WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 78 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.680 Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.359 you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:09.360 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:13.240 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:15.760 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:17.680 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:19.919 there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:28.400 can make your own decisions. Welcome to Shitty mayor Mondays, 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:30.680 a name we're not actually allowed to use as a 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:32.760 title of our podcast because it breaks a bunch of 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:36.080 search shit in the background. I'm your host, Mio Wong 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:38.519 coming to you live from a crumbling basement, and he 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:40.599 contested Chicago that may or may not be hit by 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:42.920 a tornado in the next hour. This is it could 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:48.040 happen here, So truly, it could all happen within this 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:54.560 next recording session. It could happen in me It's basement, Yeah, 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:59.639 with me of Garrison and James. Hello, Welcome to Hell. Hi, 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:04.080 a tornado free San Diego did have a tornado warning yesterday. 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.240 Luckily I'm in the ever stable Pacific Northwest where nothing 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:13.880 bad can happen. Yeah, it's contractually, contractually obligated. It says no, no, 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.880 no bad things, No no earthquakes here that that are overdue, 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.319 no forest fires or record temperatures. It's great up there. 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:26.720 It's so true. So today we're doing a sort of 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:30.120 special episode of Shitty Mayor Mondays, which is that we 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:33.759 are we are doing the Chicago double feature because our 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.319 previous shitty Mayor, Lloyd Lightfoot I, managed to become the 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.360 first I think I think, the first Chicago mayoral candidate 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:43.880 in forty years. She was an incumbent and lost reelection. 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:48.080 And not only is she lose reelection, she went out 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:52.279 so okay the way the way the Chicago mayor elections 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:53.880 have like a trillion candidates, like I think they were 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.480 like nine this time, and if no one can get 0:01:57.480 --> 0:01:59.240 about fifty percent, it goes to a runoff, and she 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:03.960 got knocked out before the runoff, which is unbelievably funny. Um. 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:07.840 So we're gonna talk about her first as the sort 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:12.000 of loyal Lifewood is sort of the shitty Chicago mayor past, 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.440 and then we're gonna talk about the maybe future shitty 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:19.280 Chicago Mayor, Paul Vallis, who sucks so much that he 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:21.400 was the reason I specifically wanted to do this series. 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.120 But first, what do you talk about? Fucking Lorily Lightfoot? 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:30.480 A person who I don't I don't know. I feel 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:36.639 like people outside of Chicago don't know much about her. Yeah, 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.360 I mean I know that she's like like has gebody 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:42.600 failed to do all the things that he was supposed 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:44.560 to do and in a kind of general sort of 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:49.480 Democrat Matt model has sucked. But I'm excited to hit 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:52.760 his specifics. Yeah, she's a super well okay, Ay. The 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:55.400 funniest thing about her is it's just just Google pictures 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.920 of her hats. She has just like an incredible hat game. 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.760 It's just all least appearing in just an incredible like 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.240 she has so many hats. It's it's wild. It's just 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:07.680 every single picture she's in it's just like a random, different, 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:12.919 wild hat. It's amazing. But she's also kind of in 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:18.440 some sense like a kind of uniquely incompetent politician. So okay, 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.240 So Lightfoot was elected mayor in like an absolute landside 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:24.079 in twenty nineteen, and she ran this very weird campaign 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:26.120 which it was based on sort of three main things. 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.400 It was one was not being a machine candidate. And 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.440 this is actually very important, is it Lightfoot is not 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.080 actually part of the Chicago political machine that controls like 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.240 most polic Why there's there's the kind of kind of 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:40.440 separate parts of the machine. This is a complicated thing 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.160 we're not going to fully get into here. But she's 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.600 like not a machine candidate. She like kind of is 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.880 an outsider in some sense um and that was a 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:50.960 big part of why people voted for her. There's another thing, 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:53.200 which is this sort of like identity tokenism thing, which 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:54.720 is like, I'm going to be the first black, lesbian 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:57.320 mayor of Chicago, which she is. And then the third 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:59.000 thing she was running on was building a ship ton 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:05.000 of police academies. Now I now in twenty nineteen, I 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:06.920 was in Chicago for this election, and I was like, 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.000 do not fucking vote for her. She's gonna build these 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:11.120 cop academies. And everyone was like, no, it's gonna be great. 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:15.320 She's not the machine, She's like. So she gets elected 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.920 in twenty nineteen, and this means that when she gets 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:23.880 into office, like almost immediately, twenty twenty happens, and okay, 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:26.359 so no mayor has like a good response of twenty 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:31.440 twenty Lightfoot's is like catastrophic. So I've talked about this 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.279 a bit at the show, but but what twenty twenty 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:38.400 in Chicago is this really really kind of wild and 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:40.440 weird thing. It doesn't map onto a lot of the 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.640 other sort of twenty twenties, but like the first thing 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:46.240 that happens basically is Chicago has this thing called I 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.960 think it's I think it's the Magnificent Mile. It's something milds. 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:52.120 I can remember when its magnificent a miracle because it's 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.920 the fucking bullshit tourist thing. But it's it's like the 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.240 Chicago's like it's like a mile of like really rich 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:01.520 shopping districts, and the I was just lost control of it. 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:03.760 Like people just took it. It was like fully looted. 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:05.560 It was just this. It was just this. There was 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.880 this sort of incredible moments of like Chicago's working class 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:10.799 that had been getting shit on for two hundred fucking 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.960 years like finally stormed their way into their pas and 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.680 just the fucking boushee part of Chicago would destroyed it 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.800 and it fucking ruled. But after that happened, life Foot 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.080 was like, oh shit, we can never let protesters get 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.440 back there again. So she started raising the fucking draw 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:30.080 bridges that lead that lead across the fucking rivers, like 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.840 she was like she basically turned the entirety of like 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:36.200 like that that event part of Chicago into a fucking 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:39.440 fortress that you could not get onto. Amazing, I just 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:41.680 raised she did this, Like, she raised the bridges multiple 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:44.880 fucking times. Like we're gonna get to another story of 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.440 her raising the bridges where it's like it's un like 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.640 like she doesn't so many times that like even times 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:52.680 where she claimed she didn't do it on purpose, people 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:55.919 are like, I think she raised the bridges. This is 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:58.599 you know, and so this is her basically she when 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.960 when she raises the bridges, she just like declares war 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:06.920 basically on like half of Chicago. And Okay, so this 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:08.840 is like not a great thing to do if if 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:11.120 you're trying to be a popular politician is to just 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:15.440 like physically declare war and like do fucking medieval fortress 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.960 shit to like half half your fucking city. And so 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:24.560 her popularity starts tanking immediately. This is in like the 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.240 this is I'm guessing as a consequence of the Black 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.480 Lives Matter protest, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so her 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:36.080 reproove rating is like fucking absolutely dog should I think, Oh, 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.840 I'm trying to find I should have looked this up earlier. 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:40.960 I meant to, and I forgot. I think her APPO 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.120 rating was like thirty percent when she left office. It 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.240 might even be lower than that. Yeah, but you know, 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:49.840 but she she does this kind of unique thing where 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:54.120 she basically goes around and alienates like every single voting 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.800 block in the city. I guess before we get to this, 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:58.440 we should get we should get to how she pissed 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:00.840 off the cops because one big things which she came 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:02.520 into office was she was trying to sort of like 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:07.200 do this alliance with the police. But instead of her 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:09.200 sort of actually like forming this, you know, she she 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:11.800 was trying to form sort of sent a right wing bass. Right, 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.080 She's trying to both sort of play this kind of 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:16.200 like identity tokens something and then also build a bass 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:20.080 with the cops. But a, the cops are racist And Okay, 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:23.400 do you two know the story about the Chicago Columbus statue. 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:27.040 I don't think Wait, is that one of the ones 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.920 that got taken down? Sort of? I think this is 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:32.920 one of the ones that so in twenty twenty, I 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.120 wrote a story about how to tie down statues and 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.920 then became the guy that everybody sent pictures of statues 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:42.120 getting torn down to for a while. So I'm sure 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.360 I seen amazing. Yeah, it was great. Ben Shapira had 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.920 a whole fucking seizure about it. We got lots of 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:53.000 trouble with various federal agencies. But yeah, it was a 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:57.880 very amazing story. I don't don't affiliate link to the 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:00.760 ingredients to things which mail made be illegal if you 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:05.160 combine those ingredients in your story, so true. Yeah, yeah, 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:10.600 many popular mechanics editives have tried this. It's great. I 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:14.120 was on Russia today. Uh not not with my knowledge, 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:15.680 but yeah, tell us about this, tell us about his 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.920 other statue. Man. Okay, So there is a giant like 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.480 statue thing sitting on a like sitting on this big 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.000 column that was made nineteen thirty three, and it's it's 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.120 this giant statue of Christopher Columbus. I'm also on this statue. 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:31.680 So there there, there, there's like a series of like 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.840 important Italian people like on the column. One of these things, 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.080 one of the people who has picked it on this column, 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:40.800 like very much seems to be Benito Mussolini holding a 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:47.280 bunch of fascies. That's cool. Now, the sculptors, the sculptor's 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:49.800 son denies this, but this was made ninety thirty three. 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:54.320 It really looks like he is definitely holding fascis. So 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.440 all right, this this statue, this is like in like 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:00.200 the middle of the fucking city, right in like this 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.720 park in the middle of the city. Um, and this 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.120 became the so okay, so in twenty twenty in Chicago, 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:08.840 the way the protests work is you have like the 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.200 first initial like phase where the cops like lose control 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.400 of the city, and then the cops kind of like 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.040 retake it over the next few days, and there's a 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.040 kind of lull, but then it starts another like sort 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:21.679 of wave of it starts back up again, like a 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:24.560 rounds specifically around this statue, and there's this whole thing 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:26.560 that cops are trying to keep it up, and there's 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.160 this whole thing where like there's like like rings of 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:31.960 activists like surrounding a group of cops standing around the 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.320 statue like throwing shit at them. When it fucking ruled, 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:36.720 and eventually the city is like, Okay, we're gonna we're 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:38.960 just gonna take down the fucking statue. And this was 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:43.200 a Lightfoot thing, but but this pissed off the cops 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.400 and specifically, so what I talked about this before on 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:47.440 the show, but like this is one of the sort 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.360 of unique things about Chicago is that Chicago has like, yeah, 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:52.520 I guess the technical term is like white ethnic like 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.040 groups that like do shit. And one of those things 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.560 is like there's like an Italian American Cop Association that 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:03.000 is very powerful. The Echina American Cop Association is like, like, 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.120 we will keep the statue at all costs. This is 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:09.440 like our fucking guy, like, hey, we're yeah, and and 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.000 and Lightfoot is like, you guys, if you guys don't 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:14.440 take this statue down, people are gonna fucking like burn 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.560 the Miracle Mile again. And she gets to this giant 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:20.080 fight of them, and these emails eventually get I think 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:21.679 I can't remember thaying. I think they get released part 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:23.840 of a court case or something, but these these emails 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.600 come out that it like Lightfoot is yelling that she 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:28.839 has the biggest balls of anyone on the table. She's 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:30.800 gonna put her balls on the table. She's trying to 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:34.680 like keep the cops. So she gets in this giant fight, 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:36.880 it just pisses off all of the cops in the city. 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:41.400 So she's she she has pissed off like like from 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.000 from from from the initial wave of protests at the 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:46.720 Drawbridge stuff. She has pissed off like anyone who's even 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.160 sort of vaguely center left and anti racist and like 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.040 a huge proportion of the city's black population. And then 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.520 she like systematically she's now pissed off like the sort 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.480 of like white ethnic cop groups who are also very powerful, 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:09.160 and then she does something like like really genuinely unforgivable 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.480 and horrific, which she is. In twenty twenty one, Chicago 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:15.720 police shot thirteen year old Adam Toledo share so much 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.200 Chicago paper called the Tribe. At a press conference after 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.600 the shooting, Mayor Louis Lightfoot vowed to find the people 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:26.199 responsible for quote putting a gun in the hands of Toledo, 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:31.280 who Chicago police and prosecutors insisted was armed. So, okay, 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:35.240 they shoot this kid who is fucking thirteen years old. 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.079 His name is Adam Toledo, and immediately the cops of 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.360 prosecutors and the mayor said that he's armed. They're gonna 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:41.880 find the person who put the gun in his hand. 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.200 So two and a half weeks later, the video comes 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:46.720 out and it turns out that not only was Adam 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.040 Toledo not armed, the cops shot him while he was 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:51.600 while his hands were up while complying with their instructions. 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:54.760 I think I've seen this, buddy cam. Yeah, yeah, it's 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:57.800 fucking awful. And then like two year two days later, 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:02.880 they killed another guy and like there were there was, 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:04.320 there was, there was there was another round of like 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:06.200 huge protests, I mean, and they weren't as big as 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:08.120 twenty twenty ones, but like there was another round of 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:12.400 like really big protests in this and Lightfoot was, you know, 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:15.360 like actively involved in a conspiracy to lie about this 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.000 fucking thirteen year old kid who was killed in cold blood. 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:23.160 And so this pisses off like this. This this like 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.120 basically means that her her support among like the Latino 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.520 population drops to basically zero because she fucking accused a 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:32.240 thirteen year old kid of being a gang, an armed 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.040 gang member, and then he got fucking after he got 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:38.920 shopped by the cops. So well, the other fun thing 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.760 about this is so our our like prosecutor Kim Fox 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.720 is like there's like this whole thing about how she's 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:46.920 like a progressive prosecutor and like the rights trying to 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.440 unseat her. None of the fucking officers involved in this 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:51.560 or the other shooting two days later were ever charged 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:55.040 with anything after they again it shot like killed in 0:12:55.080 --> 0:13:00.120 cold blood a thirteen year old kid with his hands up. Now, 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.000 the sort of regular Chicago right hates her because she's 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:08.079 both black and a lesbian, and there's some like well 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.400 we'll talk about this a bit when we gets a Vallis, 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:17.200 but there's just genuinely unhinged, horrifying sort of like racism 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:22.400 and like homophobia, and like she's getting basically like splash 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.480 damage transphobia from it because of how racist these people are. 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.280 And so but that means that like you know, she 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:32.800 has like no support, right, she she managed to get 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:34.640 she like she she manages to get into a fight 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.920 with Chicago is like normally pretty conservative like Black Caucus, 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:40.199 and the Black Hawcus gets so pissed at her, but 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.599 they forced through a police reform bill that has just 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:50.000 like oversych committees, just like Rain and so you know, 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.880 there like on on Forbruary twenty eighth, there's an election 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:56.120 and all of the sort of like everyone in the 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.240 city of Chicago is like she's fucked. Like she's a 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.800 unique she's like a uniquely unpopular candidate. Everyone fucking hates her. 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:05.080 She has systematically pissed off every single possible voting block 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:10.040 in the entire city of Chicago. And she loses, and 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:12.280 you know, there's this whole sort of media junket that 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:14.360 happens her. Everyone's like, this is like a referendum on 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.679 crime in Chicago, and it's like, no, no, it's not 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.160 like everyone just hates Lightfoot because she sucks, and she 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:23.480 sucks in like a unique combination of ways that pisses 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.520 off everyone who can possibly vote in the city. And 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.160 so she gets sixteen percent of the vote, which I 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:31.760 think sixteen percent of the vote is like the actual 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:33.960 sort of like top limit cap of the number of 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:36.560 people in Chicago who Jenny winely like her, Like, I 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:38.960 think it's exactly fifteen sixty percent of the city and 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.400 there's fucking no one else. So she comes in third. 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.760 It's also very funny she spends the entire like a 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.200 bunch of her money running campaign ads, like against the 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:55.600 guy who comes in fourth instead of the other two. Yeah, 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.560 and so the man who came in second, who is 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:00.880 on the By the time this episode comes out, the 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.160 election will be fucking tomorrow. Um. The person who came 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.520 in second in that vote is Brandon Johnson, who's the 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:09.440 progressive candidate. He's backed by like the teachers Union. He's 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.000 like fine, he is like as good as you're going 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.480 to get for a mayor. Oh though I will remind 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:19.440 people that like Johnson is say much better candidate the 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.600 other fucking guy we're gonna talk about, But we need 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:23.040 to talk about a little bit about the limits of 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:26.640 electoral politics, and like, you know, I'm I'm just gonna 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:28.880 point out here if that like Nepal, for example, routinely 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:30.760 elects Maoist governments and like do you know, how do 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.080 you know how much Maaoism those guys do? Like fucking nun, 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.920 there was no Maoism happening, right. There were some cool 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.880 socialist mayors in Spain who led the population of the 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.840 city to expropriate the landowners around the city in the 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.160 nineteen thirties. Yeah, that was the nineteen thirties, is twenty 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:49.000 those are old. Most people's fucking grandchildren are like maybe 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:53.160 around but yeah, like you're you're not gonna get, you know, like, 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:55.720 we're not going to get a socialist city off of this. 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:58.120 On the other hand, the person who comes in first, 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.760 who Brandon Johnson will be facing tomorrow when you listen 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:02.560 to this, is a demon in human form. He is 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:04.760 near your liberal lives as a bag man. He is 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.680 the fucking reactionary Republican dog of the Chicago political machine. 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:11.800 And that manon's name is Paul Vallis. And as as 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:13.960 as Vallis would fucking want, we are going to talk 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.280 about him after we go to ADS. All right, we're 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:21.440 back from ADS. We're going to talk about Paul Vallis. 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:30.080 Just the worst guy. Okay, So Paul Vallis sucks ass um. 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:34.080 The thing he's most famous for sucking ass for is 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:37.400 for being the school privatization guy. So we're gonna start 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.760 with him. The beginning of his sort of political career 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.920 is in two In nineteen ninety five, he gets appointed 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.240 as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools and he holds 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:51.480 that position from nineteen ninety five to two thousand and one. Now, okay, 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.160 so there's a few things that he like, really likes. 0:16:55.760 --> 0:17:00.760 One is insulating schools entirely insulating any mechanism and any 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:03.160 sort of like part of how a school works from 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.639 any kind of community democratic control. Chicago used to have 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.320 these sort of like democratic councils that could like do 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.199 stuff within the school and vows is like, fuck that 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.080 we're getting rid of all that shit, like absolutely not. 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.920 The other thing he loves is charter schools, So we 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:24.480 should explain what a charter school is. Yeah, so okay, 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.280 The way a charter school works is that instead of 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:32.119 like the state or like the city or a town 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:34.119 or like a local government running a school, which is 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:36.960 the way that schools normally work, you instead give out 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:40.080 a charter to either like technically an NGO or just 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.679 a for profit company, and then that company takes a 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:44.399 bunch of tax money, like takes a tax money that 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:47.879 would have gone to a public school, and then uses 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.840 it to run their own fucking school. So bait like 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:54.960 it is. It is privatization that they've relabeled like charter 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:57.800 quote unquote because if they actually called it privatization to schools, 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.840 people would fucking hate it. And Vallis loves this ship. 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:03.520 This is this is what he spends most of his 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:08.919 time across like on multiple continents doing schools bullshit like 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:12.080 attempting to push for um the other specific thing that 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:14.000 he really likes this and this, this is like this 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:17.560 is sort of the Paul Vallis signature. Like classic thing 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.520 is military academies. They used to like basically not be 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.200 military academies in Chicago, and Vallis is like, We're gonna 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:28.199 open so many fucking military academies and these are these 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:31.239 are like regular and the things okay, like there are 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:33.879 sort of like disciplinary quote unquote military academies, which is 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:35.720 like you get sent there instead of prison. These are 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:37.639 like just like normal schools that are like quote unquote 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:41.680 military academies. But these schools like they're they're barely schools. 