WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 150 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:02.920 Al Zone Media. 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:05.920 Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:09.600 you know. This is a compilation episode. So every episode 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:12.879 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.759 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.240 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:21.200 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:22.959 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:25.360 you can make your own decisions. 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:27.640 Welcome to it. 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.080 Couldop be here a podcast about things falling apart and 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:33.800 how to put them back together again. I'm your host, 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:38.800 Mia Wong. This is a story about Boeing. I'm going 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:40.760 to lay my cards on the table from the stars. 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.640 I'm from Chicago, but my family is from Seattle. Some 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:46.479 of my aunts and uncles worked for Boeing in the 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.200 eighties or the airline side. Some of our closest family 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:53.120 friends worked there for much longer than that. I grew 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:55.400 up on the periphery of this industry, and I have 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.440 never seen the people in it and the people who 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.960 have left as angry as they are now. People are pissed, 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:05.039 and they should be. In the last six years, Boeing 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.679 has killed three hundred and forty six people. In the 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.880 years to come, they may well kill more, and not 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:14.760 a single one of them had to die. This is 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:20.240 how it happened. What is Boeing? The short answer, obviously 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:22.640 is that it's a company that makes both civilian and 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:25.800 military airplanes. It also does some other things, including working 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.480 on space travel, but that's not our media concern here. 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.640 The long answer, however, and it's the long answer that 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.760 we need, is that Boeing is the poster child for 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:41.080 the post World War II labor, corporate, militarist alliance. Boeing 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:45.440 itself was a sometimes uneasy alliance of workers, engineers, and 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:49.800 the army that made civilian and military airplanes. This is 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:52.440 also not a terrible description of the entirety of the 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:55.680 post war United States, with the proviso at the airplanes 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:59.280 the US is making, We're dropping bombs at Vietnam. The 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.920 unwinding of Boeing that we're all watching today as doors 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:06.120 fall off of planes and more and more grounded, is 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:10.440 the unwinding of that America. Here I turned to the 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.880 anthropologist David Graber from his book The Utopia of Rules quote, 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.119 I think what happened is best considered as a kind 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.359 of shifting class allegiances on the part of the managerial 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:25.679 staff of major corporations from an uneasy de facto alliance 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.920 with their own workers to one with investors. As John 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.320 Kenneth Galbraith long ago pointed out, if you create an 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:37.160 organization geared to produce perfumes, dairy products, or aircraft usel lodges, 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:40.120 those who make it up will, if left at their 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.519 own devices, tend to concentrate their efforts on producing more 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.560 and better perfumes, dairy products, or aircraft usel lodges, rather 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.760 than thinking primarily of what will make the most money 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:54.960 for shareholders. What's more, since for most of the twentieth century, 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.400 a job in a large bureaucratic megafirm meant a lifetime 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:02.480 promise of employment involved in the process, managers and workers 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.760 alike tended to see themselves as sharing a certain common 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:10.280 interest in this regard over and against meddling owners and investors. 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.639 This kind of solidarity across class lines even had a name. 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:19.320 It's called corporatism. One mustn't romanticize it. It was, among 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:23.240 other things, the philosophical basis of fascism. Indeed, one could 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.240 well argue that fascism simply took the idea that workers 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.480 and managers had interest in common, that organizations like corporations 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:34.080 or communities formed organic holes, and that finances were an alien, 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.160 parasitic force and drove them to their ultimate murderers. 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:37.640 Extreme. 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:41.840 Even in its more benign social democratic versions in America 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:46.040 or Europe, the attendant politics often came tinged with chauvinism, 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:48.960 but they also ensured that the investor class was always 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.600 seen as to some extent outsiders, against whom white collar 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.400 and blue collar workers could be considered, at least to 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.560 some degree, to be in united common front. Now as 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.800 a product of the united Front between workers and managers, 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.200 the corporate as system of the post war era had 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:10.560 a very different conception of what a corporation is. It 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:13.760 was a social entity composed of a variety of classes 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:18.159 and had an obligation to take care of them. It 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.760 had an obligation to its workers, to its engineers, to 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:26.200 its customers, and even to its country. By absorbing unions 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.839 into the corporate system, the system itself had been forced 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:34.279 to adapt a more sociological self conception that vastly differed 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:38.039 from the ways corporations both view themselves and behave today. 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:43.360 As Grabern notes this class coalition largely wrote capitalists out 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.640 of the equation, reducing them to merror holders of stock, 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:51.840 not managers. In Boeing's case, those managers were engineers at 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:56.000 basically all levels of the company. Now we must note 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.839 here that in the post World War two era engineers 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.360 were extremely powerful, and this is not just true of 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:07.360 capitalist nations. So the US, to some extent, had an 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.200 early start on the power of engineers in the running 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:14.279 of New deal programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Engineers 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.239 are powerful in communist countries as well, and it's true 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.080 in quasi socialist countries that have just liberated themselves from 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:24.240 the old European empires. These engineers were both extremely well 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:27.280 paid and very influential everywhere you can find them, from 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:30.640 Belgium to Peru, and the only real difference is whether 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:33.839 they were trained by the Americans or the Soviets. Now, 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.560 the fact that you, the listener, are not reporting to 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.200 an engineer right now at your job is assigned that 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:44.839 they didn't exactly hold on to power. In fact, the 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:49.240 last vestiges of this class of extremely powerful engineers aren't 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:53.120 really even em Boeing at all. The most prominent remain 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:57.400 of the Great Engineering International is Shijim Ping, who is 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.120 part of a class in China known as the Red Engineer. 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.040 If you want to know more about the Red Engineers, 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:05.359 we unfortunately do not have time to really go into 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.520 them here, but c Joel Andreas's book Rise of the 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:12.280 Red Engineers for the most famous treatment of them. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:13.240 Now. 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.760 In China, the Red Engineers effectively seized control of the 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:20.520 states and were the kind of second generation that ruled 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.760 back the social changes of the revolution from the Maoist period. 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:29.360 In the US, the story is a bit more complicated. 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:33.440 In some places, the engineers as a class were rolled 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.760 up and brutally destroyed in a war with a newly 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:42.320 ascended financed class. In others, engineers, feeling the disciplining effects 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:47.039 of the market, effectively engineered their own destruction. The latter 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:51.719 engineers leading the company to financial ruin is to some 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:56.520 extent the story of Boeing, But to get there we 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.760 need to take a look at how the worker management 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.240 Alowience Graver described came a part. I have talked at 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:06.960 length on this show about the economic crisis of the 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:11.240 seventies in which everything the entire consensus that had held 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:15.160 the post war era together fell apart. One of the 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:19.480 key elements is that in the nineteen seventies, manufacturing becomes 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:23.440 zero sum. If manufacturing output increases in one country, it 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:26.720 can largely only come at the expense of production somewhere else. 