Speaker 1: It's too am in Drop City and you're listening Tonight Call. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Night Call, a call in show for
Speaker 1: our dystopian reality. I'm Molly Lambert and with me are
Speaker 1: Tess Lynch and Emily Oshida. We're gonna talk about some
Speaker 1: cults today and some fireworks everyone's favorite. I feel like
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory is whether it's a conspiracy theory, the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory du jure. We got a lot of good
Speaker 1: calls and emails about fireworks, So thanks to everybody who
Speaker 1: sent in your your Bang Bang discourse. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: into it in the second half of the show. Before
Speaker 1: we do, let's take a night call about Drop City. Hi.
Speaker 1: Then Dennor Colorado and I was just listening to your
Speaker 1: latest episode and we're talking about biodome and Spaceship Earth,
Speaker 1: but also Buck Myster Cooler and um My I was
Speaker 1: listening to in my art CEO and my studio mate
Speaker 1: actually started one of the first artists commune in the
Speaker 1: country in the sixties based off of Buck Monster Pooler's
Speaker 1: um like geodesic domes. What they did is they bought
Speaker 1: a piece of land in Trinidad, Colorado UM and they
Speaker 1: built a bunch of a bunch of geodesic domes in
Speaker 1: the middle of like this kind of a plot of
Speaker 1: lands um and they built it out of like just
Speaker 1: wood and like car tops that they bought for like penny. Um.
Speaker 1: It was super cool and I don't know if y'all
Speaker 1: would be interested in looking it up. It's filled drop
Speaker 1: the City, Um. Yeah, it was like based off then
Speaker 1: they did a bunch of direct stuff those usually create
Speaker 1: shells um and most of them left Boulder after the
Speaker 1: hippies kind of stuck over drops in like the late sixties.
Speaker 1: Love the podcast all Right, Drop City, Drop City, USA.
Speaker 1: Did you guys know about Drop City already? I did
Speaker 1: know about Drop City because I read this TC Boil
Speaker 1: novel about it called Drop City. You also read that novel?
Speaker 1: I did you lent it to me? And I never
Speaker 1: gave it back, and I said, go, Yeah. It came
Speaker 1: out in two thousand and three when we were in college,
Speaker 1: and they definitely read it. Um. And what I remember
Speaker 1: about the TC Boil novel is that a lot of
Speaker 1: it is about sort of the breakdown the things that
Speaker 1: didn't work great in Drop City, which, like a lot
Speaker 1: of communes, was the balance of labor between the genders.
Speaker 1: That's the big you know, the problems that communes have
Speaker 1: as we think about how to form the night Call commune.
Speaker 1: Division of labor. Division of labor is a big one.
Speaker 1: They're super white for the most part, all these these communes.
Speaker 1: That was something I also noticed in the Spaceship Earth documentary. Again,
Speaker 1: they're all theater companies. Also, they were like, um, some
Speaker 1: of them are film students from the University of Kansas,
Speaker 1: which my mom was the film student at the University
Speaker 1: of Kansas. She missed the opportunity to go to Drop
Speaker 1: City like by a few years. So yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to say Drop City has a has a pretty good
Speaker 1: reputation compared to some communes. Well because it ended so quickly,
Speaker 1: I think, right, it ended quickly, but it also didn't
Speaker 1: end like tragically. Yes, and I did you guys know why.
Speaker 1: I didn't know why it was called drops City. Didn't
Speaker 1: remember if this was addressed in the novel. But um,
Speaker 1: the four co founders, I think, when they were still students,
Speaker 1: started painting rocks and then they would drop them out
Speaker 1: of windows to see the reaction of people who were
Speaker 1: walking by, not to hit them, but just to be
Speaker 1: like something fell out of the sky. Maybe don't use
Speaker 1: a rock if you're going to do that. Um. But
Speaker 1: they called them drop art or droppings, which was like
Speaker 1: a play on happenings but also works in its own
Speaker 1: funny way. Um. But yeah, they made these really cool
Speaker 1: looking domes. It's fun to look them up. And uh,
Speaker 1: I guess like, yeah, when the when there was like
Speaker 1: a festival there, uh, and it attracted a ton of people.
Speaker 1: One of one of the founders in particular was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this place is over and left. Um, and now I
Speaker 1: think it's it's pretty demolished. I think in the late nineties. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently it cost four hundred and fifty dollars for the land.
Speaker 1: That's the communit I can get behind. That's somebody else
Speaker 1: said it was seven hundred and fifty dollars and that
Speaker 1: they both agree that they paid money by selling some weed.
Speaker 1: Of course one does. It's resourceful. There's also a really
Speaker 1: good documentary I'm definitely mentioned it before called Murder Mountain
Speaker 1: about Humble that basically starts with intentional communities and then
Speaker 1: leads to kind of terrifying meth amphetamine crime syndicate on
Speaker 1: a TV stuff. Murder Mountain was very depressing to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it starts off being like we're in Humble,
Speaker 1: We're gonna like grow some weed, and like, well, it
Speaker 1: shows how the weed growing industry is part of the
Speaker 1: reason that a lot of these communes started also because
Speaker 1: they were like, we need a farm where we can
Speaker 1: grow weed, and Humble was it was like they established
Speaker 1: the idea of doing that in Humble and then basically
Speaker 1: like drug runners got involved and took it over and
Speaker 1: ran out the hippies. So wait, actually, what's the what
Speaker 1: is the Buckminster Fuller connection other than having the geodes
Speaker 1: syc domes, that's like the main one there were. It
Speaker 1: was like this comes up in Spaceship Earth too. It's
Speaker 1: basically like the whole Earth catalog was out. There were
Speaker 1: a bunch of these books out at the same time
Speaker 1: that were like how to live off the land, how
Speaker 1: to build your own house, um sustainably and cheaply, and
Speaker 1: the Buckminster Fuller domes became like the the easiest kind
Speaker 1: of like way to do apes. Just love Buckminster Fuller. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like they say here. It was also like
Speaker 1: John Cage, you know, they were all into conceptual living.
Speaker 1: I just like the name drop City. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of slab City. Also, these are like very good apocalyptic
Speaker 1: city names. But Drop City just sounds like a place,
Speaker 1: like a like a place for spies to just do
Speaker 1: dead drops. Um, it's a very cool name for a commune. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could have gone with Dropping City and I still
Speaker 1: would have been a fan this this whole thing though,
Speaker 1: it does it just the Colorado connection and our many
Speaker 1: hours or at least minutes that we've dedicated to Denver
Speaker 1: and the airport there, and I feel like there's been
Speaker 1: a few different Colorado things. It makes me feel like
Speaker 1: eventually we should do some sort of ranking of the
Speaker 1: states by UM level of night call for sure, UM,
Speaker 1: because I actually think that Colorado would be up there.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a deceptively weird state. Uh, but I
Speaker 1: would be interested to see how how it shook out. Well,
Speaker 1: I think UM as our resident expert in like the weird,
Speaker 1: the weird Pacific Northwest and surrounding regions. What's Colorado the
Speaker 1: Rockies call it? Yeah, it's a mountain states, mountain mountain time.
Speaker 1: I feel like people just don't know them about much
Speaker 1: about all those states because they're like the last ones well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think it was on WHO Weekly where
Speaker 1: they ranked the time zones by who were them, and
Speaker 1: Mountain time was like the most definitive who of the time.
Speaker 1: So absolutely nobody knows. Question is mount what is mount like?