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:44.080 Like like there there there. There are a lot of 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.119 people who went to these schools who in multiple cities 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:47.920 and multiple get into more of this sort of later 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:50.040 when we get to Philly, but like people will go 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.040 to these schools and like their textbooks have pages torn 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:58.760 out of them and like whith you know, here's the thing, 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:00.760 right you would think this is like like a kind 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.000 of like Republican style, like uh, we're taking out the 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:06.440 pages to talk about like Columbus being bad, Like no 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:08.440 no, no no, no, just random fucking like just pages torn 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.240 out of it because they these schools don't be fucking money, 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:13.480 like they don't have actual curriculars like they just they 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:15.320 just like don't have sports. They just don't have like 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.840 anything to fucking do. Um. And then this is another 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:21.360 thing with charter schools. So all right, if you want 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.440 to like be a regular teacher, you have to have 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:27.840 like teaching teaching certificates if you work at a charter school. Yeah. 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.440 So I think that the standards depend on the state 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.440 some of them. I think Illinois is like two thirds 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.119 of the teachers have to have teaching certificates. But that 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:39.040 means that a lot of kids are being taught by 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:42.439 teachers with no teaching certificates, which is like, you know 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:46.760 that teaching and it turns out is not in fact 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:48.640 easy enough that you could just put a random person 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:50.760 there who doesn't know how to do it, and you know, 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:55.120 like have kids be taught correctly. These mil academies, these 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:57.440 milter academies, they have teachers who just like don't fucking 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:01.000 teach right, like they're they're they're just complete shit show. 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:06.800 But he opens a bunch of these am but okay, 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:08.639 and the other big thing the vallas Is supposed and 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:10.159 this is the thing all all the people who like 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:11.960 Fallos would do this thing where they're like he's like 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:13.720 a budget wizard and he's like the guy, he's like 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:17.040 the technocrat, like smart policy, want guy who you bring 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:19.600 in to like like bail out of school district that's 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:25.800 underwater financially and oh boy, oh boy, is that not true? 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:30.200 He okay, So there there, there's there's a very good 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.399 report called Passing the Buck, which is written by the 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:35.880 Action Center on Race in the Economy or ACRE, which 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:38.080 I recommend people look genuinely, people should go read this. 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:40.720 It's like twelve pages long. It's very short, and like, 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:42.920 h like it's not even twelve like three of those 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:48.160 pages dissertations um. And they wrote a report on Vallis's 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:51.480 time in various school districts. And here's some of the 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:53.159 ship that he did to make it look like he 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.600 had his balanced, his budget balanced. So all right, let's 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.320 let's talk about his pension scheme. I feel like I 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:01.679 actually should have plain how pensions work, because like nobody 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:06.200 fucking has them anymore. So a pension is a thing 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:08.800 where like you the worker or in this case, the 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:11.359 Chicago teachers, you take some of your current pay and 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:13.760 instead of taking the money, now it gets taken out 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:15.960 of your paycheck and put towards a pension fund to 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:18.800 fund your retirement. And then this fund is invested in 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:21.280 the stock market to get returns to pay out pensions 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.560 that like support you when you retire. Right. Yeah, So 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.399 in nineteen ninety nine, Vallis was like, oh, hey, the 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:30.800 Chicago pension system is funded, so we're gonna take the 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:35.679 teacher's money and use it to pay other budget shortfalls. Great, 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:41.440 so this is good. Anyways, after he does this for 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:44.920 for thirteen consecutive years, Chicago stops paying into its pension 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:49.040 system altogether, and the result of this is a nine 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:52.119 point six billion dollar hole in the pension system that 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:54.399 Chicago has to like pay off. And this is a 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:56.200 huge part of like where are the sort of modern 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:58.240 like budget deficits in Chicago come from, like things that 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:01.240 are used to like justify show schools down. Is that 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:04.280 like they just didn't pay into this, They just stop 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:06.600 paying into the pensions and instead took the money that 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:08.359 they're supposed to go to teachers and use it to 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:14.199 like make their budgets look clean. So if if he 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:16.960 had just done this, it would have been bad enough. 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:21.160 But but Vallas is like is a very very specific 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:25.520 kind of like neoliberal technocrat dip shit, And that kind 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:29.440 of neoliberal technicrat dip shit is the the extremely interested 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:32.720 in financial instruments guy who was like a kind of 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:34.520 person that I think I think we see less of 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:36.399 these days because the most not the modern version of 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:39.119 this or like crypto people. Right, but back in like 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:40.840 the nineties and two thousands, there were a bunch of 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:43.480 guys whose things were like really really conflabu of financial 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:47.280 instruments and everyone thought they were fucking geniuses. Um now, 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:49.640 now if if you if you were alive in two 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:53.080 thousand and eight, you know where this is going. But 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:56.080 vallis the second thing he does to sort of like 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:59.120 like quote unquote balance his budget sheet is he takes 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:03.800 out the government que a payday loan. So here's here's 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:07.480 a passing the buck quote. Vallas literally borrowed against Chicago 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.800 school children's futures when he took out a six hundred 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:13.720 and sixty six million dollars in capital appreciation bonds. Also, 0:23:13.960 --> 0:23:17.560 when I said he was like like a demon sid 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:21.879 sixty six million dollars with the Satanic Yeah, yeah, we're 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:25.480 doing the Satanic panic, but for this guy who fucking sucks, 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:28.760 So yeah, he took out the loans and capital appreciation 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:31.840 bonds a form of debt in which the borrower pays 0:23:31.880 --> 0:23:34.880 nothing for several years, but then has to pay very 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:38.639 large sums to make up for skipped payments. A capital 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:41.679 appreciation bond c a B is a long term bond 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:46.680 with compounding interest, on which the borrower is not permitted 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:50.600 to make any principal or interest payments for many years, 0:23:51.720 --> 0:23:56.480 but the interest will. Yeah, crazy, but you're allow Why 0:23:56.480 --> 0:23:58.159 would we Why would you take that? Why would you? 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:01.000 Why would you do? That's like a really bad decision. 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:03.000 Oh it's a terrible it's a terrible decision. I'm not 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:06.320 a big money guy. But the Valis's assumption was that, like, Okay, 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:08.320 we don't have any money now, but property values will 0:24:08.320 --> 0:24:10.840 continue to go up, and it just keep going up forever, 0:24:11.320 --> 0:24:13.159 so we can pay this bond back when we have 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:18.680 money from higher from property taxes. And yeah, so okay, 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:20.480 I really if I'm gonna finish this thing on these 0:24:20.560 --> 0:24:25.159 these just dogshit bonds. In this way, it is similar 0:24:25.200 --> 0:24:28.880 to a negative amortization mortgage, in which the outstanding principle 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:32.919 actually grows over time because the unpaid interest gets tacked 0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:38.919 onto the amount owed and compounds. Yeah, very Amusingly, California 0:24:39.040 --> 0:24:43.880 was doing something similar to this with with restitution payments recently, 0:24:43.960 --> 0:24:46.159 or some some place in California were, at least in 0:24:46.200 --> 0:24:48.080 one case that I looked into for a story I wrote, 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:50.800 it was it was ruled illegal under the Eighth Amendment. 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:55.239 Oh my god, a cruel and unusual interest payments. It's 0:24:55.280 --> 0:24:58.520 good to see the Chicago is doing it. Yeah, there's 0:24:58.520 --> 0:24:59.960 actually a funny story about this that, like one of 0:25:00.040 --> 0:25:02.280 the size stories of this is that the guy who's 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:06.040 running the school system in California like gets this same 0:25:06.119 --> 0:25:09.159 offer from like bond salesman people, and he's like, know, 0:25:09.240 --> 0:25:11.680 what the fuck, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:15.000 Vallas does this. Vallas is going to do this in 0:25:15.119 --> 0:25:18.119 multiple cities. So I'm gonna finish reading this thing. Because 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:22.120 of this structure, borrowers often end up paying extraordinarily high 0:25:22.200 --> 0:25:25.560 interest rates over the lifetime of the bonds. Former California 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:29.240 State Treasurer Bill Lockney called CIABS the school district equivalent 0:25:29.240 --> 0:25:32.040 of a pan a loan. So the result of this 0:25:32.240 --> 0:25:34.359 is that out of the six hundred and sixty six 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:38.119 point two million dollars right that Valas takes out, they 0:25:38.160 --> 0:25:44.159 pay one point five billion dollars in interest. The interest 0:25:44.240 --> 0:25:47.160 rate over the lifetime of this bond is two hundred 0:25:47.280 --> 0:25:51.600 and twenty three percent. Good. This is the guy who's 0:25:51.640 --> 0:25:54.040 supposed to be like the really smart type, the crack 0:25:54.080 --> 0:25:57.280 reformer guy who understands financial stuff, who you bring into 0:25:57.320 --> 0:26:00.000 like solve school districts, and he took out a load 0:26:00.160 --> 0:26:05.560 two hundred and twenty three percent fucking interest. This is 0:26:05.680 --> 0:26:07.160 this is the kind of interest rate. Then, the words 0:26:07.160 --> 0:26:10.239 of David Graeber were once reserved for organized crime, and 0:26:10.320 --> 0:26:12.640 now is you know, normally normally this kind of loan 0:26:12.800 --> 0:26:13.800 is like a thing. It's like, this is like a 0:26:13.880 --> 0:26:16.760 very predatory sort of like yeah, it's like a predatory 0:26:16.800 --> 0:26:21.040 banking thing. Valis think this to himself on purpose because 0:26:21.040 --> 0:26:23.280 he's dumb, and I mean, also like he's trying to 0:26:23.320 --> 0:26:24.679 I mean and part of part of the other sort 0:26:24.720 --> 0:26:26.800 of undercurrent of this, it's not just that he's really stupid, 0:26:26.800 --> 0:26:29.080 it's that he's trying to pay off his buddies in 0:26:29.119 --> 0:26:31.399 the in the finance sector. Yeah, and then you know, 0:26:31.440 --> 0:26:32.679 there is the other part of the story. Right, It's 0:26:32.720 --> 0:26:34.680 like all of these all these school districts just get 0:26:34.680 --> 0:26:38.240 fucking looted to pay off these like fucking stupid ass 0:26:38.240 --> 0:26:41.040 hedge funds, and then he just bounces somewhere else and 0:26:41.119 --> 0:26:43.359 leaves him people with it. Yeah. And you know, so 0:26:43.520 --> 0:26:47.600 I talked a bit earlier about how like Valis's assumption 0:26:47.640 --> 0:26:49.640 on these bonds was like, well, be fine, because well, 0:26:49.680 --> 0:26:51.280 the housing markets will keep going up forever. But then 0:26:51.280 --> 0:26:54.240 two happens, and this has a bunch of effects. One 0:26:54.240 --> 0:26:57.120 of the big ones is that Vallas was taking out 0:26:57.160 --> 0:27:05.199 bonds with variable interest rates. Oh now, okay, we have 0:27:05.280 --> 0:27:07.800 talked about this on this show before. Right, there are 0:27:08.160 --> 0:27:12.320 entire country they are like entire like like multi national 0:27:12.400 --> 0:27:16.280 political movements that don't exist. There are entire countries who 0:27:16.400 --> 0:27:18.840 fucking don't have manufacturing checkers anymore. Like there are there 0:27:18.880 --> 0:27:21.440 are places with a life expectancy felled by twenty years 0:27:21.800 --> 0:27:24.520 because they're they're they're fucking leaders took out these kind 0:27:24.560 --> 0:27:27.080 of of like variable interest rate loans and got de 0:27:27.119 --> 0:27:29.720 strobe in the interest rate spikes and guess what happened 0:27:29.760 --> 0:27:36.040 in Chicago interest rate spikes. And okay, so Vallas's successors 0:27:36.480 --> 0:27:38.639 look at this and are like, this is the stupidest 0:27:38.640 --> 0:27:40.959 fucking you know well, but okay, Valles' success by the way, 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:43.119 is Artie Duncan, who's the guy that Obama puts in 0:27:43.200 --> 0:27:49.200 charge of of the Department of Education. And Artie Duncan 0:27:49.359 --> 0:27:51.000 is like, okay, do you know how we're going to 0:27:51.080 --> 0:27:53.679 solve the problem of these the the the risk from 0:27:53.680 --> 0:27:59.040 these adjestable rate interest rates. Credit default swabs? Oh god, 0:28:00.960 --> 0:28:03.320 all right, I'm not going to explain how a credit 0:28:03.320 --> 0:28:06.120 default swap works because it's fucking annoying as hell. But 0:28:06.359 --> 0:28:08.560 credit default swaps are one of the things, like one 0:28:08.600 --> 0:28:12.800 of the very specific financial instruments that are that are 0:28:12.920 --> 0:28:15.439 like specifically responsible for the two thousand and eight collapsed Yes, 0:28:15.760 --> 0:28:18.760 and now these technically aren't credit default swaps, right, These 0:28:18.840 --> 0:28:21.359 These are technically what are called interest default swap or 0:28:21.440 --> 0:28:24.560 like interest swaps, and they're but they're exactly the same 0:28:24.600 --> 0:28:26.560 thing as a credit as a credit default swap, but 0:28:26.640 --> 0:28:30.040 instead of credit, it's interest. So the underlying asset right 0:28:30.200 --> 0:28:32.520 is like as a bond and not like a loan 0:28:32.640 --> 0:28:35.720 or whatever. But otherwise it's exactly the same thing. And 0:28:36.280 --> 0:28:39.280 this this man, you know, and these these swaps have 0:28:39.400 --> 0:28:41.480 this thing where like if you can't pay, you get 0:28:41.480 --> 0:28:45.000 these like unbelievably high like fees that start happening. So 0:28:45.840 --> 0:28:48.920 when when these bonds blow up, they managed to cost 0:28:49.240 --> 0:28:52.160 they managed to cost Chicago another thirty one million dollars 0:28:52.800 --> 0:28:59.040 because they're credit default swaps just blew up. So all right, 0:28:59.040 --> 0:29:00.560 so this has a two thousand too, And she tells 0:29:00.600 --> 0:29:04.520 the two He ran for governor or against Rob fucking Blogoyevich, 0:29:05.680 --> 0:29:10.480 who is Rob who is Rob a Bligoyevich. He just 0:29:10.520 --> 0:29:12.040 did the first syllable and then let your let to 0:29:12.040 --> 0:29:19.480 take the rest. And Valis sucks so much that Rob 0:29:19.520 --> 0:29:23.400 Blugoyevich is able to outflank him on the left bye 0:29:23.480 --> 0:29:25.719 bye bye, running against him saying, hey, look at all 0:29:25.720 --> 0:29:29.400 these schools he privatized. And so he gets claw bared 0:29:29.440 --> 0:29:35.240 in the primaries by Rob fucking Bloyevich, the man who okay, 0:29:35.280 --> 0:29:37.360 so this is what we will cover this one day 0:29:37.360 --> 0:29:39.440 at fully on the show because it's really funny. But 0:29:39.720 --> 0:29:42.360 Rob Lgoievic is the man most famous for getting arrested 0:29:42.360 --> 0:29:47.480 for trying to sell Obama Senate seat like he tried 0:29:47.520 --> 0:29:54.920 to sell a Senate Oh he's Oh, he's amazing. He's 0:29:54.920 --> 0:29:58.360 now just on Tucker talking about political persecution. Oh yeah, 0:29:58.400 --> 0:30:01.520 yeah's extremely funny. Yeah he was on yesterday, wasn't he? Yeah? 0:30:01.600 --> 0:30:07.200 Yeah yeah, first Trump should Yeah, how he was persecuted first, 0:30:07.200 --> 0:30:11.280 and how Trump is being persecuted too. It's great, really, 0:30:11.480 --> 0:30:18.320 really the canary in the coal mine off, Hey, griffting politicians, look, Garrison, 0:30:18.480 --> 0:30:21.280 look if they if they can go after Rob Lgio 0:30:21.440 --> 0:30:23.520 trying to sell Obama Senate seat, they could go after 0:30:23.560 --> 0:30:26.560 you for trying to sell Barack Obama Senate seat. That's true. 0:30:28.360 --> 0:30:30.440 You know who else is trying to sell Barack Obama 0:30:30.520 --> 0:30:36.160 Senate seat? Products and services that support this very podcast. No, 0:30:36.200 --> 0:30:38.000 they're really not allowed to do that. None of them 0:30:38.000 --> 0:30:40.840 would ever commit a crime I under any circumstances. I 0:30:40.880 --> 0:30:45.360 still think I think a fair number of these corporations 0:30:45.400 --> 0:30:49.480 probably engage in some some sort of political Yeah, that's true, 0:30:49.520 --> 0:30:53.200 but I don't they're trying to buy him a Senate seat, Garrison. 0:30:53.280 --> 0:30:56.320 That's totally different, different, not the same, not the same, 0:30:56.920 --> 0:31:01.760 totally fine. Thanks Ronald Reagan, all right, we're back, and 0:31:01.800 --> 0:31:04.040 we're now, We're we're now, we're now sending Vallis to 0:31:04.600 --> 0:31:07.440 our I don't I don't actually know if Chicago and 0:31:07.480 --> 0:31:09.400 Philadelphia or sister or cities, but like I think they 0:31:09.400 --> 0:31:11.280 should be. I don't know. I am. I am very 0:31:11.320 --> 0:31:17.240 in favor of the Chicago Philadelphia alliance. Same vibe. Yeah, 0:31:17.280 --> 0:31:20.440 so she they both stood in for Gotham City and 0:31:20.520 --> 0:31:24.880 the Christopher Nolan trilogy. So we're doing a Bagman reference again. 0:31:25.560 --> 0:31:29.320 There's there's a whole There are like so many different 0:31:29.560 --> 0:31:33.240 specific there. David Grabber rights about this, like there there 0:31:33.240 --> 0:31:37.280 are so many different like parts of places where they filmed, 0:31:37.920 --> 0:31:40.520 like the Dark Night where people tried to protest and 0:31:40.560 --> 0:31:42.600 got arrested for blocking the road. Like this happened in 0:31:42.680 --> 0:31:47.120 multiple cities. Yeah. No, one wants the city to turn 0:31:47.160 --> 0:31:49.600 into la So you have to stand up against that 0:31:49.640 --> 0:31:52.680 shit immediately. You do not let it happen in your hood. 0:31:52.960 --> 0:31:58.560 Yeah it could, it could happen here. Okay. So after 0:31:58.640 --> 0:32:02.680 Vallas gets clabbered in in in the mayoral race, he 0:32:02.720 --> 0:32:05.440 gets brought in by Philadelphia to try to like fix 0:32:05.520 --> 0:32:13.280 their school system, and he uh me, his plan to 0:32:13.320 --> 0:32:15.640 do this is by doing a bunch of military academies 0:32:15.640 --> 0:32:19.520 again and then doing also doing charter schools, and so 0:32:19.680 --> 0:32:21.680 I should I should explain like his other sort of 0:32:21.880 --> 0:32:24.880 so the big sort of rationale thing behind charter schools, 0:32:24.960 --> 0:32:29.400 this school choice, which is this thing that was specifically 0:32:29.440 --> 0:32:33.200 invented as a way to let Race his parents avoid integration. Yeah, 0:32:33.320 --> 0:32:35.200 this is like goes along with sobody mentioned the homeschool 0:32:35.200 --> 0:32:38.080 and when we've talked about this in other episodes. But 0:32:38.160 --> 0:32:40.960 he's like a huge like Valist to this day is 0:32:41.000 --> 0:32:45.080 a giant like school choice guy. Um, and you know, 0:32:45.120 --> 0:32:46.760 but the other thing, the other thing about Valist, I 0:32:46.800 --> 0:32:49.680 don't think people realize that much he even though he's 0:32:49.680 --> 0:32:52.120 a Republican a lot of the time, like he kind 0:32:52.120 --> 0:32:54.480 of flips back and forth being a Democrat being a Republican. 0:32:54.520 --> 0:32:57.920 But he's he's like after he loses to Rob or 0:32:57.960 --> 0:33:00.440 even even sort of before, like he is anual sort 0:33:00.480 --> 0:33:03.360 of Chicago machine guy. And because he's a Chicago machine guy, 0:33:03.360 --> 0:33:05.880 when he gets into Philly, the stuff that he starts doing, 0:33:05.880 --> 0:33:09.760 the stuff where he like he'll just like like he 0:33:09.800 --> 0:33:11.800 takes over the school district and like fires munch people 0:33:11.800 --> 0:33:14.080 and like installs his cronies and all these departments and 0:33:14.120 --> 0:33:16.440 all these people are getting like he's like buying off 0:33:16.440 --> 0:33:20.960 people with budget allocations, and he starts selling off buildings 0:33:20.960 --> 0:33:23.640 to raise money. So he sells off like the district 0:33:23.720 --> 0:33:27.480 headquarters in order to buy like a more expensive district headquarters. 0:33:28.440 --> 0:33:30.960 And here's a quote from the book Not Paid for Us, 0:33:31.000 --> 0:33:33.360 which is a really really great book about sort of 0:33:33.360 --> 0:33:37.280 the history of racism in education in Philadelphia. And this 0:33:37.640 --> 0:33:41.200 is a quote from a long time activist le Roy Simmons. 0:33:41.800 --> 0:33:44.200 Before I start reading this, the district headquarters was called 0:33:44.200 --> 0:33:48.160 twenty first and Parkway. There was doors in twenty first 0:33:48.200 --> 0:33:51.440 and Parkway worth one million dollars, then big brass doors 0:33:51.440 --> 0:33:54.080 in the fronts. Those doors were worth one million dollars 0:33:54.080 --> 0:33:55.920 with all the carving on them. People don't know how 0:33:55.960 --> 0:33:57.960 much they got for it. To this day, I can't 0:33:58.000 --> 0:34:00.240 get an answer about how much did you sell that 0:34:00.280 --> 0:34:04.920 building for? Where the money went? The school district sold 0:34:04.960 --> 0:34:07.880 twenty first and Parkway in a package with Kennedy Center. 0:34:08.080 --> 0:34:10.880 There were brand new trucks parked at Kennedy Center. They 0:34:10.880 --> 0:34:14.080 had forgot were there. There was a printing press in 0:34:14.120 --> 0:34:16.440 the Kennedy Center that could print all new magazines and 0:34:16.480 --> 0:34:19.359 they never used. There were books and calculators and every 0:34:19.400 --> 0:34:21.680 time it went through there there were boxes of unused 0:34:21.719 --> 0:34:24.640 stuff in the Kennedy Center and nobody knew. And they 0:34:24.680 --> 0:34:26.640 sold that in the contents and the package with twenty 0:34:26.640 --> 0:34:28.680 first of Parkway, and nobody knew how much that was. 0:34:28.920 --> 0:34:30.919 There was some art that was priceless on the walls 0:34:30.920 --> 0:34:33.319 at twenty first of Parkway. No one can find the art. 0:34:34.480 --> 0:34:37.160 They were priceless pieces of art hanging in schools across 0:34:37.200 --> 0:34:39.000 the city and all that was sold in a package 0:34:39.000 --> 0:34:44.239 and nobody saw it where it went. Yeah, so this 0:34:44.280 --> 0:34:46.200 is this is again, this is like this is classic 0:34:46.320 --> 0:34:48.640 Chicago corruption shit, right, Like we're not gonna say how 0:34:48.719 --> 0:34:50.279 much we sold this building for. We're not gonna say 0:34:50.280 --> 0:34:53.840 who who we sold it too, Like we're gonna build 0:34:53.840 --> 0:34:56.480 a more expensive building. And you know, if you look 0:34:56.480 --> 0:34:58.560 at you look into who the contractors are as like 0:34:58.600 --> 0:35:02.360 always someone's uncle or like brother or some shit. Um, 0:35:02.400 --> 0:35:04.960 there's just you know, like there's printing presses that are gone, 0:35:05.040 --> 0:35:07.520 like priceless works of art just vanished. It's like this 0:35:07.560 --> 0:35:10.200 is this is like you know, it's sort of incredible 0:35:10.320 --> 0:35:15.040 sort of Chicago political machine stuff. Um, and this gets 0:35:15.040 --> 0:35:16.800 into what I think about I think the Chicago political 0:35:16.840 --> 0:35:19.640 machine that is really interesting, which is that these people 0:35:19.640 --> 0:35:22.520 are like, on the one hand, they're unbelievably corrupt. On 0:35:22.560 --> 0:35:24.319 the other hand, a lot of them are sort of 0:35:24.480 --> 0:35:29.759 real like hardline like doctrinaire neoliberals. This is I mean, 0:35:29.760 --> 0:35:32.600 this is sort of the thing with Arnie Duncan, right, Like, 0:35:32.600 --> 0:35:34.759 like Obama actually comes out of this machine too, when 0:35:34.800 --> 0:35:37.920 he's a lot more sort of like doctrinaire about this 0:35:38.000 --> 0:35:41.360 stuff than the sort of modern people are. And you know, 0:35:41.400 --> 0:35:43.880 and Vallis is like one of the sort of like 0:35:44.560 --> 0:35:47.520 big guys here, and you know, so he's really really 0:35:47.520 --> 0:35:50.720 in favor of charter schools and so they get enormous 0:35:50.760 --> 0:35:54.640 amounts of money. Um, he also does this thing he yeah, 0:35:54.840 --> 0:35:57.560 this is also from Not Paid for Us. He funnels 0:35:57.600 --> 0:36:00.359 money into just like a shit ton of nhos in 0:36:00.440 --> 0:36:02.840 order to like do education programming or whatever. And so 0:36:02.880 --> 0:36:05.799 there's a sort of constellation that forms of these like 0:36:05.880 --> 0:36:09.440 you have you these corporations doing like education stuff or 0:36:09.480 --> 0:36:11.960 like running schools, and you have these like nonprofits running 0:36:12.000 --> 0:36:14.719 like the like the education material. And it's it's this 0:36:14.800 --> 0:36:18.200 sort of like this this is sort of arch neoliberal 0:36:18.239 --> 0:36:20.880 thing where instead of the state administering a service, what 0:36:20.920 --> 0:36:24.520 you have is this like based basically a bunch of 0:36:24.520 --> 0:36:27.520 like contracting grifters who come in and suck up all 0:36:27.560 --> 0:36:32.800 of the money and then provide absolutely dogshit services. Now 0:36:33.600 --> 0:36:35.600 I'm going to read another quote from this book, because 0:36:35.600 --> 0:36:37.720 the people they are paying these contracts who are fucking 0:36:37.840 --> 0:36:40.400 wild on the The SRC is like one of the 0:36:40.800 --> 0:36:43.080 bodies that's in charge of, like one of the state 0:36:43.080 --> 0:36:45.680 bodies as in charge of, like the Philadelphia School District. 0:36:46.520 --> 0:36:50.120 One of the SRC's most problematic contracts was with K 0:36:50.360 --> 0:36:54.520 twelve Inc. For three million dollars to quote provide academic 0:36:54.560 --> 0:36:58.600 and curriculum support access to K twelves online curriculum and assessments, 0:36:58.920 --> 0:37:03.200 academic and richment via summer and extended day programs, professional development, 0:37:03.239 --> 0:37:07.480 teacher planning and training materials, and community involvement activities. Conservative 0:37:07.560 --> 0:37:10.600 radio talk show host William Bennett was the founder of 0:37:10.680 --> 0:37:13.200 K twelve, Inc. He had been an advisor to former 0:37:13.239 --> 0:37:16.279 presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush Durin a 0:37:16.360 --> 0:37:18.880 show in two thousand and five, he said the following, 0:37:18.880 --> 0:37:21.480 and this is a direct quote. If you want to 0:37:21.520 --> 0:37:24.520 reduce crime. You could, if that was your sole purpose, 0:37:24.880 --> 0:37:27.520 you could abort every black baby in this country and 0:37:27.920 --> 0:37:30.319 your crime rate would go down. That would be an 0:37:30.320 --> 0:37:33.480 impossibly ridiculous and wray reprehensible thing to do, but your 0:37:33.480 --> 0:37:35.960 crime weight would go down. So they peeled this guy 0:37:36.000 --> 0:37:44.440 three million fucking dollars to both of VAL's pro choice credentials. 0:37:45.480 --> 0:37:47.799 This is this is the most pro choice thing I've 0:37:47.800 --> 0:37:55.040 ever seen from him, is the genocide guy. Because guy, yeah, yeah, 0:37:55.080 --> 0:37:58.240 well you see, they all have a have a weakness. 0:37:59.120 --> 0:38:02.800 That is, has anyone looked to the curriculum that they're providing. 0:38:03.760 --> 0:38:06.399 I'm serious the thing, it's unclear to me that they ever, 0:38:06.440 --> 0:38:10.080 like actually really provided much of anything. It does sound 0:38:10.160 --> 0:38:11.600 like a like if you were going to make up 0:38:11.640 --> 0:38:15.120 a company to grift at the education system, K twelve Inc. 0:38:15.160 --> 0:38:17.680 Would be a great name. Yeah, And then that's that's 0:38:17.680 --> 0:38:19.440 the thing about like all these charter schools too, right. 0:38:19.480 --> 0:38:21.800 It's like, like, okay, so like there are some for 0:38:21.960 --> 0:38:25.120 profit corporations you do charter school stuff, and they stick 0:38:25.160 --> 0:38:27.680 in the charter school business because they decide that's how 0:38:27.680 --> 0:38:29.239 they want to make their money. A lot of these 0:38:29.280 --> 0:38:31.680 things come in take a state contract the school immediately 0:38:31.719 --> 0:38:33.399 implodes and then leave and then they just walk out 0:38:33.400 --> 0:38:35.319 with self a million dollars and this is like this 0:38:35.360 --> 0:38:39.839 is a recurring pattern over and over again with charter schools. UM. 0:38:39.920 --> 0:38:42.879 He also brings in Teach for America, who is this 0:38:43.040 --> 0:38:46.320 like just genuinely evil organization that tries to break teachers 0:38:46.400 --> 0:38:50.160 unions by recruiting these like incredibly idealistic and naive young 0:38:50.239 --> 0:38:53.440 college grads and like throwing them into like into failing 0:38:53.480 --> 0:38:56.040 schools as this thing to like, ah, you're gonna like 0:38:56.080 --> 0:38:59.640 go serve the community and like you know, you're you'll 0:38:59.719 --> 0:39:02.040 learn the job and you'll you'll become an educator and 0:39:02.040 --> 0:39:05.320 you're like helping these disadvantaged kids and it's a disaster. 0:39:05.400 --> 0:39:06.960 These these these people, the people who do this have 0:39:07.000 --> 0:39:09.000 no fucking idea how to teach because they know theyn't 0:39:09.040 --> 0:39:12.359 have teachers, gets right, They're just like college grads, and 0:39:12.400 --> 0:39:14.520 at any any of you who have been around college grads, 0:39:14.560 --> 0:39:17.200 like you think those people are responsible enough to fucking 0:39:17.239 --> 0:39:22.319 teach kids, Like Jesus Christ, Yeah, I meant of that 0:39:22.400 --> 0:39:24.279 was like a big thing. Like I don't know if 0:39:24.280 --> 0:39:27.560 it still happens or not. I can remember, right, Yeah, 0:39:27.640 --> 0:39:31.839 reference letters for students like ten fifteen years ago for that. Yeah, 0:39:31.960 --> 0:39:33.560 Like I I mean, I know I had to like 0:39:33.640 --> 0:39:36.439 talk out classmates of mine like out of doing it 0:39:36.520 --> 0:39:38.439 because we were like you are doing you are doing 0:39:38.520 --> 0:39:40.680 union busting and also this will destroy your life and 0:39:40.719 --> 0:39:42.719 the life of the children you have to teach. Yeah, 0:39:42.719 --> 0:39:45.080 it's a very strange system that, yeah, takes someone who 0:39:45.080 --> 0:39:48.280 by virtue of having any degree is it's automatically an educator. 0:39:48.560 --> 0:39:52.319 But to be fair, that is how universities work as well. Yeah, 0:39:52.360 --> 0:39:54.439 you get get your master's degree and they're like, well, 0:39:54.440 --> 0:39:57.919 fuck it, get in there. They'll just give you grad 0:39:57.960 --> 0:40:01.960 students with no degrees, right, Like that's that's the thing too. Yeah, 0:40:01.960 --> 0:40:07.480 but yeah, yeah, and you know to to to to 0:40:08.040 --> 0:40:09.839 get up together into those syds of like the other 0:40:09.920 --> 0:40:13.040 thing that's happening here is is he has this really valas, 0:40:13.080 --> 0:40:16.000 has this really really racist kind of like we need 0:40:16.080 --> 0:40:19.360 to like enforce discipline in schools thing, and so they 0:40:19.400 --> 0:40:20.960 have all these and this happened to Chicago too. They 0:40:20.960 --> 0:40:22.920 have these like zero tolerance policies that have done i 0:40:22.960 --> 0:40:26.439 mean irreparable damage to like tons of thousands of kids. 0:40:27.320 --> 0:40:28.920 I'm gonna read I'm going to read a thing from 0:40:28.960 --> 0:40:33.640 tribe about Philadelphia. Quote. Test results were posted on data 0:40:33.719 --> 0:40:36.239 walls in the school buildings to show which classes were 0:40:36.280 --> 0:40:40.040 making the most progress. WHOA, it was humiliating, said Grill 0:40:40.160 --> 0:40:42.120 was a teacher. A lot of our kids were left behind, 0:40:42.160 --> 0:40:43.680 were behind, and a lot of a lot of our 0:40:43.719 --> 0:40:46.120 kids suffered trauma, and trauma affects the way you learn. 