Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: Should we say Happy New Year? I don't know? Is
Speaker 1: it too late? I feel like, what's the rules? I
Speaker 1: saw something to say that after the eighth you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to. Oh, well, I've been messing up relate. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well I won't say Happy New Year. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say it's a new year. It's January. It's January, and
Speaker 1: our calendar year has changed. It has That's right.
Speaker 2: And listen, we've been away for a while, been getting
Speaker 2: some reruns that I think are important to hear in
Speaker 2: a new year. But we're back with a grab bag,
Speaker 2: and today's grab back has ranged.
Speaker 1: Yes, honey, we going over it all, everything that you've
Speaker 1: been like. I wonder if teen's the key you're going
Speaker 1: to talk about this? Yes, it is here, Yes, today, Yes, today,
Speaker 1: Let's start with Venezuela first. Yes, Oh my goodness. So
Speaker 1: we know that the US government went into Venezuela, captured
Speaker 1: their current president and brought him back here.
Speaker 2: It's given homeland it's given political thriller, but also it's
Speaker 2: giving history book, and so.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this TT.
Speaker 2: I think what this is revealed for me is just
Speaker 2: how weak my like geopolitical knowledge is.
Speaker 1: Absolutely because I was like, why what's going on? I
Speaker 1: don't understand. That was like the first questions that popped
Speaker 1: into my head, like why are we doing this? Why
Speaker 1: are we doing this now? If he was a problem,
Speaker 1: hasn't he always been a problem? And we have like
Speaker 1: there was just so many questions and not enough answers.
Speaker 2: And I think we had to do the digging. So
Speaker 2: now you don't have to. Let's just give folks a
Speaker 2: fast timeline, I think, so they have some context now.
Speaker 2: A lot of people start the clock in nineteen fourteen
Speaker 2: because that was when Venezuela had its first big oil weal,
Speaker 2: but there's history before that. In Venezuela. The indigenous peoples
Speaker 2: there used oil and asphalts, so from like natural places
Speaker 2: or what they call like seeps where you can get
Speaker 2: access to it without drilling. They were using that for
Speaker 2: purposes like waterproofing fuel, and it was also thought that
Speaker 2: there were medicinal purposes, and so they were using it
Speaker 2: in medicinal ways, and that was adopted by colonizers that
Speaker 2: later came to Venezuela in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Speaker 2: So oil has been around and has been known about
Speaker 2: and used in Venezuela since the sixteenth and seventeenth century
Speaker 2: and before then.
Speaker 1: So it's a part of their culture and a part
Speaker 1: of their national history and story. Yes, in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: Venezuela became the world's top oil exporter. Yeah, so now
Speaker 1: there are foreign he's involved. And around nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: the Venezuelan government claimed fifty percent of the profits. I
Speaker 1: don't blame them, right, because there's a lot of money there. Okay.
Speaker 1: If you fast forward to nineteen fifty eight, there was
Speaker 1: more state share and no new concessions to outside oil companies.
Speaker 2: So when I was reading about this, I was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: if I'm Venezuela, I'm not gonna let y'all milk all
Speaker 2: the profits off of my land, exactly. And so by
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five to nineteen seventy six, Venezuela said, hey,
Speaker 2: y'all get on out of here. We we're gonna take over.
Speaker 2: And so like they had their own kind of company.
Speaker 2: It's the PDVSA, and it's like petrol to Venezuela. You
Speaker 2: know my Spanish, you know, none of my stuff is
Speaker 2: right there, but you speak Japanese.
Speaker 1: She do, y'all?
Speaker 2: She do so shady. I don't care if people know.
Speaker 2: I was a president of the Japanese club in high school.
Speaker 2: Now my Japanese has fallen off since then, but I
Speaker 2: still claim it. So nineteen seventy five, Venezuela takes and
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, we can do this on our own.
Speaker 2: But by the nineties they're reaching out to private partners
Speaker 2: for heavy oil.