Speaker 1: What time is it now? In Mountain It's just one
Speaker 1: hour ahead. One hour ahead Central is two hours, at
Speaker 1: Eastern is three hours. We should have opened this episode
Speaker 1: by saying that by putting us in mountain time, this
Speaker 1: is why it's a night call place. Night call exists
Speaker 1: in mountain time for sure. Well, yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: good lead into our another uh topic that Test and
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about, which is another story about
Speaker 1: a intentional organization that was published on Medium. Yes, so
Speaker 1: this was mediums one zero UM site, the arm of
Speaker 1: Medium that is called one zero published this really long
Speaker 1: and fascinating article about the Daylife Army, which I think
Speaker 1: was previously known as Temple, but it also could be
Speaker 1: pronounced Temple because one of the things that this cult
Speaker 1: does is it has reinvented language um to replace certain
Speaker 1: vowels with us and wise, and they call it English um,
Speaker 1: which makes for it makes for a fun read. A
Speaker 1: lot of stories about cults. I got so far down
Speaker 1: along the line before I was like, maybe this is
Speaker 1: a bad idea. So it's based it's like anti racism,
Speaker 1: like you know, overthrowing the patriarchy capitalism is terrible. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so it follows this one guy named Matthew who was
Speaker 1: recruited into the cult when he was eighteen, and this
Speaker 1: cult started on weird Facebook with basically just ship posting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a ship posting cult, and they like openly acknowledged
Speaker 1: that they're a cult constantly. They're not like pretending not
Speaker 1: to be there. All of their stuff is tagged with
Speaker 1: like Jim Jones, People's temple and family, like like we're
Speaker 1: doing a performance art piece about cults that like happens
Speaker 1: to maybe also be a cult. Obviously they don't think
Speaker 1: it actually is a cult, or if they do, they're
Speaker 1: not admitting it. But it's run by two charismatic leaders.
Speaker 1: One of them is named whiz L otherwise known as
Speaker 1: Eban or Evan Carlson Um, and the other one is Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is the question. It's stylized capital K, lower
Speaker 1: case oh, capital A, so it's either co A or
Speaker 1: CoA And she's the sister of TV on the radio's
Speaker 1: Kit Malone and her other brother is also a DJ.
Speaker 1: Like she comes from a very high achieving family and
Speaker 1: she they both seem very charismatic. They're like they look
Speaker 1: very like hipster like there, Yeah, that's the thing is
Speaker 1: it's like it's a hipster cult, but like self consciously
Speaker 1: it's a hipster cult, but it's just sort of presented
Speaker 1: as being like a hippie anti racist organization. So this
Speaker 1: is something is this current or like it's the kind
Speaker 1: of timeline that like when did it kind of started?
Speaker 1: Probably like when Trump got elected, So I think, well,
Speaker 1: I think it may have even been earlier. I don't know. There,
Speaker 1: I think it started around but that was when the
Speaker 1: guy who they follow in this story, Matthew, he got
Speaker 1: involved with it. He was involved with it for like
Speaker 1: five years, I think. So she so CoA was really
Speaker 1: is a Jehovah's witness. And there's like a point in
Speaker 1: the end of the story where they talked to her
Speaker 1: brother cap alone and ask him for comment about like
Speaker 1: his sister being a call leader, and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we were raised in like a very oppressive
Speaker 1: religious atmosphere, and like sometimes people who have trauma from
Speaker 1: something like that like replicated in an attempt to like,
Speaker 1: you know, deal with it, but he was like I
Speaker 1: love my sister, and like, yeah, he seems super cool.
Speaker 1: What's fucked up about it is that it's like it
Speaker 1: presents itself as like a black female supremacist like religion.
Speaker 1: At first, it's like, you know, we're here to like
Speaker 1: uplift black women, and like you should you know, white people,
Speaker 1: like just give us all your money to cleanse yourself
Speaker 1: of your sins. But then there's also racist stuff about
Speaker 1: black women from whizz l, who is a white guy
Speaker 1: who is co as partner, so like it really feels
Speaker 1: like they're in an abusive relationship and he's manipulating her
Speaker 1: and they're both manipulating all these young people who get
Speaker 1: into it because it sounds really good. It's that because
Speaker 1: they're basically promised that, you know, some Matthew had like
Speaker 1: an electronic music hobby that he wanted to you know,
Speaker 1: like make money off of, and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can market and they seem so savvy because their
Speaker 1: ship posting and they're promising like drop City, you know,
Speaker 1: and they're saying like oh, it's a cult, but not really.
Speaker 1: It's like an artist collective and we're going to get
Speaker 1: some land and everyone's going to like make their art
Speaker 1: and we're all gonna like end white supremacy. Does ship
Speaker 1: posting make people seem credible in your like, does that
Speaker 1: make it feel like you're like credibly um ironic about
Speaker 1: your intentions or like, what the deal? I think when
Speaker 1: they when they really started appealing to people, it was
Speaker 1: that they were so incredibly online. They seem to have
Speaker 1: a sense of humor about what they were doing, and
Speaker 1: they they point out in the article that weird Facebook
Speaker 1: was kind of blowing up at that point because it
Speaker 1: was like the demise of tumbling weird Facebook. I don't
Speaker 1: know what weird Cato is real. It's real Molly, Molly
Speaker 1: and I am. Back when Molly was on Facebook, we
Speaker 1: were in a weird Facebook group that was like all
Speaker 1: about disgusting food and the tub chef. Yeah, tub Chef,
Speaker 1: which was super I mean, there's all of these weird
Speaker 1: top chefs could be a cult if it wanted to. Okay,
Speaker 1: one thing is I didn't realize about it is it's
Speaker 1: a parent. It's a play on top chefs. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: but that's clear. It's it's just I think it's like
Speaker 1: food you would make in a bathtub, but it crunches
Speaker 1: way off. Though it started as that, but then in
Speaker 1: true weird Facebook fashion, it just evolved to be like
Speaker 1: any kind of weird food. There were weird food brackets
Speaker 1: and you know, that went on and on. Like then
Speaker 1: my friend, my friend Anne, who was very involved in
Speaker 1: the founding of tub chef and like other uh weird
Speaker 1: Facebook groups, eventually like weird Facebook and tub Chef got
Speaker 1: invaded by norms and then it's like she didn't want
Speaker 1: to be part of it anymore because it got to
Speaker 1: learn trying to or just like people were doing things
Speaker 1: that weren't tub Chef. They were like posting food that
Speaker 1: wasn't actually weird, or just memes that have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the theme. There's also one called scrub Chef
Speaker 1: that's all stumped memes about I'm gonna I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: out a hypothesis. I don't think the weird blank about
Speaker 1: the internet can be truly weird if you know the
Speaker 1: person who's involved with it in real life, Like I
Speaker 1: think it deludes the purity of the online experience if
Speaker 1: you actually if you're just friends with somebody and they're
Speaker 1: doing a goroof online. I think it's different than like
Speaker 1: I stumbled across this weird thing on Facebook at three
Speaker 1: in the morning because i couldn't get to sleep, and
Speaker 1: now I'm subscribed to this thing called tub chef. And
Speaker 1: these are definitely like a group of artists. It's also
Speaker 1: people affiliated with like everything is terrible. It's people who's like,
Speaker 1: it's like weird Midwest and their stall in trade is
Speaker 1: like replicating that weird finding something weird on the Internet
Speaker 1: or TV at three am, feeling um, which is the
Speaker 1: aesthetic of weird Internet. I guess, um, here's where the
Speaker 1: very basic by platform. But yes, anyway, go on, we'll
Speaker 1: get to the really bad. Yeah. Yeah. So basically they
Speaker 1: promised people, you know, like if they promised them the
Speaker 1: basically like getting out of what's the pain matrix and
Speaker 1: getting into the pleasure matrix. And the pleasure matrix is
Speaker 1: to shed all of the like terrible things about life
Speaker 1: and to shed your what you've like learned from your
Speaker 1: parents and from school that's kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: giving you the perception that the systems in place are good,
Speaker 1: and to enter the pleasure matrix, which also placed a
Speaker 1: big emphasis on masturbation and like sex, magic and stuff,
Speaker 1: and by doing that to become kind of enlightened and
Speaker 1: then also to like live off the land. But they
Speaker 1: also had some weird abusive stuff even before things did
Speaker 1: get really bad. That's also another classic commune issue. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that was also an issue at Drop City. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they made everyone like scrub the toy. They had like
Speaker 1: really exacting standards of cleanliness and like personal hygiene, and
Speaker 1: that extended to like dietary prescriptions for individual members like
Speaker 1: this one guy couldn't use ice cubes in his water.