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:30.960 This is the product of a general crisis of structural 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:35.640 overproduction and structural under consumption. This meant that it was 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:40.520 no longer possible to incorporate everyone into the capitalist welfare 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:44.720 system while also retaining corporate profits, and so someone was 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.280 going to have to lose everything. It was either going 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:49.800 to be the capitalist or the workers. And the people 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.560 who lost everything, as I think we're all aware of 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:54.960 living in the world that we do now, were the 0:07:55.000 --> 0:08:00.520 workers whose power was systematically destroyed. But that arly, the 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:02.680 story of the destruction of unions and destruction of the 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:06.760 leftbore broadly is a story for another day for our purposes. 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:11.120 The important class that was destroyed in the period of 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:15.120 the seventies is the class of managerial engineers, and these 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:19.200 engineers were destroyed by a takeover of Corporate America by 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:22.800 the shareholders the Corporatist Alliance had previously held at bay. 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:28.000 The takeover of Corporate America by finance schools had two mechanisms. 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.560 The leveraged buyout, better known as corporate rating, was carried 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:35.920 out by people like Michael Milken, and the internal movement 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:40.120 of executives from inside the corporations themselves, led by people 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:43.040 like Jack Welsh, who will meet both of these people 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:47.480 in detail later in this story. But the details of 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:52.320 the process of how exactly the finance schools came to 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:57.160 control Corporate America turn out to be extremely important because 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:02.400 Boeing is destroyed by both of the two mechanisms coming 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:06.679 together at the same time. Now, as the eighties dawned, 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.400 the world lived in fear of a new kind of 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:14.920 financial device, the leveraged buyout. The exact mechanisms of the 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:19.200 leveraged buyout are slightly complicated, but the short version is 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.880 that Michael Milken, a bond salesman who I eventually am 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:24.960 going to do a fall behind the bastard's episode on 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.480 because oh my God is the evil and there simply 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:30.240 is not space to elaborate on all the stuff that 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.120 he did here, including this off that eventually is going 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.640 to send him to prison, figured out a way for 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.480 a person or a group too, with very little actual 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:45.520 cash on hand to very quickly take on an unbelievable 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.560 amount of debt, use it to buy a company, and 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.760 then sell that company for parts to pay back the debt, 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:58.000 pocketing the difference as profit. This was an instant, existential 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:03.480 danger to a corporate America. Previously, corporate takeovers were extremely difficult. 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.120 Attempting to get two hundred million dollars to buy a 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.920 company required you to have two hundred million dollars on hand. 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:15.359 But now with the leveraged buyout, a group of yahoos 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:17.640 with a tiny amount of money could simply buy a 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:20.800 company for higher Vans stock price, loot it for parts, 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:25.000 and destroy it. This completely changed the balance of power 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.839 between shareholders and corporations. One of the best accounts of 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.679 this era is from the anthropologist Karen Hoe in her 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:35.240 book Liquidated in Ethnography of Wall Street. The book was 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:37.080 a product of the field work she did at a 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.640 Wall Street investment bank in the nineties. And I really 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:44.080 cannot emphasize this book enough. This book is incredible. Everyone 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.120 should read. It is a book that genuinely changed my life. 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:50.320 And one of the things that she talks about is 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:54.640 this moment, the moments of leverage buyouts, and the way 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:57.920 that it is constantly brought up by the people that 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.199 she is working with at this bank when she's wing 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.280 her which she's doing around topological field work. Everyone she 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:07.800 talks to talks about this moment where the corporate raids 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:13.319 really got going as the moment the shareholder revolution began. Now, 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.720 we talked earlier about how in post war America, the 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.840 corporation was a social entity with responsibilities to its workers 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.680 and country. For the shareholders running the new shareholder revolution, 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:31.320 corporations had exactly one job, getting them more money to 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:37.320 raise stock prices. They called this shareholder value. And now 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.640 the disciples of shareholder value were able to wield the 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.559 ability to simply buy companies out wholesale and bend them 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:48.560 to the ends of shareholder value directly. This is what 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.880 is known as the shareholder revolution. Now, do you know 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.760 what else is a revolution in the ways that y' 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:58.920 all experience capitalism and mass culture at our jobs? It 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:01.600 is the products and service is that support this podcast. 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:15.680 We're back. The first thing that the corporate. 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.679 Raiders and the disciples of shareholder value did when they 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.440 started to take over companies was look at the balance 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.800 sheets of a company and destroy everything that didn't immediately 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:29.160 look to the Wall Street goruls like they made money. Now, 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:32.240 what are the assets on a balance sheet that do 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:36.520 not immediately increase stock price? Because again they look like costs. 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:36.800 Right. 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:41.080 The two assets that don't immediately contribute are funds allocated 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:45.240 for research and developments and pensions, the darlings of the 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.760 workers and engineers who comprise the previous corporatist regimes. 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:50.960 Mass layoffs followed. 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.720 Companies were reduced to debt financing mechanisms for the corporate 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.960 raiders who took on the debt to acquire them were still. 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.840 As Karen Hie observes, even companies ran by the old 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:06.240 elite were forced to embrace the same methods the raiders 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:09.080 were using, because the only way to keep the raiders 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.600 from buying your company was by increasing your stock price, 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:15.720 And the only way to increase your stock price was 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:20.400 to appease the shareholder value fanatics. Control of corporate America 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:24.600 had shifted from the old managerial worker alliance to the 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:31.280 new shareholder value financiers. Now, the problem with these shareholder 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:36.079 value people running companies is that they are viscerally physically 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.800 incapable of long term planning. Don't take my word for it, 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:45.400 here's Karen hoe quote to actualize their central identity as 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:50.080 being immediately responsive to their own changing relationship with the market, 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:54.600 including employees, products, and so on. Their strategy is, in 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:59.960 a sense to have no strategy. Ironically, having no law 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:04.840 long term strategy is contradictory and potentially self defeating in 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:09.120 that investment banks often find themselves making drastic changes, only 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.000 to realize months or weeks later that those changes who 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:18.760 are unnecessary, premature, and extremely costly. For example, in chapter five, 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:22.560 I describe how investment bankers, in part because of their 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:27.160 access to sensitive proprietary information, are not only fired in 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:30.360 an instance, but must leave the physical premises of the 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:34.400 building within fifteen to thirty minutes. Given how crucial the 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.480 control of knowledge and the protection of inside information are 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:41.440 for Wall Street investment banks, it seems self defeating that 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:45.600 they do not praise any premium on loyalty, despite the 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:49.880 fact that firms try above all to enforce secrecy. They 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:55.640 accept and maintained this volatility in revolving door policy. To 0:14:55.720 --> 0:15:00.360 make this clear, what carrot Ho is describing is that 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.600 investment banks, on the one hand, turn over like a 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.680 third of their staff every six months. And yet also 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:10.520 they are so reliant on the secrecy of this proprietary 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:14.040 information that they're using to make their investment decisions that 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:16.680 they are kicking the people. They are firing out of 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.160 the building in like fifteen minutes, so they don't have 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.960 time to plan or leak information. But again they're also 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.720 just firing these people on mass, so they're defeating the 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:31.320 entire point of their operations. These people cannot plan ahead. 