0:40:46.560 --> 0:40:48.680 So they were behind, they weren't on grade level, and 0:40:48.719 --> 0:40:55.680 it made them feel like failures. I hated giving those tests. Wow. Yeah, yeah, 0:40:56.080 --> 0:40:58.200 people like to be wrong about Georgia. Well, but that 0:40:58.520 --> 0:41:01.640 that's some more wedding and ship threat that like and 0:41:01.760 --> 0:41:04.680 like these are like fucking yeah, like these are like 0:41:05.120 --> 0:41:09.520 these are literally children like you were. You were publicly 0:41:09.640 --> 0:41:14.320 shaming people who are like twelve. It's just it's just horrible. 0:41:14.400 --> 0:41:17.000 Yeah that, Like we've known for a very long time 0:41:17.040 --> 0:41:20.480 that that doesn't work when you're educating kids. Like I 0:41:20.840 --> 0:41:25.440 have done Pettigougi training and get it. No one with 0:41:25.640 --> 0:41:27.880 any intent to actually help kids is shaming kids in 0:41:27.960 --> 0:41:31.080 the classroom, or young people or anyone of any age 0:41:31.120 --> 0:41:33.479 for that matter. I just checked out what K twelve 0:41:33.560 --> 0:41:36.920 Inca doing. It's great. They're now offering online high school. 0:41:37.360 --> 0:41:40.279 Oh great, yeah, yeah, you can go to a faith 0:41:40.360 --> 0:41:47.200 prep academy, developed Christian character find Yeah, yeah, this is great. 0:41:47.719 --> 0:41:49.920 This is this is what I this is what I 0:41:50.040 --> 0:41:56.200 youth need. Yeah it sucks so Um. The other thing again, 0:41:56.480 --> 0:41:58.640 we keep strinkling around this because this happens a bunch 0:41:58.640 --> 0:42:00.680 of times. Like again, vals, this whole thing is supposed 0:42:00.719 --> 0:42:04.799 to be about, like about balancing budgets. Right in two 0:42:04.840 --> 0:42:07.200 thousand and seven, by the time he's like like at 0:42:07.239 --> 0:42:09.400 the near the end of his like time in Philly, 0:42:09.840 --> 0:42:12.719 he's fucked everything up so badly that that for in 0:42:12.960 --> 0:42:15.879 like just one year of the budget, Philly schools were 0:42:15.920 --> 0:42:20.480 seventy three million dollars in the whole. Now, the thing 0:42:20.520 --> 0:42:22.680 about this is this is where most stories about Valis's 0:42:22.719 --> 0:42:27.000 time in Philadelphia end. But wait, there's fucking more so 0:42:27.600 --> 0:42:29.800 that that seventy three million dollars short fall was. It 0:42:29.920 --> 0:42:31.880 was the one year short fall. Right remember back in 0:42:31.960 --> 0:42:34.640 Chicago where Valas is like variable interest rate bonds like 0:42:34.719 --> 0:42:38.440 blew up in the school's faces. Um, this time, Vallas 0:42:38.560 --> 0:42:40.560 is the guy directly who did the credit the fault 0:42:40.600 --> 0:42:44.080 swaps and uh, these these the interest rates on these 0:42:44.120 --> 0:42:46.400 things are locked in literally for decades and just like 0:42:46.880 --> 0:42:49.640 like some of these aren't expiring to like twenty thirty one, right, 0:42:50.040 --> 0:42:52.760 and just so far they've cost one hundred and sixty 0:42:52.800 --> 0:42:58.080 one million dollars. Great, yeah, and test test scores fucking 0:42:58.200 --> 0:43:01.279 go down under him. It's a ship show. Yeah, And 0:43:01.360 --> 0:43:03.320 so twousand and seven they kick him out because they're like, 0:43:03.400 --> 0:43:09.279 what the fuck are you doing? Like Unfortunately the place 0:43:09.360 --> 0:43:12.839 they kick him out too is is and you're you're 0:43:12.920 --> 0:43:16.400 not gonna like this post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. So 0:43:16.800 --> 0:43:21.279 for fuck's sake? Yeah, yeah, why why do we have 0:43:21.400 --> 0:43:24.920 to inflict like the fail suns of neoliberalism and the 0:43:25.239 --> 0:43:29.040 people of New Orleans that's gonna get worse by the way, Okay, great, yeah, um, 0:43:29.360 --> 0:43:33.439 so this is really bad, right New Orleans? Now? Okay, 0:43:33.480 --> 0:43:37.839 so I think there's there's some kind of controversy about 0:43:37.840 --> 0:43:41.480 how exactly you calculate this. At the very least sixty 0:43:41.600 --> 0:43:45.399 three out of the sixty six like New Orleans, like big, 0:43:45.520 --> 0:43:48.120 like sorry, let me let me rest at the very 0:43:48.239 --> 0:43:50.480 least sixty three out of the sixty six, like schools 0:43:50.520 --> 0:43:53.360 that they run, like at the very least like that 0:43:53.440 --> 0:43:55.759 that are directly run by the state. Our charter schools. Um, 0:43:56.120 --> 0:43:58.960 there's three more that are also charter schools but are 0:43:59.000 --> 0:44:02.080 kind of administrated by the district. So there is a 0:44:02.200 --> 0:44:04.600 huge debate as to whether there are technically any public 0:44:04.680 --> 0:44:08.759 schools left in in fucking New Orleans. Jesus. Yeah, they 0:44:08.880 --> 0:44:12.280 fired like and this this was this was before Valis 0:44:12.320 --> 0:44:15.480 came into office. But in New Orleans they fired the 0:44:15.960 --> 0:44:18.839 entire every teacher in the fucking city. They fired all 0:44:18.840 --> 0:44:20.920 the unions, literally, all the union teachers were replaced them 0:44:20.920 --> 0:44:25.600 with non union people. M Vallis comes in and starts 0:44:25.640 --> 0:44:29.480 implementing some shit that is just like I like prison 0:44:29.640 --> 0:44:32.960 camp shit. Oh god, here's from here's from tribe again. 0:44:33.480 --> 0:44:36.480 According to Biguard, a lot of kids were arrested for 0:44:36.600 --> 0:44:39.319 quote disruption of a school process if they showed up 0:44:39.400 --> 0:44:42.880 late to class and refused to be kicked out for tardiness. 0:44:43.480 --> 0:44:47.200 And again they are being arrested for refuge for wanting 0:44:47.239 --> 0:44:51.279 to stay in school. Yeah, black kids, black girls were 0:44:51.400 --> 0:44:55.120 arrested for having quote rat tail combs, which have long, 0:44:55.320 --> 0:45:00.319 sharp handles from grating hair. Yeah. In one instance, Gard 0:45:00.360 --> 0:45:03.040 said a six year old student was expelled and charged 0:45:03.080 --> 0:45:06.719 with possession and distribution of a controlled substance because he 0:45:06.840 --> 0:45:09.719 brought toms to school and gave them to his classmates 0:45:09.800 --> 0:45:15.680 thinking they were candy. What the fuck they charged a 0:45:15.880 --> 0:45:21.160 six year old? Yeah? God, yeah, the levels of fucking 0:45:21.280 --> 0:45:23.440 cruelty that have to exist, Like a cop has to 0:45:23.520 --> 0:45:25.960 see a six year old and not be like a lull. 0:45:26.520 --> 0:45:28.840 Those are toms, like the kitch by should neat too 0:45:28.840 --> 0:45:31.200 many of those. Let me go, he didn't know they 0:45:31.239 --> 0:45:37.279 were kiddy because he's six Jesus Christ. Yeah, just like 0:45:37.719 --> 0:45:43.480 just just jetty widely like abhorrently evil shit. Yeah. See 0:45:43.520 --> 0:45:45.800 this is like maybe now is a good time to 0:45:45.880 --> 0:45:48.480 point out that, like U, in the wake of yet 0:45:48.480 --> 0:45:50.719 another terrible school shooting, people will want to put more 0:45:50.760 --> 0:45:52.640 cops in schools. This is what happens when we put 0:45:52.719 --> 0:45:55.879 cops in schools, right, They brutalize our fucking children. Yeah, 0:45:56.600 --> 0:46:00.319 and like it's not yeah, like the state doing vince 0:46:00.360 --> 0:46:02.560 the children is not on the way or protect children. Yeah. 0:46:02.680 --> 0:46:05.800 What I want to say, the more your school represents 0:46:05.920 --> 0:46:08.920 the levels of law enforcement that are in a prison camp, 0:46:09.000 --> 0:46:11.919 the more the actual experience of the children will become 0:46:12.000 --> 0:46:17.480 like prison camps. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, but also just 0:46:17.719 --> 0:46:20.680 literally I mean, that's God. I love to go to 0:46:20.760 --> 0:46:22.960 the Panoptic on high school. Garrison, what are you talking about. 0:46:23.640 --> 0:46:26.160 It's just the panoptic on high school where if you don't, 0:46:26.200 --> 0:46:28.440 if you don't get kicked out of your fucking class 0:46:28.520 --> 0:46:32.600 for being late, they arrest you the coalent again. Yeah, 0:46:33.040 --> 0:46:36.960 just so speaking speaking of disciplining and punishing. So these 0:46:37.080 --> 0:46:39.560 charter schools, they do think that charter schools always do right, 0:46:39.560 --> 0:46:41.319 which is sometimes if you know, if if you look 0:46:41.320 --> 0:46:43.320 at people who talk about educational reform, they'll be like, 0:46:43.800 --> 0:46:46.800 charter schools have like really great like test numbers, and 0:46:46.920 --> 0:46:48.680 a that's just like not true, right, that they're only 0:46:48.719 --> 0:46:51.320 looking at the really good charter schools. But you know, 0:46:51.520 --> 0:46:53.279 here's the thing. If you give a public school the 0:46:53.320 --> 0:46:55.040 amount of money that a really good charter school has, 0:46:55.080 --> 0:46:57.320 it will also be a really good school. But but 0:46:57.360 --> 0:46:58.880 there's the second thing that charter schools can do that 0:46:58.960 --> 0:47:01.320 other schools can't, which is that charter schools could just 0:47:01.360 --> 0:47:03.719 fucking kick students out. And this is one of the 0:47:03.760 --> 0:47:05.719 ways that they maintain their test numbers is they just 0:47:05.880 --> 0:47:08.080 kick out kids over whatever. Yet you don't do who 0:47:08.080 --> 0:47:09.719 aren't initially doing well on tests. So they don't have 0:47:09.760 --> 0:47:12.000 to teach them and like bother to improve their test scores. 0:47:12.520 --> 0:47:14.520 And in New Orleans they get in trouble because the 0:47:14.600 --> 0:47:17.000 kids they were kicking out were kids with disabilities who 0:47:17.040 --> 0:47:20.239 they were illegally yeah, who they were illegally not like 0:47:20.520 --> 0:47:24.120 giving individual education plans too, and also they were these 0:47:24.239 --> 0:47:26.120 everything right, These charter schools are all run by different 0:47:26.120 --> 0:47:29.319 private corporations, and so there's no system of tracking whether 0:47:29.400 --> 0:47:31.080 when a kid gets kicked out whether they can actually 0:47:31.080 --> 0:47:34.920 get it go to another school. So they're just leaving 0:47:35.040 --> 0:47:37.480 these disabled kids, like in the fucking win with no 0:47:37.600 --> 0:47:43.000 school to go to. And this was so illegal that 0:47:43.160 --> 0:47:46.239 after a lawsuit, like I think it might still be 0:47:46.280 --> 0:47:47.960 going to this day. It was going like twenty fourteen. 0:47:48.280 --> 0:47:50.919 Like the school the Philadelphia school system was like under 0:47:50.960 --> 0:47:53.600 resizaship by the federal government because they committed so many 0:47:53.640 --> 0:47:58.719 crimes against disabled students. Jesus Christ, that is brutal. Yeah, 0:47:58.840 --> 0:48:02.080 it's awful, fucking sorry. Stuff makes you kind of WoT 0:48:02.160 --> 0:48:03.719 an education for a lot of my adult life, and 0:48:03.719 --> 0:48:07.360 this ship makes me furious. Yeah, I just wanted to 0:48:07.640 --> 0:48:09.600 what do you you to guess? Where do you think 0:48:09.680 --> 0:48:12.319 they sent Paul Vallis next after he got kicked out 0:48:12.360 --> 0:48:17.600 of I try trying to run of New Orleans. Did 0:48:17.680 --> 0:48:20.759 they send him to set up a finishing school for 0:48:20.840 --> 0:48:26.200 girls in Kabul? No, but similar similar vibes. Oh, for 0:48:26.320 --> 0:48:29.279 fock's sake, it dude, it's outside the continental US. Yes, 0:48:31.719 --> 0:48:39.160 it's not a rock no Puerto Rito earthquake. It's Haiti 0:48:39.239 --> 0:48:43.800 after the yep yep. So now we've talked about this 0:48:43.840 --> 0:48:45.960 in four on the show. In two thousan ten, there 0:48:46.120 --> 0:48:51.760 was a just unbelievably heartwrenchingly catastrophic earthquake killed two hundred 0:48:51.760 --> 0:48:54.239 and twenty thousand people and also destroyed like almost every 0:48:54.280 --> 0:48:58.000 building in Haiti. And this kicks off phase two of 0:48:58.040 --> 0:49:00.160 the UN occupation of the country. We talked about out 0:49:00.160 --> 0:49:02.000 this in our episodes on Lulu and Bill Snaro. This 0:49:02.120 --> 0:49:04.000 is this is when the UN guys from the Paul 0:49:04.120 --> 0:49:07.600 bring in Cholerado, a bunch of the operation. Right. Yeah, 0:49:08.040 --> 0:49:10.320 So right after this happens, so the US just like 0:49:10.600 --> 0:49:14.839 sends Marines in, right, and no one in Haiti asked 0:49:14.840 --> 0:49:18.600 for it. We just we just fucking invade um and 0:49:19.000 --> 0:49:22.040 they bring in Paul Vallis, like specifically Paul Vallas and 0:49:22.080 --> 0:49:27.319 also Arnie Duncan, who's again Obama's fucking education secretary, gets 0:49:27.400 --> 0:49:29.480 bring in to rebuild the Haitian school system on the 0:49:29.520 --> 0:49:33.320 New Orleans model. Now, okay, weirdly, if they had actually 0:49:33.360 --> 0:49:36.000 implemented New Orleans model, it would have been an improvement, 0:49:36.160 --> 0:49:38.120 because they hate the way the Haitian school system worked 0:49:38.120 --> 0:49:40.719 was it was ninety percent private and the tuition was 0:49:40.840 --> 0:49:44.040 forty percent of someone's annual budget, like like a family's 0:49:44.080 --> 0:49:47.200 annual budget. Yeah, so that's the friends in Haiti who 0:49:47.239 --> 0:49:52.640 couldn't afford to pay for school trying. It's fucking horrible. 0:49:53.520 --> 0:49:55.600 Vallis is supposed to like change this, right, he gets 0:49:55.600 --> 0:49:57.800 brought in, They bring in the Clinton Foundation. Instead, what 0:49:57.920 --> 0:50:00.840 happens is the Clinton Foundation and buys a bunch of 0:50:00.920 --> 0:50:04.080 trailers to use as schools for the from from specifically 0:50:04.160 --> 0:50:06.000 the same people who got in trouble for selling for 0:50:06.120 --> 0:50:11.200 maldehyde ridden trailers to FEMA drink Katrina, and then you know, okay, 0:50:11.680 --> 0:50:15.200 and I never think that I I can't emphasize enough 0:50:15.440 --> 0:50:20.279 the grifted trailer ink or something. Yeah, they fucking suck well. 0:50:20.280 --> 0:50:23.040 But also also even though trailers were good, right, there's 0:50:23.040 --> 0:50:26.040 a real issue with trying to use trailers to teach 0:50:26.200 --> 0:50:29.120 kids in a place that is hot, yeah, which is 0:50:29.160 --> 0:50:32.320 that it is one hundred fucking degrees inside these trailers. 0:50:32.320 --> 0:50:34.759 These trailers are made of metal, so if you touch 0:50:34.800 --> 0:50:37.359 the side of the thing, you get burned. Kids at people, 0:50:37.520 --> 0:50:39.719 people who like teachers who were taught there, routinely talk 0:50:39.760 --> 0:50:41.719 about how every kid, and they're every kid in their 0:50:41.760 --> 0:50:44.200 fucking class was having heat stroke and they were just 0:50:44.239 --> 0:50:46.440 like giving them painkillers for heat stroke because that's all 0:50:46.440 --> 0:50:50.840 they could do. And yeah, it is punishingly hot if 0:50:50.880 --> 0:50:52.759 you haven't works in that part of the world a lot, 0:50:52.840 --> 0:50:56.000 and it is, it's hot enough without banking a tank 0:50:56.040 --> 0:50:59.759 can Yeah, and vowless's fucking education form. They don't fucking work. 0:51:00.000 --> 0:51:02.680 They don't do shit, right, hate education system is still 0:51:02.800 --> 0:51:05.800 fucked despite all the body the Clinton Foundation and the like, 0:51:05.960 --> 0:51:09.560 all these experts got paid, Like, it's still really bad. 0:51:10.200 --> 0:51:15.360 I vallist like specifically, like very specifically defended the use 0:51:15.440 --> 0:51:19.359 of trailers is like a thing you teach people in um. Yeah, 0:51:19.520 --> 0:51:21.840 and you know this stuff. I'll continue used to the 0:51:22.680 --> 0:51:24.920 present day. The US has been trying to find another excuse, 0:51:25.080 --> 0:51:27.040 just trying to find a way to do another intervention. 0:51:27.400 --> 0:51:31.160 In Haiti. So she's still on the New Orleans job. 0:51:31.200 --> 0:51:33.560 I think, while he's doing this Haiti job, and then 0:51:33.560 --> 0:51:41.040 he takes another job in Chile. Yeah, why, I don't know. 0:51:41.480 --> 0:51:44.640 The people people get well, because because the the Interamerican 0:51:44.680 --> 0:51:47.279 Development Bank gives him half a million dollars to run 0:51:47.320 --> 0:51:50.719 two thousand schools there. So again he's now he's now 0:51:50.800 --> 0:51:54.080 splitting his time between New Orleans, Haiti, and Chile. It's 0:51:54.120 --> 0:51:56.319 it's almost impossible to find it. I spent a lot 0:51:56.320 --> 0:51:59.279 of time looking. It's like it's really hard to find 0:51:59.360 --> 0:52:01.640 like anything about what actually he was doing in Chile. 0:52:02.000 --> 0:52:03.920 What we do know was when he got there, he 0:52:04.040 --> 0:52:06.400 was met by the enormous two thousand and eleven Chilean 0:52:06.440 --> 0:52:10.120 student protests, which then later turned into the twenty thirteen 0:52:10.239 --> 0:52:13.200 Chilean student protests, which turned into two thousand and fifteen 0:52:13.320 --> 0:52:15.480 Chilean student protests, which turned into the two thousand and 0:52:15.520 --> 0:52:20.320 nineteen Chilean student protests. So you know, I mean, I 0:52:20.520 --> 0:52:23.040 just I just want to like you. It is possible 0:52:23.080 --> 0:52:25.520 to run Paul Vallis out of your country a couple 0:52:25.600 --> 0:52:27.680 of different places, or at least your school. Jesians were 0:52:27.680 --> 0:52:29.560 also a country a couple of places have done it, 0:52:31.520 --> 0:52:34.400 and then after that they ended up Bridgeport, Connecticut for 0:52:34.480 --> 0:52:37.320 some reason, where he gets run out after doing like 0:52:37.600 --> 0:52:41.840 he gets he flees Connecticut, like trying to escape a 0:52:41.960 --> 0:52:44.879 lawsuit about all the illegal anti union stuff that he did. 0:52:46.239 --> 0:52:48.400 I really love the image of someone trying to desperately 0:52:48.520 --> 0:52:55.399 flee from Connecticut. Yeah, like it's so small. How how 0:52:55.520 --> 0:52:58.520 hard is it to leave Connecticut? It seems pretty easy 0:52:58.560 --> 0:53:00.840 to jump over the line. I mean the one the 0:53:01.680 --> 0:53:03.400 video I actually want to see is him getting out 0:53:03.440 --> 0:53:07.839 of Philly. See see, getting out of Philly sounds actually hard. 0:53:08.200 --> 0:53:11.759 Getting out of this Connecticut is like, come on, come on. Yeah, 0:53:11.960 --> 0:53:13.640 the video I want to seuse him getting sent back 0:53:13.680 --> 0:53:21.480 to Haiti by himself. Oh god. Yeah. So he runs 0:53:22.080 --> 0:53:26.440 again and she wasn't fourteen. So Bigovis gets arrested for 0:53:26.680 --> 0:53:29.440 you know, selling a Senate seat, and he tries to 0:53:29.560 --> 0:53:33.160 run for lieutenant governor on on a slate, on like 0:53:33.200 --> 0:53:35.360 a ticket with Pat Quinn who had been the governor 0:53:35.400 --> 0:53:38.360 because he'd been the lieutenant governor under boys, and they like, 0:53:38.400 --> 0:53:41.400 actually they managed to lose in Illinois to a Republican, 0:53:42.200 --> 0:53:43.960 which is like, I think that should not happen unless 0:53:43.960 --> 0:53:46.640 the Democrats would like really fuck up, which I mean 0:53:46.640 --> 0:53:50.600 it happens, right, but like, yeah, so Democrats can make 0:53:50.640 --> 0:53:53.560 can make electoral mistakes. Are you sure to be fair? 0:53:53.880 --> 0:53:58.600 To be fair? This one wasn't. This wasn't even an 0:53:58.680 --> 0:54:02.080 electoral thing. This was just the guy tried to sell 0:54:02.120 --> 0:54:04.640 a fucking Senate and people were so mad at into 0:54:04.640 --> 0:54:07.800 the next election, They're like, we will vote for Bruce Rowner, 0:54:07.880 --> 0:54:12.640 who is just like a fucking absolute dipshit. But okay, 0:54:12.680 --> 0:54:15.799 so she So he has now lost two consecutive runs 0:54:15.840 --> 0:54:20.560 for governor, right governor and lieutenant governor. Now this year 0:54:20.800 --> 0:54:23.000 he actually he would he had another bid where he 0:54:23.080 --> 0:54:25.719 was maybe gonna run, and then he stopped. And now 0:54:26.040 --> 0:54:27.879 now he is one of the candidates for the mayor 0:54:27.920 --> 0:54:31.960 of Chicago. Now, while he's been doing his campaigning for this, 0:54:32.280 --> 0:54:36.120 some other fun stuff has been happening. Um, so he 0:54:36.280 --> 0:54:48.560 has an absolutely unlistenable podcasts please nodered. I considered pulling 0:54:48.840 --> 0:54:50.360 clips from this, and then I was like, I'm not. 0:54:50.400 --> 0:54:53.879 I can't inflict this on you. Absolutely it sucks too much. Yeah, 0:54:53.960 --> 0:54:59.839 I would simply leave this zoom call. I'm not, I'm 0:54:59.840 --> 0:55:03.279 just trauma. I was gonna, like, I was gonna talk 0:55:03.320 --> 0:55:04.759 about one of the things that he said a couple 0:55:04.760 --> 0:55:06.239 of things that he well, okay, one that he said 0:55:06.280 --> 0:55:08.360 on this one of they said on a different show. Um. 0:55:08.640 --> 0:55:10.759 One of the things was he starts ranting about this 0:55:10.920 --> 0:55:14.000 thing called culturally responsive teaching, which is this kind of 0:55:14.080 --> 0:55:18.799 liberal like anti racist. Yeah, this is a big thing. 0:55:18.880 --> 0:55:22.720 Like if anyone ever starts talking about culturally responsive teaching 0:55:22.760 --> 0:55:25.239 and starts yelling about it like they're a racist, like that, 0:55:25.360 --> 0:55:28.400 those are the only people who like actually like consistently. 0:55:28.440 --> 0:55:30.759 I mean, like it's not like there ar't criticisms of it, 0:55:30.800 --> 0:55:32.520 but like almost everyone who talks about this on like 0:55:32.560 --> 0:55:36.799 a school board level is like a really weird racist guy. 0:55:37.080 --> 0:55:39.800 So she starts raving about how this means that everyone's 0:55:39.800 --> 0:55:43.040 gonna get handed a copy of Mao's Little Red Book, 0:55:43.480 --> 0:55:46.840 and then says, quote, what is this the cultural Revolution? 0:55:48.120 --> 0:55:51.239 Now we have covered the cultural revolution over the course 0:55:51.280 --> 0:55:53.400 of the show in the Atlanta episodes, and I'm just 0:55:53.480 --> 0:55:58.480 gonna simply say no and move on to read this 0:55:59.080 --> 0:56:03.480 unbelievably racist thing that he said. I'm just gonna read this. 0:56:04.120 --> 0:56:08.480 It's it's real bad. But for that matter, if you're 0:56:08.520 --> 0:56:10.440 a black child, you go home and listen to your 0:56:10.480 --> 0:56:12.960 parent when your parent has failed to be successful in 0:56:13.000 --> 0:56:16.840 addressing the ways these historically racist obstacles that have denied 0:56:16.880 --> 0:56:19.160 them a chance to equal opportunity. Here's the guy he's 0:56:19.200 --> 0:56:21.799 talking to, Paul. I wonder if you're a black kid, 0:56:21.840 --> 0:56:23.719 why don't you become a criminal? If you're hearing this 0:56:23.760 --> 0:56:25.600 stuff in school, everyone with the white skin is an 0:56:25.600 --> 0:56:27.600 oppress or if you're a black skin, you're the oppressed. 0:56:27.800 --> 0:56:30.640 That makes it pretty easy to justify any pretty bad conduct. 0:56:30.680 --> 0:56:34.440 In my opinion, you're absolutely right. So this is valence 0:56:34.480 --> 0:56:36.719 comes back. But what you're also doing, you're giving these 0:56:37.040 --> 0:56:39.880 You're giving people an excuse for bad behavior. You're almost 0:56:39.960 --> 0:56:43.040 justifying is Rams book in Fox. So you're right, You're 0:56:43.040 --> 0:56:46.759 absolutely right. Where is the accountability? You're the victim. What's 0:56:46.800 --> 0:56:49.600 happening is it becomes a justification for everything, and I 0:56:49.680 --> 0:56:55.040 think that's a very dangerous thing. Sollas arguing that talking 0:56:55.040 --> 0:56:57.759 about racism is actually a thing that encourages black people 0:56:57.800 --> 0:57:01.359 to do crime, which is like, that sounds that sounds 0:57:01.440 --> 0:57:05.600 kind of racist me just a little bit. He maybe 0:57:05.800 --> 0:57:10.880 with supremisist gives up racist vibes. Yeah. Um, so speaking 0:57:10.920 --> 0:57:14.280 of racist vibes, his son is a cop in Santa 0:57:14.320 --> 0:57:16.040 Fe and he was one of three cops who shot 0:57:16.080 --> 0:57:18.800 a black guy in the back after calling him boy. Um. 0:57:19.080 --> 0:57:22.840 The cops, including Vasis. Yeah, they start screaming boy at 0:57:22.920 --> 0:57:25.120 him and they shoot him in the back. And the cops, 0:57:25.200 --> 0:57:27.160 including Valles, his son claimed to have found a gun 0:57:27.280 --> 0:57:30.800 next to his body. Um. And in a completely unrelated story, 0:57:30.840 --> 0:57:33.320 you with special forces units in Afghanistan, Ricie Lee carried 0:57:33.360 --> 0:57:35.240 AK forty sevens in a combat zone so they could 0:57:35.280 --> 0:57:36.919 drop the next to the body of people they killed, 0:57:37.080 --> 0:57:39.440 Ridge and declared them insurgents. This has no relation to 0:57:39.520 --> 0:57:41.880 the previous story at all. I am simply relaying facts 0:57:44.640 --> 0:57:49.160 two interesting and unrelated stories. Yeah, didn't. Valis also is 0:57:49.200 --> 0:57:51.320 he's the guy who claimed his Twitter was hacked, right, 0:57:51.400 --> 0:57:54.840 Oh yeah, yeah, so very way back. At the beginning 0:57:54.880 --> 0:57:58.120 of this episode, I talked a bit about the racism 0:57:58.200 --> 0:58:01.040 against Loie Lightfoot and like, one of the tweets that 0:58:01.200 --> 0:58:05.280 he liked is a tweet like calling Lori a man like, 0:58:05.360 --> 0:58:09.840 Lord life Foot a man like. It's just unbelievably racist, 0:58:10.120 --> 0:58:13.920 like homophobic, transphobic shit. And he claims that his account 0:58:13.960 --> 0:58:16.680 was hacked and people were liking tweets without his permission. Yeah, right, 0:58:16.720 --> 0:58:19.160 that's all they did. They just liked somebracist sweets. There's 0:58:19.200 --> 0:58:20.720 like a bunch of other like and the other thing. 0:58:20.760 --> 0:58:24.240 It's like, okay, like Paul Bells doesn't like actually live 0:58:24.320 --> 0:58:28.360 in Chicago. You mentioned this. He lives in like he 0:58:28.640 --> 0:58:32.640 claims to live in Polo's Heights, which is also not Chicago, 0:58:33.560 --> 0:58:36.960 but it's unclear whether he even lives there or if 0:58:37.000 --> 0:58:40.400 he's in like some kind of like even more insane 0:58:40.480 --> 0:58:44.480 outlying suburb that's even less Chicago than the stuff is. 0:58:45.360 --> 0:58:48.000 And he like, he likes, he likes he one of 0:58:48.040 --> 0:58:50.560 the things he likeing tweets, calling it like shit cago 0:58:50.640 --> 0:58:51.920 and stuff. And it's like, well, yeah, it's because he 0:58:51.960 --> 0:58:54.400 doesn't live in the city. He's not actually like these 0:58:54.400 --> 0:58:56.120 are like a bunch of his support, a bunch of 0:58:56.120 --> 0:58:59.240 the money he's getting are from like drained suburban like 0:58:59.400 --> 0:59:02.720 reactionary and okay, So I want to tell one last 0:59:02.760 --> 0:59:05.880 story about him that pisses me off a lot, which 0:59:06.000 --> 0:59:09.920 is the story of a Wake Illinois. So Awake Illinois 0:59:10.200 --> 0:59:13.120 is like Illinois version of Protect Texas Kids. It's a 0:59:13.160 --> 0:59:16.600 group that does Nazi protests at drag events. They managed 0:59:16.640 --> 0:59:19.120 to destroy a bakery called Uprising for trying to hold 0:59:19.120 --> 0:59:21.960 a drag bunt brunch so that they Awake did all 0:59:22.000 --> 0:59:24.560 this thing of like, ah, they're grooming kids, and then 0:59:25.000 --> 0:59:26.840 the Proud Boys showed up and attacked it, and then 0:59:26.880 --> 0:59:28.959 someone like vandalized it, and they nearly had to close 0:59:29.040 --> 0:59:31.880 the entire bakery until a go fund me raised thirty 0:59:31.920 --> 0:59:35.120 thousand dollars for them to survive. They are like, these 0:59:35.160 --> 0:59:39.200 people are unbelievably homophobic. They rant about groomers constantly. They're 0:59:39.200 --> 0:59:41.640 like really transphobic. Anyways, Paul Vallis spoke at one of 0:59:41.680 --> 0:59:45.680 their fundraisers. Oh god. So after this came out, Vallis 0:59:45.720 --> 0:59:47.880 distanced himself from the group, saying you didn't know what 0:59:47.960 --> 0:59:50.880 they represented and just wanted to support school choice. Awake 0:59:51.000 --> 0:59:53.520 responded by going, hey, what the fuck. You absolutely know 0:59:53.600 --> 0:59:56.480 who we are, and they released another video of Vallis 0:59:56.520 --> 0:59:59.560 and another Awake event where he said that AWAKES president 0:59:59.640 --> 1:00:06.080 shad An Adcock should run for governor, So if elected, 1:00:06.120 --> 1:00:09.680 would I probably be the most openly homophobic democratic like 1:00:10.160 --> 1:00:13.360 mayor in the country, which is a pretty wild like, 1:00:14.960 --> 1:00:17.280 which is pretty wild claim, but like I can't think 1:00:17.320 --> 1:00:20.960 of anyone else who actually like showed up at an 1:00:21.040 --> 1:00:25.880 event where people just screaming about groomers, like yeah, and 1:00:25.960 --> 1:00:29.160 of the Democrats, he is just a Republican, Like he's 1:00:29.200 --> 1:00:32.200 he's like like a pretty right wing like Republican who 1:00:32.280 --> 1:00:35.120 runs the Democrat because Chicago political machine is also just 1:00:35.200 --> 1:00:38.160 so far right. I thought this was because low Lightfoot 1:00:38.200 --> 1:00:41.960 defounded the police. Mayor. Oh, I thought that's what happened, 1:00:42.080 --> 1:00:44.440 and people want the police back. That's what That's what 1:00:44.560 --> 1:00:46.600 I That's what I've told you know. The thing is 1:00:46.640 --> 1:00:49.760 actually very funny about the elections is like, so there 1:00:49.880 --> 1:00:52.080 is elections for these like police district councils are just 1:00:52.080 --> 1:00:54.880 supposed to be these like civilian oversight boards and the 1:00:55.080 --> 1:00:57.520 like reform. There was kind of there was an alliance 1:00:57.560 --> 1:01:00.960 to sort of like reform defund an abolitionist candidates, and 1:01:01.320 --> 1:01:03.760 they did fucking amazing and the pro police candidates got 1:01:03.800 --> 1:01:08.560 fucking clabbard and it Meanwhile, every single national story about 1:01:08.600 --> 1:01:11.800 the election was like Chicago crime. I was like, you 1:01:11.920 --> 1:01:15.000 guys don't understand how much everyone here hates the police, 1:01:15.080 --> 1:01:18.240 Like I like, they murdered a thirteen year old, like 1:01:18.560 --> 1:01:25.320 fucking two years ago. I yeah, good, Yeah, I'm gonna 1:01:25.360 --> 1:01:27.680 I'm gonna hedge my thing here by saying there's so 1:01:27.800 --> 1:01:30.400 much other Paul Valle shit I couldn't fit, Like I 1:01:30.720 --> 1:01:33.440 really wanted to talk about Keith Thornton, who is Chicago's 1:01:33.480 --> 1:01:37.360 George Santos, who like his thing is that he stole 1:01:37.480 --> 1:01:40.400 nine to eleven dispatcher Valor and is like keep showing 1:01:40.480 --> 1:01:43.800 up in pictures with Vallis. Just just google Keith Thornton 1:01:44.360 --> 1:01:46.520 and you will have a good time. Like, there are 1:01:46.560 --> 1:01:48.600 so many other Valist things that he did that are awful. 1:01:48.600 --> 1:01:50.200 There are probably things that he's done that will never 1:01:50.320 --> 1:01:53.440 know about because he did them in like I don't know, 1:01:54.360 --> 1:01:56.360 like like what the fuck he was doing in Chile. 1:01:56.480 --> 1:01:58.560 We probably won't ever know all the things he didn't 1:01:58.560 --> 1:02:01.680 hate E. Yeah, don't let this guy become the fucking 1:02:01.760 --> 1:02:06.200 mayor of Chicago. He will leave the city utterly destroyed. 1:02:08.000 --> 1:02:13.560 Let's go Brandon. I I'm so annoyed that people are 1:02:13.560 --> 1:02:15.880 on ironically, let's go brandon ing in Chicago now for 1:02:15.920 --> 1:02:19.440 Brandon Johnson. It's bringing it back, We're taking it back, 1:02:19.440 --> 1:02:24.480 We're reclaiming it. I reclaim Brandon. Yeah, I'm so bad 1:02:24.760 --> 1:02:28.160 like bringing Brandon back. Okay, I got in trouble with 1:02:28.320 --> 1:02:31.520 my boss in twenty fifteen for saying fuck Hillary, like 1:02:31.640 --> 1:02:33.720 you fucking little bitches. You could just you can just 1:02:33.840 --> 1:02:36.240 say that. You you could just say fuck Joe Biden 1:02:36.640 --> 1:02:40.800 like all of your cowards. Yes, it was. It is 1:02:40.880 --> 1:02:43.880 deeply cowardly afraid of saying fuck. But at the same time, 1:02:43.880 --> 1:02:50.040 they think they're gonna staged an armed overthrow of the government. Huh. Anyway, Oh, 1:02:50.160 --> 1:02:52.320 there's actually okay, this is the thing I actually should much. 1:02:52.640 --> 1:02:57.920 There are a bunch of ties between um, there are 1:02:57.920 --> 1:03:00.520 a bunch of ties between val Us and guys who 1:03:00.520 --> 1:03:02.720 were at J six, like and like a lot of 1:03:02.800 --> 1:03:05.160 j S people support him. He's like he's like he 1:03:05.320 --> 1:03:07.520 is the MAGA candidate. That's like there's like, oh, there's 1:03:07.520 --> 1:03:09.320 a whole thing there that I didn't get into because 1:03:10.880 --> 1:03:13.680 I don't know. There's so much you could do, like 1:03:13.840 --> 1:03:17.080 seven episodes just about Paul Vallas and how much he sucks. 1:03:17.760 --> 1:03:21.760 But yeah, stop him if he fucking gets elected. We're 1:03:21.800 --> 1:03:23.840 doing that. We're doing that. We're doing the fucking Chilean 1:03:23.920 --> 1:03:44.240 student protests because yeah, hate him. Opie has a bad day. Hey, 1:03:44.560 --> 1:03:48.360 welcome to It could happen here a podcast about things 1:03:48.520 --> 1:03:51.960 falling apart um and today it's kind of going to 1:03:52.000 --> 1:03:55.160 be a conversation about uh, is shit falling apart? Are 1:03:55.200 --> 1:03:58.320 we all about to be devoured by a rogue AI? 1:03:58.720 --> 1:04:02.080 Is your job about to be devowered by a rogue AI? 1:04:02.560 --> 1:04:04.880 These are the questions that we're going to, you know, 1:04:05.080 --> 1:04:08.120 talk around and about and stuff today and with us 1:04:08.160 --> 1:04:12.919 today is Noah John Syracusa, a math professor at Bentley University. Noah, 1:04:13.040 --> 1:04:16.600 welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, and I'm 1:04:16.680 --> 1:04:20.080 reaching out. We're talking right now because there's an article 1:04:20.200 --> 1:04:22.960 that was put up in The New York Times on 1:04:23.160 --> 1:04:25.800 March twenty four, twenty twenty three, titled you can have 1:04:25.960 --> 1:04:27.960 the Blue Pill or the Red Pill and We're out 1:04:28.000 --> 1:04:31.480 of Blue Pills, which is a fun title by Yuval 1:04:31.560 --> 1:04:36.600 Harari Tristan Harris and as a raskin. And it's an 1:04:36.720 --> 1:04:40.080 article that is kind of about the pitfalls and dangers 1:04:40.280 --> 1:04:43.960 of AI research, of which there definitely are some. I 1:04:44.160 --> 1:04:46.000 enjoyed your thread on the matter. I thought it was 1:04:46.040 --> 1:04:48.640 a lucid breakdown of the things the article gets right 1:04:48.720 --> 1:04:50.360 and the areas in which I think they're a bit 1:04:50.440 --> 1:04:53.120 fear mongery. So yeah, I think that's probably a good 1:04:53.160 --> 1:04:55.720 place to start, unless you wanted to start by just 1:04:55.840 --> 1:04:58.919 kind of generally talking about where you kind of are 1:04:59.200 --> 1:05:03.360 on AI and what you kind of think, you know, 1:05:03.600 --> 1:05:08.200 the technology is advancing towards right now. Yeah, I mean, 1:05:08.240 --> 1:05:10.400 I think I can probably answer both those questions and 1:05:10.440 --> 1:05:12.800 the same because part of why I enjoyed writing that 1:05:12.880 --> 1:05:16.160 threat dissecting the article is I just had the strangest 1:05:16.200 --> 1:05:18.440 feeling reading it that I agreed with it so much 1:05:18.480 --> 1:05:21.560 in principle and yet somehow objected it to so much 1:05:21.720 --> 1:05:24.919 in detail. Yeah, and it thinking about that article helped 1:05:24.920 --> 1:05:27.080 me think about my own feelings on AI, which you know, 1:05:27.240 --> 1:05:29.360 every day of the week is slightly different because so 1:05:29.440 --> 1:05:34.320 much news happens. Yeah, I found myself overall deeply frustrated 1:05:34.360 --> 1:05:36.520 that I agree with the central conclusion, which is that 1:05:37.000 --> 1:05:39.760 maybe we shouldn't be just like plowing headlong into this 1:05:39.880 --> 1:05:43.280 and should be more careful when we we we screw 1:05:43.320 --> 1:05:46.520 around with technology like this, which I agree with and 1:05:46.680 --> 1:05:48.600 I feel like should have been the thing we did 1:05:48.680 --> 1:05:51.560 with like I don't know, Facebook, Twitter, like all of 1:05:51.640 --> 1:05:55.160 these things like it's less. My obsession is less with 1:05:55.280 --> 1:05:58.200 like the specific dangers of AI and more with what 1:05:58.360 --> 1:06:01.840 we keep letting these guys who are fundamentally like gamblers 1:06:01.880 --> 1:06:05.440 within your capital money really put our society through the 1:06:05.520 --> 1:06:08.240 ringer without ever asking should we like do any research 1:06:08.320 --> 1:06:10.600 on maybe how social media affects children and like how 1:06:10.720 --> 1:06:14.919 all of these different things. And it's it's right that, like, yeah, 1:06:14.960 --> 1:06:17.560 we should be concerned about what these people are going 1:06:17.640 --> 1:06:23.120 to do with AI, but also why now? Why just now? Yeah? 1:06:23.240 --> 1:06:26.160 And that raises a really good point, which is what's 1:06:26.280 --> 1:06:29.720 different now versus what we've been experiencing with social media? 1:06:29.800 --> 1:06:32.520 And just to give your listeners some context, one of 1:06:32.560 --> 1:06:35.200 the three authors on this New York Times article is 1:06:35.280 --> 1:06:38.240 famous for writing this book Sapiens that's a sweeping history 1:06:38.240 --> 1:06:40.960 of humanity, and the other two are actually most famous 1:06:41.040 --> 1:06:44.919 for the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. So they really 1:06:45.000 --> 1:06:47.920 are in this camp of warning people about social media algorithms. 