Speaker 1: He wasn't allowed anything sugary, but that was just for him. Wait,
Speaker 1: I feel like we zipped over the part where they
Speaker 1: actually did make a commune. Did that happen? They started? Okay,
Speaker 1: so they recruited online, and they recruited people who I
Speaker 1: guess you know, are lonely, you know, people looking for
Speaker 1: guidance on the internet. Um, and then they were saying
Speaker 1: like here's this, like we're going to teach you. We're
Speaker 1: gonna un teach you everything that like you've learned, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like Q and on, but like like seemingly
Speaker 1: like an online scene, but it's just unusual for that
Speaker 1: stuff to get into meat space. Well it was it
Speaker 1: was half and half for a while. A lot of
Speaker 1: people are only involved online. There's and there's a very
Speaker 1: small group of people who were involved in this at all,
Speaker 1: and it's at its peak it had only a few
Speaker 1: dozen members and now I think there are five. Um.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't everyone living, cohabitating or anything. It was
Speaker 1: like a select few who decided to kind of take
Speaker 1: the leap. And they started by trying to like monetize
Speaker 1: internet advertising basically, which as we all know, is impossible,
Speaker 1: but what a what a cult for our times? We
Speaker 1: will not be growing weed, will be selling. So they
Speaker 1: would recruit people and be like, you have to post
Speaker 1: ads for Temple and recruit people for Temple, and that's
Speaker 1: how you like pay off your debt to Temple. UM
Speaker 1: and giving Temple money is washing, is called washing. It's
Speaker 1: like you're washing yourself of the guilt you have for
Speaker 1: like being in this capitalist, white supremacist, misogynist society. So
Speaker 1: some people got so into it that then they were
Speaker 1: recruited to be like I R r L soldiers and
Speaker 1: join up with Temple in real life. And so they
Speaker 1: did get some property in Washington, but that was while
Speaker 1: his parents house. Okay, so Whizzel. Also Whizzle is related
Speaker 1: to a guy who's in the band Earth, which is
Speaker 1: also interesting. It's a very like you know, indie rock
Speaker 1: adjacent cult. And his dad is like some famous objectivists,
Speaker 1: so he went to like the ain Rand school as
Speaker 1: a child. He was like raised by an objectivist, so
Speaker 1: his whole thing was like, fuck, my objectivist dad, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get into like collectivism, but like not really
Speaker 1: because he still wants to be in charge of everything.
Speaker 1: And the washed money was buying like expensive cars, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. The washed money was not going
Speaker 1: toward any kind of great right. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: wild wild countries, give up all your earthly possessions but
Speaker 1: also give them to us, um And so they kept
Speaker 1: trying to kind of get in like rich people, people
Speaker 1: who they thought were going to provide like a big windfall,
Speaker 1: you know who they could like. It's very Manson family too.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of like call your parents and
Speaker 1: demand money because they taught you all of these stupid
Speaker 1: ideas in the first place, so they need to give
Speaker 1: money to you that then you can give to us
Speaker 1: because we're teaching we're giving you a real education. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and the parents were like, no, I won't do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there was like some guy, one of the guys
Speaker 1: they talked to who they brought in. Um. He they
Speaker 1: were like expecting his parents to give all this money,
Speaker 1: and then when they didn't, they like essentially forced him
Speaker 1: into sex trafficking and started doing that with other members
Speaker 1: of the group as sort of their new plan to
Speaker 1: make money. We'll hold up with the way that they
Speaker 1: did that. First of all, they suggested that one of
Speaker 1: the members who identified as straight have sex with a man.
Speaker 1: But the sex, the sex trafficking thing was because the
Speaker 1: members were forbidden from getting any kind of a job
Speaker 1: because that would be a capitalism. You know, you can't
Speaker 1: do that, that would be a capitalism. Interesting time, anyway,
Speaker 1: that would be a capitalism. Don't do a capitalism. But anyway,
Speaker 1: they were like, you can't have a job, but you
Speaker 1: need to pay five hundred dollars a month or whatever
Speaker 1: to stay with us. So the people were basically they
Speaker 1: had to slightly kind of sneak out of the cabin
Speaker 1: and find a way to get money without having a job.
Speaker 1: So a lot of them were, you know, driving for
Speaker 1: ride shares, but it became hard to conceal these things.
Speaker 1: So that's why eventually they started doing escort work. Also
Speaker 1: because this was like you know, they had a lot
Speaker 1: of things of like the pearl divine or whatever, which
Speaker 1: is basically drinking jizz was a popular thing, one of
Speaker 1: the big sacraments. Um, let's take a break for an
Speaker 1: ad and then we'll finish up the saga and come
Speaker 1: come into fireworks when we return. Welcome back. We were
Speaker 1: just discussing Temple a k Daylife Army, and we've gotten
Speaker 1: into some of the darker stuff with it. UM. But
Speaker 1: I think what what kind of needs to be clarified
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit is that nobody was really forced
Speaker 1: into sex trafficking, um, but they were given very few
Speaker 1: options to operate under the rules of this cult without
Speaker 1: doing it. It's like extremely Manson family because that was
Speaker 1: a Manson family tactic. It's like a lot of cults
Speaker 1: tactic is like, you know, show of loyalty by being
Speaker 1: like do something you wouldn't normally do. Manson had all
Speaker 1: of the male members of the Manson family have sex
Speaker 1: with each other to like prove that, you know, they
Speaker 1: were free of ego or whatever, but it's totally to
Speaker 1: like demonstrate that you will do anything, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it takes. So then they started using Grinder and Craigslist
Speaker 1: and stuff. Not Craigslist, you can't do that anymore, but
Speaker 1: Tinder hook up sites to to to do dates and right,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't let them have any other jobs, and people
Speaker 1: were like secretly getting door dash jobs and and rideshare jobs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like the accommodations kept getting kind of less nice.
Speaker 1: Like at first they were at Whizzl's dad's house, and
Speaker 1: then they were at some other like nice airbnb's with
Speaker 1: the pool and stuff, and then they were in like
Speaker 1: a motel six, and then they were just like living
Speaker 1: out of cars and camping. And at a certain point
Speaker 1: they added like a seven level thing to it that
Speaker 1: is very scientology, where it's like, you know, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to move up through the levels and like get rid
Speaker 1: of all your baggage, um, but nobody can actually move
Speaker 1: up to the top level except for them. So anyway,
Speaker 1: it kind of it resolves the article. Resolve of the
Speaker 1: cult is not in any way kind of resolved. But
Speaker 1: the member who was being who was telling this story
Speaker 1: to medium, has since left and started an Instagram called
Speaker 1: pain Matrix where he out he has all these videos,
Speaker 1: um and pictures from when he was in the cult,
Speaker 1: and he kind of breaks it down. Several members have
Speaker 1: anti Temple instagrams now and tell us about the Instagram
Speaker 1: life of Temple. So I was trying to find Temple
Speaker 1: stuff online. I looked on Instagram and found both followers
Speaker 1: and X followers, and they're like basically directly addressing all
Speaker 1: of the stuff in this article on their Instagram right now,
Speaker 1: sort of just like making fun of it. It's very
Speaker 1: just like Internet e It's like everything's a troll. Like
Speaker 1: even the people who are out at it, they still
Speaker 1: think of it as being a troll or or they're
Speaker 1: being out of it, is a is a troll or no,
Speaker 1: like just that, like they respond to everything to criticism
Speaker 1: like trolls just you know, which is like the least
Speaker 1: helpful way to like understand what's going on with something,
Speaker 1: especially if you're like if there could be something serious
Speaker 1: like people being in danger with it. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Like the guy like whizz L just posts like you know,
Speaker 1: his whole vibe is like they all dressed in white,
Speaker 1: and his whole thing is like looking like a creepy
Speaker 1: like you know, hipster cult leader guy um and he
Speaker 1: tags his photos with like you know yeah, like people's
Speaker 1: temple and stuff. Just like it's very It's that thing
Speaker 1: where it's like if I'm being self aware of how
Speaker 1: fucked up it is, then like yeah, you know. There's
Speaker 1: a part also there's a quote I think it's from
Speaker 1: Ka in the piece where she says like any attention
Speaker 1: on the internet is good attention, yes, yeah, which really
Speaker 1: I mean again, she's also very charismatic and like, you know,
Speaker 1: you you understand how people got drawn into this and
Speaker 1: also how they got drawn to her because she presents
Speaker 1: herself as like, you know, a black feminist who is
Speaker 1: you know, gonna You're gonna teach people how to unlearn yeah,
Speaker 1: bad things that they've learned. It's like the goals that
Speaker 1: they stayed are all good on on the page. But
Speaker 1: then all the members are like, they're not actually an
Speaker 1: anti racist organization. They're not like a feminist organization, and
Speaker 1: they target a lot of like trans kids, because they
Speaker 1: target people that are like vulnerable or have something you
Speaker 1: know that they like are dreaming of, like a transition
Speaker 1: that they're like We're going to help you achieve whatever
Speaker 1: it is you want. And then there was a trans
Speaker 1: woman who was saying, like, but they wouldn't let me
Speaker 1: go to the hospital or get her hormones because they
Speaker 1: don't believe in hospitals. So they were like, but I
Speaker 1: think it bears mentioning that this sounds as though it
Speaker 1: did start from a kind from a good place, and
Speaker 1: also like we can do something good and kind of
Speaker 1: have a laugh and like try to market it in
Speaker 1: this new way. And then I think at some point
Speaker 1: um CoA started to tell people that she was communicating
Speaker 1: with aliens. She was carrying a pendulum around that would
Speaker 1: allow her to like communicate with you know, the galaxy
Speaker 1: and like interpret those messages for followers and stuff. So
Speaker 1: it does kind of did she rename herself the General Lisimo?