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.760 And the reason that they cannot plan ahead isn't just 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:37.920 that they're sort of like naked disciples of pure increase 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:43.760 in stock price. What Liquidated describes is that these people 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:50.360 believe that they are effectively constantly reacting to near instantaneous 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.880 market changes. Right, they can't sort of make any kind 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.040 of long term plan because the market is the thing 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.600 that's making the plan, like the sort of mythical abstraction 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.520 of them. Market is what is doing all of the 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.880 actual allocations. So they just have to sort of like 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.360 sit there and have no plan and quote unquote respond 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:12.760 to what the market is doing. Now, large corporations have 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.920 always to some extent, acted as long term planning engines 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:19.960 because they have to Corporations have to do things like 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:23.080 research and development, They have to plan product lines, they 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:26.960 have to make long term decisions about resource allocation. The 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:30.280 shareholder value people are incapable of giving a shit about 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.040 any of this because all they care about is immediate 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:35.480 stock price movement, because they think that immediate stock price 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.320 movement reflects the will of the great efficiency planning engine 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.920 of the market. And you could begin to see here 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:45.800 why it would be a bad idea if these people, 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:50.400 who literally cannot create long term plans did something like, 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:55.000 for example, take control of the world's largest manufacturer of 0:16:55.080 --> 0:17:02.560 commercial aircraft. Now, the shareholder value people also believe that 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:06.840 people are effectively interchangeable. And they believe this because and 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.760 this is a very key part of why the shareholder 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:12.480 value people and why these sort of finance people have 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.679 reshaped the world the way they do. They have reshaped 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:19.320 the world in their own image. And all of these 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.159 sort of investment bankers are interchangeable, right. All of these 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:25.800 fucking bankers are fired all of the time, and they 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:28.280 move from firm to firm, and it is fine for them. 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:31.760 But the thing is, you can't do this with the 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:36.560 design of your entire aircraft because unlike in finance, where 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:38.960 every single one of these clowns is really just a 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.480 replacement level bozo whose qualifications are being able to stumble 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.880 through the chain role and vaguely remember calculus, kiss, ask, 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:51.080 and play golf. Aerospace Engineers actually do a difficult job, 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:55.800 and it requires extraordinarily large bodies of embedded knowledge to 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:59.040 do this job correctly. Now, bringing in a bunch of 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.800 people who think you can just fucking replace aerospace engineers 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.320 will have no negative influences on Boeing in the future. 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.520 Pay no attention to the man behind the mirror. Everything 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.320 is fine. Do you know what else is fine? It 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:24.320 is the products and services that support this podcast. And 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:29.360 we are back the shareholder value fanatics. The investors who 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:33.280 are now taking control of Corporate America also believe that 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.920 mass firings make companies more valuable because it makes them 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:41.240 more efficient. They believe that offshoring makes a company more 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.680 valuable because it makes it more efficient. It doesn't actually 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.600 matter what the effect these moves have on the company 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:49.879 and its ability to produce products and its ability to 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:54.919 produce money. It doesn't matter at all, because that's how 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:59.399 the people who can control stock prices by buying the 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.760 stocks think the world works, and so if you do 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.680 these things, the stock price will go up. All quote 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:10.359 unquote creating shareholder value means is convincing a bunch of 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:12.880 dipshit quants working one hundred and twenty hours a week 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:15.439 that your company is valuable, so they buy it for 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:19.480 a higher price. And these are the people who reshape 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:24.399 American capitalism to their whims. Now importantly for our story, 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:26.840 they're also the people who ran the second phase of 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:31.480 the corporate rating era, the mergers and acquisitions boom through 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:34.880 the nineties and really to this day. Wall Street bankers 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.520 began to encourage companies to buy out other companies as 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.959 a mechanism of raising their stock price. This is, you know, 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.440 the acquisitions and mergers and acquisitions. They also heavily push 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:49.760 merging companies together. In the nineties. The buzzerod behind this 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:54.520 was quote unquote synergy. Buying companies or merging companies could 0:19:54.560 --> 0:20:00.399 quote leverage synergies between companies to grow shareholder value. Side 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:03.639 of the shareholder value fantasy lands, Most of these mergers 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:06.360 and acquisitions either did nothing to help the company if 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:10.159 the acquisitions were small, or were a complete disaster that 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:14.080 destroyed both companies. The bankers who orchestrated these mergers and 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:17.359 acquisitions didn't give a shit though, because they got paid 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.680 on commission. It did not matter to them what happened afterwards. 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:24.560 All that matters is that the deal goes through. And 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.560 this is where we returned to Boeing because in nineteen 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:30.800 ninety seven Boeing made an acquisition that would fuck the 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.679 company forever. They bought one of their longtime rivals, an 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:40.600 aircraft company known as McDonald douglas. Now hitherto, Boeing had 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:45.560 been relatively insulated from the shareholder revolution. McDonald Douglas, however, 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.560 was not. Its CEO was a man with the incredible 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:54.000 name Harry Stone Cipher. Stone Cipher is different from most 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.480 aerospace executives because he wasn't a McDonald douglas corporate man. 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.840 He came from Jack Welch's at a Rule Electric And 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.080 it's here we need to introduce the other mechanism through 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:08.560 which the shareholder revolution was realized, a new breed of 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:13.600 CEOs led by the man himself, Jack Welsh. Now we 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.359 are not going to spend an enormous amount of time 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:22.040 talking about Jack Welsh in this episode, because Hit Cools 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:24.919 one media podcast behind the Bassard has three hours of 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.639 episode about this man, which you should go listen to 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:29.960 their good The short version of it that we're going 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:31.960 to give here is that Jack Welsh is the man 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.399 who invented the bass layoff. He was one of the 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:36.680 first CEOs to figure out that, again, you could raise 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:40.000 stock prices by selling off profitable divisions and firing workers 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:43.320 who are making the company money because shareholders are ideologically 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:47.720 driven maniacs who would believe Welsh's manipulated balance sheets that 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:49.760 show the company was doing better than ever even as 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:52.879 it sold off all of its assets. He was also 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:55.720 one of the first people to start practicing mass outsourcing, 0:21:56.040 --> 0:22:00.520 replacing workers directly employed by General Electric with contractors. Soon 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:06.439 he was outsourcing entire divisions. Offshoring followed Welsh move jobs 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:09.359 from highly paid and highly trained union employees in the 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:13.480 US to ununionized workers in places like India and Mexico. 