1:06:48.360 --> 1:06:50.720 And as exactly as you're saying, that's sort of this 1:06:50.920 --> 1:06:53.680 thing that we've been dealing with, probably quite poorly, and 1:06:53.800 --> 1:06:56.200 now we're kind of moving on to the next societal risk, 1:06:56.240 --> 1:06:59.200 which is AI. So that as a really important question 1:06:59.240 --> 1:07:00.920 of what's different now. And I think that's one of 1:07:00.960 --> 1:07:03.640 the things the articles try to address, which is many 1:07:03.720 --> 1:07:06.480 of the problems that we already have with algorithms, data 1:07:06.520 --> 1:07:09.840 driven algorithms, and even AI as it's used in social 1:07:09.920 --> 1:07:13.280 media is still happening now, but somehow things feel like 1:07:13.720 --> 1:07:18.160 they're spiring out of control. Yeah, And I think, I mean, honestly, 1:07:18.200 --> 1:07:19.720 I think a lot of this just has to do 1:07:19.840 --> 1:07:24.080 with culturally, what are touchstones for AI we're going into this, 1:07:24.520 --> 1:07:27.960 you know, which are Skynet? You know, like it's that 1:07:28.080 --> 1:07:30.440 sort of thing, and you do see. I feel like 1:07:30.680 --> 1:07:35.200 the uncredited fourth author on this particular article is James Cameron, 1:07:35.600 --> 1:07:39.320 because there's pieces of it throughout this wellere like there's 1:07:39.320 --> 1:07:42.520 some it opens actually pretty provocatively. Imagine that you are 1:07:42.640 --> 1:07:45.400 boarding an airplane. Half the engineers who built it tell 1:07:45.440 --> 1:07:47.560 you there is a ten percent chance the plane will crash, 1:07:47.880 --> 1:07:50.560 killing you and everyone else on it. Would you still board? 1:07:51.000 --> 1:07:53.680 In twenty twenty two, over seven hundred top academics and 1:07:53.800 --> 1:07:57.000 researchers behind the leading artificial intelligence companies were asked in 1:07:57.040 --> 1:07:59.800 a survey about future AI risk. Half of those surveys, 1:08:00.200 --> 1:08:02.040 there was a ten percent or greater chance of human 1:08:02.080 --> 1:08:07.480 extinction from future AI systems, which, yeah, let's zoom it on. Yeah. Yeah, 1:08:08.480 --> 1:08:11.919 that's because what I tried to do in my thread 1:08:12.040 --> 1:08:14.040 was go through all the claims and assertions and really 1:08:14.080 --> 1:08:17.160 pause and say hold on. But that's a great one 1:08:17.200 --> 1:08:20.160 to start, because there's a lot to dig in right there. Yeah. So, 1:08:20.320 --> 1:08:23.880 first of all, there's a huge difference in that airplanes 1:08:23.920 --> 1:08:26.479 are based on science and physics and things that we 1:08:26.640 --> 1:08:30.000 understand pretty well. There's a lot to it, and there's 1:08:30.040 --> 1:08:32.080 been millions of flights, so you have a lot of data. 1:08:32.120 --> 1:08:34.040 You know, how many planes crash and how many don't. 1:08:34.479 --> 1:08:37.280 Maybe one engine goes out, you can do the statistics 1:08:37.320 --> 1:08:40.120 and CEO you know whatever percent of planes without that 1:08:40.200 --> 1:08:43.880 engine still land safely. The problem with AI is we're 1:08:44.000 --> 1:08:47.479 just guessing. Yeah, right, there's no way to know one 1:08:47.560 --> 1:08:49.400 hundred years from now or ten years from now what 1:08:49.479 --> 1:08:51.519 it's going to do, what the real risks are, so 1:08:51.640 --> 1:08:56.080 we speculate, and that's not uncharted territory, right Let nuclear 1:08:56.160 --> 1:08:59.200 weapons were first introduced, people had to guess and speculate. 1:08:59.760 --> 1:09:03.320 But the danger, I think is putting it in that 1:09:03.439 --> 1:09:06.680 same category as things like airplanes or climate change. I'll 1:09:06.720 --> 1:09:09.400 like to think about climate change. When you see these, 1:09:09.720 --> 1:09:12.479 you know what's the IPCC. I forget the acronym in 1:09:12.520 --> 1:09:16.240 these reports. That's based on thousands of scientists digging into 1:09:16.360 --> 1:09:19.599 thousands of published papers and all this data really modeling 1:09:19.680 --> 1:09:22.000 the environment. There's a lot of meat and substance to it. 1:09:22.560 --> 1:09:24.960 The problem with the AI is it's mostly people I 1:09:25.040 --> 1:09:26.519 hate to say it, but like me or like you, 1:09:26.720 --> 1:09:29.439 just kind of guessing and thinking, maybe this will happen, 1:09:29.760 --> 1:09:34.160 maybe that'll happen. The reasonable thing to say. If you're 1:09:34.240 --> 1:09:36.920 in AARs you just like, yeah, I have concerns that 1:09:37.080 --> 1:09:40.400 AI could cause serious negative externalities for the human race. 1:09:40.520 --> 1:09:43.720 Perfectly reasonable statement. It is physically impossible to say there's 1:09:43.720 --> 1:09:47.120 a ten percent chance, exactly because it's never done that before. 1:09:47.240 --> 1:09:50.200 You know, I'm a math professor, and I'm the first 1:09:50.280 --> 1:09:53.880 to say numbers don't have some intrinsic meaning. Right. If 1:09:53.960 --> 1:09:56.680 I just say something has maybe a fifteen percent, I'm 1:09:56.680 --> 1:09:58.400 just making it up. I'm pulling out of my ass. Yeah, 1:09:58.560 --> 1:10:02.960 it doesn't make it true. So it's this, it's a 1:10:03.040 --> 1:10:05.439 general pet peeve I have of sort of giving a 1:10:05.560 --> 1:10:08.920 false sense of precision by using numbers that you don't 1:10:08.960 --> 1:10:11.400 really know where they came from, or they're just made up. 1:10:11.760 --> 1:10:14.880 So that's one issue is these numbers are made up, 1:10:15.080 --> 1:10:18.120 and asking a thousand people to make up numbers isn't 1:10:18.160 --> 1:10:21.000 necessarily any better than asking one or two. You know, 1:10:21.080 --> 1:10:23.360 then if the numbers made up, it's made up. So 1:10:23.520 --> 1:10:26.439 that's one issue. Yeah, I also do think, and I'm 1:10:26.520 --> 1:10:29.080 not the I saw someone make a note I think 1:10:29.120 --> 1:10:31.639 was Ben Collins, who writes for NBC on Twitter, made 1:10:31.680 --> 1:10:33.560 a note that like, well, the fact that all of 1:10:33.600 --> 1:10:36.599 these statements about like how dangerous they are about human 1:10:36.640 --> 1:10:39.080 extinction are coming out of people in the AI industry 1:10:39.400 --> 1:10:43.200 has started to kind of feel like marketing. That's right, Yeah, exactly, 1:10:43.240 --> 1:10:45.320 it's a little bit of buzz marketing going on here. 1:10:45.439 --> 1:10:47.559 And I think you mentioned social media, and the authors 1:10:47.560 --> 1:10:49.479 of this article mentioned social media, and we have to 1:10:50.000 --> 1:10:52.320 look to the past right to understand the future. I 1:10:52.400 --> 1:10:54.400 think that's the only way to do it. So, what 1:10:54.640 --> 1:10:56.800 was one of the biggest scandals in social media was 1:10:56.880 --> 1:11:00.280 Cambridge Analytica, And as you know, we probably a member. 1:11:00.360 --> 1:11:03.240 This was this data privacy scandal where a bunch of 1:11:03.320 --> 1:11:06.800 data was collected from Facebook users that shouldn't have been 1:11:07.120 --> 1:11:09.120 you know, people didn't realize that the data is being collected, 1:11:09.120 --> 1:11:11.760 they didn't approve it, and it was used for this 1:11:12.080 --> 1:11:16.320 election company or this political company that was trying to 1:11:16.439 --> 1:11:22.519 profile people and influenced campaigns towards Donald Trump, towards Brexit. 1:11:23.400 --> 1:11:26.240 So this was a huge scandal, and you know, Facebook 1:11:26.320 --> 1:11:30.000 was fine five billion dollars or something, very justifiably, but 1:11:30.400 --> 1:11:32.720 I would say what it was in retrospect was a 1:11:32.840 --> 1:11:35.840 data privacy issue. People's personal data was leaked when it 1:11:35.880 --> 1:11:38.559 shouldn't have been. The problem was there was so much 1:11:38.680 --> 1:11:42.800 fear and fear monitoring over it that people felt this 1:11:43.040 --> 1:11:46.839 data was used by these sort of algorithmic mind lasers 1:11:46.960 --> 1:11:49.600 to kind of know us in such great detail and 1:11:49.720 --> 1:11:51.840 get us, trick us into voting for Donald Trump and 1:11:51.920 --> 1:11:55.320 targeting us. And the journey is still kind of out, 1:11:55.400 --> 1:11:58.560 but most of the evidence looks like Cambridge Analytical it 1:11:58.720 --> 1:12:01.960 wasn't that effective. They couldn't do it. And it turns 1:12:02.000 --> 1:12:03.880 out you can know a lot about a person, a 1:12:03.920 --> 1:12:06.360 lot about their data, and it's really hard to influence 1:12:06.400 --> 1:12:09.640 them to change them. So what happened I think was 1:12:09.840 --> 1:12:13.000 there was a lot of alarm set spread rightly so 1:12:13.120 --> 1:12:15.160 about the tech companies. They have too much power, too 1:12:15.240 --> 1:12:16.920 much data, they know too much about us, and this 1:12:17.000 --> 1:12:19.519 horrible thing happened. The problem is a lot of the 1:12:19.600 --> 1:12:24.439 alarmism then actually reinforce this aura of power, of godlike 1:12:24.479 --> 1:12:28.599 power that the tech companies have. People criticizing them actually 1:12:28.680 --> 1:12:32.599 gave them more potency than they deserved. And then suddenly 1:12:32.720 --> 1:12:35.160 Google and Facebook and all they had. It wasn't sudden, 1:12:35.200 --> 1:12:37.080 but it kind of built it up. They had this 1:12:37.240 --> 1:12:40.519 aura that our algorithms are it's so insanely powerful, and 1:12:40.600 --> 1:12:42.360 we have to make sure they stay in the right hands, 1:12:42.400 --> 1:12:45.519 and we can do so much. And that's unfortunately what 1:12:45.600 --> 1:12:48.200 I see happening now a lot, And that is kind 1:12:48.240 --> 1:12:53.519 of the setting for critiquing this article. Yeah, absolutely agree 1:12:53.600 --> 1:12:56.280 that this stuff is risky. AI. I absolutely agree that 1:12:56.360 --> 1:12:58.560 we could go down a dangerous path. But once we 1:12:58.680 --> 1:13:01.720 start leaving firm ground and speculating wildly and using the 1:13:01.800 --> 1:13:04.720 terminator stuff that you described. Yeah, even if you think 1:13:04.760 --> 1:13:06.800 you're criticizing the tech companies, you know what you're doing 1:13:06.920 --> 1:13:09.720 giving them the biggest compliment in the world, saying that 1:13:09.840 --> 1:13:12.439 you guys have created are godlike and you've created these 1:13:12.640 --> 1:13:15.960 mighty machines, You've created a deity, which is very similar 1:13:16.040 --> 1:13:18.559 to the language this argue article has at the end, 1:13:18.600 --> 1:13:20.599 and I think it's kind of worth like, as you're 1:13:20.640 --> 1:13:25.200 bringing up there are real threats. There are real threats 1:13:25.240 --> 1:13:27.160 that are immediately obvious. The threat that a lot of 1:13:27.240 --> 1:13:30.120 writers are going to lose their jobs because companies like 1:13:30.240 --> 1:13:33.360 BuzzFeed decide to replace them with you know, chat, GPT 1:13:33.560 --> 1:13:35.479 or whatever. The fact that a lot of artists are 1:13:35.560 --> 1:13:37.320 going to lose out on work because their work has 1:13:37.360 --> 1:13:39.720 been hoovered up and it's being used to generate Like 1:13:39.840 --> 1:13:42.360 these are very real and very immediate concerns that we 1:13:42.400 --> 1:13:44.760 don't have to They're not hypothetical. We don't have to 1:13:44.880 --> 1:13:48.280 theorize about the AI becoming intelligent for this to be 1:13:48.360 --> 1:13:51.519 a problem. These are things we have to immediately deal 1:13:51.640 --> 1:13:56.080 with because it puts people at risk. It's the same 1:13:56.160 --> 1:13:58.519 thing with like, you know, there's a lot that gets 1:13:58.680 --> 1:14:01.000 talked about with Cambridge in Altica, with kind of like 1:14:01.080 --> 1:14:04.759 the different Russian disinformation efforts. But when I think about 1:14:04.800 --> 1:14:07.120 the stuff that was happening in the same period that 1:14:07.280 --> 1:14:10.120 worries me more. One of the things that occurred is 1:14:10.320 --> 1:14:12.840 because there was so much money to be made if 1:14:12.880 --> 1:14:15.120 you could get certain things to go viral on YouTube 1:14:15.520 --> 1:14:18.600 companies that use tools that weren't wildly dissimilar from some 1:14:18.720 --> 1:14:23.160 of these basically generated CGI videos based on kind of 1:14:23.600 --> 1:14:26.040 random terms that they knew were likely to trick the 1:14:26.120 --> 1:14:29.080 algorithm into trending. And god knows how many children were 1:14:29.120 --> 1:14:31.720 parked in front of these like very unhinged videos for 1:14:31.840 --> 1:14:34.400 hours at a time that they would start watching some 1:14:34.560 --> 1:14:37.040 normal kid musical video or something, and then they're watching 1:14:37.400 --> 1:14:40.240 like the disembodied head of Krusty the crownd bounce around 1:14:40.320 --> 1:14:42.439 while like some sort of nonsense song gets sung and 1:14:42.520 --> 1:14:44.840 it's like, what is that actually going to do with kids? Like, 1:14:44.960 --> 1:14:50.000 we don't know. That's unsettling thought, Yeah, and that's the 1:14:50.120 --> 1:14:52.320 kind of thing, you know, and I'm sure there will 1:14:52.360 --> 1:14:55.360 be obviously, Like one of the things that this article 1:14:55.479 --> 1:14:57.840 is not wrong about is that if we kind of 1:14:58.000 --> 1:15:01.800 leap forward into this technolog oology with the kind of 1:15:01.880 --> 1:15:04.720 abandon that we're used to giving the tech company, there 1:15:04.720 --> 1:15:07.640 will be unforeseen externalities that we can't predict right now 1:15:07.680 --> 1:15:11.360 that will be very concerning. I just don't sky in it. Yeah, 1:15:11.640 --> 1:15:14.679 And that's what was so challenging, not just with that article, 1:15:14.760 --> 1:15:17.640 but with I think the movement we're having is I 1:15:17.760 --> 1:15:21.880 do agree very much in spirit. I agree with the recommendations. 1:15:22.040 --> 1:15:24.360 We need to slow down, we need to be more 1:15:24.479 --> 1:15:29.519 judicious and cautious, we need to really consider these. But again, 1:15:29.640 --> 1:15:33.120 if we overhype the technology, we may be doing ourselves 1:15:33.120 --> 1:15:36.720 a disservice by empowering the very entities that we're trying 1:15:36.760 --> 1:15:39.800 to take power from. And as an example like that, 1:15:40.120 --> 1:15:42.680 can I read a quick quote from the article, do 1:15:43.000 --> 1:15:45.960 you AI's new mastery of language means it can now 1:15:46.040 --> 1:15:50.559 hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization. By'm gaining 1:15:50.680 --> 1:15:53.680 mastery of language, AI is seizing the master key to 1:15:53.720 --> 1:15:58.280 civilization from bank vaults to holy sepulchers. That's right, and 1:15:58.400 --> 1:16:00.880 that I mean, that is fun and you're right to laugh. 1:16:01.439 --> 1:16:03.320 Let's actually zoom in a second. And I think this 1:16:03.560 --> 1:16:07.440 is such a tempting trap that AI is super intelligent 1:16:07.479 --> 1:16:11.439 in some respects. Right, It's done amazing at chats, amazing, 1:16:11.479 --> 1:16:14.519 it's jephard be amazing at various things. Chat GPT is 1:16:14.560 --> 1:16:17.960 amazing at these conversations. So what happens is it's so 1:16:18.160 --> 1:16:22.360 tempting to think AI just equal super smart and because 1:16:22.400 --> 1:16:24.360 it can do those things, and now, look, it can 1:16:24.439 --> 1:16:28.479 converse that it must be the super intelligent conversational entity. 1:16:29.200 --> 1:16:32.320 And it's really good at taking text that's on the 1:16:32.360 --> 1:16:34.439 web that it's already looked at and kind of spinning 1:16:34.479 --> 1:16:36.839 it around and processing. It can come up with poems 1:16:36.880 --> 1:16:40.439 and weird forms. But that doesn't mean it is super 1:16:40.479 --> 1:16:44.000 intelligent in all respects. For instance, one of the main 1:16:44.080 --> 1:16:48.439 issues is to hack civilization. To manipulate us with language, 1:16:48.760 --> 1:16:50.920 it has to kind of know what impact its words 1:16:50.960 --> 1:16:53.880 have on us, and it doesn't really have that. It 1:16:54.000 --> 1:16:56.760 just has a little conversation at textbox and I can 1:16:56.800 --> 1:16:59.120 give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. So the 1:16:59.200 --> 1:17:01.479 only data that it's collecting for me when it talks 1:17:01.520 --> 1:17:03.439 to me any of these chat thoughts is did I 1:17:03.600 --> 1:17:07.720 like the response or not. That's pretty weak data to 1:17:07.800 --> 1:17:10.679 try to manipulate me, you know, it's so basic. That's 1:17:10.760 --> 1:17:12.960 not that different than when I watch YouTube videos. YouTube 1:17:13.040 --> 1:17:14.760 knows what videos I like and what I don't like. 1:17:15.040 --> 1:17:18.400 When you say that YouTube is hacked civilization, no, it's 1:17:18.439 --> 1:17:21.599 addicted a lot of us, but it's not hacked us. Yeah, 1:17:21.880 --> 1:17:24.880 we people have hacked YouTube, and that has done some 1:17:25.080 --> 1:17:28.720 damage to other people. Like, but it's like the thing 1:17:28.920 --> 1:17:31.680 is and that's that's part of why while I have 1:17:31.840 --> 1:17:34.840 many concerns about this technology, it's not that it's going 1:17:34.920 --> 1:17:38.160 to hack civilization because like, we're really good at doing 1:17:38.280 --> 1:17:40.920 that to each other. Like, there's always huge numbers of 1:17:41.000 --> 1:17:44.720 people hacking bits of the populace and manipulating each other, 1:17:44.840 --> 1:17:47.080 and they're always have been. That's why we figured out 1:17:47.120 --> 1:17:52.240 how to paint like it's I do think that there's um, 1:17:52.600 --> 1:17:58.040 there's an interesting conversation to be had about the part 1:17:58.120 --> 1:18:01.920 of why people are kind of willing to leave anything 1:18:02.000 --> 1:18:04.599 as possible with this stuff is that for folks who 1:18:04.640 --> 1:18:07.800 were just kind of living their lives with a normal 1:18:07.840 --> 1:18:10.719 amount of attention paid to the tech industry, it seems 1:18:10.760 --> 1:18:12.880 like these tools popped out of nowhere a couple of 1:18:12.920 --> 1:18:15.280 months ago. Right. It feels like, oh, there has just 1:18:15.400 --> 1:18:18.120 suddenly been this massive breakthrough. And the reality is that 1:18:18.680 --> 1:18:21.000 all of the stuff that people you know, chat gpt 1:18:21.200 --> 1:18:24.160 these different ais that everybody's talking about, this is technology 1:18:24.200 --> 1:18:26.800 that people have been pouring resources into for years and 1:18:26.960 --> 1:18:28.960 years and years and years and years, and that's why 1:18:29.479 --> 1:18:31.519 it's able to do some of these amazing things that 1:18:31.600 --> 1:18:33.880 we've seen but it's not. I don't think it means 1:18:33.920 --> 1:18:35.759 that in a month it's going to be a thousand 1:18:35.840 --> 1:18:39.640 times smarter. It's it's it's a process of labor, and 1:18:39.720 --> 1:18:42.080 it was finally ready to be unveiled to the extent 1:18:42.200 --> 1:18:45.040 that it has been. Maybe that's right. And a good 1:18:45.040 --> 1:18:48.600 example as GPT four which recently came out. There was 1:18:48.640 --> 1:18:51.760 GPT three before and chat GPT and there is so 1:18:51.880 --> 1:18:54.599 much speculation that GPT four is going to be again 1:18:54.680 --> 1:18:58.439 this godlike thing that just you know, that brings us 1:18:58.439 --> 1:19:02.360 to the singularity. And and honestly, it's done better at tests. 1:19:02.520 --> 1:19:04.120 You know, I forget the numbers, but maybe one of 1:19:04.160 --> 1:19:06.439 them got a twenty percent grade on some tests and 1:19:06.479 --> 1:19:08.760 this one got an eighty percent. So that is a 1:19:08.840 --> 1:19:11.280 significant improvement. Right, If you're a teacher and your students 1:19:11.520 --> 1:19:15.120 improve that much, you should be happy. But as you said, 1:19:15.200 --> 1:19:18.160 is that a thousand times no, even though the machine 1:19:18.280 --> 1:19:21.439 is much bigger, much more data, and it just shows that. Yeah, Like, 1:19:21.680 --> 1:19:24.720 the reality is this is incremental progress going at a 1:19:24.840 --> 1:19:27.640 very fast rate, very unsettling even for those of us 1:19:28.000 --> 1:19:31.240 following the field closely. We're experiencing that kind of vertigo 1:19:31.320 --> 1:19:33.080 that you're saying that whoa where did this come from? 1:19:33.600 --> 1:19:35.720 So even within the field, and you're absolutely right, if 1:19:35.800 --> 1:19:37.960 you're just at home, you know, not paying attention for 1:19:38.240 --> 1:19:40.439 a week or a month or a year, suddenly the 1:19:40.479 --> 1:19:43.560 stuff pops up. It is disorienting. But one thing I 1:19:43.640 --> 1:19:45.960 think that's helped me at least kind of clarify what 1:19:47.320 --> 1:19:50.160 not even answering what the risks are, but just understanding 1:19:50.200 --> 1:19:53.160 the different camps of why certain people are reacting differently, 1:19:53.800 --> 1:19:56.000 and why even the people afraid of AI seem to 1:19:56.040 --> 1:19:58.759 be now fighting amongst each other and why it's getting fractured. 1:19:59.439 --> 1:20:03.679 Is are you more afraid of this be AI used 1:20:03.720 --> 1:20:06.920 as a tool by people, or are you more afraid 1:20:06.960 --> 1:20:09.519 of it kind of taking on its own autonomy and 1:20:09.600 --> 1:20:11.920 kind of going rogue and doing its own things. And 1:20:12.040 --> 1:20:14.840 I'm very much afraid of people using it. I think 1:20:15.320 --> 1:20:17.479 big companies are going to use it and there's going 1:20:17.520 --> 1:20:19.160 to be a lot of problems, just like we saw 1:20:19.200 --> 1:20:22.560 with social media. People will get addicted, democracies will be 1:20:22.640 --> 1:20:27.400 flooded with misinformation, It'll be weaponized by various actors, will 1:20:27.439 --> 1:20:30.160 be bought accounts. So I am very concerned about it 1:20:30.320 --> 1:20:33.639 being used. Basically, it performing the job it was told 1:20:33.680 --> 1:20:36.439 to do, but it'll be told to do dangerous jobs, 1:20:36.479 --> 1:20:39.720 either making money or making discord. There's another group of 1:20:39.840 --> 1:20:42.839 people that are more worried about the AI somehow deciding 1:20:42.920 --> 1:20:45.680 on its own to do things to take over. And 1:20:45.920 --> 1:20:48.840 that's where you know, I can't roll it out, But 1:20:49.000 --> 1:20:51.760 that's where I kind of am skeptical. Let's focus on 1:20:51.920 --> 1:20:55.120 how people are using it for now, for the foreseeable future. 1:20:55.600 --> 1:20:57.840 I don't think we need to worry yet, at least 1:20:57.920 --> 1:21:01.160 about the AI somehow having a life of its own 1:21:01.280 --> 1:21:04.519 and stabbing us in the back and enslaving us, because 1:21:04.560 --> 1:21:06.680 there's just so much that can go wrong before you 1:21:06.680 --> 1:21:09.439 even get to that point. Yeah, And it's it's not 1:21:10.320 --> 1:21:13.479 that that's exactly like it's a threat triage kind of thing, 1:21:13.560 --> 1:21:16.000 where like, is it theoretically possible that one day human 1:21:16.080 --> 1:21:19.880 beings could create an artificial intelligence that is capable of 1:21:20.040 --> 1:21:23.720 having its own agency that is malicious? Yeah, sure, I guess, Like, 1:21:24.160 --> 1:21:27.360 I mean maybe, but man, we're there's a lot of 1:21:27.520 --> 1:21:30.520 us that are very malicious right now that are actively 1:21:30.680 --> 1:21:33.880 trying to harm other people at scale. I'm concerned about 1:21:33.920 --> 1:21:36.000 how they will use AI to do that. I think 1:21:36.040 --> 1:21:38.360 botnets are a really good example. One of the things 1:21:38.479 --> 1:21:42.280 that these new this newest generation of AI tools allows 1:21:42.800 --> 1:21:45.880 is more realistic and intelligent bots than I think have 1:21:46.000 --> 1:21:49.439 been accessible at scale before. And that's a very real concern. 1:21:50.560 --> 1:21:53.760 I will say when I kind of sorry, when I 1:21:53.800 --> 1:21:56.280 kind of wargame this back and forth with myself. One 1:21:56.360 --> 1:22:01.120 thing that is oddly comforting is like, well, the shared 1:22:02.280 --> 1:22:06.160 comments that we all inhabit of, like ontological truth is 1:22:06.160 --> 1:22:10.639 already so shattered that like there's there's only so much damage. 1:22:10.720 --> 1:22:14.800 I feel like adding additional bots and additional disinformation can 1:22:15.000 --> 1:22:18.840 really do um. Like one one thought on that though, 1:22:18.880 --> 1:22:21.760 because I've been digging into that too. I've been, you know, 1:22:21.840 --> 1:22:23.800 trying to ponder how to feel about that, because a 1:22:23.840 --> 1:22:25.400 lot of this I don't know, you know, I'm trying 1:22:25.400 --> 1:22:29.479 to make is. I do think if you go back 1:22:29.560 --> 1:22:33.840 to like twenty sixteen earlier versions of the Internet, you know, 1:22:33.920 --> 1:22:36.840 before leading up to Donald Trump's election, Yeah, I think 1:22:37.160 --> 1:22:40.280 there was a lot of wild West to Google, to 1:22:40.400 --> 1:22:42.479 social media, to all these things. Right, fake news was 1:22:42.600 --> 1:22:45.400 just like piling up to the top of Google search results. 1:22:46.040 --> 1:22:50.400 That election was so monumental and such a seismic shockwave 1:22:50.479 --> 1:22:53.120 through a tech that fake news and misinformation might have 1:22:53.160 --> 1:22:55.880 played a role, that they really had to do something, 1:22:56.120 --> 1:22:58.040 and I think some companies are more effective than others. 1:22:58.080 --> 1:23:00.840 I think Google put a lot oft into making sure 1:23:00.920 --> 1:23:04.040 authoritative sources rise to the top. So what that means 1:23:04.200 --> 1:23:06.439 is when now you go online and you Google for 1:23:06.560 --> 1:23:11.559 medical information, the top results yougether WebMD or some official CDC, 1:23:11.800 --> 1:23:15.080 your government thing. They're pretty decent reliable. It's not to 1:23:15.160 --> 1:23:17.200 say there's an all that crap on the Internet, but 1:23:17.360 --> 1:23:19.720 Google has done a pretty good job of having the 1:23:19.760 --> 1:23:22.120 good stuff float to the top, and that's the information 1:23:22.200 --> 1:23:25.400 that people see. So what I'm worried is now we 1:23:25.560 --> 1:23:28.040 might be kind of resetting ourselves back to the twenty 1:23:28.320 --> 1:23:30.559 sixteen where when you're talking to these chatbots that are 1:23:30.600 --> 1:23:34.240 trained on all the internets. Yeah, I don't know if 1:23:34.280 --> 1:23:37.560 the web mds and the CDC type of information is 1:23:37.640 --> 1:23:40.080 necessarily going to float to the top. Maybe they'll work 1:23:40.160 --> 1:23:44.040 that out. But I'm also worried that open AI or 1:23:44.120 --> 1:23:46.400 Google or Microsoft or wherever, they'll have ones that are 1:23:46.479 --> 1:23:49.360 pretty reasonable and kind of you know, tuned to appeal 1:23:49.360 --> 1:23:51.679 to a lot of people. But Elon Musk might build 1:23:51.720 --> 1:23:54.320 his own competitor one that might be really tuned to 1:23:54.439 --> 1:24:00.599 elevate the right wing site. So I have been around, 1:24:00.680 --> 1:24:02.320 as I mean, and you have been doing so in 1:24:02.400 --> 1:24:04.479 a much more rigorous manner, I'm sure. But I've screw 1:24:04.560 --> 1:24:08.120 around with a couple of different AI chat and search engines. 1:24:08.120 --> 1:24:12.080 I use find PHI and D sometimes. I've been playing 1:24:12.080 --> 1:24:14.240 around with being and one of the things I've noticed 1:24:14.400 --> 1:24:16.559 is that you know, if you ask it like, hey, 1:24:16.640 --> 1:24:18.920 summarize for me, like why the Battle of Hastings matter, 1:24:19.000 --> 1:24:22.120 You'll get a reasonably decent answer. But if I ask 1:24:22.240 --> 1:24:25.439 it like I don't know, specific questions about myself, I've 1:24:25.520 --> 1:24:27.320 come to I noticed at first when I did it, 1:24:27.320 --> 1:24:31.519 I would get some really weirdly like colloquial vernacular from 1:24:31.560 --> 1:24:34.240 it explaining things, and I realized it was just pulling 1:24:34.280 --> 1:24:37.200 answers directly that fans had asked about me on the 1:24:37.320 --> 1:24:41.200 subreddit that this show has. And so when I think 1:24:41.240 --> 1:24:43.320 about like ways in which to game the system, well, 1:24:43.360 --> 1:24:45.120 you make a bunch of bots. You have them post 1:24:45.240 --> 1:24:47.760 questions and answers that are you know, supportive of this 1:24:47.840 --> 1:24:51.280 specific product line or whatever on a subreddit and hope 1:24:51.280 --> 1:24:53.880 that it gets picked like scanned by an AI, and 1:24:53.960 --> 1:24:56.280 that becomes part of its like answer for you know 1:24:56.400 --> 1:24:58.880 what happens if you know, I can't stop itching or whatever. 1:24:58.920 --> 1:25:02.200 I don't know, like, but I like obviously you can 1:25:02.320 --> 1:25:05.040 see using them ways in which these cannon will be 1:25:05.280 --> 1:25:08.080 gamed to some extent. You know, it's always kind of 1:25:08.120 --> 1:25:10.560 a red Queen sort of situation where you have to 1:25:10.800 --> 1:25:14.679 disinformation people fighting this info. You're always running as fast 1:25:14.680 --> 1:25:17.439 as you can just to stay in place that's right, 1:25:17.520 --> 1:25:20.240 And that is that brings up another issue which I 1:25:20.400 --> 1:25:23.879 do feel like this is possibly really tipping the balance, 1:25:24.000 --> 1:25:26.560 and that it takes a certain amount of resources to 1:25:26.680 --> 1:25:30.160 create misinformation, it takes a certain amount of resources to 1:25:30.479 --> 1:25:32.799 debunk it. Right, A journalist has to sit down, Snopes 1:25:32.840 --> 1:25:35.479 has to write a little piece about it. And the 1:25:35.600 --> 1:25:38.960 problem is with this AI, it's suddenly just dropping the 1:25:39.080 --> 1:25:43.280 price of creation down to essentially zero. Anyone can create 1:25:43.800 --> 1:25:47.599 essentially limitless supply of quasi information that may or may 1:25:47.640 --> 1:25:50.360 not be true. But the problem is, is the price 1:25:50.520 --> 1:25:54.840 of journalism of debunking also going down, maybe by fifty percent, right, 1:25:54.920 --> 1:25:56.400 maybe it takes you half as much time to write 1:25:56.400 --> 1:25:59.519 an article. It's not going to zero, No, So that's 1:25:59.560 --> 1:26:02.599 the balance is Creating stuff has gotten a lot cheaper. 1:26:03.040 --> 1:26:06.519 Detecting debunking, doing proper journalism it's gotten a little bit cheaper. 1:26:06.960 --> 1:26:10.160 So I'm worried that that's journalists are already stretched then. 1:26:10.400 --> 1:26:14.519 And this is by far my biggest concern because it's 1:26:14.600 --> 1:26:17.800 it's not just this that's obviously a significant factor in it. 1:26:17.840 --> 1:26:20.840 There will be more disinformation, there will not be more journalists, 1:26:20.920 --> 1:26:23.160 in part because I think AI is going to take 1:26:23.240 --> 1:26:26.080 jobs from that, particularly low level d It's not going 1:26:26.120 --> 1:26:29.880 to replace, you know, prize winning columnists at the New 1:26:30.000 --> 1:26:32.080 York Times, and it's not going to replace like guys 1:26:32.120 --> 1:26:35.400 like me who have a very long and established career 1:26:35.520 --> 1:26:38.240 of doing the specific thing that we do. But I 1:26:38.360 --> 1:26:40.720 think back to when I got started as a as 1:26:40.720 --> 1:26:43.040 a journalist, as a writer, it was as a tech blogger, 1:26:43.120 --> 1:26:46.000 and I had an X number of articles that I 1:26:46.040 --> 1:26:48.519 had to get out per day, and obviously, like my 1:26:48.720 --> 1:26:52.160 boss was essentially trusting that with that many articles, i'd 1:26:52.200 --> 1:26:53.920 have a few that did well on Google, and that 1:26:54.040 --> 1:26:56.280 brings in traffic, and that brought in money. And there's 1:26:56.320 --> 1:26:58.559 a degree to which you're just kind of doing seo shit. 1:26:58.640 --> 1:27:01.320 But it's also I can did my first interviews for 1:27:01.400 --> 1:27:03.720 that job. I went to trade shows for the first time. 1:27:03.760 --> 1:27:06.120 I did my first on the ground journalism for that job. 1:27:06.479 --> 1:27:08.360 It taught me how to write quickly and an a 1:27:08.439 --> 1:27:11.519 polished nature. And I was not writing anything that was 1:27:11.640 --> 1:27:16.559 like crucial to the development of humankind, but it made 1:27:16.680 --> 1:27:19.320 me into the kind of person who was later able 1:27:19.400 --> 1:27:21.880 to write things that were read by people all over 1:27:21.960 --> 1:27:24.600 the world, and that had an influence on people. And 1:27:25.439 --> 1:27:28.720 I worry about the brain dry, not just among journalists, 1:27:28.880 --> 1:27:31.720 but among writers, among artists, you know, people who do 1:27:31.760 --> 1:27:34.640 illustrations and stuff. Eventually, musicians, at least some kinds of 1:27:34.800 --> 1:27:38.360 musicians will probably also run up against this, where the 1:27:38.560 --> 1:27:41.360 stuff that it was easy for kind of people breaking 1:27:41.439 --> 1:27:43.400 in to get a little bit of work that would 1:27:43.479 --> 1:27:46.639 hone their skills and allow them to, you know, live 1:27:46.760 --> 1:27:50.080 doing the thing that they're interested in, is going to disappear. 1:27:50.640 --> 1:27:53.400 And more and more of the stuff that we kind 1:27:53.479 --> 1:27:56.360 of casually low level consume, not our high art, not 1:27:56.479 --> 1:27:59.439 our favorite movies, not our favorite books, but the stuff 1:27:59.479 --> 1:28:02.080 that we or when we stumble upon a web page 1:28:02.200 --> 1:28:04.720 or like in a commercial or whatever will be increasingly 1:28:04.800 --> 1:28:09.040 made by AIS and that AI will be pulling from 1:28:09.080 --> 1:28:12.080 an increasingly narrow set of things that humans made because 1:28:12.200 --> 1:28:14.280 less humans will get that entry level work, and that 1:28:14.439 --> 1:28:17.160 is there's something concerning there that is something that worries 1:28:17.240 --> 1:28:21.280 me about the future of just creativity. Yeah, and I think, 1:28:21.360 --> 1:28:23.560 I mean two points. One is just to kind of 1:28:23.760 --> 1:28:26.360 be Devil's advocate a little bit, because I do sympathize 1:28:26.400 --> 1:28:28.280 and I think you're right, but a little bit devil's 1:28:28.280 --> 1:28:31.679 advocate is it might be on the out flip side 1:28:31.680 --> 1:28:33.640 of the coin that there's people that feel like they 1:28:33.720 --> 1:28:37.920 have artistic imagination and desires but lack the technical ability, 1:28:38.360 --> 1:28:41.160 and suddenly they can paint, so to speak, by using 1:28:41.200 --> 1:28:45.760 these aiimage generators. Maybe someone has some form of dyslexia, 1:28:46.000 --> 1:28:49.639 or they're English as a second language or even native 1:28:49.680 --> 1:28:53.400 speaker without any of these issues obstructions, but just finds 1:28:53.439 --> 1:28:56.720 the writing process difficult, and maybe AI enables them to 1:28:56.840 --> 1:29:00.439 be a writer, to contribute. So I could see, you know, 1:29:00.520 --> 1:29:02.879 there's there's going to be the pros and the negatives, 1:29:02.920 --> 1:29:04.560 and I don't know how the balance is, but I 1:29:04.600 --> 1:29:07.360 think you're right thinking from a profession that's sort of 1:29:07.439 --> 1:29:11.560 like a passion project view. From a professional view, I 1:29:11.680 --> 1:29:15.280 do see the profession narrowing. If it journalists are expected 1:29:15.320 --> 1:29:17.920 to work twice as quickly because they're all using chatbots, 1:29:18.479 --> 1:29:20.519 there's probably going to be half of half as many 1:29:20.600 --> 1:29:24.040 of them, right, I mean, that's that's the economics. But 1:29:24.160 --> 1:29:26.479 this brings up a bigger issue, which is I do 1:29:26.680 --> 1:29:29.400 think what you're hitting on is there are these long 1:29:29.560 --> 1:29:33.360 term risks that maybe AI is gonna fuel this rebellion 1:29:33.400 --> 1:29:36.560 of robots and this. You know, maybe, but again, we 1:29:36.720 --> 1:29:40.400 have an economics, social, political, economic world we live in, 1:29:40.960 --> 1:29:43.679 and I just think let's really focus on the issues 1:29:43.760 --> 1:29:46.160 we have. Now. That's not discounting the future. It's not 1:29:46.280 --> 1:29:49.840 like let's burn a bunch of carbon emitting fuels because 1:29:49.880 --> 1:29:52.960 who cares about climate change? That's our grandkids problems. Yeah, 1:29:53.000 --> 1:29:56.000 this is different. It's like, let's think about the jobs 1:29:56.080 --> 1:29:57.920 the world. I mean, another way to put this is 1:29:58.320 --> 1:30:01.160 if we mess up our economy, mess up our democracy 1:30:01.280 --> 1:30:05.360 by people losing jobs and mass protests and losing trust 1:30:05.439 --> 1:30:07.800 in the government and there's just an erosion of truth, 1:30:08.400 --> 1:30:10.320 we're not going to be able to handle climate change 1:30:10.720 --> 1:30:15.439 or any of these big AI know, the singularity type 1:30:15.439 --> 1:30:18.280 of risks. So what I feel like is let's focus 1:30:18.360 --> 1:30:22.240 on what keeps our economy and our sanity and our humanity. 