Speaker 1: She did, or General CoA is now her Instagram name,
Speaker 1: but all that stuff too. I was like that would
Speaker 1: just work on New age people, like even better, you know,
Speaker 1: like if you say, like there's some esoteric system to
Speaker 1: this that you have to learn and you can only
Speaker 1: learn it by like following us. So many people want that,
Speaker 1: they want to be told how to be better. And
Speaker 1: if you add an l O L onto it that
Speaker 1: then there's like less embarrassment factor because but we're all
Speaker 1: like fucking with you, Like there's something very sinister about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to like to just broaden what
Speaker 1: this sounds like to something you know, more general or
Speaker 1: more cultural. It's happy now, Like I feel like I
Speaker 1: always a vague sense of easiness. The more mimified stuff
Speaker 1: like eat the rich or guillotines for everybody like becomes
Speaker 1: a meme because then I feel like the actual intent
Speaker 1: or vision for the future that is like gestured at
Speaker 1: by that sort of statement that has now become ironic
Speaker 1: or just like a weird kind of half joke, gets
Speaker 1: like kind of forgotten about or diluted in a way. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like a lot of things where it's like you
Speaker 1: can say anything you want online, and we're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of like the blowback from that, you know, coming
Speaker 1: home now of just people when they first were like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I can really say anything online. Uh, no one's going
Speaker 1: to stop me. That does lead to kind of like
Speaker 1: a dulling of if you're saying something really violent or
Speaker 1: crazy that it's supposed to just become normalized, or if
Speaker 1: you're saying something that's that is uh, you know good
Speaker 1: or could be you know, constructive if it was in earnest.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're talking about like a positive revolution
Speaker 1: for people, but you're doing it with the astra of
Speaker 1: like L O L at the end of it, then
Speaker 1: it's like very that But that feels very of its time,
Speaker 1: Like that feels very now. Yeah, And you know, I
Speaker 1: think what makes this feel very sinister is sort of
Speaker 1: that they are hooking people in with this idea of
Speaker 1: anti racism. You know that of course, there are lots
Speaker 1: of like great anti racist organs that aren't cults that
Speaker 1: like might you know, radicalize you if you have like
Speaker 1: bad parents, who are you know, didn't teach you anything good?
Speaker 1: It's just And I think also like, especially if this
Speaker 1: has started after Trump selection in twos sixteen, like that
Speaker 1: was a moment of genuine panic where a lot of
Speaker 1: people like, what the funk am I supposed to do
Speaker 1: with my life now? Like? How can I not be
Speaker 1: a part of a problem in a way that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are dealing with now. Also,
Speaker 1: and I think the younger you are, the less patients.
Speaker 1: If you're in the middle of a kind of like
Speaker 1: national emergency moment like that, the less patients you have
Speaker 1: for people who are experienced with the organizing, who do
Speaker 1: the dumb boring work of like you know, bringing about
Speaker 1: social change, like you want the dramatic thing, you want
Speaker 1: to go out into the woods and burlap and like whatever,
Speaker 1: like start a commune like that has a lot of appeal.
Speaker 1: It's very understandable. I mean, it's understandable for me, Like
Speaker 1: I know, I mean, I mean for sure, and I
Speaker 1: think we're seeing that now too, because it's like it's
Speaker 1: exciting to be at a protest and to be at
Speaker 1: an action, and it can be less exciting to be
Speaker 1: on like a two hour zoom call like going over
Speaker 1: how everything went and planning for the next thing. But
Speaker 1: that stuff does all have to be done, and like
Speaker 1: just being accountable these people, it's just kind of a bummer.
Speaker 1: One girl who was in it still, I looked at
Speaker 1: her Instagram for a really long time. She had a
Speaker 1: real Manson girl vibe um and she posted like emails
Speaker 1: from her parents that were like we read another article
Speaker 1: about how you're in a sex trafficking cult. And she'll
Speaker 1: be like l o, l oh, my god, they understand
Speaker 1: my family and she's just but it was interesting because
Speaker 1: she kept being like, my parents are neoliberals, Like they're dirty,
Speaker 1: disgusting money, like should burn um, oh my gosh, which
Speaker 1: some of these things. I was like, I understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the thing. That's the reason that
Speaker 1: this article was so interesting was because normally, its cults,
Speaker 1: it's built on something that is less accessible as an
Speaker 1: idea than this one is. And yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen Daily Dot article I think was the first
Speaker 1: to bring this to people's attention. Um and yeah. At
Speaker 1: that point, the cult had existed for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and that was the I think the first indication that
Speaker 1: a lot of the parents and relatives of people involved
Speaker 1: in this cult, we're like, oh, it's not just like
Speaker 1: they're spending a lot of time on line talking to
Speaker 1: their weird new friends. It's like this might actually be
Speaker 1: dangerous to them. Yeah, and it does have some like
Speaker 1: Jonestown vibes for sure, because like one of the really
Speaker 1: insiduous things about Jonestown also was that it was like
Speaker 1: we're creating this new church for like racial equality, and
Speaker 1: so it was a white cult leader, you know, promising
Speaker 1: like racial equality and like that's what the purpose of
Speaker 1: this group is. We're starting like a new post racism commune,
Speaker 1: and obviously that is not what happened with Jonestown. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's just like, once you get people to
Speaker 1: listen to you, there's there's like a point where people
Speaker 1: naturally like stop questioning things themselves. Um. I saw somebody
Speaker 1: saying that about podcasters yesterday and what way. Um I
Speaker 1: thought it was funny actually because I was like, I've
Speaker 1: definitely noticed this a little bit. It was Sarah scorm
Speaker 1: the comedian who I really like. Um, she was talking
Speaker 1: about people who have just replaced their own original thoughts
Speaker 1: with takes from podcasts and how that's like an entire
Speaker 1: type of person now, especially for politics, and I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: she is right about that. Um yeah, I think nobody
Speaker 1: is immune to like hearing something catchy and like being
Speaker 1: like I also now think this especially now, and like,
Speaker 1: at least speaking for myself, most of my social interaction
Speaker 1: has been replaced with listening to podcasts and audio books.
Speaker 1: But like all of my human voice stuff is just
Speaker 1: like listening to other people's takes on podcasts, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure is like very damaging. Those are your friends, Emily
Speaker 1: and my new friends. They don't know who I am,
Speaker 1: but I know who they are. Um, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to get back into everybody's favorite conspiracy theory this
Speaker 1: fourth of July. Welcome back to Night Call. First off,
Speaker 1: we're going to take an email from Will from Okerville River. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for writing in, Will, Will write, I wonder what
Speaker 1: you make of the fireworks can RC theories that have
Speaker 1: begun circulating in the past few days. The uptick and
Speaker 1: neighborhood fireworks was something I noticed gradually. It seemed at
Speaker 1: first to be an outgrowth of the A p M
Speaker 1: healthcare workers shoutouts, and then the shoutouts were replaced by explosions,
Speaker 1: and then the explosions went all through the night. Then
Speaker 1: I noticed that my friends all over the country we're
Speaker 1: hearing them. And today I'm seeing news stories along with
Speaker 1: social threads about random white men pulling up an unmarked
Speaker 1: black SUVs and handing out pro grade fireworks to kids.