Speaker 1: So crude oil is the raw material, and it is
Speaker 1: a naturally occurring yellowish black liquid found underground in reservoir.
Speaker 1: So again that is unprocessed and raw material. What petroleum is.
Speaker 1: It is a broad category that encompasses crude oil. And
Speaker 1: so you have crude oil, the unprocessed form that is petroleum.
Speaker 1: You have natural gas, which is often found in crude oil.
Speaker 1: Then you have petroleum products, so that's refined crude oil
Speaker 1: that gives you gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, heating oil, asphault,
Speaker 1: and plastics. And so we call all of these fossil
Speaker 1: fuels because they're from the ground and they're actually made
Speaker 1: from fossilized materials, so fossilized plants and animals, and that's
Speaker 1: where we get that oil from. So even within crude oils,
Speaker 1: there's heavy crude oil and then there's light crude oil.
Speaker 1: Heavy crude oil is more viscous, so it's thicker. The
Speaker 1: higher the viscosity, the thicker the liquid. Light crude oil
Speaker 1: is thinner, so it has a lower viscosity. And refineries
Speaker 1: run on a mix of crude oils to run efficiently
Speaker 1: and have maximum output. And the statistics says that nearly
Speaker 1: seventy percent of US refining capacity runs most efficiently on
Speaker 1: heavier crude oil. And that's why ninety percent of crude
Speaker 1: oil imports into the United States are heavier than US
Speaker 1: produced SHLLE crude, and we get most of that from
Speaker 1: Venezuela and Canada. Yes, exactly, and that's the reason why
Speaker 1: it is such a big deal. Heavy oil requires a
Speaker 1: lot for you to get it out. If somebody just
Speaker 1: takes over an oil well, there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: technology that has to be invested in keeping those kind
Speaker 1: of that drilling up. There's a lot of safety measurements
Speaker 1: you need a lot of maintenance. You need skilled laborers,
Speaker 1: you need all that. So Venezuela said, hey, we took
Speaker 1: over all this. Actually we want to move into these
Speaker 1: other areas of the nation. We need help from outside
Speaker 1: investors to do that. And so they opened it back
Speaker 1: up to private partners, right, and then we enter into
Speaker 1: the Hugo Chavez era in nineteen ninety eight, and he
Speaker 1: uses the PDVSA, you know what Takia was talking about.
Speaker 1: That took over and he uses that money to fund
Speaker 1: social programs. And what that does is that it creates
Speaker 1: a lot of tension and tension spike. And in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two there was a massive strike. All production
Speaker 1: stalled and Hugo Chavez, the president of the time, fired
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand workers and packed the PDVSA with his loyalists.
Speaker 1: He said, you have an objection, get out of here. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just bring in all my friends. They're gonna
Speaker 1: do what I say. Hmm.
Speaker 2: But then by two thousand and seven, the government forces
Speaker 2: those foreign firms that were there to their stakes. They're like,
Speaker 2: all right, we got a little help from y'all. Now
Speaker 2: y'all get out of here. So Conicco Phillips and Exon Mobile.
Speaker 2: They get out of there, but they know them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know them. But they also sue because they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we had a contract or, we said we were gonna
Speaker 1: be here investing in this much. We spent a lot
Speaker 1: of money here and that became a problem. And later
Speaker 1: they were awarded billions, but I think some of the
Speaker 1: issues that they weren't able to recoup a lot of
Speaker 1: those funds. Who is they in that situation? The foreign
Speaker 1: companies that we know Exxon and Conicco, Phillips. So now
Speaker 1: we're in twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen. Moduro, the Maduro
Speaker 1: that we have now captured and brought back to the
Speaker 1: United States, became president in twenty thirteen. Twenty thirteen. That's
Speaker 1: a long time to be president if you're thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: up to twenty twenty five, and then there's a big
Speaker 1: crash and global prices tank for oil, and the PDVSA
Speaker 1: was already cash strapped, and so in twenty seventeen, the
Speaker 1: US sanctions officials and the PDVSA over repression and Maduro's
Speaker 1: power graph.