1:30:23.080 --> 1:30:26.960 Let's keep this fabric of society together now so that 1:30:27.040 --> 1:30:30.040 we're more equipped in the future to handle all the 1:30:30.200 --> 1:30:32.840 risks AI and otherwise. But this goes back to what 1:30:32.880 --> 1:30:36.640 you're saying, which is, these are real issues in the 1:30:36.760 --> 1:30:38.720 short term, and if we don't address them, if we 1:30:38.800 --> 1:30:41.519 get distracted by the long term, we're not going to 1:30:41.560 --> 1:30:43.800 be ready to address the long term even if we 1:30:43.880 --> 1:30:47.280 think about it now, we'll be so distracted and so dismayed. Yeah, 1:30:47.320 --> 1:30:50.240 so I think we have to be practical here. I agree, 1:30:50.320 --> 1:30:53.479 and I am also I think it's a valid point 1:30:53.560 --> 1:30:56.320 that you make about the fact that all these are 1:30:56.400 --> 1:30:58.960 tools that will reduce options for some people, there are 1:30:58.960 --> 1:31:01.519 also tools that create options that can be used for 1:31:01.560 --> 1:31:04.840 the creation of art of culture. I do think some 1:31:04.960 --> 1:31:07.760 people I know have brought up photoshop when I talk 1:31:07.760 --> 1:31:09.920 about my concerns with AI and are like, you know, 1:31:10.040 --> 1:31:12.320 there were a lot of you know, people, draftsmen and 1:31:12.439 --> 1:31:15.960 whatnot who were concerned when photoshop hit because it was 1:31:16.000 --> 1:31:17.640 a threat to some of the things that they did 1:31:17.720 --> 1:31:21.760 for money. And photoshop effectively has created whole forms of 1:31:21.920 --> 1:31:24.080 art that didn't exist or didn't exist in the same 1:31:24.120 --> 1:31:26.840 fashion before it did as a tool and tools like it. 1:31:28.040 --> 1:31:30.760 And that's not a think I think it's kind of 1:31:30.880 --> 1:31:35.519 worth I don't like, I don't want to be kind 1:31:35.520 --> 1:31:37.400 of just on the edge of tragedy here. You know, 1:31:37.560 --> 1:31:39.680 this is a there's a lot of different ways this 1:31:39.840 --> 1:31:42.280 could go, and they're not all bad. I think we're 1:31:42.320 --> 1:31:45.640 all used to calamity right now, so much so that 1:31:45.760 --> 1:31:48.800 we potentially expect it in situations where it's not the 1:31:48.880 --> 1:31:52.599 inevitable outcome. Well, I mean that's I think one way 1:31:52.640 --> 1:31:54.920 to kind of boil a lot of that down is 1:31:56.439 --> 1:31:58.960 we can adapt. We just need time to do so 1:31:59.479 --> 1:32:03.320 to many things. And what's really challenging and frustrating now 1:32:03.560 --> 1:32:06.080 is the pace is so fast. It's not just an illusion. 1:32:06.160 --> 1:32:08.320 It's not just oh, if you don't pay attention to AI, 1:32:08.520 --> 1:32:11.360 it really is fast. It's very very hard for us 1:32:11.400 --> 1:32:14.439 to adapt. So, just thinking of the Internet, we got 1:32:14.479 --> 1:32:17.680 a lot, like individuals as users and tech companies got 1:32:17.680 --> 1:32:20.280 a lot better at dealing with clickbait. Right, YouTube was 1:32:20.360 --> 1:32:22.960 tons of clickbait, and they figured out ways to demote 1:32:23.000 --> 1:32:25.200 that to some extent. We got a lot better at 1:32:25.280 --> 1:32:28.000 keeping fake news out of the high search rankings and Google. 1:32:28.080 --> 1:32:30.599 Like I mentioned, a lot of these problems that came up. 1:32:30.920 --> 1:32:33.800 We're not perfectly addressed, not even close. But there was 1:32:33.880 --> 1:32:37.479 significant progress and that's often understated. But if these problems 1:32:37.520 --> 1:32:40.840 are coming so fast and so intense, it's a lot 1:32:40.920 --> 1:32:43.439 to adapt to. And that's what's really the challenge is 1:32:43.520 --> 1:32:45.840 the pace. And I think we're seeing a very, very 1:32:45.920 --> 1:32:50.000 breakneck pace that's really hard. Now does that mean you're 1:32:50.040 --> 1:32:52.400 on the side of like Elon Musk and some of 1:32:52.400 --> 1:32:55.280 those folks who just signed that letter being like, maybe 1:32:55.360 --> 1:32:58.600 we should put a pause on AI research because you know, 1:32:58.640 --> 1:33:02.439 I'm not one hundred percent against it. Again, I kind 1:33:02.479 --> 1:33:04.519 of am, like, Man, I wish we'd been having this 1:33:04.640 --> 1:33:09.320 conversation when Facebook dropped or YouTube dropped. But I don't 1:33:09.400 --> 1:33:12.400 think that's a realistic thing. I'll say that. But I 1:33:12.520 --> 1:33:15.639 do think, yeah, yeah, so I would say, no, I'm 1:33:15.680 --> 1:33:19.360 not I'm not a favor that For one thing. I mean, 1:33:19.479 --> 1:33:23.639 in a very practical sense, you think all these companies 1:33:23.680 --> 1:33:26.120 that are putting billions of dollars in these investments in 1:33:26.200 --> 1:33:28.920 a AI are all going to sit around saying, you 1:33:29.000 --> 1:33:31.320 know what, let's just not do this for a few 1:33:31.680 --> 1:33:34.760 of course not. So here's what I think, They're not 1:33:34.800 --> 1:33:36.519 going to slow down. What's going to happen is going 1:33:36.600 --> 1:33:39.840 to happen even if some players decide to be responsible 1:33:39.840 --> 1:33:42.320 and slow down. Guess what that means. The only people 1:33:42.400 --> 1:33:45.200 plunging ahead are going to be the irresponsible ones. So 1:33:45.400 --> 1:33:46.960 what I think we need to do is I don't 1:33:47.000 --> 1:33:50.200 think we can really slow that down. So what about 1:33:50.200 --> 1:33:52.639 the flip side. I think we need to accelerate public 1:33:52.840 --> 1:33:56.760 education on artificial intelligence. I think we need to accelerate 1:33:57.280 --> 1:34:02.040 government legislation, regulation, intern national cooperation. I don't think we 1:34:02.120 --> 1:34:04.720 can solve this by slowing AI down. I do think 1:34:04.760 --> 1:34:06.479 we need to find a way to speed up our 1:34:06.520 --> 1:34:10.280 democratic process processes. It's taken us how many years to 1:34:10.400 --> 1:34:13.600 pass basically nothing about social media in the US and 1:34:13.800 --> 1:34:17.000 some mixed results in Europe. Yeah, that's the problem, right, 1:34:17.240 --> 1:34:20.160 If we could work faster, then I think we could 1:34:20.240 --> 1:34:24.040 keep up. And I think that that's actually the long term, 1:34:24.160 --> 1:34:27.479 like practical survival thing from this is that I hope 1:34:27.520 --> 1:34:31.160 we get is like, yeah, we've always needed to be 1:34:31.320 --> 1:34:35.280 more careful about the things that we expose billions of 1:34:35.360 --> 1:34:39.360 people too. Suddenly it should have happened before now. But 1:34:39.479 --> 1:34:42.320 I hope that this I hope that all I hope 1:34:42.320 --> 1:34:45.439 the fact that AI, because of James Cameron, is coated 1:34:45.479 --> 1:34:47.720 into our brains to be something that triggers a little 1:34:47.760 --> 1:34:50.160 bit of panic in people. I hope that rather than 1:34:50.240 --> 1:34:54.160 reacting with panic, it leads to a more intelligent and 1:34:54.240 --> 1:34:57.680 considered state of affairs when potentially embracing technologies that are 1:34:57.720 --> 1:35:00.960 going to change life for huge numbers of people. That's right, 1:35:01.040 --> 1:35:03.320 and that is I think we have an opportunity here 1:35:03.439 --> 1:35:06.160 to experience that and explore than and try, and that 1:35:06.640 --> 1:35:08.040 is kind of what I was aiming for. And that 1:35:08.120 --> 1:35:10.560 threat is again I love that article that you know 1:35:10.640 --> 1:35:14.120 you mentioned at the beginning, But if we start going 1:35:14.160 --> 1:35:16.800 down this road of hype, there is a danger that 1:35:16.840 --> 1:35:18.639 we're going to fall into these traps. And I think 1:35:18.720 --> 1:35:21.759 let's stay grounded. Let's say practical, let's really identify the risks. 1:35:22.120 --> 1:35:23.960 Not that I'm some guru and know what they are, 1:35:24.520 --> 1:35:27.800 but it's almost easier to see what's not true than 1:35:27.880 --> 1:35:30.400 what is true. Yeah, and that's I think let's all 1:35:30.479 --> 1:35:32.439 try to police each other and make sure we're focusing 1:35:32.520 --> 1:35:35.680 on practical things that really are manageable, that really are 1:35:35.760 --> 1:35:41.160 genuine risks that are impacting people, that are impacting people today, 1:35:41.479 --> 1:35:45.840 and especially ones that are impacting marginalized populations. Yes, so 1:35:46.000 --> 1:35:48.200 I think let's hope we learn these lessons. And I 1:35:48.280 --> 1:35:52.160 am not optimistic, but I'm not as cynical. I think 1:35:52.200 --> 1:35:55.479 there's a lot of important discussions happening now that let's 1:35:55.520 --> 1:35:57.680 just say, there's a lot more discussion now than we 1:35:57.760 --> 1:36:01.160 had with social media, and maybe that's a good thing. Yeah, well, 1:36:01.200 --> 1:36:03.479 I think that's a good note to end on. Noah, 1:36:03.520 --> 1:36:04.960 did you have anything you kind of wanted to plug 1:36:05.000 --> 1:36:09.200 before we roll out here? No, I just I think 1:36:09.240 --> 1:36:12.640 it's it's a great topic that everyone can be involved in, 1:36:12.840 --> 1:36:16.599 and I just my plug is just don't be intimidated, 1:36:16.680 --> 1:36:18.600 don't be afraid. I am writing a book that's not 1:36:18.680 --> 1:36:20.000 going to come up for a couple of years that's 1:36:20.040 --> 1:36:22.760 trying to help empower people to kind of be part 1:36:22.800 --> 1:36:25.320 of these conversations. But that's far off. I just want 1:36:25.360 --> 1:36:28.360 to say broadly, don't be intimidated and don't fall for 1:36:28.439 --> 1:36:32.960 this narrative that sometimes happens in tech communities that, oh, 1:36:33.120 --> 1:36:34.600 you know, I'm not a tech person, I don't have 1:36:34.680 --> 1:36:37.720 a chance to understand this stuff. Affects all of us, 1:36:37.880 --> 1:36:40.679 and how it affects you matters, and your opinion matters, 1:36:40.720 --> 1:36:43.719 and your voice matters. And we're all part of social media, 1:36:43.800 --> 1:36:45.559 we're all very soon going to be part of AI 1:36:45.720 --> 1:36:48.880 in chat thoughts, So don't be afraid to join the conversation. 1:36:49.040 --> 1:36:51.680 You don't need any technical background because I think the 1:36:51.760 --> 1:36:56.120 subject is just as much sociological as technical. It's about people. 1:36:56.520 --> 1:36:58.360 I think that's a great point to end on. Thank 1:36:58.439 --> 1:37:01.920 you so much, Noah, really appreciate your time. And uh, 1:37:02.320 --> 1:37:04.400 everybody else, have a have a nice day. I mean 1:37:04.439 --> 1:37:07.320 you have a nice day too. Also, thanks to you too. 1:37:07.360 --> 1:37:26.720 It's lots of fun. Ah, welcome back to It could 1:37:26.800 --> 1:37:30.320 Happen here a podcast about things falling apart, sometimes about 1:37:30.479 --> 1:37:35.320 putting them back together, um, sometimes just about enduring difficult times. 1:37:35.439 --> 1:37:38.000 And it's it's been a rough couple of weeks, what 1:37:38.200 --> 1:37:41.640 with the mass shooting in Tennessee and the Right accelerating 1:37:41.720 --> 1:37:46.080 their anti trans paranoia, the whole you know, Trump getting 1:37:46.160 --> 1:37:48.800 arrested and all that, all that, Yes, that has really 1:37:48.880 --> 1:37:51.960 hit all of us really hard, yes, and really yeah deeply. 1:37:52.320 --> 1:37:55.800 Now that now that Trump is has been charged with felonies, 1:37:55.920 --> 1:37:59.720 he's officially a friend of mine. So we're on Trump now. 1:38:00.120 --> 1:38:03.880 I really convicted. I'm really conflicted between my acab side 1:38:03.960 --> 1:38:07.360 my illegalist side. It's really it's really hard. I mean, 1:38:07.720 --> 1:38:11.080 thirty four felonies, that's quite a legalist. Very few of 1:38:11.160 --> 1:38:14.000 the people I know who commit crimes is like a vocation, 1:38:14.160 --> 1:38:19.280 have that many. It's pretty difficult. But at any rate, 1:38:19.600 --> 1:38:21.479 you know, it's been a rough couple of weeks, and 1:38:21.560 --> 1:38:25.040 I thought we could use a lighter episode to, you know, 1:38:25.240 --> 1:38:28.960 help everybody everybody feel better. And I know that you 1:38:29.280 --> 1:38:32.560 Mia and you Gare are both young uns. H you 1:38:32.760 --> 1:38:35.360 you missed the earlier age of the Internet and the 1:38:35.479 --> 1:38:38.920 heroes of that ancient age. You know, when I was 1:38:39.000 --> 1:38:42.040 a child, you know, it was Jupiter and uh and 1:38:42.400 --> 1:38:45.679 and all the Greek gods of the old Internet y'all. 1:38:45.760 --> 1:38:47.720 Y'all have come up more in the Roman gods of 1:38:47.800 --> 1:38:50.479 the old Internet era. So yeah, I wanted I wanted 1:38:50.520 --> 1:38:53.680 to talk about an ancient hero of the Internet. And 1:38:53.880 --> 1:38:56.280 perhaps this will become a series that we do now 1:38:56.320 --> 1:38:59.080 and again where we talk about we talk about the 1:38:59.200 --> 1:39:02.680 gods of the past and today. The ancient deity that 1:39:02.760 --> 1:39:05.760 we're talking about is kind of like the Internet's Hercules, 1:39:06.080 --> 1:39:09.400 a man named Troy Hertabes. Have you guys heard of 1:39:09.640 --> 1:39:13.679 Troy Hertabes. No, I've not. I've not heard of Troy Hernabes, 1:39:13.760 --> 1:39:16.920 but I do have one correction. Jupiter is actually a 1:39:17.080 --> 1:39:20.200 Roman god. The Greek version is Zeus. You're right, You're right, 1:39:20.280 --> 1:39:24.200 you're right. Before before some freak dms me and sends 1:39:24.240 --> 1:39:27.519 me like three phs on this, I'm just gonna put 1:39:27.600 --> 1:39:30.400 that out there. Do not DM me about this. Yeah, 1:39:31.600 --> 1:39:33.880 wet do that thing where we start, We start including 1:39:33.960 --> 1:39:36.840 one of these every episode that, yeah, just fucking up 1:39:36.920 --> 1:39:39.680 purposefully in order to get people. They love doing it, 1:39:39.800 --> 1:39:42.160 they love being able to hop on I do. Ever, 1:39:42.280 --> 1:39:44.679 we did get recently, we did the liver King episodes 1:39:44.760 --> 1:39:47.000 this week, and somebody popped on to be like, hey, guys, 1:39:47.200 --> 1:39:49.800 you're probably not aware of this, but the livers of 1:39:49.920 --> 1:39:56.519 polar bears contain enough vitamin hundred and forty people something 1:39:56.640 --> 1:40:00.280 like that, Um, don't eat polar bear lovers. This is 1:40:00.360 --> 1:40:03.400 relevant because we are talking about a man today whose 1:40:03.479 --> 1:40:06.720 lifelong goal was to develop a suit of armor that 1:40:06.800 --> 1:40:09.400 allowed him to fight bears in hand to hand compact. 1:40:11.800 --> 1:40:14.160 It is actually very applicable to us, because just last 1:40:14.240 --> 1:40:17.360 week we went to the theater to watch Cocaine Bear. 1:40:17.720 --> 1:40:20.200 You're right, this man would have been one of the 1:40:20.280 --> 1:40:23.080 only people capable of dealing with a cocaine bear. So 1:40:23.800 --> 1:40:26.240 once upon a time, before the breaking of the world, 1:40:26.320 --> 1:40:30.000 there lived a beautiful maniac named Troy Hertebes. Troy was 1:40:30.040 --> 1:40:32.840 a simple man. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1:40:33.000 --> 1:40:35.960 nineteen sixty three. He liked the outdoors, and he was 1:40:36.000 --> 1:40:40.200 a dedicated conservationist. The one exception to his abiding love 1:40:40.240 --> 1:40:44.320 of nature was bears. On August fourth, nineteen eighty four, 1:40:44.400 --> 1:40:46.880 when Troy was twenty one years old, he went hiking 1:40:46.920 --> 1:40:50.360 in central British Columbia. Now he's given a couple of 1:40:50.479 --> 1:40:52.920 versions of this story over the years. Some that this happened, 1:40:53.080 --> 1:40:55.320 say that this happened when he was a boy, Others 1:40:55.360 --> 1:40:57.960 say he was like twenty years old, but all agree 1:40:58.040 --> 1:41:01.240 that he wound up in close proxim to a grizzly bear. 1:41:01.600 --> 1:41:04.360 In the most exciting and almost certainly untrue version of 1:41:04.439 --> 1:41:07.639 the story, the bear knocked Troy down and he dropped 1:41:07.720 --> 1:41:10.439 the twenty two caliber rifle he was carrying, which would 1:41:10.479 --> 1:41:15.479 not have made much difference against a grizzly bear, you 1:41:15.520 --> 1:41:18.840 will only make it more upset. Two is not the 1:41:18.920 --> 1:41:22.519 weapon you want to that situation. In a desperate attempt 1:41:22.560 --> 1:41:25.160 to defend himself, he drew a knife. We're gonna talk 1:41:25.200 --> 1:41:28.840 about Troy's knives in a minute here about. In an 1:41:28.880 --> 1:41:32.240 interview with Mental Flass many years later, Troy claimed that 1:41:32.479 --> 1:41:35.240 seeing the knife, the bear thought better of attacking him. 1:41:35.280 --> 1:41:40.640 After this, Okaya a minute, That's not how bears were. 1:41:41.720 --> 1:41:44.760 Has this bear been like involved in other fights guys 1:41:45.880 --> 1:41:50.120 like another maniac bear got stabbed behind a seven eleven 1:41:50.200 --> 1:41:52.960 and is like, na, man, I don't grizz don't funk 1:41:53.000 --> 1:41:57.519 with knives no more. I've been through that ship like 1:41:57.560 --> 1:42:02.000 a street gay like na brot na bro are worth it? 1:42:04.200 --> 1:42:08.160 And so he later claims an expert told him he 1:42:08.200 --> 1:42:10.240 would have been mauled if there'd been any cubs this. 1:42:10.479 --> 1:42:15.280 I believe bears very rarely attack people. Now, a normal 1:42:15.360 --> 1:42:17.519 man would have taken this number one as boy I 1:42:17.640 --> 1:42:20.320 sure got lucky, and number two as I should be 1:42:20.479 --> 1:42:23.040 more careful when out in the woods. But Troy was 1:42:23.200 --> 1:42:26.040 not a normal man. His first thought was that he 1:42:26.160 --> 1:42:29.560 needed to invent a new form of mace made specifically 1:42:29.640 --> 1:42:33.639 four bears. He had been beaten and developing bear mace 1:42:33.720 --> 1:42:37.160 by an actual scientist, Although the first paper on bear 1:42:37.280 --> 1:42:40.040 mace was published in nineteen eighty four, so it makes 1:42:40.080 --> 1:42:42.040 sense that it wouldn't have been available at the time. 1:42:42.360 --> 1:42:44.360 It was a reasonable thing to be like, maybe we 1:42:44.360 --> 1:42:48.760 should have a mace for use against bears. There are 1:42:48.840 --> 1:42:51.920 again several versions of what came next. I'm going to 1:42:52.000 --> 1:42:54.040 quote from one that I found in a write up 1:42:54.120 --> 1:42:57.400 by the spec Now quote from then, he decided that 1:42:57.520 --> 1:42:59.880 his destiny in life was to invent a dependable bear 1:43:00.040 --> 1:43:03.479 spray repellent, but he realized field testing with bears would 1:43:03.479 --> 1:43:06.240 be needed. This would require a protective suit for the 1:43:06.360 --> 1:43:12.120 person doing the test. No. In his interview with Mental Floss, 1:43:12.200 --> 1:43:14.320 one of the later pieces on the Man, Troy dropped 1:43:14.360 --> 1:43:16.759 the mace story and claimed that he had the idea 1:43:16.880 --> 1:43:19.640 just to make bear resistant armor a year after his 1:43:19.720 --> 1:43:23.160 grizzly encounter when he was watching RoboCop and decided bear 1:43:23.280 --> 1:43:26.880 researchers would need protective armor that would let them test 1:43:26.960 --> 1:43:31.760 bear spray and also safely observed grizzly behavior. Troy is 1:43:31.880 --> 1:43:34.320 something of an unreliable narrator, but I will say I 1:43:34.479 --> 1:43:37.840 do not doubt that the film RoboCop influenced his subsequent 1:43:37.920 --> 1:43:44.280 ass No, he absolutely had this idea that makes that 1:43:44.400 --> 1:43:47.640 makes the most sense out of anything you said. It 1:43:47.840 --> 1:43:52.559 is very logical. So it is now Troy, it should 1:43:52.560 --> 1:43:55.080 be noted, is not the first, probably not the first 1:43:55.160 --> 1:43:57.880 man who has thought I should develop a suit of 1:43:58.000 --> 1:44:00.400 armor to allow me to grapple with bears in hand 1:44:00.400 --> 1:44:04.400 to hand combat. It is possible that in medieval Europe 1:44:04.760 --> 1:44:07.640 some people hunted bears while wearing full body suits of 1:44:07.760 --> 1:44:11.040 armor covered in spikes. There is debate as to whether 1:44:11.160 --> 1:44:14.000 or not this really happened. The gist of why this 1:44:14.200 --> 1:44:16.519 is a debate is that there's an insane looking suit 1:44:16.560 --> 1:44:19.639 of armor currently in a Houston museum that was probably 1:44:19.720 --> 1:44:22.800 made in switzerlander Germany like four hundred dish years ago. 1:44:23.280 --> 1:44:26.360 Researchers have not conclusively determined why it was made or 1:44:26.439 --> 1:44:29.040 for what purpose, but one theory is that it was 1:44:29.160 --> 1:44:31.720 used for bear baiting. If so, it was used for 1:44:31.880 --> 1:44:35.880 European bears, which are significantly smaller than Besty bears, and 1:44:36.040 --> 1:44:38.960 as far as we know, was never a widespread practice. 1:44:39.320 --> 1:44:41.519 This is because attempting to fight a bear in hand 1:44:41.560 --> 1:44:43.840 to hand with a suit of armor is insane and 1:44:44.000 --> 1:44:46.360 something only a madman would do. But I am going 1:44:46.400 --> 1:44:48.519 to show you this suit of armor because it looks 1:44:48.560 --> 1:44:52.280 like something from a David Lynch movie. Oh I'm so thrilled, 1:44:52.400 --> 1:44:55.840 specifically the face. So look at that, look at that 1:44:55.880 --> 1:45:00.760 beautiful thing. Oh my god. Yeah, it's in the chase 1:45:00.840 --> 1:45:04.599 of that unsettling but they think probably somewhere around Austria 1:45:04.680 --> 1:45:07.160 or Switzerland, although it's not. I don't think known to 1:45:07.400 --> 1:45:12.519 a point of certainty. That looks fucked up. It looks 1:45:12.560 --> 1:45:14.840 like it looks like a like like like a metal 1:45:15.320 --> 1:45:18.160 casting of someone's head but with like but with like 1:45:18.240 --> 1:45:22.040 the pinhead thing. Yeah, it's a howlazy I think is 1:45:22.080 --> 1:45:27.600 the movie. Yeah, the face on it is distinctly unsettling, 1:45:28.880 --> 1:45:30.479 like they could have just made a normal helmet, but 1:45:30.560 --> 1:45:33.639 like no, no, like there's a nose, it's the guy's face. 1:45:33.880 --> 1:45:36.040 We gotta it's We're not doing this right unless we 1:45:36.200 --> 1:45:40.920 like peek into the uncanny valley with this thing. Troy 1:45:41.560 --> 1:45:44.200 was not interested in the fact that attempting to fight 1:45:44.240 --> 1:45:47.400 a bear and body armor is just objectively nuts, and 1:45:47.560 --> 1:45:50.040 since he was as handy as he was unhinged, he 1:45:50.160 --> 1:45:52.800 set swiftly to building a suit of armor and then 1:45:52.960 --> 1:45:55.360 testing it. Um, I'm going to read another quote from 1:45:55.360 --> 1:45:58.519 the specs right up, because it's extremely funny. So the 1:45:58.600 --> 1:46:01.160 suit became his focus of a putting it through all 1:46:01.280 --> 1:46:03.360 kinds of tests that included being run down by a 1:46:03.439 --> 1:46:06.599 pickup truck driven by his pot, rolling off the side 1:46:06.640 --> 1:46:09.960 of a cliff, and being pummeled by bikers with baseball bats. 1:46:10.360 --> 1:46:13.800 And I'm gonna play you a video of Troy um 1:46:14.560 --> 1:46:17.519 one of these tests where Troy gets hit by a tree. 1:46:18.640 --> 1:46:21.840 It's almost exactly that scene from hot Rod. If you've 1:46:21.880 --> 1:46:24.840 watched the movie hot Rod where they like swing a 1:46:25.000 --> 1:46:29.280 log down at him and hit him. Um, that may 1:46:29.360 --> 1:46:30.960 in fact be what that scene is based on, but 1:46:31.000 --> 1:46:42.840 I'm gonna I'm gonna share that with y'all. Now the 1:46:42.960 --> 1:46:56.280 log is U Oh my gosh, so get them guys. 1:46:58.640 --> 1:47:01.400 I cannot emphasize enough. It looks like half this armor 1:47:01.520 --> 1:47:06.599 is held together by duct tape. Just like. This looks 1:47:06.640 --> 1:47:09.479 like a fever dream combination of the Wizard of Oz 1:47:09.760 --> 1:47:14.040 and like and like the Battle of Endor walks. He 1:47:14.160 --> 1:47:17.479 walks throwing massive logs at the guy in the middle. 1:47:17.720 --> 1:47:21.720 Tin suit, it's white, it's a white suit too. Yeah, 1:47:21.840 --> 1:47:26.160 it looks almost like something from um like speed Racer. 1:47:26.560 --> 1:47:29.639 Is weird the aesthetic that I would reckon, I would 1:47:29.680 --> 1:47:32.479 closest compare it too. It is kind of like that 1:47:32.600 --> 1:47:37.759 anime robot style design. Yeah, it's it's it's profoundly unhinged. 1:47:37.800 --> 1:47:40.160 So I want to I want to play you a 1:47:40.200 --> 1:47:41.920 clip of him getting the helmet off so you can 1:47:42.000 --> 1:47:46.400 listen to Troy talk and see this man's face better 1:47:46.479 --> 1:47:51.120 than the first. Yeahs, I had that time, that stuff 1:47:51.160 --> 1:47:53.040 on my mouth. Yeah, if I have a most piece, 1:47:53.280 --> 1:47:55.280 a mostpiece, you can do that all day long. I 1:47:55.360 --> 1:47:57.240 got the airbags in the back, so my neck hasn't 1:47:57.240 --> 1:47:58.519 got a lot of place, so that'll be perfect for 1:47:58.600 --> 1:48:00.439 the grizzy I can I can take he can give 1:48:00.479 --> 1:48:04.600 me with that log if that couldn't do anything to me? 1:48:04.960 --> 1:48:07.240 And I feel great, like really great. And actually my 1:48:07.360 --> 1:48:13.960 left hand was asleepist now a week. Really you don't say, yeah, 1:48:14.479 --> 1:48:19.599 truly damage fascinating man. So I'm gonna play you now 1:48:19.800 --> 1:48:22.160 him being attacked by a bunch of men with baseball 1:48:22.240 --> 1:48:25.000 bats as he attempts to move in this suit. And 1:48:25.120 --> 1:48:27.679 I have to emphasize to you he is not capable 1:48:27.720 --> 1:48:30.320 of moving in this thing. This is an immobile suit 1:48:30.400 --> 1:48:33.280 of armor that he can he can almost shuffle in it, 1:48:33.360 --> 1:48:35.639 but not quite. His idea with the with the pickup 1:48:35.720 --> 1:48:38.400 truck and the bikers with regards to big men and 1:48:38.479 --> 1:48:41.719 being an anthropologist, he yet he looked at the testings 1:48:41.720 --> 1:48:44.439 we had originally done with normal sized man, you know, 1:48:44.439 --> 1:48:46.080 one hundred and fifty hundred and eighty pound, he said, 1:48:46.080 --> 1:48:47.960 the public isn't gonna buy it. They're they're looking at 1:48:48.000 --> 1:48:51.200 this monstrous, groovy bear and they're looking at a normal 1:48:51.240 --> 1:48:53.280 size man hitting you with bats and boards and stuff 1:48:53.280 --> 1:48:54.640 like that. They're not going to buy. You have to 1:48:54.720 --> 1:49:17.400 give them reality. This is insane. This is so weird, amazing, amazing, 1:49:21.280 --> 1:49:24.560 Like a gang of men attacking this nerd in a 1:49:24.640 --> 1:49:30.639 metal suit is like, yes, it's so funny. It's it's 1:49:30.800 --> 1:49:35.200 it's extremely funny. They're like and they pick like terminator 1:49:35.280 --> 1:49:40.040 two looking bikers like it's out of their way. All 1:49:40.080 --> 1:49:44.400 of the stylization is super super bizarre. Yeah, it's it's 1:49:44.439 --> 1:49:47.679 such a strained documentary. This is from the documentary project Grizzly, 1:49:48.040 --> 1:49:50.760 and there's Troy gives. In the various interviews, he does 1:49:50.920 --> 1:49:54.679 some pretty incredible quotes. Like years after this, he wrote 1:49:54.960 --> 1:49:56.920 at fifty two, I have to know whether or not 1:49:57.040 --> 1:49:59.479 the suit will hold. It's one of the curiosity things. 1:49:59.760 --> 1:50:01.760 We tested the suit a lot of ways, but never 1:50:01.880 --> 1:50:05.200 went against the Grizzly. And the suit that you're seeing 1:50:05.360 --> 1:50:07.639 is like the first version of his suit, the Ursus 1:50:07.760 --> 1:50:10.320 Mark one. He eventually gets up to the Mark six 1:50:10.479 --> 1:50:13.040 and spends more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 1:50:13.560 --> 1:50:17.439 making various versions of these bear suits. Actually, sorry, I 1:50:17.439 --> 1:50:19.400 think the one that we're looking at in the documentary 1:50:19.479 --> 1:50:22.479 is the Mark six, because he did eventually, after years 1:50:22.560 --> 1:50:25.320 of this quest, get a documentary and interested, and the 1:50:25.400 --> 1:50:29.160 film Project Grizzly was made about his quest. One fun 1:50:29.880 --> 1:50:31.720 piece of trivia about it is that it's one of 1:50:31.760 --> 1:50:34.960 Quentin Tarantino's favorite movies. That makes a lot of sense. 1:50:35.040 --> 1:50:36.840 That makes a lot of sense. It makes yeah, it 1:50:36.960 --> 1:50:40.320 makes total sense. Now, in order to give you just 1:50:40.479 --> 1:50:43.639 one last piece of context about the personality, what kind 1:50:43.720 --> 1:50:47.400 of man is Troy her Tobes or was Troy her Tobes. 1:50:47.600 --> 1:50:49.759 I am gonna play you a clip of an interview 1:50:49.920 --> 1:50:54.240 with this man from the documentary. That's just perfect. He's 1:50:54.280 --> 1:50:57.360 holding in this a gigantic booie knife in his hand, 1:50:57.479 --> 1:51:00.639 and he has another booie knife strapped across his shoulder 1:51:00.680 --> 1:51:02.760 in such a way that it's on his shoulder but 1:51:02.960 --> 1:51:05.720 pointed down. Yeah, which is the way a crazy man 1:51:05.880 --> 1:51:10.320 carries a book. He's also, it's worth noting, dressed as 1:51:10.400 --> 1:51:14.920 like a frontier settler, but wearing like a bread's Harry Baray. 1:51:18.960 --> 1:51:21.080 I go into the bush. I don't use a gun, never, 1:51:21.200 --> 1:51:23.760 don't believe in guns. I swear by my knives. They 1:51:23.800 --> 1:51:27.599 save your life a thousand times around. If a grizzlies 1:51:27.640 --> 1:51:29.160 gonna come at you. And I'm not saying knives are 1:51:29.160 --> 1:51:30.920 going to save you, that's not what I'm saying. What 1:51:31.000 --> 1:51:33.240 I'm saying is you've got a gun, and that grizzlies 1:51:33.280 --> 1:51:34.960 fifty feet one hundred feet away from you, you got 1:51:35.040 --> 1:51:36.840 one shot. I don't give a shit who you are 1:51:37.080 --> 1:51:39.639 or how steady you are. You've got one shot, not grizzly. 1:51:39.880 --> 1:51:42.080 And if he's still coming at you that gun, you 1:51:42.200 --> 1:51:43.880 might as well use the barrel on him, or you 1:51:43.920 --> 1:51:46.000 can use the stock. That's useless. But if you've got 1:51:46.040 --> 1:51:48.559 some half decent knives, at least you got a fighting chance. 1:51:48.760 --> 1:51:51.200 With animals. But that's not the reason why when I 1:51:51.280 --> 1:51:52.760 go into the mountains, or I go into the bush, 1:51:52.840 --> 1:51:54.400 or any man goes into the bush, they don't carry 1:51:54.479 --> 1:51:56.240 nives for the four legged animals. They carry knives for 1:51:56.240 --> 1:51:58.880 the two legged animals. Because nowadays it's a lot like 1:51:58.960 --> 1:52:00.760 the old days. You've got a lot of whackers up there, 1:52:00.960 --> 1:52:05.439 and it's nivish. Want to close quarters. Yea, you do, 1:52:05.600 --> 1:52:10.040 indeed have a lot of wackos up there, Troy. Um. 1:52:12.200 --> 1:52:16.080 So that's that's a brief introduction to Troy Hurdabes. Now, 1:52:16.640 --> 1:52:18.880 the suit that you've seen in the Project Project Grizzly 1:52:19.000 --> 1:52:21.840 documentary weighed one hundred and fifty pounds and it was 1:52:21.920 --> 1:52:24.120 not in any way powered. As you see in the dock. 1:52:24.200 --> 1:52:26.479 He can kind of barely shuffle with it. He is 1:52:26.600 --> 1:52:29.519 unable to move or even stand on uneven ground. He 1:52:29.640 --> 1:52:34.439 falls over very easily. Um. Troy liked the documentary, felt 1:52:34.479 --> 1:52:37.120 like it helped expose his work to a wider audience, 1:52:37.400 --> 1:52:39.520 but he took issue with the fact that the documentary 1:52:39.600 --> 1:52:42.160 did not delve into what he described as the science 1:52:42.280 --> 1:52:45.200 behind it all. Adding being able to get hit by 1:52:45.240 --> 1:52:49.880 the truck took years of development, now years years of 1:52:50.000 --> 1:52:53.479 practice of getting hit by trucks. Yeah, it's you can't 1:52:53.520 --> 1:52:55.880 just jump into getting hit by a truck like that. 1:52:56.960 --> 1:52:59.799 In two thousand and two, a trainer who probably should 1:52:59.880 --> 1:53:02.760 not be allowed around animals let Troy get into a 1:53:02.880 --> 1:53:06.720 cage with a Kodiak bear. Now, thankfully the bear was 1:53:06.800 --> 1:53:09.599 too confused by Troy's armor to what to get near him, 1:53:09.800 --> 1:53:14.040 which you might not. This is technically a wind for Troy. 1:53:14.439 --> 1:53:18.320 The armor did do its job, just scare them away. Yeah, 1:53:18.840 --> 1:53:21.320 you know, the bear just saw that was like, you 1:53:21.400 --> 1:53:25.400 know what this said? Wrong with this guy? It's clearly unwell. 1:53:25.520 --> 1:53:27.559 I do not want to be around this person right now. 1:53:31.080 --> 1:53:35.720 Here's mental floss interviewing Troy. She was so terrified she 1:53:36.000 --> 1:53:39.000 urinated her. To best recalls, I didn't look human enough. 1:53:39.360 --> 1:53:43.839 Limited mobility and questionable usefulness combined to doom the Mark series. 1:53:44.120 --> 1:53:48.000 We would never use a suit like that, says Lana Siernello, PhD. 1:53:48.200 --> 1:53:51.520 A bare behavior expert, a solid knowledge of bare behaviors, 1:53:51.560 --> 1:53:53.919 the best thing one can use to avoid being attacked, 1:53:54.160 --> 1:53:56.880 which is rare, and this is this is common whenever 1:53:56.960 --> 1:54:00.640 they talk to actual bear experts and researchers, like do 1:54:00.720 --> 1:54:03.120 you want a suit of armor. They're like, no, that's 1:54:03.160 --> 1:54:05.800 not at all useful. It's very easy to not get 1:54:05.840 --> 1:54:09.160 attacked by bears. Actually, and again, if you watch the 1:54:09.240 --> 1:54:12.639 documentary Grizzly Man, and the man in the documentary Grizzly 1:54:12.760 --> 1:54:15.400 Man is a similar type of person to Troy Hertabes. 1:54:15.800 --> 1:54:19.519 They are both people. I do believe Troy Hertabes might 1:54:19.640 --> 1:54:21.760 need a suit of bear armor because he seems like 1:54:21.840 --> 1:54:24.439 the kind of person to push grizzly bears past their 1:54:24.479 --> 1:54:27.680 limits of comfort. Very rarely will someone else wind up 1:54:27.680 --> 1:54:31.880 in that situation. Nonetheless, the armor brought Hertabes fame. He 1:54:32.320 --> 1:54:34.240 was all over the internet. I found out about him 1:54:34.240 --> 1:54:36.800 because one of my colleagues at Cracked wrote about him 1:54:36.800 --> 1:54:38.960 in an article. But like, you would see this guy 1:54:39.040 --> 1:54:40.520 all the time, I'm sure I ran. I think I 1:54:40.520 --> 1:54:44.280 also ran across him on something awful. Earlier. He would 1:54:44.320 --> 1:54:47.320 regularly put out videos he had. He had an early 1:54:47.480 --> 1:54:50.040 kind of understanding for how to make yourself into a 1:54:50.160 --> 1:54:52.880 brand on the internet in order to get funding, and 1:54:53.000 --> 1:54:55.520 so he was very successful at raising money in order 1:54:55.600 --> 1:54:58.320 to like make new iterations of his armor. He was 1:54:58.360 --> 1:55:01.680 also recruited on several JAP and he's game shows, and 1:55:01.800 --> 1:55:03.880 he inspired a two thousand and three episode of The 1:55:03.960 --> 1:55:07.560 Simpsons where Homer constructs a bear fighting suit. He even 1:55:07.640 --> 1:55:11.360 filmed an outie commercial. Of course, he always reinvested the 1:55:11.440 --> 1:55:15.480 proceeds directly into making more suits of bear armor. Now, 1:55:15.880 --> 1:55:18.600 the good news is he eventually moved on from wanting 1:55:18.640 --> 1:55:21.960 to make armor that was specifically geared towards fighting bears, 1:55:22.320 --> 1:55:24.440 but he never got over his desire for making a 1:55:24.520 --> 1:55:27.680 suit of elaborate body armor. So he pivoted, claiming that 1:55:27.920 --> 1:55:30.200 now his brother was in the military, and so he 1:55:30.280 --> 1:55:33.480 wanted to make flexible body armor themed after the armor 1:55:33.520 --> 1:55:36.680 in Halo to help keep soldiers and SWAT officers safe 1:55:36.760 --> 1:55:40.360 during dangerous raids. Because next suit was called the Trojan, 1:55:40.640 --> 1:55:43.000 and it featured a compass in the dick for reasons 1:55:43.040 --> 1:55:47.640 that are deeply confusing. Wait, that's not even it's not 1:55:47.720 --> 1:55:51.240 even a useful spot, like put it on your watch 1:55:52.480 --> 1:55:55.640 him he is adamant that he had talked to Special 1:55:55.720 --> 1:55:58.360 Forces guys and they said, right in the dick is 1:55:58.400 --> 1:56:00.960 where you want to compass it, like flip down, So 1:56:01.120 --> 1:56:03.080 it looks like he has a penis that's made out 1:56:03.080 --> 1:56:06.480 of compass. Okay, that is kind of funny. I'm gonna 1:56:06.480 --> 1:56:08.400 play you a clip of this armor, which I will 1:56:08.440 --> 1:56:12.120 say looks a lot more professional than the last suit, 1:56:12.800 --> 1:56:17.440 the first ballistic full exoskeleton body suit of armor. This 1:56:17.600 --> 1:56:20.400 came from twenty years of development through the bear suits 1:56:20.800 --> 1:56:25.360 and about seventeen hundred and fifty hours of actual building time, 1:56:25.760 --> 1:56:28.400 And it came from so many calls I got from 1:56:28.480 --> 1:56:31.120 friends of mine in Iraq and an Afghanistan. My brother 1:56:31.200 --> 1:56:34.240 was in the military, talking about is there can you 1:56:34.360 --> 1:56:36.160 not go in the direction that we need, which is 1:56:36.280 --> 1:56:40.960 you know, against the ieeds improvised explosive devices, and you know, 1:56:41.160 --> 1:56:43.880 build it to the point where you've got the flexibility, 1:56:44.120 --> 1:56:46.720 the lightness, but with the strength of what the bear 1:56:46.800 --> 1:56:48.480 suits were, And that's where that's where this came from. 1:56:49.400 --> 1:56:52.960 So I'm gonna tell you right now that suit is 1:56:53.000 --> 1:56:56.840 not going to help you against an IED. The gigantic 1:56:56.920 --> 1:56:59.800 heavy armor you see in the hurt Locker only kind 1:56:59.840 --> 1:57:02.800 of helps you if it's a pretty small IED. What 1:57:03.000 --> 1:57:05.320 he's built is not going to protect you from like 1:57:05.960 --> 1:57:09.280 an explosively formed penetrator or like a five thousand pound 1:57:09.640 --> 1:57:12.760 fertilizer five hundred pound fertilizer bomb or something like that. 1:57:14.240 --> 1:57:17.800 To test this, though, Troy hired a former military marksman, 1:57:17.880 --> 1:57:20.160 the guy who he claimed had previously covered him out 1:57:20.240 --> 1:57:23.040 in the woods on bare expeditions with less lethal AMO, 1:57:23.920 --> 1:57:26.000 and he asked this man to shoot him point and 1:57:26.040 --> 1:57:32.080 blank with a rifle. So thankfully, this guy was like Troy, 1:57:32.160 --> 1:57:34.320 it's illegal to point a loaded weapon at a person 1:57:34.400 --> 1:57:37.200 in our province. I'm not going to shoot you directly 1:57:37.280 --> 1:57:40.120 in the chest with a hunting rifle. So Troy had 1:57:40.200 --> 1:57:42.560 him take the armor out of the suit and then 1:57:42.640 --> 1:57:45.480 shoot at it, and the bullet went immediately through the armor. 