Speaker 1: And I saw a couple of photos of said SUVs,
Speaker 1: and also a weird New York Post story about a
Speaker 1: group of firefighters spotted setting off illegal fireworks in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: at midnight. For some reason, common sense tells me that
Speaker 1: this is just your typical neighborhood fireworks fun only on
Speaker 1: steroids because people are pent up on board and agro
Speaker 1: from quarantine. But this is the month in which we've
Speaker 1: seen the NYPDS dumb shake Shack poisoning lie picked up
Speaker 1: by all the New York news networks. We've seen cops
Speaker 1: not accepted gineering into the ground on camera until us
Speaker 1: he tripped, and we've seen unidentified badgeless soldiers on patrol
Speaker 1: in DC. A week or so ago, I was reading
Speaker 1: a slate piece of out William Barr, which said, chaos
Speaker 1: is the point. Chaos keeps the cameras on Trump and Bar,
Speaker 1: Chaos puts the head of the federal law enforcement apparatus
Speaker 1: in a position to exert enormous power over the flow
Speaker 1: of information. And of course that word chaos made my
Speaker 1: mind go somewhere super specific, namely the CIA's Operation Chaos
Speaker 1: in the sixties, whose basic mission, as with co Intel
Speaker 1: pro what's to turn communities and activist groups against each
Speaker 1: other and create an attitude of distrust and paranoia. Things
Speaker 1: feel weird outside, even though I've personally gotten used to
Speaker 1: all the random all night booms. If they were replaced
Speaker 1: by gunfire or tear guest canisters, I probably wouldn't even notice.
Speaker 1: But since we're in a moment where some are calling
Speaker 1: to defund the police while others are imagining this means
Speaker 1: a world where gangs and murderers room free, it strikes
Speaker 1: me that neighborhoods filled with chaotic explosions aren't exactly helping
Speaker 1: the cause. As conspiracy theories go, this one is maybe silly,
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it's so hard to discount
Speaker 1: any conspiracy theory when you can't trust any giant organization
Speaker 1: that pretends to have the public interest in mind. Thank you, well,
Speaker 1: I want to just like confirm between the three of
Speaker 1: us and and maybe like among our audience in general. Um,
Speaker 1: fourth of July is uh is canceled this year? Right? Uh?
Speaker 1: You mean the purge? Yes? Yeah, I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: south Land Tales a lot for many reasons, but I
Speaker 1: just assume it's gonna be south Land Tales this fourth
Speaker 1: last year. I mean, yeah, who knows. I just feel like, one,
Speaker 1: you can't really go out anyway to kind of a
Speaker 1: low point for America right now. Yeah, but that I
Speaker 1: mean I could see it being used as a good
Speaker 1: opportunity to like overturn some more statues and stuff like that. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I would love it if people reclaimed the fourth of
Speaker 1: July by knocking the fourth of July itself over. I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: mout Rushmore is the big one. We got to figure
Speaker 1: out the engineering there. Get some get some engineer, Like
Speaker 1: if you're a if you're a woman in Stem or
Speaker 1: a man in stem, let's figure out how to get
Speaker 1: the amount Rushmore down. Yeah? Can I just can we
Speaker 1: just say fuck Mount Rushmore? Yeah? About Rushmore's they destroyed? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they destroyed a sacred, sacred mountain. It almost killed Carrie Grants. True,
Speaker 1: nothing good has ever come of Mount Rushmore. How could
Speaker 1: they destroy it? Though? Are they just going to blow
Speaker 1: it up? While you could like chop the faces, you
Speaker 1: can give it a facelift. That seems so hard. What
Speaker 1: if you made it into know that it's probably too
Speaker 1: much work to make it into waterfalls so that the
Speaker 1: water is like streaming in front of their faces and
Speaker 1: eventually just erodes them. That That's what I'm thinking, That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. This is a job for engineers, not us,
Speaker 1: So I'm asking the engineer's sake. I think this is
Speaker 1: a job for land artists a k a us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: drop that too. I think Tash just came up with
Speaker 1: a really good John Cage let water away. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the long term happening. The only problem with this
Speaker 1: idea is just getting a large body of water and
Speaker 1: somehow plopping it where we need it. Yeah, that's we're
Speaker 1: just dropping. We're dropping water. They've done, they've done more
Speaker 1: in in like Avengers movies. They can take right, We'll
Speaker 1: take the reclaimed water from the shutdown Splash Mountain. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: all that blue water. Yeah, that needs needs to be purified. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So the that's about the beginning of end of our
Speaker 1: our our Fourth of July plans. I think it's a podcast.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, a lot of people seem to
Speaker 1: have been getting a head start on Fourth of July,
Speaker 1: as I think per usual, especially in Los Angeles, there's
Speaker 1: about a month of firework ner random fireworks going off
Speaker 1: the four fourth of July, as people you know, acquire
Speaker 1: their illegal fireworks from very places and set them off
Speaker 1: like we're kind of used to that here. I think
Speaker 1: like as far as fireworks goes, this is mostly a
Speaker 1: New York seems to mostly be a New York thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's because I mostly follow New York people. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, there have been more fireworks here
Speaker 1: than usual I think in Los Angeles. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: let's put our tinfoil hats on, put our put our
Speaker 1: firework hats on. I just want, like, first impression, did
Speaker 1: you think? What did you think when you heard this conspiracy?
Speaker 1: You don't want to say what the conspiracy is first
Speaker 1: for those people who maybe site some people who are
Speaker 1: the first to sort of bring it bring it in.
Speaker 1: A Twitter user with the Twitter named Son of Baldwin
Speaker 1: was tweeting about it first, suggesting that it was a
Speaker 1: conspiracy involving the police, that maybe the police were giving
Speaker 1: out fireworks to uh young black kids, especially in New York,
Speaker 1: so that they could then have to like rush in
Speaker 1: and save the day or demonstrate what happens when there's
Speaker 1: no cops, is that nobody comes in to stop fireworks
Speaker 1: from being lit off. Um, some people think the cops
Speaker 1: were just doing it themselves. And there's a video of
Speaker 1: a New York fire station where there just appears to
Speaker 1: be a huge creative fireworks going off in the front
Speaker 1: room in front of a yeah, just in front of
Speaker 1: a fire station. So a couple of people, we know,
Speaker 1: we're investigating it, the writer Charlotte Shane and um, a
Speaker 1: couple other people, and so far I haven't seen any
Speaker 1: conclusive evidence. So there a few of the things that
Speaker 1: kind of made the rounds. There was There was the
Speaker 1: New York Freight Department photo. There was also a video,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: which precinct it was. I think it was somewhere near
Speaker 1: Williamsburg where there was a bunch of fireworks going off
Speaker 1: and what looked like whatever the building was behind this precinct,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of cops were just sitting out front
Speaker 1: like not doing anything, like even though you know, the
Speaker 1: fireworks were like literally behind them. So there was sort
Speaker 1: of like kind of furthering the idea that that they
Speaker 1: either don't care or they were putting it off themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the Son of Baldwin conspiracy,
Speaker 1: as laid out by that account, it's pretty um it
Speaker 1: covers a lot of bases in in the on the
Speaker 1: way that all the best conspiracy theories do because it's
Speaker 1: sort of like, well, even if it's not that, it's
Speaker 1: still that it's basically the thing like, Um, so you know,
Speaker 1: it could be that they are that protesters are putting
Speaker 1: them off. That that that's like, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: first thing that a lot of people assumed that it
Speaker 1: was is that these are like kids and a lot
Speaker 1: of people who had been at protests earlier that day
Speaker 1: just like letting off steam, putting out, putting off fireworks
Speaker 1: like and that uh, that the police weren't doing anything
Speaker 1: about it because the more noise and chaos there was.
