed and angry
Speaker 1: young men like men with Yeah, we've talked enough about cops.
Speaker 1: It is funny that the story that I read right
Speaker 1: before recording this episode is about how a group of
Speaker 1: the state police in Kentucky, one of their training documents
Speaker 1: about a warrior mentality came out, and in it they
Speaker 1: quote Hitler positively, perceptions and actions are not hindered by
Speaker 1: the potential of death. They also quoted Robert E. Lee.
Speaker 1: They encourage police to be ruthless killers. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I prefer emergent groups of people taking care of each other,
Speaker 1: but whatever. I love emergent groups. I love that that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they was still found sounds scary. I don't want to
Speaker 1: when any of those emergent groups getting near you and
Speaker 1: saving your life. You wouldn't want that. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: They might loot. They might loot food from a burning building.
Speaker 1: That is so Yeah, but you didn't pay. You're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the building is full of building is on fire. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's just like shove a dollar bill in a fish's mouth.
Speaker 1: They're like, Okay, we're more square here. Yeah, well, Jamie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my episode on Elite Panic. I uh First of all,
Speaker 1: I think we should start a band called Elite. I agree,
Speaker 1: we should start a punk band we should started years
Speaker 1: ago called Elite Panic, get some wigs, do some metal,
Speaker 1: absolutely and really addicted to cocaine. Later be found to
Speaker 1: have engaged in a whole bunch of questionable sexual behaviors,
Speaker 1: like just oodles of them on our private yet like yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and then and then and then twenty years after that,
Speaker 1: someone writes a best seller about that, and we get
Speaker 1: canceled in the press, and then there's an HBO mini
Speaker 1: series based on us. We're played by that same guy
Speaker 1: who played David Koresh. Sec Es and stop both played
Speaker 1: by We're both We're both played by David Koresh. Absolutely
Speaker 1: and Emmy. He wins all of them. Actually, I would
Speaker 1: say he's nominated for an Emmy, but that he loses
Speaker 1: to Fokey. That's what I would say to your last
Speaker 1: episode and to the thing that happened to you with
Speaker 1: the Emmy. I'm never over. Okay, So this is being
Speaker 1: recorded like the day before Halloween. Did see a child
Speaker 1: dressed as Fokey on the street today and I was triggered.
Speaker 1: I was I still have no idea who Forky is,
Speaker 1: and I will every weapon at my disposal to avoid
Speaker 1: learning that was I have to say this is for
Speaker 1: all of the horrible atrocities we talked about today. Uh,
Speaker 1: there there was some optimism to be found in in Uh,
Speaker 1: in this one, I feel I feel not completely terrible. No,
Speaker 1: because again, the lesson that people learn over and over
Speaker 1: again in times like this is like, oh, people take
Speaker 1: care of each other when things are bad, like which
Speaker 1: everything goes to ship at once. People tend to be like, well,
Speaker 1: how can I help? That's the normal human response, unless
Speaker 1: you're rich, or the mayor, or a general or the
Speaker 1: CEO of a supermarket, shape or a rich mayor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're the baby, you're not. Don't be the baby.
Speaker 1: Don't be the baby. Don't be save babies. Don't let
Speaker 1: them burn to death while saving cash registers. Don't be
Speaker 1: the baby, and definitely don't be the son of a baby.
Speaker 1: Be a person. Babies aren't people, That's what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Well this will drop after the election, so
Speaker 1: it may land in a world incomprehensibly different than the
Speaker 1: one that we're currently in, but will probably be broadly
Speaker 1: similar to the one that we're in but either shittier
Speaker 1: or maybe slightly less shitty. No, no real way to know. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this podcast exists in a strange void in time. It does,
Speaker 1: it does. It is weird recording this and being like,
Speaker 1: who the funk knows where everything's going to be? So yeah,
Speaker 1: give us, give us ninety six hours. Who fucking knows? Yeah? Anyway,
Speaker 1: Well I had fun. I have fun. To Jamie, I
Speaker 1: enjoy talking about elite panic. It turns out I do too,
Speaker 1: now that I know what it is. Well for the
Speaker 1: people who are not elites, who have panicked already, you
Speaker 1: want to give your plug doubles plugging away, You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter dot com at Jamie loftus help.
Speaker 1: You can listen to my new show, Lolita Podcast, which
Speaker 1: examines the legacy of the book Lolita and gets really
Speaker 1: into who the character to Laura's Hayes was and how
Speaker 1: she got lost in translation throughout the adaptations that that
Speaker 1: this book was given over the years. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that starts on Munday, novemberye and episodes will release every Monday.
Speaker 1: And Robert, you're going to be playing Vladimir Nabokov, the
Speaker 1: role of a lifetime, the role of a lifetime. It's
Speaker 1: the part I shouldn't say that. This is not a
Speaker 1: time for It's the part I was born to play.
Speaker 1: He's actually not a terrible person, so he's uh and
Speaker 1: I've looked, but wait, wasn't he didn't? Oh wait no,
Speaker 1: Lolita was supposed to be like Antie that right, is
Speaker 1: the guy fucking the kid was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: bad guy, right, he was a village. Yeah. The book,
Speaker 1: I've never read it because it seems that's good. But
Speaker 1: everyone's interpretation, like the greater cultures, uh, interpretation was the
Speaker 1: exact opposite. Is it kind of like like Starship Troopers,
Speaker 1: where it's like they made a movie to make fun
Speaker 1: of how bad fascism is and how bad how close
Speaker 1: to fascism America was, but instead everyone was like, look
Speaker 1: at those cool guns. I want to be those guys.
Speaker 1: It's literally, yeah, it's just like the smartest people in
Speaker 1: the world being like, so I think you are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's interesting and funked up, and it's been,
Speaker 1: you know, ruining my day every day for a while.
Speaker 1: So you should listen to never make anything with a
Speaker 1: message because people will misinterpret it and molest children. That's
Speaker 1: the message of today, and now there's going to be
Speaker 1: a whole podcasts about it, all right, well, the episodes
Speaker 1: fucking over whatever. It's reasonable when the incomprehensible world you
Speaker 1: live in now bite