1:57:46.760 --> 1:57:49.440 It says a lot about Troy that his first instinct 1:57:49.600 --> 1:57:52.520 was not shoot the armor without a human being in it. 1:57:52.920 --> 1:57:57.080 But um, at least, yeah, at least the guy who 1:57:57.200 --> 1:57:59.720 was testing it did not shoot him directly in the 1:58:00.000 --> 1:58:03.280 guest and kill him. I'm gonna quote again from Mental 1:58:03.320 --> 1:58:06.440 Flaws here. Hertibes tweaked the Trojan, which he debuted in 1:58:06.480 --> 1:58:09.320 two thousand and seven to little notice. Eventually, he offered 1:58:09.360 --> 1:58:11.960 his design to the Canadian military for free, but it 1:58:12.000 --> 1:58:14.920 can take years for armed forces to evaluate new technology, 1:58:15.120 --> 1:58:18.480 and existing contracts with equipment vendors render it near impossible 1:58:18.560 --> 1:58:22.440 for independent inventors without backing or references to succeed with 1:58:22.600 --> 1:58:25.440 industrial military contracts are sewn up and they don't want 1:58:25.480 --> 1:58:28.720 anyone stepping on toes. He says, engineers pick my brain, 1:58:28.840 --> 1:58:31.080 but I can't be affiliated with them. I'm a loose 1:58:31.160 --> 1:58:35.160 cannon and my methodology is backward. I do not disagree 1:58:35.200 --> 1:58:40.080 with that statement. He did, however, have several other inventions 1:58:40.240 --> 1:58:44.240 over the years. For one thing, Troy invented a burn paste, 1:58:44.440 --> 1:58:48.000 a gooey substance that hardens when exposed to flame in 1:58:48.160 --> 1:58:52.400 order to protect you. Canada's Discovery Channel documented him covered 1:58:52.440 --> 1:58:55.960 in the burn pace, being exposed to temperatures above thirty 1:58:56.000 --> 1:58:59.000 six hundred degrees fahrenheit. He held a blowtorch to his 1:58:59.080 --> 1:59:04.400 helmeted head for ten minutes and it worked. This leaves 1:59:04.440 --> 1:59:06.840 out a fun fact, which is that Troy was inspired 1:59:06.880 --> 1:59:09.200 to make his burn paste because one day, while wearing 1:59:09.280 --> 1:59:13.040 his suit, it overheated, burning most of his body very badly. 1:59:14.200 --> 1:59:16.800 So he needed to make the burn paste in order 1:59:16.880 --> 1:59:20.040 to protect himself. Yeah, it doesn't seem easy to get 1:59:20.120 --> 1:59:23.760 in and out of. Like, no, it would not be 1:59:23.920 --> 1:59:26.240 easy to dawn your If you look at the helmet 1:59:26.280 --> 1:59:28.600 there your peripheral version is going to be shit. It's 1:59:28.640 --> 1:59:31.120 not going to be good for like fighting in and 1:59:31.240 --> 1:59:33.520 it is going to exhaust you. Like he builds an 1:59:33.560 --> 1:59:36.360 air conditioner for it, but that's only gonna do so 1:59:36.560 --> 1:59:40.520 much like body armor is always kind of like a 1:59:42.360 --> 1:59:46.360 trade off between mobility and protection, and something like a 1:59:46.480 --> 1:59:49.840 plate carrier is worth it. But full body armor that's 1:59:49.880 --> 1:59:52.120 not powered in a meaningful way just is not going 1:59:52.160 --> 1:59:54.360 to be practical yet. This is why I do not 1:59:54.480 --> 1:59:58.800 respect the Mandalorians. No, no, you you've been vocal about 1:59:58.880 --> 2:00:02.880 that for years have I'm gonna play you a video 2:00:03.000 --> 2:00:06.240 of him testing this fire paste from that Canadian Discovery 2:00:06.320 --> 2:00:11.440 Channel documentary because it's very funny. Troy envisions neighborhoods in 2:00:11.480 --> 2:00:13.880 the path of a forest fire being sprayed with a 2:00:13.960 --> 2:00:17.440 thin layer of fire paste, effectively starving out the fire. 2:00:18.080 --> 2:00:21.200 And according to Troy, clean up is a breeze due 2:00:21.240 --> 2:00:28.200 to firepace only weakness water. Just see it turns back 2:00:28.240 --> 2:00:32.240 into a paste. See, I'm already into a layer. It's 2:00:32.280 --> 2:00:35.200 just past now, which is firepiece. This is its natural state. 2:00:35.480 --> 2:00:37.720 And when it dries, see I'm already slopping it off. 2:00:37.760 --> 2:00:40.200 Now there's is there It turns to the peace. This 2:00:40.240 --> 2:00:42.000 is what's gonna happen on your host Now it's a 2:00:43.360 --> 2:00:48.160 he's chewing it up, and oh that's so cross. He's 2:00:48.160 --> 2:00:50.840 just spitting it all over his house. The dog comes along, 2:00:51.080 --> 2:00:53.400 takes a little in his mouth, washes it around, and 2:00:53.480 --> 2:00:57.640 spits it out. Nothing's gonna happen. It's biden ridable, non topsic. 2:00:58.240 --> 2:01:00.960 Don't have to worry one anything happening. So how would 2:01:00.960 --> 2:01:04.080 a homeowner remove the firepace from the outside of their home? 2:01:04.480 --> 2:01:08.160 This is gonna be bob fuse next door. Bob's house 2:01:08.280 --> 2:01:10.320 is gonna be fine. The next day, he's gonna come 2:01:10.400 --> 2:01:12.440 up with his garden, the holes in a cannabier, and 2:01:12.560 --> 2:01:15.240 in two hours he'll be ready for the football game. 2:01:16.080 --> 2:01:18.520 Oh what there goes to the house. After ten minutes, 2:01:18.760 --> 2:01:21.560 Troy inspects the firepaced house. Look at look at this. 2:01:21.920 --> 2:01:26.360 At this there's a little Barbie. She's all kay. Barbie's 2:01:26.360 --> 2:01:35.000 fire same Barbie's sister. The Barbie is clearly sin. Now. 2:01:35.320 --> 2:01:37.400 He does note again that the only weakness of the 2:01:37.440 --> 2:01:40.240 fire paste is water. This might reduce its efficacy, but 2:01:40.320 --> 2:01:42.720 I think he envisions it being dumped on neighborhoods in 2:01:42.800 --> 2:01:45.880 the path of a fire. They decided not to do this. Now, 2:01:46.400 --> 2:01:49.640 why why does he keep getting platforms? Like, why why 2:01:49.680 --> 2:01:53.160 does he continue? He was because because this was really 2:01:53.240 --> 2:01:55.840 funny to everyone on the Internet. So a documentary that 2:01:55.960 --> 2:01:58.600 came out would get shared all over. People would watch it. 2:01:58.680 --> 2:02:01.760 It would get him attention, he would get donations. There 2:02:01.920 --> 2:02:04.120 was like one point where he had to he had 2:02:04.160 --> 2:02:07.440 to sell his body armor. He had to like sell 2:02:07.480 --> 2:02:09.520 it to a pawn shop because he was broke, and 2:02:10.040 --> 2:02:12.280 a fan bought it back from the pawn shop and 2:02:12.360 --> 2:02:17.440 gave it to him so he could continue. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, 2:02:17.520 --> 2:02:19.400 he had a fan base. Like I said, he was 2:02:19.440 --> 2:02:23.080 a hero of the old Internet. He did eventually succeed 2:02:23.160 --> 2:02:25.600 in making an armor suit that was resistant to twelve 2:02:25.640 --> 2:02:28.959 gage shotgun shells, which he acts like is very impressive. 2:02:29.520 --> 2:02:33.120 Shotgun shells are not good at penetrating armor. Most soft 2:02:33.240 --> 2:02:36.200 body armor vests will stop a shot shell from penetrating it. 2:02:36.760 --> 2:02:40.000 Shotguns are not for penetrating armor. There for damaging meat. 2:02:41.040 --> 2:02:43.000 But Troy made a big deal about how this would 2:02:43.000 --> 2:02:46.520 save the lives of soldiers in war. His next invention, 2:02:46.720 --> 2:02:49.760 as he was continuing to iterate his body armor, was 2:02:49.880 --> 2:02:53.600 something called the Godlight device. Now, Troy never gave much 2:02:53.680 --> 2:02:56.280 detail on what the Godlight was, but he says it 2:02:56.440 --> 2:02:59.480 shrunk tumors and mice as well as his sister's tumor, 2:02:59.720 --> 2:03:01.800 and he would tell interviewers he was pretty sure it 2:03:01.880 --> 2:03:06.919 could cure Parkinson's disease. Light is extremely effective against certain cancers. 2:03:07.200 --> 2:03:10.120 All I did was take all spectrums of light electromagnetic 2:03:10.200 --> 2:03:13.240 radiation and put them together, and it works. I don't 2:03:13.280 --> 2:03:19.240 know why, but I think that's how you get cancer. 2:03:19.360 --> 2:03:23.920 But okay, funny you mentioned that. So obviously his claims 2:03:23.920 --> 2:03:27.040 about the Godlight were never validated by any outside force, 2:03:27.280 --> 2:03:31.200 in part because shining whatever the fuck he's invented on 2:03:31.280 --> 2:03:34.760 a bunch of sick people has ethical considerations to it. 2:03:35.200 --> 2:03:38.520 But Troy turned the light on himself and experienced what 2:03:38.680 --> 2:03:41.919 he calls the hide effect. I think, as in doctor Jackline, 2:03:41.960 --> 2:03:44.640 mister Hyde, his hair fell out and he lost twenty 2:03:44.760 --> 2:03:53.640 pounds curious a mystery. Then he claims the Godlight mysteriously 2:03:53.960 --> 2:03:56.200 stopped working and he didn't have the money to fix 2:03:56.320 --> 2:04:04.480 it up. There are amazing I love this man. It's 2:04:04.920 --> 2:04:08.280 it is. It is fascinating that the closer society comes 2:04:08.320 --> 2:04:10.800 to this complete collapse. We get more of these little 2:04:10.840 --> 2:04:13.840 weirdos who are like trying to figure out how to 2:04:14.160 --> 2:04:21.240 survive the apocalypse and exactly the wrong way. Yes, um, 2:04:21.640 --> 2:04:25.480 I'm going to read another quote from that mental phloss article. Today. 2:04:25.600 --> 2:04:29.520 Hertabes operates a scrapyard in Ontario and dismisses notions of patents. 2:04:29.760 --> 2:04:32.440 The stuff is too easy to duplicate and it costs 2:04:32.520 --> 2:04:36.080 eighty thousand dollars to file an application. He rejects offers 2:04:36.080 --> 2:04:39.280 to outright sell his creations like Firepaste, because he frequently 2:04:39.360 --> 2:04:41.840 sells off shares to fund their development. By the time 2:04:41.880 --> 2:04:44.240 I got Firepace to the point of testing, seventy percent 2:04:44.320 --> 2:04:46.560 of it was owned by investors, So when a university 2:04:46.640 --> 2:04:48.960 wants it, I only have thirty percent left. They're not 2:04:49.120 --> 2:04:52.440 interested in that. And yet Hernabes can't stop inventing. He 2:04:52.560 --> 2:04:54.720 still feels compelled to put in twenty one hour days 2:04:54.760 --> 2:04:57.800 refining his projects. His current plan is to find funding 2:04:57.840 --> 2:05:00.520 for the Apache, the latest version of his t Oan suit, 2:05:00.720 --> 2:05:03.040 which he says protects ninety three percent of a user's 2:05:03.120 --> 2:05:06.640 body and offers ninety six percent flexibility. A prototype will 2:05:06.640 --> 2:05:09.600 cost seventy thousand dollars. It'll take six to eight months 2:05:09.640 --> 2:05:11.280 to build by hand. I'll try to market it to 2:05:11.400 --> 2:05:14.280 law enforcement like SWAT. He needs another one hundred thousand 2:05:14.280 --> 2:05:17.720 dollars to rebuild the Godlight, renamed the EMR five, which 2:05:17.760 --> 2:05:20.280 he now claims will only cure breast cancer. He wants 2:05:20.280 --> 2:05:24.840 to take it to John's Optics for testing. So well, 2:05:24.880 --> 2:05:29.040 I'm excited for SWAT teams to be using his inventions. Yes, yes, 2:05:29.200 --> 2:05:31.800 I do support that. Thanks to that dit compass, they'll 2:05:31.800 --> 2:05:34.560 never get lost at the wrong house again. Could really 2:05:34.680 --> 2:05:39.080 save a lot of lives. That's the problem SWAT teams 2:05:39.120 --> 2:05:41.920 have is poor land nav I think so. I think 2:05:41.960 --> 2:05:44.320 the SWAT team should wear that. Every SWAT team member 2:05:44.320 --> 2:05:47.600 should be forced to wear that barrasuit for everything they do. Yes, 2:05:48.040 --> 2:05:53.880 the only thing SWAT could get due So tragically, Troy 2:05:54.080 --> 2:05:58.240 died in like twenty twelve, I think in a fiery collision. Yeah, 2:05:58.520 --> 2:06:02.640 he drove right into a fuel tanker. Oh yeah, it's 2:06:02.760 --> 2:06:05.920 very sad. He was fifty four years old old. His 2:06:06.080 --> 2:06:09.640 widow says that he swerved his car or the police 2:06:09.680 --> 2:06:11.440 say that he swerved his car into the pathway of 2:06:11.520 --> 2:06:14.680 the truck. He had been very depressed because he'd encountered 2:06:14.720 --> 2:06:19.320 financial difficulties and had not been able to sell his inventions. Um, 2:06:19.480 --> 2:06:22.320 obviously this is very sad for them. He seems like, 2:06:23.080 --> 2:06:25.480 despite everything, he was a fun guy to be around 2:06:25.600 --> 2:06:29.040 and then yeah, fell on hard times. Um it is. 2:06:29.200 --> 2:06:32.200 It is a depressing end to the story. But Troy 2:06:32.480 --> 2:06:36.600 lives on in the documentary project Grizzly, and in the 2:06:36.680 --> 2:06:38.600 impact he had on all of our hearts, and in 2:06:38.680 --> 2:06:41.880 the memory that you know, even if your dreams are 2:06:42.080 --> 2:06:44.480 are crazy, you should you should try and live them 2:06:44.520 --> 2:06:47.680 because who knows, Maybe maybe you'll develop a suit that 2:06:47.760 --> 2:06:49.640 allows you to fight a Grizzly bar in hand to 2:06:49.720 --> 2:06:55.080 hand combat. Anyway. That's that's this Hero of the Internet episode. 2:06:55.120 --> 2:06:58.600 I hope you all found it edifying. That is that 2:06:58.840 --> 2:07:04.000 is an inspiring, inspiring ringtail Yeah, um, it's it's it's 2:07:04.360 --> 2:07:07.800 you know, he's fucking more of an inventor than Elon 2:07:07.920 --> 2:07:11.280 Musk has been, and he would have been a better 2:07:11.440 --> 2:07:15.760 ruler of Twitter if that's true, was in charge of Twitter. 2:07:16.440 --> 2:07:19.120 He's he's really the last guy from the old error 2:07:19.120 --> 2:07:21.720 of capitalism where you would actually like return your profits 2:07:21.760 --> 2:07:24.280 into into R and D instead of just like paying 2:07:24.360 --> 2:07:26.960 Elon Musk like forty seven million dollars to hire a 2:07:27.040 --> 2:07:30.160 bunch of consultants who also make forty million dollars. Yeah. 2:07:30.280 --> 2:07:32.400 One thing you have to say about Troy is he 2:07:32.600 --> 2:07:34.440 was not He was not in this for the money. 2:07:34.560 --> 2:07:37.560 This was a man who believed more strongly than I 2:07:37.640 --> 2:07:40.400 think I've ever believed in anything about the idea of 2:07:40.520 --> 2:07:43.640 building a suit of armor to fight grisly bears, um 2:07:43.880 --> 2:07:47.360 and whatever else you can say about Troy, he was absolutely, 2:07:47.560 --> 2:07:50.160 absolutely honest in that belief. And I think I'm going 2:07:50.200 --> 2:07:53.680 to end by playing a brief montage of him testing 2:07:53.880 --> 2:07:57.600 out his first version of the armored suit, which looks 2:07:57.720 --> 2:08:00.480 more or less like a set of heavy base ball armor. 2:08:00.800 --> 2:08:02.840 Like it looks like someone wearing body armor and a 2:08:02.880 --> 2:08:05.800 baseball helmet or a sorry, a football helmet. In fact, 2:08:05.840 --> 2:08:07.960 I think it just is a football helmet. But yeah, 2:08:08.280 --> 2:08:12.000 here's here's Troy's early tests in nineteen eighty eight. That's 2:08:12.000 --> 2:08:17.080 definitely a ball helmet. That one looks kind of cool. 2:08:18.560 --> 2:08:21.240 That one looks pretty cool too. Yeah, they look increasingly 2:08:21.400 --> 2:08:24.040 space Marini in this period, and he has some range 2:08:24.080 --> 2:08:37.560 of motion, doesn't even have his helmet on, just knocking 2:08:37.680 --> 2:08:42.120 him down with what looked like to buy force. It 2:08:42.280 --> 2:08:45.520 doesn't it does look more. Oh my gosh, he just 2:08:48.640 --> 2:08:53.080 he keeps getting he walks right in the face. Yeah, 2:08:53.600 --> 2:08:57.200 it's it's just amazing. That last one looks super Space 2:08:57.280 --> 2:09:00.880 Marine es. Yeah. Yeah, some of them looked pretty cool. Um, 2:09:01.160 --> 2:09:04.240 And he didn't die from anything related to the suit testing, 2:09:04.320 --> 2:09:06.320 So you got to give him one thing. He knew 2:09:06.320 --> 2:09:07.960 how to make a suit of armor that would not 2:09:08.120 --> 2:09:10.720 get you killed doing the kind of shit Troy Hertabes 2:09:10.800 --> 2:09:13.800 like to do. It seems like he was good with 2:09:14.000 --> 2:09:18.200 like with like blunt force trauma armor. Did anyone ever 2:09:18.280 --> 2:09:22.120 do like a CTE skit like test on him every 2:09:22.200 --> 2:09:28.400 dime because this man had a thousand micro head injuries. Absolutely. 2:09:28.920 --> 2:09:31.120 I mean, I think the real lesson here is that 2:09:31.200 --> 2:09:33.320 he was able. He was he was able to continue 2:09:33.400 --> 2:09:39.320 his work thanks to Canadian healthcare. Um, he was probably 2:09:39.400 --> 2:09:43.000 like five percent of the entire Canadian healthcare system budget 2:09:43.480 --> 2:09:49.600 just dealing with all of Troy's concussions. Yeah. Anyway, that's 2:09:49.640 --> 2:09:52.560 the story of Troy Hertabies. I hope you've all found 2:09:52.600 --> 2:09:56.640 it useful. Um, go into the world and if your 2:09:56.680 --> 2:09:58.920 dream is to create a suit of powered armor that 2:09:58.960 --> 2:10:02.480 will allow you to defeat a grizzly bear in unarmed combat. Then, 2:10:02.560 --> 2:10:21.600 by god, you know, shoot for the stars in a 2:10:21.760 --> 2:10:25.040 world where you end up standing in a two hour 2:10:25.240 --> 2:10:31.120 line to buy mediocre and not climate friendly water. Sorry, 2:10:31.200 --> 2:10:34.400 this is it could happen here. Uh, this is Sophie. 2:10:34.480 --> 2:10:36.400 I really wanted to do that for a really long time. 2:10:38.320 --> 2:10:42.360 Well now I want to watch it. Thank you. Those 2:10:42.400 --> 2:10:44.800 voices you hear are James Stout and Margaret Killjoy and 2:10:45.120 --> 2:10:47.760 we're here. We're here to talk about the water crisis 2:10:47.840 --> 2:10:54.800 that seems to be getting worse and uh, these United States. Yeah, James, 2:10:54.880 --> 2:10:58.200 what's what's it? What's it? What's what's happening? Well? Uh, 2:10:58.280 --> 2:11:00.800 and ever things are happening, right. I think should probably 2:11:00.800 --> 2:11:04.800 emphasize at the start that water contaminants have been affecting 2:11:04.880 --> 2:11:07.520 people outside of like the kind of colonial core for 2:11:07.600 --> 2:11:12.480 a very long time, and legacy corporate media, whatever you 2:11:12.480 --> 2:11:14.640 want to call it, hasn't given it a solitary fuck 2:11:14.680 --> 2:11:18.080 about it until it affected people inside the colonial core. 2:11:18.200 --> 2:11:22.200 So what we're seeing right now is in two places 2:11:22.680 --> 2:11:27.880 East I believe it's pronounced Palestine, right, I believe so too, Yeah, yeah, okay, 2:11:27.920 --> 2:11:34.040 East Palestine, Ohio, And in Philadelphia. I believe it's pronounced 2:11:34.840 --> 2:11:39.600 phil A Delphia. Okay, they did like someone's name, like Phil. 2:11:39.680 --> 2:11:42.280 It was named for Phil a Delphia. The founder of 2:11:42.320 --> 2:11:46.520 the city, phil from Delphia, like the oracle. I see ye, 2:11:47.040 --> 2:11:50.800 he predicted that one day there would be a spill 2:11:51.520 --> 2:11:54.320 from a POC chemical plant near the Delaware River, and 2:11:54.840 --> 2:11:59.120 famously he was right. We've they built a city there anyway. Yeah, yeah, 2:11:59.200 --> 2:12:01.960 and they for years they've been so angry about not 2:12:02.080 --> 2:12:04.920 having a chemical plant. They've just climb lamppost and thrown 2:12:05.000 --> 2:12:07.960 batteries at a boating football teams. Yeah. And I feel 2:12:08.000 --> 2:12:12.120 really good about starting with such heavy jokes about this thing. Yeah. Yeah, 2:12:12.560 --> 2:12:15.440 it's three million people, I think anyway. Yeah, if you're 2:12:15.440 --> 2:12:18.920 in Philadelphia, we don't want to express solidarity with you, 2:12:19.040 --> 2:12:22.320 I guess as you wonder what the fuck to do 2:12:22.640 --> 2:12:27.640 about your water supply, which is currently contaminated, as we understand, 2:12:27.680 --> 2:12:33.040 by something called beautiful acrelate, which is a chemical that 2:12:33.280 --> 2:12:37.920 is found in paint. And the reason that there was 2:12:37.920 --> 2:12:39.800 a paint chemical in your drinking water if you live 2:12:39.840 --> 2:12:44.200 in Philadelphia, is that a PLC manufacturing chemical plant called 2:12:44.720 --> 2:12:48.800 I think it's trinso tr I n SEO had a leak, 2:12:48.960 --> 2:12:51.400 and that leak, when it's a storm drain, that storm 2:12:51.520 --> 2:12:54.839 drain went into the Delaware River, and that river feeds 2:12:54.920 --> 2:12:58.880 into the Samuel s backs to water treatment plant, and 2:12:58.960 --> 2:13:01.200 obviously that water treatment aren't feeds into the tap that 2:13:01.360 --> 2:13:02.960 you turn on to drink water when you live in 2:13:03.040 --> 2:13:07.760 your house. And this has, as it always does, when 2:13:07.840 --> 2:13:13.520 there are like these somewhat bungled announcements of chemical contamination 2:13:13.600 --> 2:13:16.800 in drinking water cause people to rush out to buy 2:13:17.360 --> 2:13:19.960 bottled water, which is an understandable response if you think 2:13:19.960 --> 2:13:21.480 you're not going to be able to drink water, which 2:13:21.560 --> 2:13:24.440 is caused people to wait in long lines to access 2:13:24.960 --> 2:13:28.040 sometimes like a limited supply of water. And what we 2:13:28.120 --> 2:13:30.040 wanted to talk about today a little bit was not 2:13:30.200 --> 2:13:33.440 so much like what to do if you're in Philadelphia 2:13:33.560 --> 2:13:37.440 right now, but how we can better prepare to be 2:13:38.440 --> 2:13:43.360 ready for water emergencies, water shortage, is water contamination, things 2:13:43.400 --> 2:13:45.720 like that, which is why Margaret has joined us because 2:13:45.760 --> 2:13:51.280 she is the prepper anarchist queen and knows a lot 2:13:51.280 --> 2:13:54.520 about these things. So yeah, Margaret, should we I think 2:13:54.560 --> 2:13:55.920 you said you wanted to break us down by like 2:13:56.000 --> 2:13:57.840 bad things. It could be in your water and things 2:13:57.880 --> 2:14:00.720 you can do to get those bad things away, right, Yeah, 2:14:00.840 --> 2:14:04.160 although I will say only a minority of this information 2:14:04.520 --> 2:14:07.920 directly relates to people who are dealing with toxic chemical spills. 2:14:08.360 --> 2:14:11.480 So if we're I have a lot of information about 2:14:11.560 --> 2:14:14.920 general water safety, it's long term storage of water, things 2:14:14.960 --> 2:14:16.920 that you don't want in your water, how to get 2:14:16.960 --> 2:14:18.920 those things out of your water, And I know you 2:14:19.040 --> 2:14:22.280 have a lot of experience with that stuff too. But 2:14:22.840 --> 2:14:26.400 the very specific thing that people first in Ohio and 2:14:26.520 --> 2:14:31.440 now in Pennsylvania are dealing with u of chemical stuff 2:14:32.440 --> 2:14:35.560 is worse than other stuff and way harder to get out, 2:14:35.720 --> 2:14:39.840 especially on a DIY level. So I don't know what 2:14:40.000 --> 2:14:42.160 what feels best like, should we do an overview or 2:14:42.200 --> 2:14:44.120 should we try and first talk about the chemical stuff 2:14:44.120 --> 2:14:46.000 and then talk about like the fun easy stuff like 2:14:46.040 --> 2:14:49.160 not getting giardio when you're camping. Yeah, let's maybe start 2:14:49.200 --> 2:14:53.160 out with the kind of this is the scary you know, 2:14:53.360 --> 2:14:58.280 you can't buy a lifestrole for this fear first, fun later. Yeah, 2:14:59.160 --> 2:15:00.840 people might be listening, I mean it might be afraid 2:15:00.880 --> 2:15:02.160 of They might be concerned that they might be in 2:15:02.440 --> 2:15:05.240 one of these places. Right, Flint, Michigan. What we still 2:15:05.240 --> 2:15:08.280 haven't fucking fixed the water. Yeah, and so yeah, let's 2:15:08.320 --> 2:15:13.520 start fucking Flint, Michigan. What a just disastrous incompetence. Yeah, 2:15:13.680 --> 2:15:17.760 I mean yeah, it's it's extremely sad that the country 2:15:17.840 --> 2:15:19.760 that is as rich as any country has ever managed 2:15:19.800 --> 2:15:24.120 to be in human history is still poisoning people with water. 2:15:24.320 --> 2:15:26.760 But yeah, let's start with that. Let's let's start with 2:15:27.000 --> 2:15:29.600 what to do when you get a reverse nine or 2:15:29.640 --> 2:15:31.480 one phone call telling you know, to drink from your tap. 2:15:32.440 --> 2:15:35.560 I mean, honestly, going out and getting bottled water was 2:15:35.720 --> 2:15:39.880 the right move. Or also, since people did have a 2:15:39.920 --> 2:15:41.640 heads up that their tap water was safe for a 2:15:41.680 --> 2:15:46.120 period of time, storing water in various containers is the 2:15:46.240 --> 2:15:50.400 right move, because once your water is contaminated with chemicals, 2:15:51.600 --> 2:15:55.720 it's really hard to get it out. The main method 2:15:56.320 --> 2:16:00.280 that well on an industrial scale, the thing that someone 2:16:00.360 --> 2:16:05.320 can use the way they treat wastewater with beautifle as late. 2:16:06.200 --> 2:16:09.560 I didn't write down the name in my notes. Acrelate, 2:16:10.200 --> 2:16:13.040 Oh like acrylic, that makes sense, slate text paint. It's 2:16:13.080 --> 2:16:16.480 something called a fluidized bed reactor, which frankly I did 2:16:16.560 --> 2:16:19.080 not know about until I started doing this specific research 2:16:19.120 --> 2:16:22.680 for this specific chemical People who are like more at 2:16:22.720 --> 2:16:24.560 a high science level will know more about this. This 2:16:24.720 --> 2:16:30.480 is basically like you're using different bacteria to eat and 2:16:31.600 --> 2:16:34.160 I don't know, fucking clean out this shit. This is 2:16:34.200 --> 2:16:36.800 not what's going to be happening in your kitchen sink 2:16:36.840 --> 2:16:38.440 anytime soon. This is not going to be a part 2:16:38.480 --> 2:16:42.440 of your bread of filter anytime soon, ironically, And this 2:16:42.640 --> 2:16:46.760 is not how am I going to say this. Don't 2:16:46.840 --> 2:16:49.920 drink this chemical water if you have any possibility, right, 2:16:50.240 --> 2:16:53.160 if you can get other water, do that. And I 2:16:53.240 --> 2:16:55.360 believe in our current society it is a better and 2:16:55.480 --> 2:16:58.160 safer bet to get water from elsewhere. If you were 2:16:58.320 --> 2:17:00.720 in some situation, which I suspect most people are not. 2:17:00.959 --> 2:17:04.160 I suspect most people could access supply lines. If you're 2:17:04.200 --> 2:17:06.440 in some situation where the only water available to you 2:17:07.040 --> 2:17:11.360 has this these types of chemicals in it, the most 2:17:11.520 --> 2:17:15.040 likely guess about a way to deal with it is 2:17:15.120 --> 2:17:21.400 activated carbon charcoal and is actually the home filters that 2:17:21.400 --> 2:17:23.640 a lot of people use. Is your Britta filter, is 2:17:23.879 --> 2:17:26.280 your burkey, although I'll talk some shit on burkey in 2:17:26.320 --> 2:17:30.880 a little bit, and and when we go over the 2:17:30.959 --> 2:17:33.920 more like nitty greedy details about each filtration method. Maybe 2:17:33.959 --> 2:17:36.200 we can we can talk more about this, but basically 2:17:36.280 --> 2:17:39.880 it is like it is not tested to do this. 2:17:40.160 --> 2:17:41.920 No one has ever been like, man, what if we 2:17:42.000 --> 2:17:45.080 get a bunch of budle accrelate in our water, will 2:17:45.200 --> 2:17:48.160 our britta filter it out? No one is running tests 2:17:48.240 --> 2:17:51.920 on this because it is not a thing that normally 2:17:52.040 --> 2:17:54.920 is in the water historically, although clearly it is often 2:17:55.000 --> 2:18:01.320 in the water now. However, the method of filtration of 2:18:01.440 --> 2:18:04.880 the various home level acts various home level methods of 2:18:04.959 --> 2:18:08.840 filtration adsorption is what it's called with a D instead 2:18:08.879 --> 2:18:12.000 of a B, is the method that is perceived as 2:18:12.240 --> 2:18:15.520 most effective at reducing chemicals in water. However, again we're 2:18:15.520 --> 2:18:20.600 talking about like maybe this reduces some chemicals, maybe not. 2:18:21.600 --> 2:18:26.000 Oh you run this through this and now you're fine. Yeah. Yeah, 2:18:26.200 --> 2:18:28.480 it's there's a lot of things that could get no 2:18:28.600 --> 2:18:30.680 water right that we don't really have like any any 2:18:30.760 --> 2:18:32.880 like decent research on how to get them out of 2:18:32.959 --> 2:18:38.840 a Yeah. So, Margaret James, is there is there a say, 2:18:39.040 --> 2:18:40.720 say you're not living in a place where you get 2:18:40.760 --> 2:18:43.240 a text letting you know that in Tuesday at three 2:18:43.320 --> 2:18:45.960 pm your water will not be safe to drink, which 2:18:46.120 --> 2:18:52.920 is really just is there a home testing kit or 2:18:53.200 --> 2:18:57.360 a water testing kit that that is accessible for for 2:18:57.480 --> 2:19:04.160 most individuals, or what resources can people use to understand 2:19:04.240 --> 2:19:06.800 their water at home? Could you want to I'm not 2:19:06.879 --> 2:19:11.199 really going to trust the government on that, right, Yeah, 2:19:12.320 --> 2:19:16.280 And Margaret, do you want to take that I only 2:19:16.440 --> 2:19:20.040 know about I do not know about testing for beautiless accrelate. 2:19:21.320 --> 2:19:23.200 I think that this is the kind of thing that 2:19:23.840 --> 2:19:26.959 they are not people are not prepared for, like at 2:19:26.959 --> 2:19:29.600 a society level, I don't know. I believe I could 2:19:29.680 --> 2:19:31.920 be wrong. All of the water testing that I have 2:19:32.080 --> 2:19:34.880 done has tended to be around like I live on 2:19:34.959 --> 2:19:37.760 a well, right, and so there's a lot of testing 2:19:37.840 --> 2:19:40.200 things that are available to tell you the acidity of 2:19:40.240 --> 2:19:42.240 your water, the hardness of your water, which is how 2:19:42.480 --> 2:19:46.000 how many dissolved minerals, whether or not your water contains 2:19:46.040 --> 2:19:49.879 things like lead and arsnic heavy metals which we'll talk 2:19:49.920 --> 2:19:54.320 about in a little bit, and also bacteria, right like 2:19:54.680 --> 2:19:57.320 all of the stuff that we normally prepare to filter 2:19:57.440 --> 2:20:01.000 out of water. There are home tests available to you 2:20:01.480 --> 2:20:04.800 that you can use to determine. UM. I don't know, 2:20:04.879 --> 2:20:06.600 and I wish I had done more research ahead of time. 2:20:06.640 --> 2:20:09.279 There's like some talk about like possible smells and stuff, 2:20:09.840 --> 2:20:14.320 um for some of these, but I don't feel confident. Yeah, 2:20:14.360 --> 2:20:17.760 I mean, I know there's the ewg's like website where 2:20:17.760 --> 2:20:19.800 you can put in your your your zip code and 2:20:19.920 --> 2:20:22.879 get more information on if there's been contamination or anything 2:20:22.959 --> 2:20:26.400 like that, but like that's you know, reported things, not 2:20:26.560 --> 2:20:30.120 necessarily on an individual level for testing. Um. Yeah, I'd 2:20:30.120 --> 2:20:32.920 definitely do that. Anytime I have moved anywhere, I'll type 2:20:32.920 --> 2:20:35.520 in my zip code and then I go, ah, that 2:20:35.680 --> 2:20:40.120 sounds bad. Um, I don't like that. But yeah, you 2:20:40.200 --> 2:20:42.080 can find out, you know, once you put in you 2:20:42.120 --> 2:20:45.680 can find out who who, Like you put in your 2:20:45.760 --> 2:20:49.360 zip code on this is just ewg dot org. You 2:20:49.440 --> 2:20:51.440 put in your zip code and you can put who 2:20:52.280 --> 2:20:54.120 you pay for water, and then it goes in and 2:20:54.280 --> 2:20:56.560 it tells you. You know, it's really it's really fun. 2:20:56.959 --> 2:21:01.680 Four In my mind, I read four you Health Guidelines 2:21:01.840 --> 2:21:08.080 fourteen contaminants. Oh yes, yeah, I think a combination of 2:21:08.200 --> 2:21:10.400 two is probably your best bet, Like unless you happen 2:21:10.400 --> 2:21:14.760 to our laboratory, like because there's stuff coming like if 2:21:14.800 --> 2:21:18.120 there is like lead like in between the water mains 2:21:18.400 --> 2:21:20.680 and or like you know, wherever the EDWD is getting 2:21:20.680 --> 2:21:24.360 its information and your tap. Then you're still risking like 2:21:24.440 --> 2:21:26.600 heavy metal contaminants, right, or if you're on a well, 2:21:27.120 --> 2:21:28.760 you should test that it. I think it's every year, right, 2:21:28.760 --> 2:21:32.280 you're supposed to test your well water. I probably should. 2:21:35.280 --> 2:21:36.800 You know, you'll be fine, you'll know. But yeah, I 2:21:37.080 --> 2:21:39.880 think it's important that, like you, I have definitely got 2:21:40.360 --> 2:21:43.280 super sick from water that looks super clear, had no odor, 2:21:44.200 --> 2:21:49.880 looked fine, And I have drunk from turbit as fuck 2:21:50.000 --> 2:21:53.080 stagnant water and not been sick. Like your nose is 2:21:53.120 --> 2:21:55.960 not going to tell you, and you do need some 2:21:56.120 --> 2:22:02.000 kind of help. Yeah, let's talk about storing water first, 2:22:02.040 --> 2:22:04.439 and then we'll talk about the more sort of established 2:22:04.480 --> 2:22:08.000 solutions for the more expected contaminants. I guess, Yeah, how 2:22:08.040 --> 2:22:11.280 would you go about let's say you're not in Philadelphia 2:22:11.360 --> 2:22:14.400 right now and you want to prepare for something that 2:22:14.520 --> 2:22:16.320 could happen in your area, how would you go about 2:22:16.320 --> 2:22:20.120 storing water? So the easiest ways that you go get 2:22:20.120 --> 2:22:23.000 bottled water, if it is sealed and you keep it 2:22:23.080 --> 2:22:24.760 out of the sun, you keep it out of the heat, 2:22:25.879 --> 2:22:28.480 even though you're it's supposedly good for a year or 2:22:28.480 --> 2:22:30.560 two whatever. I feel like, really nervous on this, like, 2:22:31.200 --> 2:22:33.640 this is what's safe, even though it's not safe, right, 2:22:34.160 --> 2:22:39.040 but you can. Water itself doesn't go bad. That is 2:22:39.080 --> 2:22:41.800 a thing that is worth understanding. Left to its own devices, 2:22:41.920 --> 2:22:44.720 water does not go bad. Water goes bad when there's 2:22:44.760 --> 2:22:48.199 like something in it that replicates, like bacteria or something 2:22:48.320 --> 2:22:52.120 like that, or when something leaks into it. The main 2:22:52.240 --> 2:22:53.800 reason that you want to keep your water out of 2:22:53.840 --> 2:22:55.920 the sun and out of the heat is because if 2:22:55.959 --> 2:22:59.680 you're storing it in plastic, that can eventually kind of 2:22:59.800 --> 2:23:02.600 lead each into it as the plastic degrades, and that 2:23:03.920 --> 2:23:06.120 I don't know, there's probably long term health effects. But 2:23:06.200 --> 2:23:09.080 like I would drink a water bottle that has been 2:23:09.200 --> 2:23:11.800 in the backseat of my car for a year before 2:23:11.840 --> 2:23:18.640 I would drink beautile acrelate water, and which is I mean, 2:23:18.760 --> 2:23:21.360 it's I guess that's just plastic or plastic pick your poison. 2:23:21.480 --> 2:23:27.040 But but yeah, so bottled water is generally very safe 2:23:27.520 --> 2:23:30.200 and it is sealed and it has no particular reason 2:23:30.240 --> 2:23:32.480 to go bad. You don't want to store it next 2:23:32.560 --> 2:23:35.560 to kerosene or gasoline. Like if you are the kind 2:23:35.600 --> 2:23:39.160 of person who keeps five gallon jug of gasoline around, 2:23:39.400 --> 2:23:41.040 you want that in a different place than your water. 2:23:42.080 --> 2:23:45.280 Usually you want the gasoline outside your house and outbuilding. 2:23:45.560 --> 2:23:49.800 Everyone lives on acreage in the rural areas the country, right, 2:23:51.080 --> 2:23:54.480 so many outbuildings around here. Yeah, everyone's outbuildings. Just go 2:23:54.560 --> 2:24:00.760 out to my urban bond, Yeah exactly, So okay, Well, okay. 2:24:00.800 --> 2:24:04.080 Then the other thing, if I'm actually preparing go out 2:24:04.120 --> 2:24:06.480 and get some five gallon Jerry cans. You're going to 2:24:06.520 --> 2:24:08.520 pay between twenty and fifty dollars, and you'll get a 2:24:08.560 --> 2:24:11.640 little bit of different quality depending on that. You want 2:24:11.720 --> 2:24:15.840 something that is BPA free, you want something that is opaque, 2:24:16.320 --> 2:24:18.680 and you want something that is like not really bigger 2:24:18.760 --> 2:24:22.199 than four or five gallons because it's clumsy and unwieldy. Yeah. 2:24:22.800 --> 2:24:25.600 You also don't want to stack these things unless they 2:24:25.680 --> 2:24:30.199 specifically say this one is stackable to such and such depth. 2:24:30.400 --> 2:24:33.600 Like most stackable containers are also only stackable one or 2:24:33.640 --> 2:24:39.720 two high, well two or three high, and I don't know, 2:24:39.800 --> 2:24:42.720 I mean, like frankly, on some level, that's what there is, okay, 2:24:42.760 --> 2:24:44.920 And if you're going to fill your own water containers. 2:24:44.959 --> 2:24:48.080 There are a couple weird things about it. One people 2:24:48.200 --> 2:24:52.160 argue about how often you should rotate it. I rotate 2:24:52.200 --> 2:24:54.840 in mind about once a year. You should theoretically rotate 2:24:54.879 --> 2:24:57.480 them somewhere between six months and a year or something 2:24:57.560 --> 2:25:00.800 like that, depending on how you store it. The other 2:25:00.920 --> 2:25:04.199 thing is that if you are I actually think living 2:25:04.200 --> 2:25:06.360 off of well, you should probably rotate it more often. 2:25:06.560 --> 2:25:09.720 If you're on municipal water, don't run it through your 2:25:09.760 --> 2:25:13.039 britta before you store it, because that britta is going 2:25:13.080 --> 2:25:15.160 to pull out all the chlorine, all the bleach, and 2:25:15.160 --> 2:25:16.640 people are like, whoa, I don't want to drink bleach. 2:25:16.760 --> 2:25:21.480 I listen to that punk song Dead Dead milkman, um whatever. 