Speaker 2: Now, I think this is interesting that the US was
Speaker 2: sanctioning them because that repression that they're talking about is
Speaker 2: contested elections, power consolidation, intimidating the media.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that sound familiar?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness, pattern recognition, So you know,
Speaker 2: that was interesting. But when we keep going past twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen and into the early twenty twenties, we see the
Speaker 2: Venezuelan economy kind of nose diving. They're experiencing hyperinflation, food insecurity,
Speaker 2: and a health system collapse, and a lot of that
Speaker 2: is tied to them having historic lows in oil output
Speaker 2: because a lot of the funds were coming from there,
Speaker 2: and they're also having power failures and that affects drilling
Speaker 2: and oil rigs in its own way. So that's what
Speaker 2: we see moving into the twenty twenties.
Speaker 1: Then we are almost present day. So twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: there is a pivot. The Trump administration ramps up military
Speaker 1: presence in the Caribbean, and this sends a signal that
Speaker 1: they have an intent to push Moduro out of his
Speaker 1: presidential seat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and January seventh, after Maduro is captured, US officials
Speaker 2: basically say, hey, this is our plan to effectively run
Speaker 2: Venezuela's oil sales. They say outright, like this is about oil,
Speaker 2: and Trump says that US companies are going to invest
Speaker 2: billions in Venezuela. They're going to rebuild the infrastructure and
Speaker 2: make money. Now I think that's interesting because that's easy
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 1: And very hard to do. To remove a president, regardless
Speaker 1: of your feelings about his presidency, to remove a president
Speaker 1: from a country, we'll send that country into a tailspin.
Speaker 1: Like there's so much political imbalance. Now, this is all
Speaker 1: very interesting because it is all about power and these
Speaker 1: large displays of power. So like to go in and
Speaker 1: capture somebody, to capture a president of a country, like
Speaker 1: when you do that show of power and force and violence,
Speaker 1: even though they show like okay images of him, like
Speaker 1: here's proof of life. All you know, there were some
Speaker 1: people on the internet given and conspiracy theories and they
Speaker 1: were like, hey, who has three outfit changes? I think
Speaker 1: there were a lot of plot twists even since then.
Speaker 1: So did you see the press conference where I don't
Speaker 1: know if you used to get caught passing notes in class,
Speaker 1: but basically somebody passed a note of Trump and he
Speaker 1: raised his hand and read it out loud. Basically that
Speaker 1: was the effectively what happened.
Speaker 2: And in that same press conference, though, an representative from
Speaker 2: Exion said that Venezuela is uninvestable. And I think this
Speaker 2: is really interesting because there's a lot of science behind
Speaker 2: all of this. Since we've been producing dope labs the
Speaker 2: thing I have seen even though I knew it, like
Speaker 2: when we said it, like there's science everywhere. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of science to this, And so when they talk
Speaker 2: about things being when they talk about Venezuela being uninvestable,
Speaker 2: from Exxon's perspective, they're probably like.
Speaker 1: We got burned before.
Speaker 2: We spent billions there, and how are you going to
Speaker 2: make sure you enforce this stuff in the countries that
Speaker 2: are like the top producers for all you'll find the
Speaker 2: United States involved in the politics there, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's a little interesting to me because this
Speaker 1: current administration ran on quote unquote America first and not
Speaker 1: being involved in international disputes or being involved internationally really
Speaker 1: at all, Like we have retreated from a lot of
Speaker 1: international engagements. But then we are going into another country, yeah,
Speaker 1: and removing their president. Yes, it's very very contradictory to
Speaker 1: what he said that he was running on.