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:19.240 I think people generally kind of understand that offshoing lowers quality, 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:23.280 but why does that actually happen. It's not about something 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:25.199 like the natural skill of the workers, which is the 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:27.200 way it can kind of be presented in these sort 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:31.280 of nationalist accounts. It is about the level of violence 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:34.159 that can be inflicted on people. In places like India 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:37.760 and Mexico and China, there is an extraordinary amount of 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:40.600 violence that can be inflicted on the working class. And 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:43.560 because of this violence, because of their ability to destroy 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:45.880 unions and because of their ability to force people into 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:49.919 poverty by taking their land, people get paid less money 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:53.120 to work faster. And those people who are being paid 0:22:53.200 --> 0:22:55.920 less money to work faster with worse training are going 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:58.520 to be worse at a job than people who are 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:01.679 paid more to do a better slow. And Jack Welch 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:04.640 wants this. He wants to sell shitty, low cost products 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:07.479 because they're cheaper to make than anything that actually works. 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:12.280 The long term consequences of this are a disaster. Welch 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:15.400 drove General Electric, one of the greatest engines of American 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.960 capitalism for a century, into the ground. Even after a 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:22.640 massive government bailout in two thousand and eights, it barely 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:26.560 exists today. Harry Stone Cipher, the CEO of the company 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:31.320 Boeing was about to buy, said this about Jack Welch. Quote, Certainly, 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:34.040 Jack Welch is one of the great leaders in my mind, 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:36.280 and of course he was selected as CEO of the 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:39.679 century by Fortune magazine a couple years ago, and of 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:42.399 course about twenty years ago, that same magazine coined the 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:45.119 phrase neutron Jack, and of course they vilified him at 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:47.360 every turn out. Neutron Jack, by the way, refers to 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:51.359 a neutron bomb, because effectively what he was doing was 0:23:51.400 --> 0:23:53.600 firing all the workers and leaving only the sort of 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.280 like physical capital assets, like leaving all of the machines intact, 0:23:56.280 --> 0:23:58.240 which is what a neutron bomb is supposed to do. 0:23:59.280 --> 0:24:01.200 Let's go back to the UOTE quote. 0:24:01.280 --> 0:24:03.080 Jack had a style that was one of trying to 0:24:03.200 --> 0:24:06.120 change the environment, not to just deal with the environment. 0:24:06.200 --> 0:24:09.879 So he inspired people, so he certainly won. So Stone 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:14.119 Cipher is a disciple of Welsh. He immediately starts running 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.640 the Jack Watch playbook, and though and behold, McDonald douglas 0:24:17.640 --> 0:24:20.480 was failing when Boeing bought it for fourteen billion dollars. 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:23.920 And again, like Boeing at this point controls like sixty 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:27.679 five percent of the commercial aviation market, McDonald douglas controls 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:31.320 like five. Right, so this should have been like Goliath 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:36.360 eating David for breakfast, but the merger didn't go as planned. 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:40.520 Instead of the massive Boeing running the tidy McDonald douglas. 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:44.720 McDonald douglas executives effectively hijacked Boeing and installed themselves in 0:24:44.720 --> 0:24:49.160 positions of power. Stone Cipher and his Padre shareholder value 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:52.480 fanatics began to consolidate their position and drive out the 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:56.760 previous Boeing regime. The capstone of this project was moving 0:24:56.800 --> 0:25:00.520 Boeing headquarters from Seattle, where it had been since William E. 0:25:00.720 --> 0:25:04.440 Boeing founded the company in nineteen sixteen, to Chicago as 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:06.919 a way to shift the physical center of power of 0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:09.960 the company away from Boeing's engineers and workers and towards 0:25:10.000 --> 0:25:13.880 the McDonald douglas finance goals. Then they began to run 0:25:13.880 --> 0:25:17.320 the Jack Walsh playbook on Boeing in earnest. Every single 0:25:17.359 --> 0:25:20.879 account of Stonecipher's takeover that I've written quotes this exact 0:25:20.920 --> 0:25:24.600 same line quote. When people say I changed the culture 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:27.119 of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it's run 0:25:27.160 --> 0:25:30.280 like a business rather than a great engineering firm. And 0:25:30.320 --> 0:25:33.000 what stone Cipher is really talking about here, and what 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:36.119 everyone is really saying when they talk about, you know, 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:39.800 the culture shift Boeing in this period, what this really 0:25:39.960 --> 0:25:42.359 is is a change in the balance of powers between 0:25:42.400 --> 0:25:45.119 the engineers and workers who actually make the planes and 0:25:45.200 --> 0:25:48.200 the finance schools who owned the company. Stone Cipher wanted 0:25:48.200 --> 0:25:50.320 to crush the engineers and workers so he could run 0:25:50.400 --> 0:25:54.320 Boeing like a business. And when he says like a business, 0:25:54.520 --> 0:25:57.159 he doesn't actually mean run it like a business. He 0:25:57.240 --> 0:26:00.720 means run the company like a finance guy. Finance guys 0:26:01.000 --> 0:26:04.080 don't build planes, which is what Boeing had previously been doing. 0:26:04.680 --> 0:26:07.800 Finance guys create shareholder value, which is to say that 0:26:07.840 --> 0:26:10.919 they make stock prices go up. So if you're just 0:26:11.000 --> 0:26:13.719 trying to raise stock prices, you don't actually need to 0:26:13.720 --> 0:26:16.280 make an airplane. You can outsource the different parts of 0:26:16.320 --> 0:26:18.720 building the airplane to a bunch of random shops around 0:26:18.760 --> 0:26:21.720 the world who work extremely fast, don't have much of 0:26:21.720 --> 0:26:24.200 an idea of what they're doing, and do a terrible job. 0:26:24.880 --> 0:26:27.439 Long term. Of course, this is an absolute disaster. There 0:26:27.480 --> 0:26:29.760 are very good reasons to keep the production line for 0:26:29.800 --> 0:26:34.240 something as complicated as commercial aircraft in house efficiency, consolidation 0:26:34.359 --> 0:26:38.440 of knowledge, quality control, et cetera, et cetera. But outsourcing 0:26:38.480 --> 0:26:40.760 is great for his stock price, and it's the Jack 0:26:40.840 --> 0:26:44.679 Welch model, selling shitty products for cheap works, kind of 0:26:45.000 --> 0:26:47.720 if you're General Electric making a light bulb. But when 0:26:47.760 --> 0:26:51.320 Boeing uses these same principles to build an aircraft, people. 0:26:51.040 --> 0:26:52.440 Begin to die. 0:26:52.760 --> 0:26:55.200 And in the next episode we are going to tell 0:26:55.320 --> 0:26:59.600 that story how Boeing killed three hundred and forty six pemple. 0:27:19.359 --> 0:27:22.080 Welcome to take it out here a podcast about things 0:27:22.119 --> 0:27:26.199 happening to Boeing. I'm your host, Leo Long. When we 0:27:26.280 --> 0:27:30.320 last left our intrepid aerospace company, Boeing had gotten caught 0:27:30.400 --> 0:27:32.919 up in the mergers and acquisitions frenzy of the nineteen 0:27:33.000 --> 0:27:36.720 nineties and bought out its rival McDonald douglas, after which 0:27:36.800 --> 0:27:40.359 McDonald douglas CEO and Jack Welsh disciple Harry stone Zeipher 0:27:40.480 --> 0:27:44.080 effectively launched an administrative coup and sees control of the company. 0:27:44.600 --> 0:27:48.159 Now stone Ceipher wasn't able to hold onto power for 0:27:48.240 --> 0:27:51.520 long because he was very quickly forced to resign after 0:27:51.560 --> 0:27:56.360 he had what CNN describes as a quote improper relationship 0:27:56.359 --> 0:27:59.720 with a female executive. So things are going great for 0:27:59.760 --> 0:28:03.000 every one. I'm realizing reading the script that I should 0:28:03.040 --> 0:28:05.439 mention it wasn't like an abuse thing. It's just that 0:28:05.520 --> 0:28:08.000 he was having a relationship with one of his subordinates, 0:28:08.000 --> 0:28:11.640 which is also not great. But it yeah, it wasn't good, 0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:14.000 and he gets kicked out of media almost immediately. But 0:28:14.480 --> 0:28:17.840 by the time he was forced out, his model for 0:28:17.880 --> 0:28:20.640 how Boeing should work going forwards, you know, the layoffs, 0:28:20.720 --> 0:28:24.840 the outsourcing, slashing the research and development budget, and above 0:28:24.920 --> 0:28:28.240 all taking power from engineers and giving it to the 0:28:28.240 --> 0:28:31.879 shareholder value fanatics had already been embedded at the core 0:28:32.280 --> 0:28:37.000 of Boeing's management structure. Here's journalist Natasha Frost writing in 0:28:37.119 --> 0:28:41.959 Courts two decades on. Perhaps the most lasting consequence if 0:28:42.000 --> 0:28:44.800 the change in culture has been in Boeing's approach to 0:28:44.840 --> 0:28:49.000 building aircraft. Cutting costs and diversifying revenue ought to have 0:28:49.080 --> 0:28:52.440 served as an ideal way to subsidize the expensive process 0:28:52.440 --> 0:28:53.960 of plane development. 0:28:54.520 --> 0:28:55.400 Oh boy did it not. 0:28:56.440 --> 0:29:01.160 Instead, with engineers now disempowered and management far away in Chicago, 0:29:01.440 --> 0:29:04.640 the actual building of new planes in Seattle all but stalled. 0:29:05.160 --> 0:29:08.480 Boeing would not actually announce even the plans for a 0:29:08.520 --> 0:29:11.640 new plane until two thousand and three with the seven 0:29:11.680 --> 0:29:15.320 to eighty seven Dreamliner. Throughout this time, Boeing was led 0:29:15.360 --> 0:29:19.800 by its first chairman without a traditional aviation background, James McNerney. 