2:25:23.200 --> 2:25:24.920 People don't want to drink bleach? Right, you actually do 2:25:25.040 --> 2:25:29.520 want to drink tiny amounts of bleach. You want Tunico 2:25:29.600 --> 2:25:34.160 medical solution. Yeah, it keeps bacteria from growing. So if 2:25:34.200 --> 2:25:36.400 you filter out all of that and then you put 2:25:36.480 --> 2:25:38.600 it the water in the thing, if there's the tiniest 2:25:38.640 --> 2:25:42.040 little bacteria that got through, it's like sweet, the defenses 2:25:42.040 --> 2:25:47.000 are down, you know. Um so, But yeah, honestly, story 2:25:47.080 --> 2:25:49.640 and water like people like they're going to sell you 2:25:49.720 --> 2:25:51.800 lots of products, and like prepper sites are full of 2:25:52.120 --> 2:25:55.520 people selling you shit. But it's just a matter of 2:25:55.640 --> 2:25:58.520 like finding containers and filling them with water and then 2:25:58.640 --> 2:26:03.119 rotating them every now and then, and it's not actually 2:26:03.200 --> 2:26:05.440 that big of a deal or super complicated. That's my 2:26:05.600 --> 2:26:08.200 take on it. Um. I used to live off of 2:26:09.040 --> 2:26:11.000 I used to live entirely off grid and then had 2:26:11.040 --> 2:26:12.960 to just drink water out of fifty gallon drums, and 2:26:14.200 --> 2:26:17.400 I just I didn't even you know what, I'm not 2:26:17.480 --> 2:26:19.480 going to say how bad my practices were because I 2:26:19.480 --> 2:26:23.800 don't want anyone to emulate me. I was gonna say, 2:26:23.800 --> 2:26:25.960 if you're like, if you're storing on a scale, I 2:26:26.000 --> 2:26:28.800 don't know why they'd say you live on a compound 2:26:28.800 --> 2:26:32.879 in the desert. You know you can get big water tanks, right, 2:26:32.959 --> 2:26:35.000 I'm just looking at moving out to the desert a 2:26:35.040 --> 2:26:39.039 couple of years ago. I didn't, but yeah, you can 2:26:39.080 --> 2:26:41.400 get big water tanks are pretty cheap. You should. I'm 2:26:41.400 --> 2:26:43.680 placed about a dollar a gallon. Last time I looked 2:26:43.720 --> 2:26:47.600 for like a fifteen hundred gallon tank. Yeah, I found 2:26:47.640 --> 2:26:51.120 them cheap, like GOV sp plus ones as well, pretty often. 2:26:51.440 --> 2:26:56.080 Oh really, Yeah, we'll talk later. Yeah, yeah, Well I'll 2:26:56.120 --> 2:26:59.320 send you some send you some links, but you might 2:26:59.440 --> 2:27:01.480 want to check it places you actually can't legally have 2:27:01.720 --> 2:27:05.640 those it's getting better now with that stuff, but you 2:27:05.840 --> 2:27:07.560 do want to check on that. I think if you're 2:27:07.680 --> 2:27:09.400 or you could get like a water buffalo, which is 2:27:09.480 --> 2:27:14.039 an industrial device for shipping water. You can probably pick 2:27:14.080 --> 2:27:17.040 up those pretty cheap. It's an animal. I don't want to. 2:27:17.520 --> 2:27:22.080 Don't dehumanize it calling it an industrial machine. It's an animal. 2:27:22.120 --> 2:27:24.840 It has feelings, Yeah, it does. And you just keep 2:27:24.879 --> 2:27:26.800 that in your backyard and then well that is is 2:27:26.879 --> 2:27:30.080 attack anyone who comes after your water. So it's quite effective. Yeah, 2:27:31.800 --> 2:27:37.240 they are toughest nails. I've had some brunners with buffalo animals. Okay, 2:27:38.280 --> 2:27:41.480 another thing, I guess that like, if you're like going 2:27:41.600 --> 2:27:44.160 hardcore on this and storing thousands of guyans of water, 2:27:45.480 --> 2:27:47.600 maybe you could invested something like a chlorine maker, and 2:27:47.720 --> 2:27:51.040 that way, if you do like mess up with your storage, 2:27:51.040 --> 2:27:53.520 I guess that that could maybe give you some leeway 2:27:53.959 --> 2:27:57.160 in terms of purifying afterwards. It's out fair to say, Margaret, Yeah, 2:27:57.200 --> 2:27:58.840 I mean that makes sense. Like chlorine maker is the 2:27:58.920 --> 2:28:01.840 next step up from basically because like bleach itself does 2:28:02.000 --> 2:28:04.840 go bad and it's not shelf stable for I don't 2:28:04.840 --> 2:28:08.959 remember how long it lasts. It's not indefinitely shelf stable, 2:28:08.959 --> 2:28:12.560 and so people often, especially in places of that, access 2:28:12.600 --> 2:28:15.240 to clean water and stuff. I will say, though, when 2:28:15.280 --> 2:28:18.320 we get into it, chemical treatment is really good for 2:28:18.440 --> 2:28:22.800 the main stuff that people normally worry about, such as protozoa, bacteria, 2:28:22.800 --> 2:28:25.840 and viruses. But once again, isn't going to do shit 2:28:26.040 --> 2:28:29.879 for some stuff that goes bad? Yeah? I think it might. 2:28:29.959 --> 2:28:33.160 There's one thing, maybe cryptosporidian. There's something that chlorine specifically 2:28:33.200 --> 2:28:36.240 doesn't work for. Oh, that's right. Actually, yeah, it's actually 2:28:36.240 --> 2:28:38.640 not very good at protozoa. It's weirdly good at viruses, 2:28:38.640 --> 2:28:41.840 and then whereas most of the filters are not good 2:28:41.879 --> 2:28:44.800 at viruses and are good at bacteria and protozoa. So 2:28:44.840 --> 2:28:47.440 we should probably explain these different things right right, ways 2:28:47.480 --> 2:28:49.960 you can treat your water. Okay, there's a bunch of 2:28:49.959 --> 2:28:51.440 stuff that you can be in your water you don't 2:28:51.480 --> 2:28:53.360 wish was in the water. The one that is like 2:28:53.560 --> 2:28:55.160 kind of off the top of my head, the one 2:28:55.200 --> 2:28:57.000 that I think about the most because if I had 2:28:57.040 --> 2:28:59.640 to deal with it, it sucked our protozoa. The two 2:28:59.640 --> 2:29:03.400 big one are Giardia and Cryptospuridium. And these are tiny 2:29:03.480 --> 2:29:06.000 little animals in the water. If you can look at 2:29:06.040 --> 2:29:07.960 pictures of them, they're really cute, and they make you 2:29:08.040 --> 2:29:14.480 shit a lot forever, sometimes until you die, mostly immunocompromise folks, 2:29:15.360 --> 2:29:18.680 but everyone really unhappy. And if you're in a survival 2:29:18.760 --> 2:29:22.880 situation already, diarrhea is like no laughing matter. Your inability 2:29:22.920 --> 2:29:26.040 to keep in fluids and nutrients will dramatically affect your 2:29:26.240 --> 2:29:29.680 your chance of survival. So that's protozoa. They are the 2:29:29.840 --> 2:29:32.160 biggest of these things and therefore sort of the easiest 2:29:32.200 --> 2:29:34.080 to actually don't whether they're bigger in bacteria or not. 2:29:34.280 --> 2:29:36.240 Then there's bacteria, which it can also be in water 2:29:36.320 --> 2:29:38.680 and do bad stuff to you. And then there's viruses, 2:29:38.720 --> 2:29:40.160 and viruses can be in the water and do bad 2:29:40.160 --> 2:29:44.320 stuff to you. Largely in the United States, and people 2:29:44.440 --> 2:29:49.400 don't worry about viruses and water, and that's not because 2:29:49.440 --> 2:29:50.960 our heads are in the sand. It's because we don't 2:29:51.000 --> 2:29:55.800 have as many viruses in our water. Then there's chemicals 2:29:55.840 --> 2:29:57.240 you could have in your water. We don't like them. 2:29:57.680 --> 2:29:59.480 There's dirt that can be in your water, which is 2:29:59.520 --> 2:30:03.200 just like not fun. There's heavy metals like lead and 2:30:03.320 --> 2:30:09.040 iron that can have deliterious effects on your health. Some 2:30:09.160 --> 2:30:12.560 people want to get water hardening minerals like calcium and 2:30:12.640 --> 2:30:14.760 magnesium out of their water, but you actually don't want 2:30:14.800 --> 2:30:16.680 to get rid of all of them. That's the catch. 2:30:17.160 --> 2:30:19.040 That's what we're gonna have to talk about, because your 2:30:19.080 --> 2:30:21.120 body wants some of those things. They mostly just like 2:30:22.360 --> 2:30:26.640 make your house has all the all the plumbing brakes. 2:30:28.280 --> 2:30:31.080 That's like the main stuff. There's also things like nitrates 2:30:31.120 --> 2:30:33.800 that I don't understand well enough to talk about how 2:30:33.879 --> 2:30:37.960 we get rid of things. The most common way that 2:30:38.080 --> 2:30:40.000 like backpackers and stuff who are a lot of the 2:30:40.040 --> 2:30:42.880 people who diy this on a regular basis use is 2:30:42.920 --> 2:30:47.600 something called filtration, or I'm going to call filtration. First 2:30:47.800 --> 2:30:50.160 use you screen your water as in, you get out 2:30:50.200 --> 2:30:52.520 the large chunks usually people use like a bandana or 2:30:52.560 --> 2:30:55.480 a sock or just some piece of cloth, right, and 2:30:55.560 --> 2:30:57.120 you want to use that so you're not gumming up 2:30:57.120 --> 2:31:01.119 your filter, and then it goes into something where it's 2:31:01.160 --> 2:31:05.240 forced through a membrane with micropores. These used to be ceramic, 2:31:05.360 --> 2:31:08.800 but these days they're like a bunch of tiny little 2:31:08.879 --> 2:31:13.400 tubes like the internet, and most of these are basically 2:31:13.560 --> 2:31:16.000 la tubes have holes in them that are so small 2:31:16.440 --> 2:31:19.200 that it stops protozoa and bacteria from going through it. 2:31:19.320 --> 2:31:21.160 That is, it's like main claim to fame. It is 2:31:21.280 --> 2:31:24.400 very effective at it. Now that they're not ceramic, you 2:31:24.440 --> 2:31:27.080 don't have to clean it like every fucking gallon. And 2:31:28.640 --> 2:31:31.120 these are really good top brands that I am not 2:31:31.280 --> 2:31:34.360 sponsored by our sawyer and life straw. They're going to 2:31:34.440 --> 2:31:37.680 use slightly different methods. People have opinions about them. I'm 2:31:37.720 --> 2:31:41.720 not going to offer mine right now. And they're measured 2:31:41.760 --> 2:31:46.440 in the size of the holes. Anything that's like one 2:31:46.600 --> 2:31:50.800 micron is small enough to stop most protozoa. Most of 2:31:50.840 --> 2:31:53.760 these ones are either point one or point two. These 2:31:53.840 --> 2:31:59.360 don't block viruses, so they make ones that have even 2:31:59.440 --> 2:32:02.920 smaller holes that can deal with viruses. And this also 2:32:03.000 --> 2:32:06.840 blocks microplastics, but you know whatever. Then there's chemical treatment. 2:32:07.240 --> 2:32:11.240 Chemical treatment. The two most common ones are bleach chlorine 2:32:11.720 --> 2:32:16.360 or iodine. And there's also like chemical tablets that you 2:32:16.400 --> 2:32:18.200 can buy that are like worth keeping around. They weigh 2:32:18.200 --> 2:32:21.920 almost nothing. Whatever. Um, I am not going to give 2:32:21.959 --> 2:32:24.200 you the chart of how much bleached to add your water, 2:32:24.360 --> 2:32:27.320 and don't just go listen to me and add bleach 2:32:27.400 --> 2:32:30.960 to your water. Fucking look it up. Do not use 2:32:31.040 --> 2:32:33.800 color safe bleach. Do not use scented bleach. It's just 2:32:34.000 --> 2:32:36.960 disinfected bleach, which will probably either come in six percent 2:32:37.160 --> 2:32:42.080 or eight point two five percent sodium hypochlorite chlorite. Um 2:32:43.040 --> 2:32:48.520 and sounds so growths just that those commination. Yeah, what 2:32:48.600 --> 2:32:54.840 do they sent it with the blood of I don't know. 2:32:54.959 --> 2:33:07.640 I got yeah, poisoned something that sounds so gross. I 2:33:07.760 --> 2:33:10.600 used to wear lavender all the time. I actually I 2:33:10.680 --> 2:33:12.440 stopped for two reasons. First, I stopped when I was 2:33:12.520 --> 2:33:14.600 in college because like my girlfriend was like, you smell 2:33:14.680 --> 2:33:16.880 like soap and was like really mad at me. Um, 2:33:17.400 --> 2:33:20.200 if you're listening whatever, I don't care. And then I 2:33:20.280 --> 2:33:26.320 stopped get what in Margaret go on Off's good look 2:33:26.360 --> 2:33:30.800 at me now? Yeah, thanks for turning me on the 2:33:30.840 --> 2:33:34.760 lots of cool stuff. Um, that was much healthier than 2:33:34.840 --> 2:33:38.000 I would have been. I'm proud of you. And then uh, 2:33:39.240 --> 2:33:41.600 um the other reason I stopped wearing lavenders. That attracts 2:33:41.680 --> 2:33:45.400 ticks if you're out in the out in the woods. 2:33:45.959 --> 2:33:50.240 Um anyway, okay, so that's chemical treatment. Chemical treatment is 2:33:50.320 --> 2:33:53.959 really good for bacteria and viruses. It's not great for parasites. 2:33:54.240 --> 2:33:57.760 It is a really good backup system. Right. Um, actually 2:33:57.760 --> 2:34:00.520 I'll go over the fucking king of all of them 2:34:00.600 --> 2:34:03.160 for for bacteria, bas and parasites. You want to get 2:34:03.200 --> 2:34:05.800 rid of it, you fucking boil your water. Um. The 2:34:06.000 --> 2:34:08.360 like classic way to deal with it is you boil 2:34:08.440 --> 2:34:11.879 your water and it only needs to get above sixty 2:34:11.920 --> 2:34:14.800 degrees celsius, which is like one hundred and forty something 2:34:14.879 --> 2:34:19.680 in regular human um. And I actually don't know the conversion. 2:34:19.760 --> 2:34:25.160 I actually know when you're talking about fahrenheit. Okay, fahrenheit 2:34:25.320 --> 2:34:28.160 is really good about humans because zero is cold and 2:34:28.200 --> 2:34:31.640 a hundred is hot. Yes, celsius is really good about 2:34:31.879 --> 2:34:35.320 for water. So we're we actually are talking about water 2:34:35.480 --> 2:34:38.000 right now. So celsius is the proper scale because it 2:34:38.080 --> 2:34:42.440 goes from zero is freezing to one hundred is boiling. Yeah, um, 2:34:43.640 --> 2:34:46.080 go ahead, Yeah, it's uh, you know what we should 2:34:46.080 --> 2:34:47.920 do before before we talk fother about water? Do you 2:34:48.000 --> 2:34:50.200 know what will not make you shot yourself to death? 2:34:51.520 --> 2:34:58.600 H Reagan coins? Yeah, it probably is Ronald Reagan coins. Again. 2:34:59.400 --> 2:35:02.080 All right, we thank you very much, Uncle ron for 2:35:02.160 --> 2:35:05.920 continuing to pay for my healthcare and insulin needs. So, Margaret, 2:35:05.959 --> 2:35:10.320 we were we were talking about boiling. Fuck boiling water. 2:35:10.440 --> 2:35:13.400 That's it. Yeah, yeah, so how long do we need 2:35:13.440 --> 2:35:16.000 to boil stuff for? Change? Depending on what we got. 2:35:16.320 --> 2:35:20.080 It does but not really, it's like all of the 2:35:20.200 --> 2:35:24.480 main and do do the actual instructions. Overkill is better 2:35:24.560 --> 2:35:28.360 than regular get killed, right, um, but most shit dies 2:35:28.400 --> 2:35:31.280 off at sixty degrees celsius, which is below the boiling 2:35:31.320 --> 2:35:34.440 point of water even at high elevation. However, basically the 2:35:34.560 --> 2:35:37.360 deal is at you want to boil water for one 2:35:37.400 --> 2:35:40.120 minute at sea level three minutes above five thousand feet 2:35:40.560 --> 2:35:44.400 um or five kilometer. No wait, no, go on, it's 2:35:44.440 --> 2:35:50.680 not a thousand feet okay, um and yeah, so so 2:35:50.840 --> 2:35:53.440 boiling water is actually the one of the main things 2:35:53.480 --> 2:35:55.280 you can do. It doesn't get rid of everything. It 2:35:55.360 --> 2:35:58.760 gets rid of those three things protozoa, bacteria, and viruses 2:35:59.120 --> 2:36:01.520 very effectively. And that is most of the time what 2:36:01.720 --> 2:36:04.120 most people are treating water for. A lot of the 2:36:04.240 --> 2:36:07.600 other stuff is like long term health effects like heavy 2:36:07.680 --> 2:36:12.240 metals and chemicals, right yea. Other methods that you can use. 2:36:12.480 --> 2:36:14.640 The other like kind of gold standard, which isn't as 2:36:14.680 --> 2:36:16.720 good as it seems like it should be, is distillation. 2:36:17.240 --> 2:36:20.520 Distillation gets out lots of stuff. Distillation is basically you 2:36:20.680 --> 2:36:23.640 evaporate the water and then let it run down into 2:36:23.879 --> 2:36:29.560 another container. You're moonshining your own water, and and you 2:36:29.640 --> 2:36:32.119 can do this DIY fairly well. And there's like solar 2:36:32.200 --> 2:36:34.000 stills that are really cool. I've never actually built one, 2:36:34.000 --> 2:36:37.960 I've always wanted to. The downside is if you'd live 2:36:38.000 --> 2:36:40.200 off of distilled water for a long time, it gets 2:36:40.280 --> 2:36:42.320 out the magnesium and the calcium, It gets out the 2:36:43.080 --> 2:36:45.080 minerals that you actually want in your water, so it 2:36:45.120 --> 2:36:47.040 can have negative effects on your long term health if 2:36:47.040 --> 2:36:50.120 you only drink distilled water. The main thing that distillation 2:36:50.200 --> 2:36:53.800 does that I think no other method on this does 2:36:54.000 --> 2:36:56.600 besides a reverse osmosis, which I'm not really going to 2:36:56.680 --> 2:37:02.800 get into, is it desalinates water. Go ahead. That's a 2:37:02.840 --> 2:37:04.680 big deal, right because like if we look at long 2:37:04.800 --> 2:37:08.280 term water insecurity, like certainly where I live, we live 2:37:08.320 --> 2:37:10.160 in a place where people like to play golf in 2:37:10.240 --> 2:37:13.120 the desert and that has become an issue as far 2:37:13.160 --> 2:37:16.840 as water supplies go, and so desalination is often proposed. 2:37:16.920 --> 2:37:19.720 It's like a way to deal with our water crisis 2:37:19.800 --> 2:37:23.120 in California and the fact that the Colorado River is 2:37:23.400 --> 2:37:25.920 getting lower and lower and we rely on it. But 2:37:26.240 --> 2:37:27.880 like you said, lots of these methods aren't going to 2:37:27.959 --> 2:37:29.840 pull the salt out of water, right, didn't let you 2:37:29.920 --> 2:37:34.000 drink seawater, right, But this one does. And so I mean, actually, 2:37:34.040 --> 2:37:36.000 I don't really care about the health of golf course. 2:37:36.080 --> 2:37:38.760 I have actually negative feelings about the health of golf courses. 2:37:40.400 --> 2:37:45.480 But theoretically, maybe water in your lawn with the desalinated 2:37:45.600 --> 2:37:49.640 distilled water and then drinking the water that actually has 2:37:49.680 --> 2:37:51.959 minerals in it. But then again, like maybe the plants 2:37:52.080 --> 2:37:56.000 need that shit too, I don't fucking no. So, And 2:37:56.080 --> 2:37:59.880 in distillation, it's very good at getting out heavy metals 2:38:00.000 --> 2:38:04.960 also like iron and lead, and it the reason it 2:38:05.080 --> 2:38:07.200 gets out the bacteria and viruses. It's not because they 2:38:07.240 --> 2:38:10.360 can evaporate, but because they die getting boiled because you 2:38:10.480 --> 2:38:17.360 boiled distill. Yeah, and some pesticides are filtered out if 2:38:17.400 --> 2:38:20.080 their boiling point is greater than the boiling point of water. 2:38:21.160 --> 2:38:23.320 Benzene and too lean which I don't know what is. 2:38:23.480 --> 2:38:26.520 I don't know too lean is. These are examples of 2:38:26.720 --> 2:38:31.040 things that do not get distilled out. Then there's a 2:38:31.120 --> 2:38:36.080 couple more. There's absorption adsorption rules. This is the thing 2:38:36.200 --> 2:38:38.920 that I always misspell and so that's why I emphasize 2:38:38.959 --> 2:38:43.879 the ad absorption, and I don't really understand. Go ahead, 2:38:44.440 --> 2:38:47.080 how do we adsorb? Is that just like absorption with adverts? 2:38:47.800 --> 2:38:49.959 You know? It's like, yeah, it's like I took three 2:38:50.000 --> 2:38:51.920 years of ladin and all I remember is that ad 2:38:52.040 --> 2:38:55.640 means towards, an ab means away from, and maybe a 2:38:55.680 --> 2:39:00.560 gorkoli is either farmer or farmhouse. Yeah, I got poor 2:39:01.040 --> 2:39:08.400 poor sums suma aramat aramasama sartta. I remember that one. Now, Yeah, great, Yeah, 2:39:08.640 --> 2:39:11.840 there you go. You've something today. Yeah. I wish that 2:39:11.959 --> 2:39:14.199 my school had made me take Spanish instead of letting 2:39:14.240 --> 2:39:19.080 me take some bullshit like Latin. H Yeah, exactly. So 2:39:19.879 --> 2:39:26.200 adsorption is good for pesticides, heavy medicals, heavy metals, chemicals, viruses, 2:39:26.480 --> 2:39:28.760 and bad tastes. It's the only one of these things 2:39:28.800 --> 2:39:31.800 that I'm aware of that actually use can get rid 2:39:31.800 --> 2:39:33.720 of bad taste because this is pulling out all the 2:39:33.840 --> 2:39:36.280 weird stuff in the water. And what it is is 2:39:36.320 --> 2:39:39.920 it uses activated carbon, which is basically just some shit 2:39:40.040 --> 2:39:43.360 that's fucking burned and then crunched up real small. It 2:39:43.520 --> 2:39:47.320 is a huge surface area because it's like little powder, right, Um, 2:39:47.440 --> 2:39:49.440 and then the water passes through it, and then by 2:39:49.520 --> 2:39:52.080 some weird science shit, the bad stuff tends to stick 2:39:52.120 --> 2:39:57.240 to the carbon um. This is great. This is what 2:39:57.360 --> 2:39:59.760 your bread of filter does. This is what you're b 2:40:00.040 --> 2:40:03.440 key does. This is what you're pure filter does. It 2:40:04.360 --> 2:40:08.360 It's not as good, I believe for bacteria and stuff, 2:40:08.400 --> 2:40:11.560 and specifically the biggest problem with these things is that 2:40:11.640 --> 2:40:15.920 bacteria can grow on them, and so some people, I mean, 2:40:16.040 --> 2:40:18.240 that's why you replace it every so often. It's not 2:40:18.320 --> 2:40:21.320 because it's like slow or clogged. It's like literally unhealthy. 2:40:22.800 --> 2:40:25.080 And so sometimes what people do is they treat for 2:40:25.160 --> 2:40:28.880 bacteria with UV or some other method, bleach whatever, all 2:40:28.920 --> 2:40:30.800 the other shit that we talked about. We haven't talked 2:40:30.800 --> 2:40:34.160 about u V yet. After it goes to the carbon filter. 2:40:34.520 --> 2:40:36.400 I'm really excited about like kind of learning more about 2:40:36.440 --> 2:40:42.240 these because you can theoretically diy carbon right, Yeah, yeah, 2:40:42.280 --> 2:40:45.600 you're definitely could, right. I know that it's not the 2:40:45.720 --> 2:40:47.760 same as this, but one of the things you can 2:40:47.800 --> 2:40:49.280 do if you're in the back country is that if 2:40:49.320 --> 2:40:51.280 you have water with a lot of turbidity, which is 2:40:52.000 --> 2:40:55.600 stuff in the water, right, if you can't see through 2:40:55.680 --> 2:40:57.400 the water, you know, if it's got a lot of cloudiness. 2:40:58.160 --> 2:41:01.280 You can use white ash from a fire and that 2:41:01.360 --> 2:41:04.240 will increase the rate of which it deposits a sediment 2:41:04.240 --> 2:41:06.800 if you see what I mean. So you interesting because yeah, 2:41:06.840 --> 2:41:09.320 it sticks to it and then slowly filters through the 2:41:09.400 --> 2:41:12.160 bottom of them. I think the gold standard is a loom, 2:41:12.280 --> 2:41:16.760 which is something using canning. Okay, that increases it even quicker. 2:41:16.840 --> 2:41:19.160 But yeah, you can use white ash from a fire 2:41:19.200 --> 2:41:21.880 if you're dealing with I think that's I don't think 2:41:21.920 --> 2:41:25.360 that's activated coup but I think that's a different mechanism. Yeah, no, 2:41:25.480 --> 2:41:29.240 I don't know. UM. And then one of the methods 2:41:29.280 --> 2:41:31.440 that is actually mostly done on an industrial scale that 2:41:31.520 --> 2:41:33.160 actually is like I think the main way that people 2:41:33.200 --> 2:41:36.040 filter water in this world is through sand, and I 2:41:36.200 --> 2:41:41.039 didn't do enough research about um. There's both slow sand 2:41:41.080 --> 2:41:43.720 filters and fast sand filters, and some of them like 2:41:43.920 --> 2:41:49.360 literally depend on certain bacteria, good bacteria, like having a 2:41:49.400 --> 2:41:52.080 healthy culture of them that like eat the bad stuff 2:41:52.120 --> 2:41:54.440 and things. I used to know more about that than 2:41:54.480 --> 2:41:56.680 I do currently. And then the last one I'm going 2:41:56.720 --> 2:41:59.160 to cover, Okay, then those reverse osmosis, which you might 2:41:59.200 --> 2:42:03.039 have a kitchen thing that does and it also removes minerals. 2:42:03.080 --> 2:42:05.879 It's a very effective method of filtering out lots of stuff. 2:42:06.120 --> 2:42:09.480 It also, I don't know, causes wastewater, and it's complicated 2:42:09.520 --> 2:42:11.960 in some ways. And then there's UV disinfection, and this 2:42:12.080 --> 2:42:13.600 is like one of the ones that gets touted as 2:42:13.640 --> 2:42:16.119 this like this is going to save the developing world 2:42:16.200 --> 2:42:19.879 or whatever, right, And UV disinfection is cool and good. 2:42:20.879 --> 2:42:25.240 Basically it uses UV light to kill off bacteria, parasites, 2:42:25.240 --> 2:42:28.879 and viruses. Again, these three things that are the main 2:42:29.000 --> 2:42:33.560 things people are usually going for. The biggest downside of 2:42:33.680 --> 2:42:36.320 UV disinfection, there's two of them. One is that it 2:42:36.440 --> 2:42:41.039 requires low turbidity water. Thanks for introducing that term clear water. 2:42:41.240 --> 2:42:43.960 It has to be fairly clear water because it's about light, right, 2:42:44.120 --> 2:42:48.199 this makes sense, and because you have to be careful 2:42:48.280 --> 2:42:50.160 to do it right, you just have to like actually 2:42:50.240 --> 2:42:53.320 get all of it with all of it. Yeah, So 2:42:54.080 --> 2:42:55.560 this is why I haven't, like, for a moment, I 2:42:55.600 --> 2:42:57.160 got really excited about these things, and then in the 2:42:57.280 --> 2:43:01.360 end I was like, I like my water filter that 2:43:01.440 --> 2:43:05.080 I already have. Yeah, I think with UV filteration as well, 2:43:05.200 --> 2:43:07.840 it's been big and the outdoor world kind of relatively recently. 2:43:08.280 --> 2:43:10.280 You have to be conscious of storing it in a 2:43:10.600 --> 2:43:15.280 opaque container afterwards because the bacteria can UV like reactivate. 2:43:16.000 --> 2:43:17.400 Oh yeah, I f that's like any of it that 2:43:17.520 --> 2:43:20.440 it doesn't get is like fuck, yeah, it's my time. Yeah, 2:43:20.440 --> 2:43:24.160 because it stops them reproducing. That's how it interested in there. 2:43:24.360 --> 2:43:26.560 But they don't so it doesn't really matter. You drink 2:43:26.600 --> 2:43:27.960 them and then you pass them through your system and 2:43:27.959 --> 2:43:30.360 it's fine, but if they reproduce, that's when you get sick. 2:43:30.480 --> 2:43:34.360 So somehow they can UV reactivate. So like if you 2:43:34.480 --> 2:43:37.879 have a you know, the classic like like through hiking thing, 2:43:37.920 --> 2:43:40.039 it's to use a smart water bottle, right because it's cheaping, 2:43:40.120 --> 2:43:42.400 it's dirty, and but if you are UV filtering and 2:43:42.440 --> 2:43:44.360 then traveling in your smart water bottle and then putting 2:43:44.360 --> 2:43:46.039 that in the back of your pack and hiking all day, 2:43:46.680 --> 2:43:50.840 you might get some difficulty. So yeah, I know it's 2:43:50.879 --> 2:43:55.600 not Yeah, I haven't really messed with it much, like like, yeah, 2:43:55.600 --> 2:43:57.280 I have my comfortable setup and that's what I'd like 2:43:57.360 --> 2:44:01.040 to use. And I will say that something that people 2:44:01.560 --> 2:44:03.920 who don't go camping much might not be aware of. 2:44:04.959 --> 2:44:08.920 There's almost nowhere in the United States that you can 2:44:09.000 --> 2:44:13.560 be confidently drink wild water without it without risking something 2:44:13.640 --> 2:44:17.959 like giardia. Um, there are places where you can directly 2:44:18.040 --> 2:44:20.800 from a spring is the most likely to be good. Um. 2:44:20.959 --> 2:44:23.240 People used to say that you can you can drink 2:44:23.320 --> 2:44:25.760 high elevation water if you're up in an alpine area 2:44:26.080 --> 2:44:28.439 because there's like no calves or whatever, because like Giardia, 2:44:28.760 --> 2:44:32.240 and I believe also crypto, but I'm um the other 2:44:32.560 --> 2:44:37.959 poop transferred crypto, the cryptosparodia, not the not the multi 2:44:38.000 --> 2:44:44.280 level marketing scam. Um. They it's it's passed in the 2:44:44.720 --> 2:44:51.240 fecal oral tradition. What's the word here, Uh, there's a 2:44:51.280 --> 2:44:57.480 word here for yeah pathway Yeah, and so um, because 2:44:57.520 --> 2:44:59.400 it's passed that way. It's like basically the fact that 2:44:59.440 --> 2:45:01.640 there's livestyle everywhere is the reason that's not safe to 2:45:01.720 --> 2:45:02.920 drink the water. And so people are like, oh, if 2:45:02.920 --> 2:45:04.760 you go up high enough, you're safe. But there's still 2:45:04.840 --> 2:45:06.480 animals up there, and there's also like more and more 2:45:06.560 --> 2:45:08.520 hikers up there. Almost anywhere you're going to be hiking, 2:45:08.600 --> 2:45:11.120 someone else is hiked, and someone else is hiked, and 2:45:11.240 --> 2:45:14.720 they have drank the water without filtering it because they're 2:45:15.760 --> 2:45:19.040 not thinking properly. And then they've shit in not in 2:45:19.080 --> 2:45:21.240 a hole, but just shit somewhere on the ground because 2:45:21.280 --> 2:45:24.720 they're also a bad person in that way. Yeah. Um, 2:45:25.280 --> 2:45:28.680 And so they've like tested a while ago at in 2:45:28.720 --> 2:45:35.360 the high Sierras that there's giardia everywhere, which doesn't necessarily 2:45:35.360 --> 2:45:37.240 mean it's going to make you sick, but it can 2:45:37.360 --> 2:45:39.080 make you sick. So it's just like worth knowing that. 2:45:39.160 --> 2:45:40.879 This is the reason that backpackers know so much about 2:45:40.879 --> 2:45:43.840 water filtration, although again they don't know as much about 2:45:43.879 --> 2:45:46.080 chemicals filtration, which is why I had to go and 2:45:46.160 --> 2:45:47.720 learn more about that, less because I'm a backpacker and 2:45:47.800 --> 2:45:50.440 more because they used to live off grid. But yeah, 2:45:50.879 --> 2:45:53.680 they're different, Like like there there are definitely a lot 2:45:53.720 --> 2:45:56.119 of products out there that are very affordable that work 2:45:56.240 --> 2:45:59.680 for like that specific specifically the giardia concern, right, which 2:45:59.720 --> 2:46:02.000 is one that most people have, And that's probably if 2:46:02.000 --> 2:46:05.280 you're like if you're in a place where you hear 2:46:05.280 --> 2:46:07.720 there's industrial water contamination and you go to RII and 2:46:07.800 --> 2:46:10.800 you buy a sawyer make a tap filter, for instance, 2:46:11.600 --> 2:46:14.720 it just clamps onto your tap. It probably won't work 2:46:14.840 --> 2:46:18.039 for the stuff that you're concerned about, but it will 2:46:18.080 --> 2:46:20.120 work if you're yeah, off a while, then you have 2:46:20.200 --> 2:46:23.000 garda or something. Yeah, And it also won't work for 2:46:23.160 --> 2:46:24.800 like lead, which is one of the reasons why the 2:46:24.840 --> 2:46:27.040 carbon filters are the more common ones at home, because 2:46:28.280 --> 2:46:31.560 city water that is a higher you know, if you 2:46:31.640 --> 2:46:34.480 live in some cities, you're gonna have lead in your water, right, Yeah, 2:46:34.520 --> 2:46:37.560 because we used it in pipes for decades. Yeah, but 2:46:39.240 --> 2:46:43.119 I don't know. Oh, let's talk shit on Burkey's really quick. Yeah, 2:46:43.240 --> 2:46:45.560 let's do it. What's up with Burkey? Why are they bad? So? 2:46:45.760 --> 2:46:47.520 I was like, I personally the other day after this thing, 2:46:47.720 --> 2:46:51.680 because that's my fun joy of being a prepper is 2:46:52.280 --> 2:46:54.840 going to Twitter and being like, here's what I know 2:46:54.959 --> 2:46:58.840 about that thing. You know, whenever a thing happens while 2:46:58.920 --> 2:47:02.920 like safe on my mountain top and drinking out of 2:47:02.959 --> 2:47:07.800 my well, which whatever has its own problems, I'll take 2:47:07.840 --> 2:47:11.080 those problems anyway, Okay. So so I post about this 2:47:11.160 --> 2:47:13.200 and then I pointed out that like, overall, there's like 2:47:13.240 --> 2:47:15.080 the different filters that you can have her home, and 2:47:15.160 --> 2:47:17.040 then the only one that seems to sort of do 2:47:17.200 --> 2:47:21.160 it all is the Burkey. It's this very expensive brand. 2:47:21.240 --> 2:47:23.600 You've probably seen them in your hippie friend's house, or 2:47:23.640 --> 2:47:25.960 you're the hippie and there's one in your house, there's 2:47:25.959 --> 2:47:29.560 one in my house. And it's a big silver canister 2:47:29.760 --> 2:47:31.520 that looks like it comes from the fifties or whatever, 2:47:32.160 --> 2:47:36.520 and and it's a filter, and it's somehow filters more 2:47:36.560 --> 2:47:38.480 than everything else. And the way that it does that 2:47:38.680 --> 2:47:47.080 is by lying or rather, I don't know what using 2:47:48.000 --> 2:47:50.160 the way. Yeah, the way it does it is it 2:47:50.320 --> 2:47:52.640 says it can do these things, and it is not 2:47:53.000 --> 2:47:57.119 certified to the what is it a NSF slash ANCI 2:47:57.280 --> 2:48:01.560 standard that all of your other filters are testing themselves too. 2:48:01.600 --> 2:48:07.040 So everyone else is saying we have passed this following certification, 2:48:07.680 --> 2:48:10.320 and Burkey is saying, oh, we tested, and it does 2:48:10.360 --> 2:48:13.560 all the stuff. All the other ones probably do kind 2:48:13.640 --> 2:48:15.600 of all the stuff too, but the only things that 2:48:15.640 --> 2:48:18.280 they're actually certified to do or what they say they do. 2:48:18.680 --> 2:48:22.400 And so Burkey basically charges a mint in exchange for 2:48:24.120 --> 2:48:28.320 using their own testing standards instead of the testing standards 2:48:28.360 --> 2:48:33.320 of other people independent testers. Google Burkey wire cutter and 2:48:33.360 --> 2:48:36.200 you'll find a good article that where people conducted a 2:48:36.240 --> 2:48:39.800 bunch of tests. And it's a shame because it would 2:48:39.840 --> 2:48:41.240 be nice to have this sort of all in one 2:48:41.280 --> 2:48:43.320 filter because it's very annoying. If you want to filter 2:48:43.440 --> 2:48:45.880 something out of your water, you have to go, Okay, 2:48:45.959 --> 2:48:47.520 what's in my water that I don't want? And then 2:48:47.520 --> 2:48:49.040 you have to go find the filter for that, and 2:48:49.120 --> 2:48:50.520 it's not going to be the same as the other filter. 2:48:50.600 --> 2:48:52.880 Is not gonna be same as the other filter. Like, oh, 2:48:53.000 --> 2:48:54.480 you live some more leading your pipes. You can't buy 2:48:54.480 --> 2:48:56.440 a regular Britta. You got to buy the lead pipe 2:48:56.480 --> 2:49:02.240 Montreal special Britta, you know, and like, you know you 2:49:02.280 --> 2:49:05.000 want an undersinc water filter, Well do you want this 2:49:05.080 --> 2:49:07.160 one or this one or this one? It would be 2:49:07.240 --> 2:49:13.280 nice if there was a yeah, like buy once, cry once, Yeah, yeah, 2:49:13.440 --> 2:49:16.800 go to Amazon two days later you're fine. Kind of situation. Yeah, 2:49:17.280 --> 2:49:21.120 but there isn't one new I was going to go over, 2:49:21.360 --> 2:49:23.840 like just in case people are curious more about the 2:49:23.879 --> 2:49:27.720 back country stuff. I guess I have three different levels 2:49:27.760 --> 2:49:29.879 of stuff that I use for back country. If I'm 2:49:29.920 --> 2:49:31.480 just going out and I don't think I'm going to 2:49:31.560 --> 2:49:35.720 filter water, I just take a stainless steel single wall 2:49:35.800 --> 2:49:41.560 water bottle and some iodine or another chemical purifier. I 2:49:41.600 --> 2:49:43.000 didn't works really well. But you don't want to be 2:49:43.080 --> 2:49:44.840 using it long term, it's not good for you long 2:49:44.920 --> 2:49:47.360 term for your thyroid, and then I'll filter it through 2:49:47.440 --> 2:49:49.200 like a buff or a kaffir or something to get 2:49:49.200 --> 2:49:52.920 the tability out and use that. If it's a trip 2:49:52.959 --> 2:49:55.280 where I'm just in the backcountry in America, I take 2:49:55.800 --> 2:50:00.240 a squeezy filteration system Catadine bee Free is the one 2:50:00.240 --> 2:50:02.960 I tend to use. And you want to have a 2:50:03.040 --> 2:50:05.160 dirty bag and a clean bottle, right, so you're squeezing 2:50:05.240 --> 2:50:08.320 from the dirty water into the clean water. And then 2:50:08.360 --> 2:50:11.000 if I'm going somewhere for work where there are virus 2:50:11.200 --> 2:50:13.360 risks and where it might be like what you'd call 2:50:13.400 --> 2:50:15.119 like a non permissive environment, at place where you don't 2:50:15.120 --> 2:50:16.720 want to hang around near a water source for a 2:50:16.760 --> 2:50:19.520 long time because it's dangerous. I have this thing called 2:50:19.520 --> 2:50:23.080 an MSR Guardian, which is not cheap, and you probably 2:50:23.080 --> 2:50:24.800 don't need it for what you're doing, but if you 2:50:25.040 --> 2:50:27.080 are concerned about viruses, it has a dirty bag and 2:50:27.120 --> 2:50:28.880 a clean bag, and it's a hang filter, so you 2:50:28.920 --> 2:50:31.560 can fill up three liters of water, bugger off to 2:50:31.600 --> 2:50:34.240 somewhere safe, hang it up, and let that filter from 2:50:34.240 --> 2:50:37.400 the dirty bag into the clean bag, and then you're 2:50:37.440 --> 2:50:40.280 not standing by the water filtering or pumping. I'm a 2:50:40.480 --> 2:50:43.760 few seconds a pretty fettied. Situations have been fine. And 2:50:43.840 --> 2:50:45.560 I'll say the thing that I used off grid as 2:50:45.560 --> 2:50:49.920 they used a sawyer, just a regular sawyer water filter. 2:50:50.040 --> 2:50:51.960 They're like thirty bucks. And I attached it to a 2:50:52.000 --> 2:50:54.720 five gallon bucket with some hoss and then I gravity 2:50:54.760 --> 2:50:56.880 fed it and I just left it drip in from 2:50:56.920 --> 2:50:58.760 one five gallon bucket to another. And that's for a 2:50:58.840 --> 2:51:02.720 stationary bas in the United States. That worked for me. Yeah, 2:51:02.840 --> 2:51:05.320 I can see that working really well, Margaret. Do you 2:51:05.360 --> 2:51:07.160 want to think where can people learn more about prepping? 