Speaker 2: I think it's also really interesting. One of the things
Speaker 2: you brought up is like, how upsetting. And when I
Speaker 2: say upsetting, I mean yes, emotionally upsetting, but the ripple
Speaker 2: effects of removing very disrupting, the disruption of this type
Speaker 2: of removal, removing a president. And it I was like,
Speaker 2: we can think back to what it looked like. We
Speaker 2: didn't even see the removal of a president. We didn't
Speaker 2: see a coup, but we saw the attempt of a
Speaker 2: coup January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: You know, we've seen these big power grabs and how
Speaker 1: it makes people feel and how it destabilizes, like even
Speaker 1: the kind of social fabric of a nation. And I
Speaker 1: think we don't even just to think about things that
Speaker 1: are upsetting or violations of what we consider to be
Speaker 1: decorum or social contracts or how we govern. We don't
Speaker 1: even have to go all the way back to January sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. We can just go back to January
Speaker 1: sixth this year, and if we pivot when we stayed stateside,
Speaker 1: like we saw Minnesota just become the center of one
Speaker 1: of the biggest immigration enforcements, having ICE there and we're
Speaker 1: talking like thousands of agents descending on their city. And
Speaker 1: that led to a fatal shooting of Renee Good exactly.
Speaker 1: Imagine you have all of these ICE agents coming to
Speaker 1: your city, some of them in unmarked vehicles, they're wearing
Speaker 1: their gear, their sirens, and there's so much more enforcement
Speaker 1: than you are used to. And so during one of
Speaker 1: these ICE operations, a thirty seven year old US citizen,
Speaker 1: Renee Good, was shot and killed by an ICE officer.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of videos that capture the moments
Speaker 1: before and after, who was doing, what, what was said,
Speaker 1: and now the evidence is under federal control and the
Speaker 1: state investigators say that complicates their work a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll watch a lot of political thrillers and crime like.
Speaker 1: I know that's fiction, but a lot of times it
Speaker 1: mimics the truth.
Speaker 2: And it's just like, who has jurisdiction over this? And
Speaker 2: if it's in federal hands and we're saying, hey, this
Speaker 2: was a federal operation that maybe went wrong, there feels
Speaker 2: like a comp ventrist, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And you already have the federal government saying the ICE
Speaker 1: agent did nothing wrong and that this is just what
Speaker 1: happens when you are defiant, and it's like, but you're
Speaker 1: supposed to do an investigation How are you already coming
Speaker 1: to a conclusion without an investigation that doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: that is unprecedented, that doesn't follow the methods that we
Speaker 1: say we uphold for sure. And so now you're having
Speaker 1: some suits from the state, from the city of Minneapolis
Speaker 1: and Saint Paul, and they're saying this is like a
Speaker 1: federal invasion basically causing this disruption. And so then they.
Speaker 2: Had protests, spreading agents were deployed, tear gas, and so
Speaker 2: now this makes us consider like, where are the constitutional lines,
Speaker 2: what is a tactic that is okay? How do we
Speaker 2: even address accountability when we have officers that are masked.
Speaker 2: All I can think about is like, how does this
Speaker 2: feel on the ground?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I hear a lot of people saying, like, I'm watching
Speaker 2: the news in this upsetting, which I totally get. But
Speaker 2: can you imagine if this is outside your door? I
Speaker 2: could not imagine.
Speaker 1: And it feels like so much bad happens in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: The amount of anxiety that you would have moving around
Speaker 1: that city, I would imagine is just so exponentially high. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was watching some of the interviews right after Renee
Speaker 2: Good was shot and killed, and there was a person
Speaker 2: saying this feels like George Floyd in twenty twenty, you know,
Speaker 2: all over again. But I'm like just thinking biologically, like
Speaker 2: the cortisol that must be coursing through your veins, the
Speaker 2: fight or flight always going off because you don't know
Speaker 2: who's who or what's beyond this next traffic, Like, like,
Speaker 2: what are going to be the lingering effects of that?