0:29:20.320 --> 0:29:23.440 James mcnerne had instead spent almost two decades in management 0:29:23.480 --> 0:29:27.240 at General Electric. Now he was following a tried and 0:29:27.480 --> 0:29:31.280 tested route of cutting, downsizing, and shifting. That approach was 0:29:31.320 --> 0:29:34.080 applied to upgrading the seven thirty seven, which had become 0:29:34.120 --> 0:29:37.680 the victim of its own success. In its five decade history, 0:29:37.880 --> 0:29:41.160 airlines have cumulatively ordered more than ten thousand of the plane, 0:29:41.440 --> 0:29:44.840 an aviation rock star. But rather than retiring the plane 0:29:44.920 --> 0:29:47.640 replacing it with the next big thing, Boeing often to 0:29:47.680 --> 0:29:50.640 keep costs down by tinkering and adjusting the model to 0:29:50.680 --> 0:29:54.600 fit still more passengers. And this is how you get 0:29:54.640 --> 0:29:58.080 planes falling out of the sky instead of you know, 0:29:58.240 --> 0:30:01.680 doing the normal thing, which is putting money into building 0:30:01.680 --> 0:30:04.760 a new airplane, which is you know expensive in the 0:30:04.760 --> 0:30:08.160 short run. And again remember that the finance goals are 0:30:08.160 --> 0:30:10.320 now in charge for these people. The only thing that 0:30:10.360 --> 0:30:13.640 exists is the short run in immediate stock price. So 0:30:13.680 --> 0:30:16.440 instead of doing that, management went, eh, we already have 0:30:16.560 --> 0:30:20.160 this plane, were first designed in the fucking sixties. Let's 0:30:20.200 --> 0:30:23.520 keep modifying that. And this this is going to kill 0:30:23.560 --> 0:30:27.480 an extremely large number of people. Now, the seven thirty 0:30:27.520 --> 0:30:34.080 seven again came out originally in nineteen sixty seven. In 0:30:34.200 --> 0:30:39.840 the two thousands, in the century, the millennia, the two thousands, 0:30:40.400 --> 0:30:43.160 Boeing begins to design a new version of this plane 0:30:43.520 --> 0:30:47.440 from the last millennium, called the seven thirty seven Max. 0:30:48.040 --> 0:30:51.000 For shareholders. Again, this is this is a great idea. 0:30:51.280 --> 0:30:54.800 It's not just that, you know, building new planes is 0:30:54.840 --> 0:30:57.480 expensive and this is cheaper because you're not spending the 0:30:57.480 --> 0:31:00.600 money on building a new plane. There's a bunch of 0:31:00.640 --> 0:31:04.320 other advantages for Boeing for this, and one of the 0:31:04.320 --> 0:31:06.760 biggest is that you could tell everyone from you know, 0:31:06.840 --> 0:31:09.440 the FAA to the airlines that the pilots that hey, 0:31:09.600 --> 0:31:12.040 this is just a regular seven thirty seven. It's it's 0:31:12.080 --> 0:31:14.560 just the same plane. You don't need to like retrain 0:31:14.880 --> 0:31:17.560 your pilots to learn how our new systems work because 0:31:17.920 --> 0:31:20.480 there's really like no new systems and that you know, 0:31:20.560 --> 0:31:22.120 that costs money, so they don't want to do it. 0:31:22.440 --> 0:31:24.640 You don't need to have the FAA do the regulatory 0:31:24.640 --> 0:31:26.480 shit they would do for a new plane, or even 0:31:26.680 --> 0:31:29.960 like a substantial change to like the original plane, which 0:31:30.240 --> 0:31:33.400 you know, again costs money and time that Boeing does 0:31:33.440 --> 0:31:36.880 not want to, you know, do. The problem is that, 0:31:37.360 --> 0:31:40.320 you know. I tried to find a sort of delicate 0:31:40.320 --> 0:31:42.000 way to say this, and then I realized you simply 0:31:42.040 --> 0:31:44.360 should not do it like that. The problem is that 0:31:44.400 --> 0:31:46.400 the seven thirty seven Max is a plane that is 0:31:46.440 --> 0:31:49.960 trying to kill you. If you know anything about the story, 0:31:50.200 --> 0:31:52.520 you're probably assuming that when I say this plane is 0:31:52.560 --> 0:31:56.200 trying to kill you, I'm talking about the Maneuvering Characteristics 0:31:56.240 --> 0:32:00.000 Augmentation System or MCASTS, the piece of software that directly 0:32:00.120 --> 0:32:02.520 cause the crashes, and to some extent, like I am 0:32:02.600 --> 0:32:06.480 talking about mcasts. Well, we'll get into it in a second. 0:32:06.560 --> 0:32:09.560 It absolutely did kill all those people. But I think 0:32:09.560 --> 0:32:11.960 there's a problem with a lot of the way the 0:32:12.000 --> 0:32:15.200 story has been covered, which is that a lot of 0:32:15.240 --> 0:32:18.240 the coverage of this has been obsessively focused on the 0:32:18.240 --> 0:32:22.480 software problem, specifically on MCAST. And I understand why people 0:32:22.560 --> 0:32:24.760 focus on the software. It is the immediate cause of 0:32:24.760 --> 0:32:28.280 the crash, But the real problem with the seven thirty 0:32:28.320 --> 0:32:32.120 seven Max is that the actual physical plane is also 0:32:32.240 --> 0:32:36.560 trying to kill you, and the software MCAST was developed 0:32:36.600 --> 0:32:38.719 to again stop the plane from trying to kill you. 0:32:39.440 --> 0:32:42.240 Now that software is also trying to kill you. But 0:32:42.720 --> 0:32:45.800 both the software and the physical plane are trying to 0:32:45.840 --> 0:32:49.040 burdy you. So you know what do I mean when 0:32:49.080 --> 0:32:51.440 I say the physical plane is trying to kill you. 0:32:51.800 --> 0:32:54.080 For this, I'm going to turn to an actual engineer 0:32:54.120 --> 0:32:56.960 and pilot, Gregory Travis, who wrote probably the best piece 0:32:57.000 --> 0:32:59.680 in the technical details of this whole problem that I've 0:32:59.680 --> 0:33:02.800 seen for I Triple E met Spectrum. I Triple E 0:33:02.880 --> 0:33:06.600 is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. They know 0:33:06.680 --> 0:33:11.840 what they're talking about spectrums their magazine. So the initial problem, 0:33:12.080 --> 0:33:15.600 as Travis explains, was this, The original seven thirty seven 0:33:15.720 --> 0:33:19.640 was designed for nineteen sixties engines. Modern airplanes have way 0:33:19.680 --> 0:33:22.640 bigger engines because, due to a bunch of engineering stuff 0:33:22.680 --> 0:33:25.200 that we're not going to get into here, large engines 0:33:25.280 --> 0:33:28.480 are more efficient than small engines, and this is a 0:33:28.560 --> 0:33:34.000 huge deal for aircraft which consume unbelievably large quantities of 0:33:34.080 --> 0:33:38.320 extremely expensive fuel. The safe and sensible, but again expensive 0:33:38.360 --> 0:33:40.960 option would have been to design a new aircraft to 0:33:41.000 --> 0:33:44.000 replace the seven thirty seven that is actually designed to 0:33:44.040 --> 0:33:48.320 accommodate the new giant engines. The chief skate option would 0:33:48.360 --> 0:33:51.640 be just bolt the new giant engines onto the old 0:33:51.680 --> 0:33:55.000 plane design. Now, the problem is that the only way 0:33:55.040 --> 0:33:58.560 to do this is to move the engines forward. The 0:33:58.880 --> 0:34:01.040 engines on the seven thirty seven are, you know, under 0:34:01.080 --> 0:34:04.800 the wing, which is like the normal thing, But the 0:34:04.840 --> 0:34:07.320 engines would no longer fit under the way because they 0:34:07.320 --> 0:34:11.359 were too large, and moving the engines forward changes where 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:16.160 the thrust is coming from. Here's Travis quote. Now, when 0:34:16.200 --> 0:34:19.480 pilots supplied power to the engine, the aircraft would have 0:34:19.520 --> 0:34:23.920 a significant propensity to pitch up or raise its nose. Now, this, 0:34:24.080 --> 0:34:28.120 as you might expect, is not good. It is quite bad. 0:34:28.160 --> 0:34:30.680 I mean airplanes and Trumps talks about this. Airplanes do 0:34:30.920 --> 0:34:33.320 kind of naturally do this a little bit. This plane 0:34:33.440 --> 0:34:36.560 does it way way more than it's supposed to. So 0:34:36.719 --> 0:34:40.480 here's where things, unfortunately, get a bit technical. So the 0:34:40.520 --> 0:34:43.760 nose going up increases something called the angle of attack. 0:34:44.280 --> 0:34:45.640 I'm going to read a description of this. 0:34:46.560 --> 0:34:46.920 Fully. 0:34:47.000 --> 0:34:49.880 Understanding exactly how the angle of attack works is not 0:34:50.360 --> 0:34:53.880 enormously important to understanding the story. But you know, the 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:56.560 crux of this story is angle of attack centers not working, 0:34:56.920 --> 0:34:59.120 so we have to explain it a little bit. 0:34:59.200 --> 0:34:59.600 Quote. 0:35:00.080 --> 0:35:02.680 The angle of attack is the angle between the wings 0:35:02.719 --> 0:35:06.239 and the airflow over the wings. So if you want 0:35:06.280 --> 0:35:09.000 to understand exactly what this is, go read the piece. 0:35:09.239 --> 0:35:12.239 The important thing for our purposes is that if the 0:35:12.280 --> 0:35:15.799 angle of attack gets too high, right, if the planes 0:35:15.880 --> 0:35:17.719 are a level and it's flying normally, the angle of 0:35:17.719 --> 0:35:20.640 attack is like zero, but the angle attack can get 0:35:20.719 --> 0:35:23.560 higher as like you know, if you're not flying like level, 0:35:24.120 --> 0:35:26.359 and if the angle of attack gets too high, the 0:35:26.360 --> 0:35:28.279 plane stalls, and this is one of the ways that 0:35:28.280 --> 0:35:32.120 you crash a plane. Worse still, in the seven thirty 0:35:32.160 --> 0:35:36.759 seven max, basically, the engine casings themselves can at high 0:35:36.800 --> 0:35:40.080 angles of attack, work as a wing and produced lift, 0:35:40.719 --> 0:35:43.200 and the lift they produce is well ahead of the 0:35:43.239 --> 0:35:47.480 wings center of lift. Meeting the engine casings will cause 0:35:47.520 --> 0:35:50.280 the seven thirty seven at a high angle of attack 0:35:50.520 --> 0:35:52.960 to go to a higher angle of attack. This is 0:35:53.040 --> 0:35:57.719 aerodynamic mispractice of the worst kind. An airplane approaching an 0:35:57.719 --> 0:36:03.120 aerodynamic stall cannot, under any circumstances, have the tendency to 0:36:03.160 --> 0:36:07.239 go further into the stall. This is called quote dynamic instability, 0:36:07.560 --> 0:36:10.880 and the only airplanes that exhibit that characteristic fighter jets 0:36:11.120 --> 0:36:14.080 are also fitted with ejector seats. So let me let 0:36:14.120 --> 0:36:16.239 me let me try to kind of like explain the 0:36:16.280 --> 0:36:19.360 sort of crux of this well, A, they've they've managed 0:36:19.400 --> 0:36:21.400 to position the engines in such a way the engines 0:36:21.400 --> 0:36:24.200 can act as a wing, which is insane. 0:36:24.600 --> 0:36:24.920 And B. 0:36:25.520 --> 0:36:27.520 Once you get to a high enough angle of attack, 0:36:27.600 --> 0:36:29.399 which again, the higher the angle of attack you're at, 0:36:29.440 --> 0:36:31.920 the more risk you're out installing, the plane starts trying 0:36:31.960 --> 0:36:34.840 to kill you by making the angle of attack increase. 0:36:35.520 --> 0:36:37.799 It is a feedback loop that means when you short 0:36:37.840 --> 0:36:41.120 the stall, the airplane makes you stall more. Planes are 0:36:41.160 --> 0:36:44.160 not supposed to do this. Again, and I cannot eplicize 0:36:44.200 --> 0:36:47.880 this enough quote. This is called dynamic instability. And the 0:36:47.920 --> 0:36:52.000 only airplanes which exhibit this characteristic fighter jets, are also 0:36:52.000 --> 0:36:55.319 fitted with ejector seats. So again, this is the thing 0:36:55.440 --> 0:36:58.160 that is dangerous enough that you get like regular, regular 0:36:58.160 --> 0:37:00.440 civilian airplanes are not supposed to do this, they do 0:37:00.520 --> 0:37:02.799 it on fighter jets because fighter jets are doing things 0:37:02.840 --> 0:37:05.520 that planes aren't supposed to do. And you can leave 0:37:05.640 --> 0:37:07.880 the plane if it fucks up it does something like this. 0:37:08.400 --> 0:37:11.960 And the worst part about this is that you can 0:37:12.040 --> 0:37:15.160 kick off this problem by trying to get the plane 0:37:15.520 --> 0:37:19.319 going faster, like while it's going slow. What part of 0:37:19.400 --> 0:37:22.600 flying a plane does it start slow, is kind of 0:37:22.600 --> 0:37:23.960 at a high angle of attack, and then has to 0:37:23.960 --> 0:37:25.719 go faster. Oh wait, take off the thing you have 0:37:25.760 --> 0:37:29.520 to do every single time we fly. This is fucking batshit. 