Speaker 1: Then then that makes that group of people, those young
Speaker 1: people who are protesting into the bad guys who are
Speaker 1: not letting other people sleep, or they are directly supplying
Speaker 1: the fireworks to those people, in which case they are
Speaker 1: encouraging that behavior, or they're just straight up cutting out
Speaker 1: the middleman and setting them off themselves. Um. And the
Speaker 1: end that, you know, it could be a mix of
Speaker 1: all of those things, and it would still serve the
Speaker 1: end purpose, which would be to keep the city uh
Speaker 1: sleepless and crazy feeling and to kind of foment this
Speaker 1: um kind of antipathy toward the protesters and and towards
Speaker 1: what people most I think, you know, mainstream non tinfoil
Speaker 1: hat wears just assumer kids and and and probably non
Speaker 1: white kids. Uh So, I don't know. It feels like
Speaker 1: that that conspiracy theory like it it brand, It branches
Speaker 1: off in every direction and covers every base in a
Speaker 1: in a way that does make you feel like it's
Speaker 1: very possive. It was a great conspiracy theory because it
Speaker 1: couldn't be proved wrong or right instantly, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of space for people to like, you know,
Speaker 1: be Internet detectives about it. And that also kind of
Speaker 1: blurred the lines of like once it became a conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: then were then it just sort of does become true
Speaker 1: in a way. Does that make sense? Because I saw
Speaker 1: somebody posted in Baltimore, and the writer pe Moscow has
Speaker 1: also been doing research on this um they post somebody
Speaker 1: posted in Baltimore. There was like a Craigslist post that
Speaker 1: was like got these shells, like these giant fireworkshells for
Speaker 1: free for any BLM supporters. Like BLM supporters can get
Speaker 1: your free fireworks. I think that's fake though. I think
Speaker 1: that's like, I they're a lot of fake Craigslist ads. Lately,
Speaker 1: I feeling, well, okay, here's the thing too. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I initially was like, obviously I believe that like the
Speaker 1: cops plant evidence and would do something like this. It
Speaker 1: was more that the idea process behind it was so
Speaker 1: convoluted that I was like, it's so stupid that either
Speaker 1: means it has to be the cops or it's just
Speaker 1: like Occam's Razor. And it's two weeks before the fourth
Speaker 1: of July, you know, because there are always a ton
Speaker 1: of fireworks in Los Angeles. It starts in like May sometimes,
Speaker 1: and it's definitely gotten more crazy every year, gotten more
Speaker 1: widespread across the city every year. And this year fireworks
Speaker 1: are insanely cheap and available everywhere because apparently fireworks companies
Speaker 1: who like this is their season didn't make their quota
Speaker 1: on anything because there like was no Memorial Day or
Speaker 1: Easter or anything. So people are like giving away fireworks,
Speaker 1: and if you look, somebody's sent me like a like
Speaker 1: a Facebook link On Facebook. People are all posting that
Speaker 1: like things are for sale, and then they'll be holding
Speaker 1: up whatever the thing they said is for sale in
Speaker 1: front of a huge room full of fireworks. Yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: be like PlayStation Control or forty dollars, and then it's
Speaker 1: in a warehouse full of fireworks. But I have to
Speaker 1: I have to jump in and say that we in
Speaker 1: l A. I think that I usually associate the summer
Speaker 1: fireworks a lot with baseball games because they've set them
Speaker 1: off at Dodger Stadium, and I think that I generally,
Speaker 1: you know, feel that they start in May and then
Speaker 1: they last way too long. There's even I was watching
Speaker 1: Under the Silver Lake again last night. Sorry, another conspiracy
Speaker 1: paranoid movie, but there are fireworks. How many times do
Speaker 1: you really want to you? I think last night may
Speaker 1: have been like twelve. Oh my god, I know I'm
Speaker 1: under this. I don't know, Emily. It's your fault. You
Speaker 1: recommended we own it. I mean, it's really it's we
Speaker 1: own it. I mean I can't. I I have to
Speaker 1: like self identify as this. But please don't think of
Speaker 1: me this way. People listening to the just just to
Speaker 1: read it. But there's even a moment in it where
Speaker 1: fireworks just start going off like crazy and they're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it's late in the season for fireworks, which is like
Speaker 1: something that you hear so often of like it's a
Speaker 1: little early for fireworks, it's a little late for fireworks,
Speaker 1: but they never never stopped. But the difference between a
Speaker 1: Dodgers stadium. I used to live right next to Dodgers State, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's like a professional display happened all the time.
Speaker 1: It was just like you can't have a dog if
Speaker 1: you live around there. It's just nearly I mean people
Speaker 1: do anyway, but like it's it's I think it's torturous
Speaker 1: if you do. But there's a difference between that and
Speaker 1: I think the random one off. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So this is my point is that we are all
Speaker 1: being deprived of the professional fireworks. Normally there are those fireworks,
Speaker 1: and then there are all of the other people setting
Speaker 1: off their own fireworks roughly the same time, which is
Speaker 1: also a way of if you can't be at a
Speaker 1: game and you feel like doing something you probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: do because it could start a fire, upset someone's dog,
Speaker 1: but you're doing it anyway because you like to have fun,
Speaker 1: which fine, but I mean it was usually the way
Speaker 1: of like celebrating that. Now there's nothing to celebrate, there's
Speaker 1: nowhere to congregate, there's no kind of sense of like
Speaker 1: that going on, So I I understand people's impulse to
Speaker 1: set off a ship ton of fireworks, like I get it.
Speaker 1: The main counter theory I've seen is like kids are
Speaker 1: board and fireworks are cheaper and more accessible than they've
Speaker 1: ever in history. If this a happening in like December
Speaker 1: or something, I think it would be way more unsettling.
Speaker 1: The fact that it is two weeks to the fourth
Speaker 1: of July means it's all like do not you know,
Speaker 1: believably deniable. Okay, here's what I think. I think. I
Speaker 1: think it's different in different cities. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: that until I asked people to make me field recordings
Speaker 1: of the fireworks. And DJ Jubilee, excellent DJ in Front
Speaker 1: of Night Call sent a recording of the New York
Speaker 1: fireworks and they were totally different from the fireworks here.
Speaker 1: Totally didn't sound anything like the even the most fireworks
Speaker 1: that we have here. It's sounded like somebody setting off
Speaker 1: professional grade fireworks. Uh. Continuously, also the way that sound
Speaker 1: works like there have been two or three times when
Speaker 1: somebody in my neighborhood was setting off fireworks in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and the sound because you're in a cord or of buildings.
Speaker 1: If somebody's setting off fireworks in the middle of that,
Speaker 1: it's loud as fun and it's actually really really it's
Speaker 1: much more than like, oh, pop pop in the distance
Speaker 1: and your dog grows a little bit. It sounds like
Speaker 1: there's like guns going off out last night. Last night,
Speaker 1: someone was setting them off less than a block for me,
Speaker 1: and it started this whole email chain between everyone who
Speaker 1: lives in my neighborhood trying to find out who had
Speaker 1: done it, and people started like accusing each other. But
Speaker 1: it it sounded it was so incredibly loud. But I, guys,
Speaker 1: I have to pause you because we have we got
Speaker 1: some feedback on this. We have some calls and emails
Speaker 1: from listeners, and I think we should pause and take
Speaker 1: one so we can continue this. Okay, Um, Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: just calling to say that I am I feel pretty
Speaker 1: certain so I don't have concrete evidence that the cops
Speaker 1: are the ones letting off all these fireworks because the
Speaker 1: timing is very suspicious and it just seems too to
Speaker 1: be true that they're all happening with such frequency all
Speaker 1: over the country at the same time of night, every
Speaker 1: single night. Um, and I think they're trying to scare
Speaker 1: us into wanting to keep them around unsuccessfully. So yeah,
Speaker 1: those are my thoughts. Wow, too bad for the cops,
Speaker 1: that we are like the Joker and chaos only feels us.