Speaker 2: You know, thinking about the loss of your loved ones,
Speaker 2: people in your community, your neighbors, people being taken just
Speaker 2: taken off the streets, out of their homes, like that
Speaker 2: feels really scary.
Speaker 1: Again, We've talked about ripple effects. The ripple effects from
Speaker 1: this will be felt for a very very long time.
Speaker 1: It is so seeds of distrust of our government. It's
Speaker 1: so seeds of distrust of law enforcement and will feel
Speaker 1: it across this country in our interactions with law enforcement
Speaker 1: and our interactions with the government. And I really I
Speaker 1: feel like we would be remiss if we did not
Speaker 1: talk about Keith Porter, a black man who was killed
Speaker 1: by an off duty ice officer on New Year's Eve.
Speaker 1: He hasn't made a lot of headlines, but I really
Speaker 1: just want to say his name and make sure that
Speaker 1: Keith Porter we talk about getting justice for him. He
Speaker 1: was outside on New Year's Eve and his community one
Speaker 1: of the traditions is to shoot rounds into the sky
Speaker 1: and celebration. An off duty ice officer sees him with
Speaker 1: a gun and kills him right there. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: seem right because all of the people of that community
Speaker 1: was saying, this is a normal thing that we do
Speaker 1: every single year for decades, and so it was just
Speaker 1: really really heart wrenching. This happened in la and I
Speaker 1: think this just also speaks to understanding community and context.
Speaker 1: Exactly what we're seeing is people are being deployed to
Speaker 1: communities that they are not a part of, where you
Speaker 1: lack context, where you lack an understanding of what is typical,
Speaker 1: and so you're responding to something and the atypical thing
Speaker 1: is you. You are the variable, you know.
Speaker 2: And then we have a person having their life taken
Speaker 2: because of an action that you weren't even on duty,
Speaker 2: wasn't even necessary, you know. And so I'm glad you
Speaker 2: did bring that up. And I think it also just
Speaker 2: this feels like the same thing we just talked about
Speaker 2: when we see people in the media being targeted, when
Speaker 2: we see organizations not sharing their perspective for fear of
Speaker 2: retribution or for fear of retaliation, but who's getting ready
Speaker 2: to sanction us for repression? Because this feels like the
Speaker 2: same things that made the US sanction Venezuela years ago.
Speaker 2: I think, yes, there's some science behind all of this,
Speaker 2: but also there's a lot of humanity there that and
Speaker 2: so we're keeping our eyes on it. We hope you're
Speaker 2: keeping your eyes on it too, and we're trying to
Speaker 2: be hopeful.
Speaker 1: And yes, yes, and part of being hopeful is being informed. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know I fall victim to this too sometimes where
Speaker 1: it's just I just can't watch the news, I can't
Speaker 1: take this anymore. But we have to remain informed, know
Speaker 1: what's going on, understand what that means for our personal
Speaker 1: rights and what that means for us as global citizens
Speaker 1: and how we move through this world. We have to
Speaker 1: fight back. We have to keep talking about it, because
Speaker 1: that's what they hope is that we will get so
Speaker 1: frustrated that we will stop talking. And we can't let
Speaker 1: that happen. Yeah, for sure. You can find us on
Speaker 1: x and Instagram at Dope Labs podcast. You can find
Speaker 1: me ct on X threads and Instagram at dr Underscore
Speaker 1: t Sho and you can find Zakiya at Ze said so.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is a production of Lemonada Media. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer is Keegan Zemma. Dope Labs is sound designed, edited,
Speaker 1: and mixed by James Sparber. Lemonada's Senior Vice President of
Speaker 1: Content and Production is Jackie Danziger.
Speaker 2: Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 1: Marketing lead is Alison Kanter. Original music composed and produced
Speaker 1: by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex suki Ura, with additional music
Speaker 1: by Elijah Harvey. Dope Labs is executive produced by us
Speaker 1: T T Show Dia and Zakiah Wattley.