0:37:29.960 --> 0:37:34.399 No one would intentionally design a new airliner like this, right, 0:37:34.520 --> 0:37:37.759 No one, not even modern I mean like Boeings, like 0:37:37.880 --> 0:37:40.640 other airplanes, like even the modern ones. Even the Dreamliner 0:37:40.719 --> 0:37:45.400 doesn't fucking do this right, It's completely nuts. The only 0:37:45.480 --> 0:37:48.040 way that you could get something like this is as 0:37:48.080 --> 0:37:51.400 a pure product of trying to bolt increasingly large engines 0:37:51.440 --> 0:37:54.160 onto a plane from the sixties, because you are too 0:37:54.280 --> 0:37:57.200 cheap to try to do anything new. But you know 0:37:57.239 --> 0:37:59.760 who isn't afraid of doing new things? It's the products 0:37:59.640 --> 0:38:02.480 and says to support this podcast. We've never gotten a 0:38:02.520 --> 0:38:04.839 Boeing ad, but if it was gonna happen, I guess 0:38:04.840 --> 0:38:17.400 it'd probably happened now, dear God. But instead of you know, 0:38:17.880 --> 0:38:21.040 dealing with this problem by either making a new fucking 0:38:21.120 --> 0:38:23.920 plane or figuring out some way to not have the 0:38:23.920 --> 0:38:28.000 engines literally become wings, Boeing was like, ah, fuck it, 0:38:28.000 --> 0:38:31.320 We'll just build some software that pushes the plane's nose 0:38:31.480 --> 0:38:35.480 down if it starts doing this. Now, if your reaction 0:38:35.600 --> 0:38:39.080 to hearing, let's put software on the plane that makes 0:38:39.120 --> 0:38:42.320 it fly towards the ground. Is wait, that's a terrible idea. 0:38:42.880 --> 0:38:45.719 You have the right idea. These people did not have 0:38:45.760 --> 0:38:49.200 the right idea. But sunningly, there's like a version of 0:38:49.200 --> 0:38:55.440 this system that isn't like lethally unsafe. But com Pubbing 0:38:55.480 --> 0:38:58.359 did not design a version of this that is even 0:38:58.440 --> 0:39:01.160 remotely safe. I don't know if that's more egregious than 0:39:01.160 --> 0:39:03.960 designing an aircraft that has that amic CA instability, but 0:39:04.840 --> 0:39:08.440 the way they implement this is egregious. They decided in 0:39:08.480 --> 0:39:12.120 their infinite wisdom that the entire system would work on 0:39:12.200 --> 0:39:15.200 a single sensor. And we need to note before we 0:39:15.239 --> 0:39:17.160 start this, so this is we're gonna be talking about 0:39:17.160 --> 0:39:20.880 angle attack sensors. They're kind of just like pieces of 0:39:20.960 --> 0:39:23.440 metal that stick out the side of the plane and 0:39:23.520 --> 0:39:26.680 they break a lot, and they break a lot because 0:39:26.960 --> 0:39:29.120 flying a plane is like the worst thing you can 0:39:29.160 --> 0:39:31.640 possibly do to a piece of equipment doesn't involve leaving 0:39:31.640 --> 0:39:34.440 the atmosphere or putting it under the ocean. Yeah, so 0:39:34.480 --> 0:39:37.120 here's from the Seattle Times, which the Scale Times actually 0:39:37.160 --> 0:39:40.400 because you know, Boeing has traditionally been in Seattle like 0:39:40.480 --> 0:39:42.080 does a lot of very very good coverage on this. 0:39:42.160 --> 0:39:45.200 They have good sources. Yeah, from the Shade Times quote, 0:39:45.200 --> 0:39:49.440 the most controversial deal of the MCAST design has been 0:39:49.480 --> 0:39:52.560 the reliance on a single angle of attack sensor of 0:39:52.680 --> 0:39:55.440 both of the deadly flights. Everything started with a faulty 0:39:55.480 --> 0:39:59.000 sensor in the second crash in Ethiopia. The data trace 0:39:59.080 --> 0:40:02.080 strongly suggested the sensor was deshortened an instant, likely by 0:40:02.120 --> 0:40:05.120 a bird strike. There are two such sensors, one on 0:40:05.160 --> 0:40:08.399 either side of the fuselage. Why didn't Boeing, especially after 0:40:08.440 --> 0:40:11.160 discarding the g forces a trigger, use both angle of 0:40:11.160 --> 0:40:15.080 attack sensors. The thinking was that requiring input from two 0:40:15.120 --> 0:40:18.320 angle of attack sensors would mean that if one failed, 0:40:18.320 --> 0:40:22.319 the system would not function. Now, the article goes on 0:40:22.360 --> 0:40:26.359 to talk about how their justification for for why they 0:40:26.400 --> 0:40:28.520 only use one sensor, and you know, they talked about 0:40:28.520 --> 0:40:31.160 the safety and simplicity if not wanting to add complexity 0:40:31.200 --> 0:40:33.120 to a system. You know, because if you have two 0:40:33.160 --> 0:40:35.319 things that you're running for, it's slightly more complex than 0:40:35.360 --> 0:40:38.879 having one thing that you're running from. Now, this kind 0:40:38.880 --> 0:40:42.279 of sounds reasonable at first glance, but first off, if 0:40:42.320 --> 0:40:45.360 your plane has dynamic instability that causes it to snowball 0:40:45.520 --> 0:40:48.839 to stalling, and this software system to make it not 0:40:48.920 --> 0:40:51.319 do that is so important you can't risk it not 0:40:51.560 --> 0:40:53.799 being on. If one of the two sensors breaks, then 0:40:53.840 --> 0:40:55.840 maybe you shouldn't have you designed your plane like this. 0:40:57.040 --> 0:41:02.200 And second, this entire system violates every design principle that 0:41:02.239 --> 0:41:04.840 you see in sort of like Boeing's Good Aircraft Design 0:41:05.200 --> 0:41:07.880 for simplicity and safety risk. And I want to go 0:41:07.960 --> 0:41:10.120 back to that Spectrum article because it lays out how 0:41:10.160 --> 0:41:13.560 this kind of thing is supposed to work. Quote, there 0:41:13.560 --> 0:41:15.759 were two sets of angle of attack sensors and two 0:41:15.800 --> 0:41:18.799 sets of pe hot tubes, one on either side of 0:41:18.800 --> 0:41:22.880 the fuselage. Normal usage is to have the set on 0:41:22.920 --> 0:41:26.000 the pilot side feed the instruments to the pilot side, 0:41:26.160 --> 0:41:28.520 and the set on the copilot side feed the instrument 0:41:28.560 --> 0:41:31.360 to the copilot side. That gives a state of natural 0:41:31.360 --> 0:41:34.879 redundancy and instrumentation that can be easily cross checked by 0:41:34.880 --> 0:41:39.000 either pilot. If the copilot thinks his airspeed indicator is 0:41:39.040 --> 0:41:41.920 acting up, he can look over at the pilot's airspeed 0:41:41.960 --> 0:41:45.400 indicator and see if it agrees. If not, both pilot 0:41:45.440 --> 0:41:48.200 and copilot can engage in a bit of triage, determine 0:41:48.239 --> 0:41:51.279 which instrument is profane and which is sacred. Now, this 0:41:51.400 --> 0:41:54.680 is great engineering, right, It is simple, it is redundant, 0:41:54.680 --> 0:41:57.239 and it allows humans to sort out issues, you know, 0:41:57.280 --> 0:42:00.480 And like, this is a product of what aerospace engineering 0:42:00.840 --> 0:42:03.040 used to be, you know, and we still have this 0:42:03.120 --> 0:42:06.239 in the world. But the fact that there are a 0:42:06.320 --> 0:42:09.040 bunch of very very good engineers who have spent an 0:42:09.200 --> 0:42:12.359 enormously long time trying to work out how this kind 0:42:12.400 --> 0:42:16.680 of stuff should work. Modern Boeing was like, well, you know, 0:42:16.800 --> 0:42:19.080 instead of of our system where multiple centers can be 0:42:19.120 --> 0:42:21.080 cross referenced by pilots, you know, and the pilots can 0:42:21.120 --> 0:42:24.320 then disable the system. Fuck that, what if we insaid, 0:42:24.440 --> 0:42:27.480 use a single sensor that can't be overridden. This is 0:42:27.520 --> 0:42:30.640 a complete violation of Boeing design principle. The thing about 0:42:30.640 --> 0:42:33.040 Boeing planes is that there isn't supposed to be like 0:42:33.160 --> 0:42:35.840 automated shit running in the background that pilots don't know 0:42:35.880 --> 0:42:38.400 about or don't know how to turn off. The pilot 0:42:38.480 --> 0:42:40.840 is supposed to be in complete control of the plane, 0:42:40.960 --> 0:42:43.120 you know, the old joke, And I mean I remember 0:42:43.160 --> 0:42:45.279 hearing this like every once in a while like when 0:42:45.320 --> 0:42:47.640 I was a kid, was that Airbus planes, which you know, 0:42:47.640 --> 0:42:50.680 Airbus obviously is a rival to Boeing. Airbus planes were 0:42:50.760 --> 0:42:53.040 quote diet by wire because you know, they didn't give 0:42:53.040 --> 0:42:57.120 you control. The documentary that Frontline did called Boeing's Fatal Flaw, 0:42:57.440 --> 0:42:59.560 which I didn't really use the source for this, but 0:42:59.600 --> 0:43:01.399 I kind I just this is this is the one 0:43:01.440 --> 0:43:03.160 part that I remember from when I watched this in 0:43:03.200 --> 0:43:07.320 twenty nineteen about the crash, described how like pilots trusted 0:43:07.360 --> 0:43:09.480 that they were flying an aircraft designed by Boeing, so 0:43:09.520 --> 0:43:10.800 there would be a way to kill the system. And 0:43:10.800 --> 0:43:12.800 again there's something I remember like from talking to people 0:43:12.800 --> 0:43:15.000 growing up, you know, so these pilots figure that there'd 0:43:15.000 --> 0:43:17.480 be a way to kill the system. Those voices a 0:43:17.520 --> 0:43:21.279 plane down and they were trying to find it, like 0:43:21.360 --> 0:43:22.760 they're trying to figure out how to turn the system 0:43:22.760 --> 0:43:25.399 off in the manual when they died, because they didn't 0:43:25.440 --> 0:43:28.720 realize the plane wasn't designed by Boeing engineers, was designed 0:43:28.719 --> 0:43:32.720 by Boeing shareholders. Going back to the process on how 0:43:32.840 --> 0:43:36.799 this was added, the stated reason for again why you 0:43:36.840 --> 0:43:39.560 don't want a second sensor is that it the theory 0:43:39.680 --> 0:43:43.600 like adds complexity by adding a second sensor. But you know, 0:43:43.880 --> 0:43:48.080 that's actually terrible reasoning from the perspective of engineering, like 0:43:48.120 --> 0:43:51.200 of engineering in general, but also like from the perspective 0:43:51.239 --> 0:43:55.080 of the engineering that the rest of the plane works on, right, 0:43:55.120 --> 0:43:57.279 the rest of the plane works on different principles than this, 0:43:57.360 --> 0:44:01.400 and it works well. And it's something that Travis describes 0:44:01.640 --> 0:44:04.800 as being a product of the destruction of Bowie's collective 0:44:04.800 --> 0:44:09.440 knowledge base, but something I don't know, I don't know 0:44:09.520 --> 0:44:12.000 to what extent, Travis, He's kind of writing about this, 0:44:12.080 --> 0:44:13.760 but I'm not sure that a lot of the people 0:44:13.800 --> 0:44:18.239 writing about this like understand that, like this was the point, right, 0:44:18.760 --> 0:44:21.719 destroying this kind of collective knowledge. This is something that 0:44:21.800 --> 0:44:24.759 was done deliberately, right, This was the inevitable sort of 0:44:24.800 --> 0:44:28.480 product of Boeing management trying to make the company quote 0:44:28.560 --> 0:44:31.279 unquote run like a business. They were trying to destroy 0:44:31.760 --> 0:44:36.280 the interpersonal bonds that create the system of collective knowledge, 0:44:36.320 --> 0:44:38.719 and they were trying to take power out of the 0:44:38.719 --> 0:44:40.480 hands that the people who had that collective knowledge and 0:44:40.520 --> 0:44:42.920 put it into the hands of people who you could 0:44:42.960 --> 0:44:45.560 pay for really cheap and exploit more who did not 0:44:45.719 --> 0:44:48.880 have access to that kind of information. Right, This is 0:44:48.920 --> 0:44:50.840 a case for like, yeah, you're putting power in the 0:44:50.880 --> 0:44:53.480 hands of software engineers instead of sort of aviation engineers 0:44:54.000 --> 0:44:56.480 speaking of I don't know, taking power out of the 0:44:56.480 --> 0:44:58.640 hands of the consumer and giving it to a corporation. 0:44:58.800 --> 0:45:12.759 Here's ads. Now, if you're trying. 0:45:12.480 --> 0:45:15.560 To make the company quote unquote run like a business, 0:45:16.840 --> 0:45:17.680 what else would you do? 0:45:18.880 --> 0:45:19.040 Oh? 0:45:19.120 --> 0:45:22.879 Yeah, you would not tell the pilots about this new 0:45:22.960 --> 0:45:25.680 system that you've added to your airplane, because if you 0:45:25.760 --> 0:45:29.000 talk about the system, everyone from you know, the FAA 0:45:29.080 --> 0:45:31.640 to the airlines of the pilots unions might realize that 0:45:31.719 --> 0:45:34.680 this is not the same plane as the seven thirty seven, 0:45:35.200 --> 0:45:37.920 and that would require all sorts of stuff like again 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:41.920 re certifying the plane, trading pilots on simulators of your 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:42.920 new plane which. 0:45:42.760 --> 0:45:44.080 Is not the old plane. 0:45:44.440 --> 0:45:47.879 It requires all sorts of stuff that would have very 0:45:47.920 --> 0:45:51.320 well could have prevented these crashes. But you know that 0:45:51.360 --> 0:45:54.920 stuff all costs money, and Boeing doesn't fucking want to 0:45:54.920 --> 0:45:59.000 spend money trying to make sure that its planes don't crash. 