Speaker 1: Um I I I mean, I think, I think, I
Speaker 1: don't know what I think still actually it is what
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, But I do think it's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like what Tests was saying, it has degenerated into people
Speaker 1: into like Shirley Jackson's the lottery of people being like
Speaker 1: Goody Tests lit the fireworks, and that feels like a
Speaker 1: pre uprising part of COVID that I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: get back to at all. No way, there's uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we cut this part out of Will's email,
Speaker 1: but um that he did mention the next door thing
Speaker 1: and I've been noticing this thing on next door nothing
Speaker 1: to do with fireworks. Other there's in plenty of fireworks
Speaker 1: discourse whenever I go on there. But um, when there
Speaker 1: is like a neighborhood disturbance, like a loud party at
Speaker 1: like a rental house or whatever, Um, there's a huge
Speaker 1: there's always a huge debate about like don't call the cops.
Speaker 1: Don't call the cops, Like we don't like, let's not
Speaker 1: rely on the police anymore. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: feel like the same thing is happening with the fireworks,
Speaker 1: because and everybody was just like what do we do, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, the people who had normally rushed to call
Speaker 1: the cops about that sort of thing, or like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do now. So it's like
Speaker 1: creates this weird mirror like accountability or something around all that, right,
Speaker 1: because people are also like, well, I want to be
Speaker 1: excusing it if it's kids doing it, but if it
Speaker 1: really is the cops doing it, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, it's cool, you know, because like fuck that.
Speaker 1: I mean. I also like, I mean, before this became
Speaker 1: like I went into full till conspiracy land, I like, I,
Speaker 1: I guess what from the few times that the fire
Speaker 1: did go off when I was in in New York
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, like it was, it was upsetting enough and
Speaker 1: disturbing enough. And if I was having like, say, a
Speaker 1: really jangling nerve day, if my anxiety happened to be
Speaker 1: up there, like they would make me cry because they
Speaker 1: are they just you know, it's like where you break
Speaker 1: out into a cold sweat because of the disturbance of them.
Speaker 1: And so when I did see, like, you know, I
Speaker 1: posted this thing, somebody had made a sign in their
Speaker 1: neighborhood that said like, please don't do this. Like it's
Speaker 1: just start like a very kind of like whatever, lame
Speaker 1: and dorky, but still like non law enforcement evolving way
Speaker 1: to like address your neighborhood and be like, hey, this
Speaker 1: isn't cool, like we can't sleep, our our dogs are
Speaker 1: really upset, and just like putting it out there and
Speaker 1: had it had it it got like spray painted over
Speaker 1: this like funk off or whatever. Get used to it
Speaker 1: like that. That stuff does also make me feel crazy, no,
Speaker 1: I know, and I think, like it's not that I
Speaker 1: don't understand the people who are like my dog is upset,
Speaker 1: you know, it's giving me PTSD whatever. To me, it's
Speaker 1: like people trying to find something that you like definitely
Speaker 1: cannot find, you know, people who are like I want
Speaker 1: to call the manager of fireworks and be like stop it.
Speaker 1: You you know, it's like you have to just kind
Speaker 1: of like give yourself over to the fact that you
Speaker 1: have no control over it whoever is in charge of it. UM.
Speaker 1: I did another podcast the other day that was based
Speaker 1: out of New York called grub Stakers, and I said, like, oh,
Speaker 1: are we going to hear the fireworks while we're recording?
Speaker 1: And like halfway through the recording, the fireworks started and
Speaker 1: it was insane. It was like Hannon going off. But
Speaker 1: but the thing that really strikes me about it is
Speaker 1: being so different from the l A ones is the
Speaker 1: l A ones have this like chaotic random pattern. Some
Speaker 1: of them are big and loud, but like most of
Speaker 1: them are small and fizzily, and it just sounds random.
Speaker 1: It sounds just like one pop and then another way
Speaker 1: over there. It sounds like actual chaos. The thing in
Speaker 1: New York sounds coordinated because it's like flat. It's like
Speaker 1: boom boom, boom boom, just like like they have like
Speaker 1: a row of like rockets basically or whatever that they're
Speaker 1: setting off like. Well, then I saw something that Macy's.
Speaker 1: I think this was real. Macy's announced their doing like
Speaker 1: a fireworks spectacular for the fourth July. They said, New
Speaker 1: York They're gonna light professional fireworks throughout the different boroughs
Speaker 1: of New York. No amaz this which also makes me
Speaker 1: think of that thirty Rock episode where they're like the
Speaker 1: nine eleven like tribute to fireworks. UM. I read an
Speaker 1: interesting piece on this in The Atlantic by Caitlin Tiffany,
Speaker 1: and she wrote, to some degree, our current circumstances are
Speaker 1: likely to blame. In a paper, the sociologist Ted Gertzel
Speaker 1: found that belief in a conspiracy theory is strongly correlated
Speaker 1: with anomia or anomia or a feeling that social order
Speaker 1: is collapsing and the situation of the average person is
Speaker 1: getting worse. He also found a correlation between conspiracy belief
Speaker 1: and positive responses to the question thinking about the next
Speaker 1: twelve months, how likely do you think it is that
Speaker 1: you will lose your job or be laid off? So
Speaker 1: I think, even though I know that here, I don't
Speaker 1: think that there's any kind of coordinated effort to drive
Speaker 1: people insane with fireworks in Los Angeles. From what I've
Speaker 1: been hearing in New York and in like more rural
Speaker 1: communities that are kind of experiencing this, it feels undeniable.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think it can be
Speaker 1: compelling and kind of appealing to participate in things that
Speaker 1: have you know, I mean, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: were super bored and super depressed and like by myself
Speaker 1: in a in a small town, and I thought that
Speaker 1: like setting off some fireworks might be fun, and also
Speaker 1: like I don't know, maybe I can't imagine it, but
Speaker 1: it's like maybe play into something that's like a good
Speaker 1: version of this conspiracy, because there are so many different
Speaker 1: ways to interpret it. Well. People have also pointed out
Speaker 1: it's like kids didn't get to graduate or have problems.
Speaker 1: And if I'm like, they're not going to get to
Speaker 1: go to college, they don't get to go to summer camp,
Speaker 1: Like what is the one thing they can do right now?
Speaker 1: Is like hang out and people are mad, and it's
Speaker 1: also way of communicating with other people, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean we're you're trapped in your own little zone, but
Speaker 1: you do something that's powerful that people feel and people here,
Speaker 1: when otherwise you're kind of relegated to just like talking
Speaker 1: to people on the computer. Right. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: people in my neighborhood who do like an official you know,
Speaker 1: not official, but like a neighborhood Fourth of July fireworks
Speaker 1: show every year who go and get like it's not
Speaker 1: surprising to me that amateurs could get like some you know,
Speaker 1: semi pro seeming stuff, especially because again like theme parks
Speaker 1: are closed, there's no concerts, Like maybe those people are
Speaker 1: selling the big giant fireworks on the black market because
Speaker 1: they can right now, because there's no other use for
Speaker 1: them now. I always remember being in Vegas once and
Speaker 1: and being at a bar and like talking to some
Speaker 1: random dudes who were like on their way to like
Speaker 1: they were coming from somewhere in Nevada to just bring
Speaker 1: fireworks to l A. They were like, just bring in
Speaker 1: black markets for sure. And people have had so much
Speaker 1: free time to like go buy fireworks in places that
Speaker 1: they're legal. Um, And people have said about New York too,
Speaker 1: that New Jersey I think legalized them not that long ago,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's not inconceivable you could get really
Speaker 1: good fireworks in New York. But there's something about the
Speaker 1: sort of like metronomic way that the New York fireworks
Speaker 1: sound that does sound like it's like here. Is the
Speaker 1: thing that makes me um feel craziest about the New
Speaker 1: York ones, specifically the New York ones, is that I
Speaker 1: think the first wave, like when when I first started
Speaker 1: realizing that they were like becoming a difference for people
Speaker 1: and they were different, and people were kind of complaining
Speaker 1: about them and like or what's up with the fireworks?
Speaker 1: Like very quickly, this narrative emerged mostly from like like
Speaker 1: white journalists that I follow that it was like it
Speaker 1: was racist to complain about the fireworks because it was
Speaker 1: like part of a Black Lives Matter celebration, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it, and I was like, this seems weird and
Speaker 1: I'm only like right now, I'm mostly only saying this
Speaker 1: from white people. And then this big BuzzFeed investigation story
Speaker 1: came out. It's like, um, like blaming the strife over
Speaker 1: and the conspiracy is about about the fireworks on white gentrifires.