2:51:07.200 --> 2:51:09.040 Would there be a podcast they could listen to? You 2:51:09.120 --> 2:51:11.520 mean one that just went weekly, Live Like the World 2:51:11.640 --> 2:51:13.560 Is Dying. I am one of the hosts of Live 2:51:13.640 --> 2:51:15.760 Like the World is Dying. The reason it went weekly 2:51:15.879 --> 2:51:17.880 is now there's more hosts and you can listen to 2:51:17.959 --> 2:51:21.200 that wherever. You listen to podcasts every Friday, and soon 2:51:21.280 --> 2:51:22.800 you'll be able to hear James on it. But I 2:51:22.879 --> 2:51:26.480 don't know when you just have to listen to all 2:51:26.480 --> 2:51:28.880 of them. Yeah, where can people see you gloating on 2:51:28.920 --> 2:51:32.360 Twitter from your mountaintop? Magpie killed Joy until I finally 2:51:32.440 --> 2:51:36.320 get sick of Twitter, which is increasingly likely every single day. 2:51:37.120 --> 2:51:39.800 Hell so, yeah, yeah, thank you very much, Margaret, thanks 2:51:39.800 --> 2:51:42.959 for having me informative. You are welcome, all right, Ali, 2:51:43.000 --> 2:52:02.240 everyone maybe and welcome. So it could happen here with 2:52:02.600 --> 2:52:06.160 me Andrew of the YouTube channel andrewism and today I'm 2:52:06.240 --> 2:52:12.560 joined by Garrison is here, greetings, and Mia also here. Hello. 2:52:13.240 --> 2:52:16.600 And I wanted to talk about the idea of the 2:52:16.680 --> 2:52:21.080 noble savage. It's something that people have occasionally brought up 2:52:21.240 --> 2:52:25.880 in my common section when I discuss really anything related 2:52:26.000 --> 2:52:32.320 to m Maybe there's something to learn, something to be 2:52:32.440 --> 2:52:39.039 learned from the Indigenous people of pre colonial period. There's 2:52:39.040 --> 2:52:46.879 often this accusation levied against any sort of positive representation 2:52:47.280 --> 2:52:52.080 of their society, any sort of generous reading of their society, 2:52:52.920 --> 2:52:56.560 as something to be scoffed at, as something to be ridicule, 2:52:56.600 --> 2:53:00.840 as something to be seen as perpetually and this troope 2:53:01.400 --> 2:53:07.520 of the noble savage. And so I was in some 2:53:07.640 --> 2:53:09.760 sort of I feel I was in sort of am 2:53:10.840 --> 2:53:12.480 I got into a sort of defense mood, and I 2:53:12.640 --> 2:53:15.560 was like, well, I really don't want to do that, right, 2:53:15.640 --> 2:53:18.640 I don't want to want to create this caricature of 2:53:18.800 --> 2:53:24.320 indigenous peoples in my videos that you know, Forster represents 2:53:24.840 --> 2:53:28.240 all their complexities and stuff. Obviously, every group throughout history 2:53:28.280 --> 2:53:32.080 has had many layers to them. And then in reading 2:53:32.560 --> 2:53:35.680 to one of Everything by David Grieber and David wen 2:53:35.720 --> 2:53:40.600 Grew ended up stumbling upon even further information on the subject. 2:53:40.640 --> 2:53:42.279 And so that's something that I want to talk about. 2:53:42.640 --> 2:53:45.280 You know, this idea where the idea of the noble 2:53:45.320 --> 2:53:48.960 savage came from how it's used, and I think how 2:53:49.040 --> 2:53:54.879 we should be approaching it today. But before I even 2:53:55.040 --> 2:53:58.040 get into all of that, are all familiar with this 2:53:58.959 --> 2:54:03.160 term and how it's used. Yeah, I mean I think 2:54:03.520 --> 2:54:06.400 I don't know. It is interesting in the way that 2:54:06.520 --> 2:54:09.720 it kind of like, I don't know, there was kind 2:54:09.720 --> 2:54:13.360 of this shift of it being uses a term to 2:54:13.480 --> 2:54:17.800 critique sort of like racist white fantasy to being a 2:54:18.000 --> 2:54:20.119 term that's used to sort of bludge at anytime anyone 2:54:20.920 --> 2:54:24.160 like has the temerity to suggest anything in another society 2:54:24.240 --> 2:54:27.360 than this one could have possibly have been better, which 2:54:27.440 --> 2:54:29.480 is a kind of grim shift I think in a 2:54:29.520 --> 2:54:32.160 lot of ways, and I think has done a lot 2:54:32.160 --> 2:54:36.000 of political damage by people who sort of don't quite 2:54:36.160 --> 2:54:41.200 understand what was going on. Yeah, and that is a 2:54:41.280 --> 2:54:44.760 shift that I noticed as well, and for a while 2:54:44.879 --> 2:54:49.640 I thought that was really how the term was originally 2:54:49.720 --> 2:54:53.280 meant to be applied. I mean we see it all 2:54:53.320 --> 2:54:58.680 over discussions of anthropology and philosophy and literature, which it 2:54:58.720 --> 2:55:01.240 could be extended to media as a whole. Right, you 2:55:01.320 --> 2:55:04.600 have this sort of stock character of the noble savage person. 2:55:04.680 --> 2:55:11.400 It's uncorrupted by civilization. Something that's a person that symbolizes 2:55:11.480 --> 2:55:15.560 this sort of any goodness and moral superiority, living in 2:55:15.800 --> 2:55:19.600 harmony with nature that we don't have access to because 2:55:19.760 --> 2:55:23.520 we've been corrupted by the influences of civilization. Right, it's 2:55:23.520 --> 2:55:28.840 this idealized concept of an uncivilized or sort of base 2:55:29.440 --> 2:55:36.360 man right or rather person, And I mean we see 2:55:36.400 --> 2:55:39.000 it a lot in rights discourse, being used as a 2:55:39.080 --> 2:55:42.920 tomb of derision. For example, a right being Australian politician 2:55:43.080 --> 2:55:48.160 named Dennis Jensen once told Parliament that the Australian government 2:55:48.240 --> 2:55:51.680 should not be funding people to live a noble savage 2:55:51.760 --> 2:56:01.480 lifestyle in remote indigenous communities. Yeah, christ and it's used 2:56:01.520 --> 2:56:05.280 to mock the so called backwards lifestyles of Indigenous people 2:56:05.800 --> 2:56:12.600 and really try to reinforce this white supremacist idea of 2:56:12.800 --> 2:56:17.400 their inferiority or their backwardness, their regressiveness, whatever the case 2:56:17.480 --> 2:56:20.760 may be. And then on the other side, in leftist 2:56:20.760 --> 2:56:23.480 political discourse, you also see it being used as a 2:56:23.520 --> 2:56:27.280 tomb of derision. So in both cases it's being used 2:56:28.240 --> 2:56:31.560 as a term of derision without really a good grasp 2:56:31.800 --> 2:56:36.240 of what the term is where it came from. For example, 2:56:36.320 --> 2:56:40.480 anarcho primitivists are criticized for upholding this troope, and of 2:56:40.560 --> 2:56:44.160 course leftists criticize a leftist when fallen for the troope 2:56:44.440 --> 2:56:48.400 for fallen for the troope. When describing indigenous histories, spiritualities, 2:56:48.440 --> 2:56:52.760 and social ecologies, it seems like you can't even bring 2:56:52.920 --> 2:57:00.040 up any sort of reciprocal gift economy based relationship of 2:57:00.120 --> 2:57:03.800 the land that indigenous group might have had without somebody saying, oh, well, 2:57:03.879 --> 2:57:07.640 did you know that indigenous people also perpetuated extinctions and 2:57:07.920 --> 2:57:13.720 genocides and this than the other. So I really don't 2:57:13.760 --> 2:57:15.800 think that any time you learn from a society that 2:57:15.879 --> 2:57:18.360 predates your own and may still persist, that you're doing 2:57:18.400 --> 2:57:25.440 a noble savage But it is something that I had 2:57:25.520 --> 2:57:29.120 become very conscious of in my approach to any sort 2:57:29.160 --> 2:57:31.800 of discussion. I feel like it sort of haunts the 2:57:31.920 --> 2:57:36.280 discourse among other sort of stock characters and troops that 2:57:37.080 --> 2:57:44.959 permeate in or political conversations within media. The troope has, 2:57:45.080 --> 2:57:50.440 you know, come in and out of fashion. But the 2:57:50.560 --> 2:57:54.520 two main forms that it appears in is one that 2:57:55.879 --> 2:57:59.800 life is strenuous, a life of quote and quote primitive 2:58:00.520 --> 2:58:05.040 is strenuous, and therefore this savage is nobody, brave, hard work, 2:58:05.120 --> 2:58:08.280 and an honorable And then you have this other depiction, 2:58:08.879 --> 2:58:13.360 which is that the savage and I can it pains 2:58:13.400 --> 2:58:16.520 me to use the term every time, but the savage 2:58:16.840 --> 2:58:19.760 is not greedy and just as now a teat for luxury. 2:58:19.840 --> 2:58:23.840 So might you see it in instant media. It's been 2:58:23.879 --> 2:58:27.039 a long time since I've watched The Road to Eldorado, 2:58:28.360 --> 2:58:32.600 but if I recall, there is this sort of idea 2:58:32.720 --> 2:58:36.560 within the movie that they're so used to this the 2:58:36.680 --> 2:58:39.959 decadence and stuff of gold and whatnot, that they don't 2:58:39.959 --> 2:58:43.400 consider it as valuable, they considered wruthless. So there's this 2:58:43.760 --> 2:58:47.360 aspect of the Troope that treats materials traditionally considered valuable 2:58:48.480 --> 2:58:51.640 to be something to be sort of shrugged off or flaunted. 2:58:52.879 --> 2:58:59.320 And then of course because what is philosophy, what is 2:59:01.160 --> 2:59:10.640 really our ontology without some sort of reference to the 2:59:10.760 --> 2:59:15.720 story is embedded within the Christian cannon, right there is 2:59:15.760 --> 2:59:18.840 this sort of interpretation of the story of the God 2:59:18.959 --> 2:59:22.920 of Eden as this as Adam and Eve and these 2:59:23.080 --> 2:59:27.520 noble savages that live in this uncorrupted innocence and harmony 2:59:27.600 --> 2:59:30.840 with nature, and then they have to they partaken this 2:59:30.959 --> 2:59:33.760 fruit from the tree of knowledge or you know, they 2:59:33.840 --> 2:59:38.200 become quote unquote civilized, and then they're punished by having 2:59:38.280 --> 2:59:43.960 to engage in agriculture and have to labor over the 2:59:44.040 --> 2:59:47.560 land instead of living in harmony with it. Just one 2:59:48.600 --> 2:59:52.360 interpretation of that story is that it's a metaphor for 2:59:52.440 --> 2:59:56.360 the dawn of agriculture and the god have eaten as 2:59:56.360 --> 3:00:01.320 a sort of nostalgic take. Even later on, when Europeans 3:00:01.360 --> 3:00:06.640 first encountered hunter gatherer communities in the Americas, they compared 3:00:06.680 --> 3:00:09.440 them to being living and they're sort of eaton. And 3:00:09.760 --> 3:00:16.200 today you still find comparisons to eat on used to 3:00:16.320 --> 3:00:22.200 describe certain hunter gather societies. And of course, as this 3:00:22.360 --> 3:00:27.800 is quite topical, you often see this criticism of noble 3:00:27.879 --> 3:00:31.840 savage and whatever being lefted against Avatar, as in the 3:00:31.959 --> 3:00:35.160 Blue People, not the not the Last Day of Bender, 3:00:36.760 --> 3:00:39.160 because they have this sort of oh we are these 3:00:39.360 --> 3:00:43.560 utterly perfect, you know, peace loving space hippies or in 3:00:43.680 --> 3:00:49.040 harmony with nature, chilling vibing, we literally have sex with 3:00:49.200 --> 3:00:54.640 trees kind of vibe. Um. And I haven't seen the 3:00:54.760 --> 3:00:56.760 second movie in the series. I only saw the first, 3:00:57.480 --> 3:01:00.760 but I wouldn't be surprised if that trend and continues. 3:01:02.240 --> 3:01:05.000 I don't know, have you all seen either both of them. 3:01:05.520 --> 3:01:07.720 I saw the first one and I was like, I, no, 3:01:08.200 --> 3:01:10.320 nothing on earth can can call me to see the 3:01:10.400 --> 3:01:16.039 second one. So I have no idea how you or not? Yeah, 3:01:16.760 --> 3:01:19.920 and I mean the conspt the noble savage. It has 3:01:20.240 --> 3:01:23.800 its roots a lot further back than European encounters with 3:01:23.920 --> 3:01:28.600 Native Americans, Right, that's sort of the intellectual lineage of 3:01:28.959 --> 3:01:31.800 the concept could actually be traced back to ancient Greece. 3:01:33.000 --> 3:01:34.640 So if you really want to reach you could say 3:01:34.720 --> 3:01:38.119 that even back in the Acadia and epic of Gilgamesh, 3:01:38.760 --> 3:01:43.840 that Akudo as a sort of bushman was a kind 3:01:43.879 --> 3:01:49.120 of depiction of that contract between hunter gatherer societies and 3:01:49.480 --> 3:01:53.960 agricultural societies, a Gilgamesh representing, of course, you know, civilization, 3:01:55.240 --> 3:01:59.920 but if he starts in from ancient Greece, we could 3:02:00.080 --> 3:02:05.000 say you're seeing Homer and Pliny and Xenophon all idealizing 3:02:05.720 --> 3:02:09.760 the Arcadians and other groups, whether they were real or not. 3:02:10.520 --> 3:02:16.120 And then later on in Rome you find Tacitus, for example, 3:02:16.600 --> 3:02:20.520 writing of the noble Germanic and Caledonian tribes in contrast 3:02:20.560 --> 3:02:23.520 with his view of Roman society as this sort of 3:02:23.600 --> 3:02:30.920 corrupt and decadent place. Even wrote speeches like he practically 3:02:30.959 --> 3:02:35.720 wrote fan fiction about liberty and honor for his sort 3:02:35.760 --> 3:02:42.520 of caricatures of these people. Other writers would also treat 3:02:42.920 --> 3:02:47.039 the Scythians comparably, You've seen in the works of Horace 3:02:47.160 --> 3:02:52.600 and Futil and Ovid. And then further on, you know, 3:02:52.640 --> 3:03:00.320 in the twelfth century the polymath even to Fail wrote 3:03:00.480 --> 3:03:05.920 in his novel The Living Son of the Vigilant this 3:03:06.200 --> 3:03:10.840 idea of this sort of stripped down back to the 3:03:11.000 --> 3:03:17.720 roots earthy wild man who is isolated from society and 3:03:18.200 --> 3:03:21.520 has a series of trials and tribulations that lead him 3:03:21.560 --> 3:03:25.800 to knowledge of Allah by living this life and harmony 3:03:25.879 --> 3:03:33.160 with Mother Nature, basically theorizing this idea that people can 3:03:33.280 --> 3:03:37.760 find can find their way to God just by being 3:03:37.840 --> 3:03:43.760 exposed to nature, finding a sort of a theological understanding 3:03:43.920 --> 3:03:47.200 by understanding the natural world. All of this is sort 3:03:47.200 --> 3:03:50.560 of a preamble to really what most people point to 3:03:50.800 --> 3:03:54.080 as the origins of the concept, the modern myth of 3:03:54.160 --> 3:03:59.720 the noble savage. It's most usually attributed to eighteenth century Enlightenment. 3:03:59.760 --> 3:04:03.800 For plosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, and he believed the original 3:04:03.920 --> 3:04:07.800 man was somebody who was free from sin, appetite, or 3:04:07.959 --> 3:04:11.520 the concept of right and wrong, and those deemed savages 3:04:12.280 --> 3:04:15.040 were not brutal, but noble, or at least this is 3:04:15.080 --> 3:04:18.840 how the story goes. The idea can also be found 3:04:19.040 --> 3:04:22.680 in theology the founder of the Methodist Church, for example, 3:04:22.800 --> 3:04:30.280 John Wesley. Again, just like the Andalusian novel writer, believe 3:04:30.400 --> 3:04:34.600 that you know, there's this idea of man in the 3:04:34.720 --> 3:04:40.800 beginning at the roots connected with nature, is not as corrupted, 3:04:42.000 --> 3:04:46.040 is more connected with nature and with God, compared to 3:04:47.040 --> 3:04:50.000 the so called de generous he found in eighteenth century society, 3:04:50.520 --> 3:04:56.400 compared to the disease and materialism seeing throughout the world. 3:04:57.480 --> 3:05:02.920 David Grieber, in one of his recent posthumous works, Pirate Enlightenment, 3:05:04.520 --> 3:05:06.119 I don't know. In a lot of his other works, 3:05:06.160 --> 3:05:08.840 as well. He sort of grapples with this idea of 3:05:09.040 --> 3:05:15.760 the Enlightenment, right, and how flawed our understanding of the 3:05:15.920 --> 3:05:19.920 Enlictenment is. How our approach the Enlightenment as a sort 3:05:20.000 --> 3:05:25.039 of era unique to Europe or this era centered upon 3:05:25.160 --> 3:05:30.680 Europe is flawed in its approach because it leaves out 3:05:31.120 --> 3:05:36.000 the realities of the Enlictenment occurred as a result of 3:05:36.160 --> 3:05:39.959 Europeans interactions and exposure to the rest of the world. 3:05:41.200 --> 3:05:48.800 You had these European explorers and colonizers and scientists venturing out, trading, 3:05:49.000 --> 3:05:53.400 interacting with these different groups of people, hearing their ideas 3:05:53.560 --> 3:05:56.720 about things, and then going back and writing best best 3:05:56.760 --> 3:06:01.720 selling books about these societies and how they believe and 3:06:02.520 --> 3:06:08.279 what they think and how they organize their society. One chronicler, 3:06:08.360 --> 3:06:14.519 for example, noted that among the Indians or Native Americans, 3:06:15.040 --> 3:06:17.840 that land belonged to all, just like the sun and water, 3:06:18.640 --> 3:06:21.080 mine and thine. The seeds of all evils do not 3:06:21.240 --> 3:06:24.480 exist for those people. They live in a golden age 3:06:24.480 --> 3:06:27.440 and open gardens, thought, laws or books thout judges, and 3:06:27.560 --> 3:06:33.640 they naturally follow goodness. Rousseau, Thomas Moore and others also 3:06:33.879 --> 3:06:40.039 idealized the naked savages as innocent of sin. Another one 3:06:40.120 --> 3:06:43.520 wrote about how they are equal in every respect and 3:06:43.640 --> 3:06:46.080 so in how many of their surroundings they all live 3:06:46.200 --> 3:06:50.439 justly and in conformity with the laws of nature. Basically 3:06:51.760 --> 3:06:53.879 we have we just found a whole continent of people 3:06:54.000 --> 3:06:57.480 basically lived in a garden of da But then this 3:06:57.760 --> 3:07:04.600 concept of ecological nobility that is perpetuated is of course flawed. 3:07:04.720 --> 3:07:08.400 I mean, like I mentioned earlier, there were cases of 3:07:08.640 --> 3:07:14.920 overexploitation and damage done to the environment. And yet we 3:07:15.120 --> 3:07:21.880 also find a lot of indigenous groups living in compatibility 3:07:21.879 --> 3:07:25.080 of the ecological limitations of their home area, getting familiar 3:07:25.200 --> 3:07:28.040 with the lands that they live on and what it 3:07:28.160 --> 3:07:33.640 takes to preserve them for the next generations. A lot 3:07:33.720 --> 3:07:37.000 of what is seen as the sort of virgin landscape 3:07:37.800 --> 3:07:41.880 was profoundly shaped by the controlled boons, the horticulture, the 3:07:42.000 --> 3:07:52.240 hooden and other activities done by indigenous groups throughout the Americas, 3:07:52.520 --> 3:07:55.240 for example, in the case of the Amazon rainforest, and 3:07:55.520 --> 3:07:59.320 in Australia as another case where the controlled boons really 3:07:59.400 --> 3:08:06.360 shaped that landscape over thousands and thousands of years. To 3:08:06.480 --> 3:08:08.920 this day, you know, the methods used by indigenous peoples 3:08:09.800 --> 3:08:12.240 have been found to be you know, superior to that 3:08:12.400 --> 3:08:14.320 was used by non indigenous peoples living in the same 3:08:14.360 --> 3:08:19.480 habitat methods like poly cropping techniques, to enhanced soil fertility, 3:08:20.160 --> 3:08:25.879 sustainable harvesting, and of course there are these culturally encoded 3:08:26.040 --> 3:08:30.560 morays that are you know, placed in these communities that 3:08:30.720 --> 3:08:36.840 helped result in the preservation of these resources. Then he 3:08:36.920 --> 3:08:40.959 also had account for the fact that no culture has stagnant. 3:08:41.040 --> 3:08:45.640 Every culture changes over time, and as a result of 3:08:47.200 --> 3:08:52.959 the capitalist market economy, there is this pressure to overexploit 3:08:53.040 --> 3:08:56.160 the land for the sake of profit. You know, a 3:08:56.240 --> 3:09:02.880 lot of way of these documented patterns of land cultivation 3:09:03.120 --> 3:09:09.520 and land preservation are found is usually in the outskirts 3:09:10.520 --> 3:09:15.720 and the margins of the capitalist market economy. Such practices 3:09:15.760 --> 3:09:21.040 can be more difficult to find right in the belly 3:09:21.080 --> 3:09:28.199 of the beast. For example, the rappapa in western Venezuela, 3:09:29.040 --> 3:09:33.680 they were traditionally mobile over an extensive area plants and food, 3:09:33.800 --> 3:09:36.360 search and game, and now they are stationary. Now they 3:09:36.400 --> 3:09:39.160 are settled, and now they sort of are forced to 3:09:39.280 --> 3:09:45.240 adopt a different lifestyle in response to their new material conditions. 3:09:46.440 --> 3:09:51.520 When you had that lesser population density and greater freedom 3:09:51.600 --> 3:09:56.920 to roame. It was easier to both satisfy subsistence needs 3:09:57.440 --> 3:10:05.680 and also maintain the health and vitality of the ecosystem 3:10:05.879 --> 3:10:09.880 over an extended period of time. But now that sill 3:10:10.000 --> 3:10:15.720 pluses are needed, now that agriculture has been reduced to 3:10:16.080 --> 3:10:19.320 a very small portion of the population, and that those 3:10:19.400 --> 3:10:22.920 techniques are now expected to be more intensive in order 3:10:22.920 --> 3:10:26.320 to keep up with the demands, those lifestyles and those 3:10:27.040 --> 3:10:33.880 cultural moras and those practices have had to change. But 3:10:34.480 --> 3:10:37.600 back to the idea of the noble savage right, and 3:10:38.040 --> 3:10:42.000 particularly drilling into this idea of the noble aspect of 3:10:42.120 --> 3:10:45.280 it right, because there's some confusion, as Groupate points out, 3:10:45.600 --> 3:10:50.520 between these two meanings associated with the word nobility. You 3:10:50.560 --> 3:10:53.160 could say someone is noble in this sense that they 3:10:53.280 --> 3:11:00.720 are you know, moral good, exemplary in their heavia and 3:11:00.760 --> 3:11:08.160 their exequette in their ethical standards. But you could say 3:11:08.280 --> 3:11:11.720 somebody is noble in the sense they have this position 3:11:13.080 --> 3:11:17.720 in a sort of a class system, a hereditary position 3:11:18.000 --> 3:11:23.160 in a class system, and elevated economic status. Rousseau didn't 3:11:23.160 --> 3:11:25.600 come up with the phrase, and in fact he never 3:11:25.800 --> 3:11:34.520 used in his writings. What terre ellingson historian discovered, or 3:11:34.680 --> 3:11:37.160 rather explored in his book The Myth of the Noble 3:11:37.240 --> 3:11:40.879 Savage is that the term was coined over a century 3:11:40.959 --> 3:11:44.800 before Russo's birth by a guy named by a French 3:11:44.959 --> 3:11:51.240 lawyer ethnographer named marcol Escarboo. And Escarboo described indigenous peoples 3:11:51.320 --> 3:11:54.960 as truly noble, not having any action, but it's generous, 3:11:55.360 --> 3:11:58.000 whether we consider their hunting or their employment in the wars. 3:12:00.240 --> 3:12:07.840 The nobility was more so associated not with just moral 3:12:07.959 --> 3:12:14.760 qualities like generosity and you know, good behavior, but also 3:12:16.480 --> 3:12:22.439 nobility from a legal standpoint. The lives of freedom, the privileges, 3:12:22.480 --> 3:12:27.560 and the responsibilities that the Indienous people enjoyed were also found, 3:12:28.920 --> 3:12:35.720 according to less Carboo, within the European nobility in Cannibals 3:12:35.760 --> 3:12:39.080 and kings nance prot just the name of Marvin. Harris 3:12:40.480 --> 3:12:44.600 went on to explain why less Carboo had recognized nobility 3:12:45.280 --> 3:12:47.880 among the Indienous people that he visited. You know, a 3:12:47.959 --> 3:12:50.840 lot of the band and village societies, there was a 3:12:50.959 --> 3:12:55.480 level of economic and political freedom that very few enjoyed 3:12:55.560 --> 3:12:59.000 in his day and even today. You know, people decided 3:12:59.040 --> 3:13:01.320 for themselves how long they wanted to work on a 3:13:01.400 --> 3:13:04.160 particular day. What they would do or if they would 3:13:04.200 --> 3:13:06.040 even work at all. You know, they didn't have to 3:13:06.120 --> 3:13:09.360 deal with the taxes and rents and tribute payments that 3:13:10.760 --> 3:13:13.000 and one I could even extend to say, debts that 3:13:13.200 --> 3:13:16.400 keep people today and in the past so confined and 3:13:16.560 --> 3:13:21.320 restricted in their limited life on this earth. What should 3:13:21.320 --> 3:13:25.360 have been you know, the sort of normal standard you know, 3:13:25.440 --> 3:13:31.840 of human freedom is in contrast with European society, just 3:13:32.040 --> 3:13:35.920 like mind blew in. Yeah, there's another David Graeber. Actually, 3:13:35.959 --> 3:13:37.920 I've been talking about their Never was at West a 3:13:38.000 --> 3:13:41.560 lot recently, and one of the things that he talks 3:13:41.560 --> 3:13:44.120 about in that in the Devery was a West. Is 3:13:44.160 --> 3:13:48.240 this like trick that European writers use when they're looking 3:13:48.280 --> 3:13:52.080 at another society, which is like they present themselves as 3:13:52.120 --> 3:13:55.400 like people whose behaviors are sort of are entirely rational, 3:13:55.440 --> 3:13:58.800 and they're solving a logic puzzle, and then they go find, like, 3:14:00.280 --> 3:14:02.200 I don't know, what they consider to be the weirdest thing, 3:14:02.240 --> 3:14:07.040 and so like sorry, they go find what they consider 3:14:07.120 --> 3:14:09.480 to be the weirdest thing that like another culture does 3:14:10.920 --> 3:14:13.800 and look at it through this you know, this lens 3:14:13.879 --> 3:14:16.320 which it draws in the reader to be doing this 3:14:16.400 --> 3:14:18.120 sort of logic puzzle and trying to figure out, oh, 3:14:18.160 --> 3:14:19.640 how could these people do this thing? And then you know, 3:14:20.640 --> 3:14:22.360 if if you pull back the lens a little bit 3:14:22.440 --> 3:14:26.600 look at like what these supposedly objective European like theorists 3:14:26.640 --> 3:14:28.120 of doing, it's like, well, okay, these guys all have 3:14:28.160 --> 3:14:31.760 these really weird ceremonies and like they eat they they 3:14:31.840 --> 3:14:35.360 eat the flesh of their God every weekend and stuff 3:14:35.400 --> 3:14:37.520 like that, and so you get this really interesting But 3:14:37.680 --> 3:14:40.240 but the when when you read it through their their 3:14:40.280 --> 3:14:48.600 sort of colonial ethnography, you get this image of both 3:14:48.720 --> 3:14:51.360 societies that's very weird that that lets you sort of 3:14:51.440 --> 3:14:53.600 that conceals the fact that, yeah, like when when these 3:14:53.600 --> 3:14:57.560 European writers are talking about meeting addious people like you 3:14:57.800 --> 3:15:00.920 kind of the way that it's and makes it very 3:15:01.000 --> 3:15:04.920 easy to sort of like do this colonial thing where 3:15:04.920 --> 3:15:07.280 you forget that every single French writer who is writing 3:15:07.320 --> 3:15:09.520 about this lives in like the most hierarchical society of 3:15:09.520 --> 3:15:14.000 the world has ever seen. Yeah, yeah, that's so true. 3:15:14.240 --> 3:15:16.199 And it's like, well, yeah, of course, like they they 3:15:16.280 --> 3:15:18.280 went to literally any other place on Earth and talk 3:15:18.320 --> 3:15:19.760 to people and they are like, oh my god, these 3:15:19.840 --> 3:15:22.560 people are like are really freed. It's like, well, yeah, 3:15:22.560 --> 3:15:25.360 it's because these guys live under the French like they're 3:15:25.400 --> 3:15:29.000 like French absolutism. This is like I think Grab's line was, like, 3:15:29.200 --> 3:15:31.920 this is a society where every single person when they walk, 3:15:31.959 --> 3:15:34.240 when they walk into a dining room immediately knows the 3:15:34.320 --> 3:15:37.199 class of every single other person sitting around the table 3:15:37.240 --> 3:15:40.480 by like how they hold their silverware. Yes, it's absurd, 3:15:41.000 --> 3:15:42.720 you know when a lot of the rest of the 3:15:42.840 --> 3:15:47.000 world is like, you know, living on the generosity of 3:15:47.080 --> 3:15:52.280 the people around them, being reliable in you know, the 3:15:53.879 --> 3:15:59.160 phone deations of you know, community, not even necessarily because 3:15:59.240 --> 3:16:02.680 I mean obviously a hierarchies to be found within a 3:16:02.760 --> 3:16:06.160 lot of these colleges and communities, but not to the 3:16:06.320 --> 3:16:09.400 extent that you would have you fallen in. And some 3:16:09.520 --> 3:16:14.480 of these European societies not even close. Yeah, these are 3:16:14.640 --> 3:16:18.360 the European like I don't know, like Europe has been 3:16:18.480 --> 3:16:20.560 really really I mean, you know, this is the sort 3:16:20.560 --> 3:16:23.440 of organizational trend of European society for like the last 3:16:24.120 --> 3:16:27.920 like four or five hundred years has been just an incredible, 3:16:28.000 --> 3:16:31.200 unfathomable centralization on a level that was just it's just 3:16:31.360 --> 3:16:34.640 sort of incomprehensible to most of the people who've ever lived, 3:16:35.280 --> 3:16:37.360 but we treat as sort of normal now because it's 3:16:37.360 --> 3:16:40.240 a society that we've grown up under. Yes, it's a 3:16:41.600 --> 3:16:46.560 I'm trying to draw a comparison between Europeans and culture 3:16:46.600 --> 3:16:51.200 and this level of freedom and other societies and sort 3:16:51.240 --> 3:16:55.720 of like I can't think of any specific example right now, 3:16:55.800 --> 3:16:59.200 but you know how, you know, grown up as a 3:16:59.360 --> 3:17:03.279 child in a particular household, your house would have certain 3:17:03.600 --> 3:17:06.880 norms that you think is just like universal, you know, 3:17:07.000 --> 3:17:09.720 like everybody does this. Obviously this is just a fact 3:17:09.760 --> 3:17:12.360 of life in the universe. But in reality, it's just 3:17:12.520 --> 3:17:14.960 like some way at quirk when you appearance had that 3:17:15.600 --> 3:17:19.120 you just had to grow up with. Yeah, yeah, like like, 3:17:19.280 --> 3:17:22.680 for example, this is a really weird example, but let's say, 3:17:22.720 --> 3:17:29.920 for example, you had like ceramic dishes. Would not allow 3:17:29.920 --> 3:17:33.600 it to be used ever, right, they were purely for 3:17:33.720 --> 3:17:40.040 decoration and appearance. Tooled you that it's some grave moral 3:17:40.240 --> 3:17:44.440 sin to eat off of ceramic dishes. And then you 3:17:44.520 --> 3:17:46.560 go to somebody's house and they have all their plates 3:17:46.640 --> 3:17:51.320 laid out, and you're like utterly baffled by how they're 3:17:51.320 --> 3:17:54.360 able to eat off ceramic dishes. If I could think 3:17:54.400 --> 3:17:57.720 of a better example, but for now, Yeah, that's what 3:17:57.840 --> 3:18:02.480 I'm a role with. Anyway, despite recognizing all of this 3:18:02.680 --> 3:18:06.920 freedom and stuff, they were kind of like disgusted by it, 3:18:07.040 --> 3:18:09.320 at least some of them, you know, some of them, 3:18:09.879 --> 3:18:14.480 when publishing their texts in Europe, would put their own 3:18:14.600 --> 3:18:18.280 liberal ideas into the mouths of indigenous people to say, oh, 3:18:18.400 --> 3:18:21.520 I'm not saying this. This is obviously like trees in 3:18:21.680 --> 3:18:25.040 US and I would never say this, but this indigenous 3:18:25.080 --> 3:18:27.400 guy who I spoke to the other day, he said it, 3:18:27.760 --> 3:18:31.960 and so I'm just publishing what he said. So that 3:18:32.080 --> 3:18:35.440 took place sometimes. And then they're also those who would 3:18:35.480 --> 3:18:42.480 like actually disgusted by the liberty exhibited in so many societies. 3:18:43.400 --> 3:18:46.360 But whether they saw that freedom as a positive or 3:18:46.400 --> 3:18:52.240 as a negative despite all their fluffy words about intigenous liberties, 3:18:53.320 --> 3:18:55.320 that doesn't really matter of indigenous people at the end 3:18:55.320 --> 3:18:58.520 of the day, because you know, through the centuries, empires 3:18:58.680 --> 3:19:04.160 continue to swallow indigenous lands. And the phrase basically disappeared 3:19:04.160 --> 3:19:06.240 for about two hundred and fifty years because the idea 3:19:06.240 --> 3:19:10.680 of the noble savage was reversed by this stereotype of 3:19:10.760 --> 3:19:14.520 the dangerous, brutal savage like whole day are they defend 3:19:14.520 --> 3:19:17.119 their land and way of life? Right. It was until 3:19:17.240 --> 3:19:20.600 eighteen fifty nine that the term was resurrected by a 3:19:20.640 --> 3:19:25.240 guy named John Crawford, a white supremacist. He wanted to 3:19:25.400 --> 3:19:29.560 become president, or rather he was attempted to become president 3:19:29.640 --> 3:19:33.280 of the Ethnological Society of London, and he was very 3:19:34.160 --> 3:19:42.080 disdainful of this idea emergin and anthropology and philosophy of 3:19:43.000 --> 3:19:47.400 universal human rights, like how dare you? You know? So 3:19:47.480 --> 3:19:51.400 he introduced the phrase resurrecting after two hundred and fifty 3:19:51.480 --> 3:19:55.440 years to make a speech to the society, and by 3:19:55.440 --> 3:19:57.960 the way, he missed. He's the one who first misattributed 3:19:58.040 --> 3:20:04.040 this speech the phrase to russ basically ridiculing using the 3:20:04.080 --> 3:20:07.279 noble savage as a term to ridicule those who sympathized 3:20:07.360 --> 3:20:12.760 with such quote less advanced cultures. And so that sort 3:20:12.760 --> 3:20:16.280 of fabrication where he attributed it to Russu and he 3:20:16.520 --> 3:20:20.680 built up this straw man to blew it down. You know, 3:20:20.879 --> 3:20:25.640 it's basically this myth of the myth of the noble savage. 3:20:26.879 --> 3:20:31.000 He creates a straw band of the noble savage as 3:20:31.040 --> 3:20:36.760 a myth, and then that's what's perpetuated. But his myth 3:20:36.920 --> 3:20:39.160 of the noble savage was the one that was a myth. 3:20:39.240 --> 3:20:41.400 So it's, you know, the myth of the myth the 3:20:41.480 --> 3:20:44.120 noble savage. And so as the British Empire was reaching 3:20:44.280 --> 3:20:46.840 the height of its power, and he was, you know, 3:20:46.920 --> 3:20:48.720 trying to ridicule anybody who had anything nice to say 3:20:48.720 --> 3:20:52.560 about Indigenous people, that straw Band was used to continue 3:20:52.560 --> 3:20:57.199 to advocate for the extermination. Crawford's version of noble Savage 3:20:57.520 --> 3:21:00.520 became the source for every citation of the myth by 3:21:00.560 --> 3:21:04.600 anthropologists from Lubbock, Tyler or Boas through the scholars of 3:21:04.680 --> 3:21:08.760 the late twentieth century. So even one hundred years later, 3:21:09.760 --> 3:21:12.720 people were still using the term that he came up with, 3:21:14.080 --> 3:21:19.040 this rhetorical cheap shots that he used, and to this 3:21:19.280 --> 3:21:23.040 day it continues to polarize our discussions and obstruct any 3:21:23.200 --> 3:21:27.560 sort of nuanced approach to hunt to gather life. And 3:21:27.720 --> 3:21:32.200 having discovered all of this, I have to say, it 3:21:32.320 --> 3:21:37.920 really made me feel like a part of history. There 3:21:38.000 --> 3:21:41.400 never was a noble savage myth, at least on the 3:21:41.520 --> 3:21:46.960 sense of this strong man of simple societies living in 3:21:47.200 --> 3:21:56.959 happy innocence. Travelers usually accounted for both virtues and vices. 3:21:59.480 --> 3:22:02.200 They spoke of the positives of these societies and also 3:22:02.280 --> 3:22:09.160 things that they weren't too fond of. Both the concept 3:22:09.200 --> 3:22:11.440 of the noble savage and the concept of the brutal 3:22:11.560 --> 3:22:19.080 savage a fantasies constructions of a European mind that was 3:22:19.160 --> 3:22:23.320 intent on boxing Indigenous people in this sort of suspended 3:22:23.400 --> 3:22:28.119 state of either purity or evil going forward. I think 3:22:28.120 --> 3:22:31.480 it's really silly to continue to perpetuate the tim I 3:22:31.520 --> 3:22:34.800 think it really keeps us from engaging with history properly. 3:22:35.959 --> 3:22:40.440 And I mean, even if somebody is exaggerating or expungentertain 3:22:40.560 --> 3:22:45.160 aspects of a particular society or culture that should be 3:22:45.280 --> 3:22:48.400 engaged with directly. You know, I don't think you should 3:22:48.440 --> 3:22:53.880 fall back on a lazy troope popularized by a white supremacist. 3:22:55.280 --> 3:22:57.520 I mean, we live under states now, we live on 3:22:57.560 --> 3:23:01.879 the capitalism now, and I don't think I don't fault 3:23:01.959 --> 3:23:06.360 people for trying to imagine what life must have been 3:23:06.440 --> 3:23:11.879 like before then, before these institutions became so all in compassing. 3:23:13.760 --> 3:23:16.320 What becomes an issue is when we take these past 3:23:16.400 --> 3:23:19.240 societies and we use them as these speakers of virtue 3:23:19.600 --> 3:23:22.400 instead of going back and trying to take their lessons 3:23:22.440 --> 3:23:25.480 and their practices and adopting them and interpreting them to 3:23:25.680 --> 3:23:31.039 move forward. There was a lot of freedom and there 3:23:31.120 --> 3:23:33.320 still is a lot of freedom left to be uncovered 3:23:33.560 --> 3:23:37.280 in our history. It is obscured in our history classes. 3:23:37.320 --> 3:23:39.800 It isn't taught. Instead, we're taught facts and figures and 3:23:40.000 --> 3:23:47.320 wars and notable notable individuals. We're taught of kings and 3:23:47.480 --> 3:23:51.000 dictators and high priests and emperors and prime ministers and 3:23:51.120 --> 3:23:57.679 presidents and chiefs and judges and jailers and dungeons, penitentiaries 3:23:57.920 --> 3:24:03.200 and concentration camps. This is always a stance now, but 3:24:03.520 --> 3:24:07.080 it doesn't have to be. And if we go into 3:24:07.240 --> 3:24:11.120 have an honest exploration of our history in order to 3:24:11.200 --> 3:24:17.240 inform our future, we have to free our imaginations of 3:24:17.520 --> 3:24:22.200 this lazy troop of the noble savage. That's it for 3:24:22.320 --> 3:24:27.080 me for this episode. Can check me out on YouTube 3:24:27.120 --> 3:24:32.119 dot com slash Aurism and also on Twitter at underscore 3:24:32.240 --> 3:24:35.200 sat Drew, as well as when patreon dot com slash 3:24:35.400 --> 3:24:38.080 Saint Drew. This is it could happen here. Yeah, you 3:24:38.120 --> 3:24:41.040 can find us in the usual places on Twitter, Instagram, 3:24:41.879 --> 3:24:48.000 and Yeah, go be free. Hey, We'll be back Monday, 3:24:48.120 --> 3:24:51.080 with more episodes every week from now until the heat 3:24:51.120 --> 3:24:53.440 death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here as a 3:24:53.520 --> 3:24:56.360 production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool 3:24:56.400 --> 3:24:59.240 Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com or 3:24:59.320 --> 3:25:01.960 check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 3:25:02.000 --> 3:25:04.800 wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for 3:25:04.879 --> 3:25:08.119 It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at Coolsonemedia dot com 3:25:08.240 --> 3:25:10.080 slash sources. Thanks for listening.