0:45:59.400 --> 0:46:01.400 So when they moved on to this version of like 0:46:01.440 --> 0:46:05.759 the seven thirty seven max right, pilots famously got I 0:46:05.800 --> 0:46:09.000 think half an hour of iPad training and that maybe 0:46:09.040 --> 0:46:11.120 I might have been an hour of iPad training, and 0:46:11.440 --> 0:46:14.480 that training that they got on their iPad again, not 0:46:14.520 --> 0:46:19.480 on a simulator, didn't even have any information about the 0:46:19.640 --> 0:46:22.600 MCAST system that killed all these people. And the product 0:46:22.640 --> 0:46:25.680 of this was that on October twenty ninth, twenty nineteen, 0:46:25.880 --> 0:46:29.279 a seven thirty seven Max flying from Jakarta crashed as 0:46:29.320 --> 0:46:32.560 the pilot was, you know, physically unable to fight the 0:46:32.600 --> 0:46:34.440 control stick. And that that's another thing that's going on 0:46:34.480 --> 0:46:37.320 with this, you know, with his decision to put Howard 0:46:37.360 --> 0:46:40.279 in the hands of software or not pilots, is that 0:46:40.600 --> 0:46:44.560 MCAST is also physically exerting control over the pilot stick 0:46:44.680 --> 0:46:46.439 and these people are trying to fight it, and they're 0:46:46.440 --> 0:46:48.680 not able to fight it enough to stop the plane 0:46:48.760 --> 0:46:53.040 from tipping down and crashing into the ground. And Boeing 0:46:53.360 --> 0:46:58.760 runs this really like pretty racist campaign blaming this pilot 0:46:58.760 --> 0:47:01.719 who was not white, for this error to try to, 0:47:01.760 --> 0:47:04.600 you know, cover up the fact that they fucking did this. 0:47:05.239 --> 0:47:09.479 And this maybe would have worked, except a few months later, 0:47:09.600 --> 0:47:12.839 Ethiopia Air Flight three ZO two went down and also 0:47:12.920 --> 0:47:17.040 killed everyone on board, and you know, all told displayed 0:47:17.080 --> 0:47:20.040 the Boeing seventy seven Max killed three hundred and forty 0:47:20.080 --> 0:47:22.799 six people. The Seattle Times, which broke a lot of 0:47:22.800 --> 0:47:26.319 the initial story, said quote. A variety of employees have 0:47:26.400 --> 0:47:29.879 described internal pressure to advance the Max to completion as 0:47:29.920 --> 0:47:32.239 Boeing hurried to catch up with the hot selling a 0:47:32.400 --> 0:47:36.480 three twenty from rival Airbus. Mark Rabin, an engineer who 0:47:36.480 --> 0:47:40.000 had flight testing work unrelated to the flight controls, said 0:47:40.040 --> 0:47:42.640 there was always talk about how delays of even one 0:47:42.800 --> 0:47:46.640 day can cause substantial amounts. Meanwhile, staff were expected to 0:47:46.680 --> 0:47:49.719 stay in line. Rebin said it was all about loyalty. 0:47:49.800 --> 0:47:52.279 Rebin said, I had managers tell me, don't rock the boat. 0:47:52.360 --> 0:47:55.239 You don't want to be upsetting executives. And I find 0:47:55.239 --> 0:47:57.279 this very funny because again, part of the whole jack 0:47:57.280 --> 0:47:59.719 Well strategy was to destroy the concept of loyalty to 0:48:00.200 --> 0:48:02.360 like Boeing as a company. But you have to be 0:48:02.440 --> 0:48:07.000 loyal to these shitty fucking executives because these executives, you know, 0:48:07.640 --> 0:48:09.839 have all of the power in this company and they 0:48:09.880 --> 0:48:12.040 want to make sure they can just ring out every 0:48:12.120 --> 0:48:14.319 single last drop of profit. And if you upset them, 0:48:14.320 --> 0:48:16.840 they're going to fire you. And so the product of 0:48:16.880 --> 0:48:19.000 this is this process that we've seen, which is that 0:48:19.880 --> 0:48:24.120 this plane isn't being designed by aircraft. This is what 0:48:24.160 --> 0:48:27.200 happens when shareholders design an airplane. And of course the 0:48:27.280 --> 0:48:30.400 seven thirty seven Max continues to have problems right Earlier 0:48:30.440 --> 0:48:33.440 this year, famously, the fucking door flew off inn Alaska 0:48:33.480 --> 0:48:37.920 air flight. Multiple whistleblowers have come forward to describe I mean, 0:48:38.000 --> 0:48:40.279 just like all of the things that you would have 0:48:40.360 --> 0:48:44.600 expected from Boeing outsourcing shit to overwork and undertrain contractors. 0:48:45.560 --> 0:48:50.520 Now several of those whistle blowers have died. When I 0:48:50.560 --> 0:48:54.960 was originally doing this, I was considering basically making this 0:48:55.080 --> 0:48:59.040 episode just about the whistleblowers being killed. But like I, 0:48:59.040 --> 0:49:00.920 I don't know, I don't really have any more information 0:49:01.160 --> 0:49:05.560 than anyone else about these deaths. So I'm just going 0:49:05.600 --> 0:49:07.520 to put on the record that if I go out here, 0:49:07.560 --> 0:49:08.160 it was murder. 0:49:10.200 --> 0:49:10.920 Yeah, And I. 0:49:10.840 --> 0:49:14.600 Think the more important story is this one, because I 0:49:14.600 --> 0:49:17.719 think I think at this point everyone everyone kind of 0:49:17.880 --> 0:49:22.759 knows that something is wrong with Boeing, And every day 0:49:22.760 --> 0:49:25.200 we're getting more and more sort of specifics about every 0:49:25.239 --> 0:49:28.120 single part of this production process that you know, used 0:49:28.120 --> 0:49:31.560 to be entirely run by highly paid while at least 0:49:31.600 --> 0:49:34.520 sort of highly paid and highly trained employees that's now 0:49:34.520 --> 0:49:38.640 being run by a bunch of non unionized, underpaid contractors 0:49:39.280 --> 0:49:43.000 who are producing shitty equipments. But what we're looking at 0:49:43.080 --> 0:49:47.359 here is Boeing coming apart somewhat more famously. I think 0:49:47.400 --> 0:49:50.239 that the rescue flight is like being prepped, but a 0:49:50.239 --> 0:49:52.360 bunch of astronauts have been stranded on the space station 0:49:53.120 --> 0:49:57.759 because Boeing's launch craft was like veering off course. There 0:49:57.760 --> 0:49:59.400 are a bunch of issues with it, and so NASA 0:49:59.520 --> 0:50:01.560 just was just like, you know, fuck this. And the 0:50:01.600 --> 0:50:06.000 most hideously galling part of this entire story is that 0:50:06.360 --> 0:50:08.400 the craft that's going to pick up the astronauts is 0:50:08.440 --> 0:50:12.000 made by fucking SpaceX, because we have reached a point 0:50:12.080 --> 0:50:16.160 where an Elon Musk company is somehow designing rockets that 0:50:16.560 --> 0:50:19.759 are you know, like designing spacecraft that are less likely 0:50:19.800 --> 0:50:23.879 to fucking explode than Boeing. That is, that is an 0:50:24.000 --> 0:50:29.160 unbelievably depressing idea. And to close, I think we need 0:50:29.160 --> 0:50:34.760 to ask who killed these people, because it's not just Boeing. 0:50:35.760 --> 0:50:39.000 Jack Welsh killed these people. Michael Milken killed these people. 0:50:39.120 --> 0:50:42.759 Ronald Reagan killed these people, and in a way all 0:50:42.800 --> 0:50:45.600 of us killed them because none of us stopped them. 0:50:45.800 --> 0:50:48.479 And these people could have been stopped at any point 0:50:48.480 --> 0:50:51.200 in the process. From Reagan to Stonecipher to Kelly or Berg, 0:50:51.920 --> 0:50:54.680 we could have stopped these people. To quote for a 0:50:54.719 --> 0:50:58.759 final time, David Graeber, the ultimate hidden truth of this 0:50:58.920 --> 0:51:01.719 world is that it is something that we make and 0:51:01.760 --> 0:51:05.200 could just as easily make differently. I add only this, 0:51:05.800 --> 0:51:08.239 If we don't make the world differently, people are going 0:51:08.280 --> 0:51:11.560 to die. Why should these murderers be allowed to run 0:51:11.600 --> 0:51:14.399 the world. We know how to make planes. They don't 0:51:14.400 --> 0:51:17.160 fall out of the sky. The people who are fucking 0:51:17.239 --> 0:51:21.320 running this planet apparently don't. It shouldn't be enormously controversial 0:51:21.360 --> 0:51:23.000 to say that the people who know how to build 0:51:23.000 --> 0:51:26.400 airplanes should control how we fucking design and build airplanes. 0:51:26.760 --> 0:51:29.799 In the nineteenth and twentieth century, this idea was called 0:51:29.840 --> 0:51:32.840 worker self management, and it was considered so dangerous that 0:51:32.880 --> 0:51:34.840 from Chile that sheop us to a jury at a 0:51:34.920 --> 0:51:38.800 Hungary to Korea, capitalist communists and fascists alight killed anyone 0:51:38.800 --> 0:51:41.920 who dared believe it. But now our choices are stark. 0:51:42.200 --> 0:51:44.560 We either let these people continue to drop planes out 0:51:44.560 --> 0:51:47.120 of the sky as the world, burns in our cities, 0:51:47.120 --> 0:51:49.799 sink into the sea, but we do something about it. 0:51:50.440 --> 0:51:51.560 So what are you going to do? 0:52:12.560 --> 0:52:12.719 Hey? 0:52:13.239 --> 0:52:15.320 This is it could happen here. I am Robert Evans. 0:52:15.360 --> 0:52:18.080 This is a podcast about things falling apart. Most of 0:52:18.080 --> 0:52:21.000 this episode is going to be me and James Stout 0:52:21.520 --> 0:52:25.640 discussing the disaster in North Carolina and elsewhere as a 0:52:25.640 --> 0:52:29.440 result of Hurricane Helene. But before we get into that, 0:52:29.600 --> 0:52:32.239 and we'll be talking largely about what this means for 0:52:32.440 --> 0:52:35.799 your own preparations for future disasters, what we can kind 0:52:35.800 --> 0:52:39.760 of learn initially from everything that's been happening. I wanted 0:52:39.800 --> 0:52:42.600 to start with a few minutes of us talking to 0:52:42.640 --> 0:52:45.360 Margaret Kiljoy, who is on the ground in the Asheville 0:52:45.440 --> 0:52:49.759 area doing disaster relief work right now. And obviously the 0:52:49.800 --> 0:52:52.319 audio here is not up to our usual quality, but 0:52:52.360 --> 0:52:54.600 it's only about five minutes, and then you will get 0:52:54.800 --> 0:52:58.000 James and I talking crystal clear into your ears. So 0:52:58.520 --> 0:52:59.760 here is Margaret. 0:53:00.440 --> 0:53:00.600 Hi. 0:53:00.640 --> 0:53:04.680 Everyone, I just got on the ground about two hours 0:53:04.680 --> 0:53:07.400 ago and immediately have been basically running around with my 0:53:07.520 --> 0:53:12.759 van delivering food to different places just because van did 0:53:12.880 --> 0:53:13.399 van thing. 0:53:13.960 --> 0:53:16.880 And it's I mean, it's intense. 0:53:17.280 --> 0:53:19.400 Everyone is having an intense time, but also at the 0:53:19.400 --> 0:53:22.080 same time, there's like, you know, more people are out 0:53:22.640 --> 0:53:26.040 walking around and riding bikes, and you know, there's hundreds 0:53:26.080 --> 0:53:28.800 of people gathering at every place that's passing out food 0:53:28.840 --> 0:53:32.080 and water, and there's a very kind of community spirit 0:53:32.200 --> 0:53:32.920 happening right now. 0:53:32.960 --> 0:53:37.160 I'm actually recording this from up in Marshall. 0:53:36.800 --> 0:53:39.319 Which is a small town immediately north of Asheville that 0:53:39.440 --> 0:53:41.319 also has a mutual Aid distribution hub. 0:53:41.320 --> 0:53:43.319 We just came up here to drop stuff off, and 0:53:43.360 --> 0:53:45.959 even in the twenty minutes that I've been here. 0:53:45.800 --> 0:53:48.160 Other people have come with pickup trucks full of harm 0:53:48.160 --> 0:53:51.480 reduction supplies and diapers and just all the things that 0:53:51.520 --> 0:53:56.520 people need. And everyone is trapped on basically little islands. 0:53:56.560 --> 0:53:58.879 Right There's a very different style of flood than when 0:53:58.880 --> 0:54:01.239 you have like a coastal flood. And what's happened is 0:54:01.239 --> 0:54:02.719 that the houses that are near the river have been 0:54:02.760 --> 0:54:06.000 destroyed and the roads a lot of them have been destroyed, 0:54:06.000 --> 0:54:07.799 and a lot of them went underwater for a long time. 0:54:08.000 --> 0:54:11.160 It's all the infrastructure is down, but many of the houses, 0:54:11.200 --> 0:54:13.600 at least as I record this, seem to be intact 0:54:13.640 --> 0:54:15.480 and then doing well and what it is that everyone 0:54:15.560 --> 0:54:20.239 is just trapped and isolated. Most people don't have food, water, sewage, 0:54:20.880 --> 0:54:24.040 or even cell signal, although cell signal is kind of 0:54:24.040 --> 0:54:26.200 the first thing to come back, and power is starting 0:54:26.239 --> 0:54:29.280 to filter back in, and we're hoping that some places 0:54:29.280 --> 0:54:32.480 are maybe getting watered. But one of the things that's 0:54:32.560 --> 0:54:35.239 kind of come up is that, again, because it's in 0:54:35.280 --> 0:54:37.360 the mountains, it's a very different setup, it's a very 0:54:37.360 --> 0:54:40.839 different culture and community. And one of the things that's 0:54:40.840 --> 0:54:42.880 happened is that, I mean a lot of people have wells, 0:54:43.000 --> 0:54:45.759 and so immediately the problem has been more about distribution 0:54:45.840 --> 0:54:47.960 of water and also getting generators to. 0:54:47.920 --> 0:54:49.760 People who have well so that they can pump. 0:54:50.000 --> 0:54:52.399 You know, a friend of mine got a generator pretty 0:54:52.480 --> 0:54:54.759 quickly and you know, pull a thousand gallons out of 0:54:54.800 --> 0:54:59.640 their well right away to get and distribute around. And 0:54:59.719 --> 0:55:03.319 there's you know, just while I was waiting outside my 0:55:03.360 --> 0:55:07.000 friend's house, someone drove by and asked us if we 0:55:07.080 --> 0:55:09.640 needed water, and then asked us if we knew about 0:55:09.640 --> 0:55:12.040 each of the neighbors and who did and didn't have water. 0:55:13.120 --> 0:55:15.680 Yeah, And I mean, one of the things that makes 0:55:15.760 --> 0:55:18.719 me think of is like having the generator, having the 0:55:18.719 --> 0:55:22.600 well that's great, the kind of thing that maybe people 0:55:22.640 --> 0:55:24.719 wouldn't think about as much as having the ability to 0:55:24.760 --> 0:55:27.640 put a thousand gallons of water in something. Yes, totally, 0:55:27.719 --> 0:55:30.120 it seems like it was also crucial and is probably 0:55:30.160 --> 0:55:32.040 would have been lowered down the list for a lot 0:55:32.040 --> 0:55:34.719 of people. But there's really no replacing it when you 0:55:34.800 --> 0:55:36.200 need it, totally. 