Speaker 1: And then I'm like I'm fully like in chaos about then,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, oh, we're starting like this weird racial
Speaker 1: argument over fireworks in Brooklyn and like making a gentrification issue,
Speaker 1: even though like if you are a human and a
Speaker 1: half ears you cannot sleep because of fireworks, it is not.
Speaker 1: It is not. And also if you're a human who
Speaker 1: likes reckless fun, I mean it's fireworks are the great
Speaker 1: equalizing totally. Fireworks are a gentrification issue for sure, especially
Speaker 1: oh yeah, especially I feel like in l A, the
Speaker 1: divides between people who like love fireworks and fireworks. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an age thing. I I kind of I refuse
Speaker 1: to believe that, because, like, there are are old people
Speaker 1: in any neighborhood who are not necessarily rich gentrifires who
Speaker 1: don't like fireworks. Like, there's not that people who don't
Speaker 1: like fireworks. But kids, all kids love fireworks, That's not true.
Speaker 1: A lot of kids, I mean, especially a lot of
Speaker 1: kids who are like on the spectrum or whatever, really
Speaker 1: hate fireworks. And a lot of the most compelling arguments
Speaker 1: for not doing fireworks is that, you know, for veterans,
Speaker 1: for kids who are you know, neurodivirgin or whatever, they're
Speaker 1: so incredibly traumatizing. I feel like firework response is a
Speaker 1: very personal and I don't really think it it follows
Speaker 1: along them though. It's totally a gentrification issue because it's
Speaker 1: like any time people that aren't white or like using
Speaker 1: public space in any way, people call the cops on them,
Speaker 1: like the cops on them, like called bullshit on this honest, Like,
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying that it's part of the
Speaker 1: character of the neighborhood. I'm not saying like doing a
Speaker 1: military display of fireworks every night is the character of
Speaker 1: anyone's neighborhood, although like you said, with the Dodgers, it
Speaker 1: is actually something they do in Echo Park that's a
Speaker 1: corporate like, that's a national but it's also it's the
Speaker 1: people who a lot of the people who live around
Speaker 1: the stadium are also. I mean, I think in l
Speaker 1: A like, it's something that people participate, whether they're at
Speaker 1: the stadium or not, because if you can see the
Speaker 1: fireworks far away coming from the stadium, it's something that
Speaker 1: you do to participate anything that's happening in a neighborhood
Speaker 1: that then white people move in and are like this
Speaker 1: needs to stop happening is part of gentrification and doing
Speaker 1: the fireworks, But that's what's happening this year. And I
Speaker 1: do think that That's what I'm saying is like, I
Speaker 1: do think it's possible that there are racist people, such
Speaker 1: as the police or Proud Boys or whatever, doing fireworks
Speaker 1: to try and instigate racial tension and create arguments about
Speaker 1: stuff like this in order to again be like, see,
Speaker 1: here's why we need cops law in order you don't
Speaker 1: like things that happen without cops. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: like the c I A. You know, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's like a federally coordinated program. But the theory I've
Speaker 1: heard that seems the most believable to me is the
Speaker 1: idea that this is like yeah, on message boards being like,
Speaker 1: what if we lit off fireworks all the time? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think they foresaw the white liberals being like, no,
Speaker 1: we can't because of like white guilt about having gentrified
Speaker 1: these neighborhoods that we live in. You know. Again, it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's having the intended effect because I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone's turning on the protesters. You know. I
Speaker 1: think people are like annoyed about fireworks, but I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone's like, you know, like Black Lives Matter is
Speaker 1: doing these fireworks, and now I don't see their point
Speaker 1: of view, Like I think it's not going to convince
Speaker 1: anyone to come over to their side, which is why
Speaker 1: it seems But it's also entirely possible that it's just
Speaker 1: really bored people. It's possible. I mean, I cling to
Speaker 1: this guy's because I do. I've wanted to set off
Speaker 1: some fireworks recently. I feel stressed out. When I was
Speaker 1: growing up, I feel like it was so normal to
Speaker 1: set off fireworks. Yeah, I don't think. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was illegal or even restricted that I guess
Speaker 1: I wasn't illegal in Washington, so people just did it
Speaker 1: all the time. Like we would get a huge amount
Speaker 1: of fireworks and set them off like an abandoned lot.
Speaker 1: It was fun, it was great. I love fireworks, but
Speaker 1: like I know, I do know people who like burned themselves.
Speaker 1: But it's still you know, you gotta take a couple
Speaker 1: of hits in life. Don't set off fire. We're not
Speaker 1: endorsing setting off fireworks, but it's really it's really fun
Speaker 1: set them off. I'm just like, I'm just like I
Speaker 1: think that the argument has gone to a real like
Speaker 1: galaxy brain level that I'm just like, I feel totally
Speaker 1: under That's what's fun about it. Was it evolved like
Speaker 1: five times in the space of two hours. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to find fun though in anything when you start
Speaker 1: talking about like the Proud Boys on message boards and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And like I want to say again,
Speaker 1: like I totally think the cops stage things all the time.
Speaker 1: I think that they were responsible for lighting that cop
Speaker 1: car on fire at the Fairfax protest in l A.
Speaker 1: I personally believe in order to instigate chaos because that
Speaker 1: was a peaceful protest. But even if it was like
Speaker 1: black block, you know, like if it was like Antifa,
Speaker 1: I still think they like left it there as like
Speaker 1: please somebody like this on fire. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't I still don't know what I
Speaker 1: think if some evidence comes out that that demonstrates that
Speaker 1: the cops have any you know, if they're a smoking gun,
Speaker 1: so to speak. What I think is crazy is how
Speaker 1: condescending people on each side of it have been. That's
Speaker 1: the crazy because I'm like, these they're both viable, like
Speaker 1: believable things to me, and it's probably both, like we
Speaker 1: all think it's probably both. It's definitely some of it
Speaker 1: is just kids setting off fireworks, and then if that's
Speaker 1: being augmented, uh with you know. But also I've seen
Speaker 1: people be like there are just professional fireworks nuts who
Speaker 1: wait all year to go buy fireworks and give fireworks
Speaker 1: shows like this. Our friend Dave Hill said he has
Speaker 1: like a brother in law or something who just is like, no,
Speaker 1: it's just fireworks, guys, I promise you this is it's
Speaker 1: true that there are fireworks. I mean it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like people with Christmas lights and stuff like that, who
Speaker 1: go absolutely bonkers over decorating their houses. I don't think
Speaker 1: that happens as much in New York, though. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say I think that I agree the New York
Speaker 1: thing is the most compelling argument for this being organized,
Speaker 1: because we've all heard how that sounds. And I was saying,
Speaker 1: I think it's the ghost of George Plimpton, because he
Speaker 1: apparently was like a real big fireworks enthusiasts and would
Speaker 1: that was his rich guy interest was like fireworks shows,
Speaker 1: and then somebody was like, well he was in the CIA.
Speaker 1: I think that has to be the last word on fireworks.
Speaker 1: It has to be girls melting out of our noses
Speaker 1: due to fireworks discourse. We've been totally destroyed. And that's
Speaker 1: right where they like, it's the point just to get
Speaker 1: people to stop talking about police killing of black people,
Speaker 1: which is like the point of most conspiracy seem to
Speaker 1: opus eight people have been pretty good at doing that
Speaker 1: on their own. We fall right into their trap, like
Speaker 1: making yeah, but that's the problems, Like the media wants
Speaker 1: a new news cycle every week, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: we need to keep the focus on prosecuting killer cops.
Speaker 1: That's the main issue. Amen. And when we prosecute some
Speaker 1: killer cops, we will light off all of the fucking fireworks,
Speaker 1: but not in New York and not in your dogs.
Speaker 1: We'll have to go to a big open field. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll go to Drop City. We'll go to Drop City.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll set them off from the dome. That actually
Speaker 1: sounds lovely, doesn't it. Yes, Yeah, okay, guys, I'm down. Well.
Speaker 1: I think that does it for this week. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Um. We will be back
Speaker 1: again next week and as always, we would love your stories, conspiracy, theories, thoughts.
Speaker 1: Give us a call to four oh four six Night
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