0:55:36.280 --> 0:55:38.000 And but one of the things that again, I mean, 0:55:38.160 --> 0:55:39.920 I'm not sureing to say that everything's fine here, it's 0:55:40.000 --> 0:55:41.000 very much fine. 0:55:41.120 --> 0:55:44.040 For example, the only federal response that anyone is talking 0:55:44.040 --> 0:55:46.759 about is that ice is already in the area, So 0:55:46.840 --> 0:55:49.560 before anyone had been given food by the federal government, 0:55:49.760 --> 0:55:52.680 they have sent ice to detain people and question people. 0:55:52.960 --> 0:55:55.440 At least that is the word on the ground. 0:55:55.520 --> 0:55:58.520 Obviously, you know, details and truths come later when you're 0:55:58.560 --> 0:56:00.640 in a crisis situation, but we do know that ice 0:56:00.680 --> 0:56:02.799 is on the ground, and no one I've talked to 0:56:02.880 --> 0:56:05.480 has seen much in the way a federal response besides 0:56:05.920 --> 0:56:08.880 law enforcement. But one of the things that's happened here 0:56:09.040 --> 0:56:12.239 is that a lot of people have pickup trucks in Appalachia, 0:56:12.400 --> 0:56:14.239 and so a lot of people have you know, you 0:56:14.239 --> 0:56:16.920 call them water buffalos, the big water tanks that you 0:56:16.960 --> 0:56:20.440 can put in a pickup truck or a trailer. I 0:56:20.480 --> 0:56:23.880 definitely left this feeling, you know, my first you know, 0:56:23.920 --> 0:56:25.759 I drove with my van full of stuff and on 0:56:25.840 --> 0:56:28.920 the highway and being passed by pickup trucks pulling flatbeds 0:56:28.920 --> 0:56:31.279 full of palettes of water and things like that. But 0:56:31.320 --> 0:56:34.080 then even yeah, in the city, people are driving around 0:56:34.080 --> 0:56:37.160 in trucks and filling them up with water and delivering them. 0:56:37.760 --> 0:56:40.319 But don't get me wrong, yeah, if you're preparing, think 0:56:40.360 --> 0:56:42.279 about how to deliver water. Even some of the things 0:56:42.280 --> 0:56:45.040 for me, for example, the city government has been doing 0:56:45.080 --> 0:56:46.920 some things and there are places where people can go 0:56:46.960 --> 0:56:48.960 and fill up water containers, but they don't have the 0:56:49.000 --> 0:56:52.560 water containers. So the people who were prepared by having 0:56:52.880 --> 0:56:55.120 a couple five gallon toats in their basement are in 0:56:55.200 --> 0:56:57.279 a much better position. And so that's like some of 0:56:57.320 --> 0:56:58.480 the things that I brought. 0:56:58.239 --> 0:56:59.120 For some of my friends. 0:56:59.160 --> 0:57:02.280 It is litergally just a couple five gallon water containers 0:57:02.280 --> 0:57:03.000 so that people. 0:57:02.719 --> 0:57:03.759 Can go get them filled up. 0:57:04.160 --> 0:57:04.279 Now. 0:57:04.239 --> 0:57:07.000 And obviously you're talking about when we're thinking about the 0:57:07.000 --> 0:57:09.759 places that people are able to drive around, where the 0:57:09.760 --> 0:57:12.680 places that you've been reaching are hit pretty hard. But 0:57:12.880 --> 0:57:17.040 we also then have these more isolated mountain communities that 0:57:17.240 --> 0:57:19.760 both seem to have suffered a lot more physical damage, 0:57:19.760 --> 0:57:21.920 although that's not entirely clear at this moment, but are 0:57:21.960 --> 0:57:24.040 certainly not accessible in. 0:57:24.040 --> 0:57:24.720 The same way. 0:57:24.760 --> 0:57:26.560 And I think that's one of those things we're still 0:57:26.600 --> 0:57:29.920 going to be waiting to hear, like how extreme it is. 0:57:29.960 --> 0:57:31.720 But like we talk a little bit on the episode 0:57:31.720 --> 0:57:34.920 before this about people using burrows to deliver food and 0:57:35.000 --> 0:57:37.400 water in places where vehicles can't even reach. 0:57:37.720 --> 0:57:39.040 Yeah. 0:57:39.120 --> 0:57:41.520 Yeah, And one of the things also, you know, one 0:57:41.600 --> 0:57:43.439 of the things that went out on the mutual aid 0:57:43.440 --> 0:57:45.400 list that I'm on is people are saying, hey, if 0:57:45.400 --> 0:57:48.200 you have your ATV, bring down your ATV, you know, 0:57:49.120 --> 0:57:51.880 and that makes complete sense if you the listener are 0:57:52.000 --> 0:57:55.400 listening to this, don't just drive down with supplies and 0:57:56.080 --> 0:57:57.920 if you are plugged into a mutual age to. 0:57:58.080 --> 0:58:00.360 Just roll to Ashville in your palan arts. 0:58:01.800 --> 0:58:06.000 Yeah yeah, but but yeah, no, one of the hardest 0:58:06.000 --> 0:58:08.600 things has been getting the supplies, you know. I mean, 0:58:09.240 --> 0:58:11.400 the disaster relief is just it's just logistics, and the 0:58:11.400 --> 0:58:13.120 same way that war is just logistics. 0:58:13.160 --> 0:58:13.360 You know. 0:58:13.640 --> 0:58:16.160 It's like, how do you get things from one place 0:58:16.200 --> 0:58:19.640 to another. And what people have set up is all 0:58:19.680 --> 0:58:22.520 of these you know, you centralize the acquisation of supplies 0:58:22.520 --> 0:58:24.280 and then you decentralize getting them out. 0:58:24.600 --> 0:58:26.360 But yeah, people have been working. 0:58:26.400 --> 0:58:28.520 I'm going to know more about what people have been 0:58:28.520 --> 0:58:30.400 doing to get things out, but I've already talked with 0:58:30.440 --> 0:58:33.440 people or heard from people who you know, we're getting 0:58:33.480 --> 0:58:36.440 rescued by people with handsaws, right. And then one of 0:58:36.440 --> 0:58:38.960 the main things that people are doing is that there's 0:58:39.000 --> 0:58:41.920 chainsaw crews, mutual aid chainsaw crews going around. One of 0:58:41.960 --> 0:58:43.880 the big asks that I came with a lot of 0:58:44.040 --> 0:58:48.080 was bar and chain oil, you know. And and it's 0:58:48.080 --> 0:58:51.720 a little bit hard because gas is also until just recently, 0:58:51.800 --> 0:58:54.720 gas is starting to come back online now, but getting 0:58:54.760 --> 0:58:58.360 gas for a chainsaw or an ATV or your vehicle 0:58:58.840 --> 0:58:59.600 has been tricky. 0:58:59.760 --> 0:59:01.400 But people been working on that too. 0:59:01.800 --> 0:59:02.520 Yeah. 0:59:02.600 --> 0:59:04.400 Well, Margaret, I'm not going to take up more of 0:59:04.440 --> 0:59:07.400 your time while you try to help in the wake 0:59:07.440 --> 0:59:09.840 of a disaster, but thank you for being on the ground. 0:59:10.360 --> 0:59:12.680 Good luck to you and everyone else who's out there. 0:59:12.960 --> 0:59:15.040 We will be hearing more from you and more about 0:59:15.120 --> 0:59:19.120 the specifics of what's happened in North Carolina and elsewhere 0:59:19.200 --> 0:59:23.040 in the wake of the hurricane next week. So thank 0:59:23.080 --> 0:59:24.680 you and thank everybody there. 0:59:24.760 --> 0:59:25.240 Good luck. 0:59:25.600 --> 0:59:26.760 Yeah, thank you. 0:59:27.680 --> 0:59:28.440 That is done. 0:59:28.560 --> 0:59:32.160 I am now going to move on with our previously 0:59:32.200 --> 0:59:33.160 recorded episode. 0:59:33.720 --> 0:59:35.040 Here is James and Me. 0:59:35.880 --> 0:59:39.680 Oh, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast 0:59:40.000 --> 0:59:44.320 where it's happened for some chuck of our listeners who 0:59:44.360 --> 0:59:47.600 are probably not listening right now because as we record 0:59:47.680 --> 0:59:49.800 this on Monday, the. 0:59:50.080 --> 0:59:53.960 First technically a Tuesday, we're just. 0:59:53.920 --> 0:59:56.360 Now getting word that internet has come back on, like 0:59:56.480 --> 0:59:58.960 mobile internet has come back on to parts of Asheville 0:59:59.000 --> 1:00:03.480 and North Carolina that were in communicado for several days 1:00:03.600 --> 1:00:09.680 after Hurricane Eleen tore through. You've heard something about this, 1:00:09.840 --> 1:00:12.439 I'm hoping. I'm different things from friends about how much 1:00:12.520 --> 1:00:15.920 news attention there seems to be on this. I'm seeing 1:00:15.960 --> 1:00:18.320 it a lot, but I'm seeing it largely through social 1:00:18.360 --> 1:00:21.200 But the gist of it is, I mean, there's a 1:00:21.200 --> 1:00:24.600 photo I came across right before getting on here where 1:00:24.840 --> 1:00:28.000 there was a memorial marker for the nineteen sixteen flood 1:00:28.000 --> 1:00:31.080 in Ashville that was knocked out by what used to 1:00:31.080 --> 1:00:33.680 be a road and was now nothing but rushing water 1:00:34.000 --> 1:00:34.760 and mud. 1:00:34.960 --> 1:00:36.880 Beautiful three out of four. 1:00:36.800 --> 1:00:42.320 Highways into Ashville are down. I heard yesterday from people 1:00:42.320 --> 1:00:44.439 who were coming in and doing an AID drop that 1:00:44.480 --> 1:00:47.479 what had been previously a thirty minute drive took twelve 1:00:47.520 --> 1:00:50.800 and a half hours. From the state of the roads 1:00:50.960 --> 1:00:54.160 and the number of checkpoints and stuff. All of this 1:00:54.280 --> 1:00:59.480 is pretty common stuff for a natural disaster. Obviously amped 1:00:59.520 --> 1:01:03.680 up in civil because this disaster was correspondingly worse than 1:01:03.720 --> 1:01:05.720 even most natural disasters tend to. 1:01:05.640 --> 1:01:09.360 Be, you know, yes, in this country. Yeah. 1:01:09.560 --> 1:01:12.200 I was just looking through, just doing a little bit 1:01:12.240 --> 1:01:14.600 of googling before we got on, and I found a 1:01:14.640 --> 1:01:17.880 Reddit post from the Asheville subreddit from two years ago 1:01:18.000 --> 1:01:20.960 saying Asheville is apparently the number one city in the 1:01:21.040 --> 1:01:24.200 United States to be a climate haven, according to the CNBC, 1:01:24.800 --> 1:01:27.120 although that article it just made the list of best 1:01:27.120 --> 1:01:31.160 climate cities, but the original post has been deleted. I 1:01:31.160 --> 1:01:33.360 don't know if that was earlier or as a result 1:01:33.400 --> 1:01:36.160 of this, but that is one of like the side 1:01:36.160 --> 1:01:39.680 stories here is that Ashville is not We're not talking 1:01:39.760 --> 1:01:43.440 about one of these coastal cities in Florida that everyone 1:01:43.520 --> 1:01:46.000 is known as doomed for forever, right, We're not talking 1:01:46.000 --> 1:01:49.680 about New Orleans, which lovely city, great history, doomed as fuck, 1:01:49.760 --> 1:01:52.280 and everyone has known it for quite a while. We're 1:01:52.320 --> 1:01:55.440 talking about places that are many miles inland and that 1:01:55.840 --> 1:01:57.480 something like two thousand feet elevation. 1:01:58.120 --> 1:02:01.680 Yeah, it's certainly not below sea or even at sea level. 1:02:02.280 --> 1:02:06.240 Yeah, it's an inland, mountainous community. It's just not the 1:02:06.320 --> 1:02:10.200 kind of threat that people are used to having here. Yeah, 1:02:10.240 --> 1:02:15.320 and the devastation has been pretty total, like whole communities 1:02:15.360 --> 1:02:18.120 wiped out. I think the death toll from the county 1:02:18.200 --> 1:02:20.760 Ashville is in Let me let me pull this up 1:02:20.760 --> 1:02:22.640 to make sure I'm not getting it wrong. I've just 1:02:22.720 --> 1:02:25.520 now pulled up a story from thirty minutes ago on 1:02:25.560 --> 1:02:29.480 the Independent that says, yeah, at least one hundred and 1:02:29.480 --> 1:02:33.320 forty three people have been killed. Yeah, that's a total 1:02:33.360 --> 1:02:37.320 death toll from Helene forty people in Buncombe County, where 1:02:37.360 --> 1:02:41.520 Ashville is six hundred people unaccounted for. Governor Roy Cooper 1:02:41.520 --> 1:02:43.840 has told CNN that there are communities that were wiped 1:02:43.880 --> 1:02:47.480 off the map. Kind of the first thing that I noticed, 1:02:47.600 --> 1:02:50.920 you know, outside of the footage coming in was friends 1:02:50.920 --> 1:02:53.080 of mine. Because I've spent a decent amount of time 1:02:53.080 --> 1:02:56.080 in Asheville. I have friends on the East Coast, including 1:02:56.160 --> 1:02:59.280 our own Margaret Kiljoy, who has a lot more friends 1:02:59.320 --> 1:03:02.120 in Asheville, and I was in a couple of different 1:03:02.120 --> 1:03:04.960 signal loops where people were trying to contact their people, 1:03:05.640 --> 1:03:08.120 and there was a line from one of the folks 1:03:08.160 --> 1:03:10.800 I was chatting with who had reached out to multiple 1:03:10.800 --> 1:03:13.720 people in the area and said, I have not heard 1:03:13.760 --> 1:03:17.240 anything from anyone in Nashville in hours. Nothing is getting 1:03:17.240 --> 1:03:20.200 in and nothing is getting out, And that seems to 1:03:20.240 --> 1:03:25.400 be consistent with everyone's experience. Starlink was largely not functional. 1:03:25.880 --> 1:03:28.880 Starlink doesn't work very well when the weather's really bad. 1:03:29.920 --> 1:03:32.960 SAT phones seem to have had some efficacy. I know 1:03:33.040 --> 1:03:35.080 some people were getting messages in and out, but they 1:03:35.080 --> 1:03:39.000 weren't super reliable because SAT phones also are reliant upon 1:03:39.160 --> 1:03:43.320 climactic conditions. Right, It's certainly better than just trusting your 1:03:43.360 --> 1:03:45.800 normal cell phone, but it's not going to do great 1:03:45.840 --> 1:03:49.960 when you've got a fucking hurricane dumping half an ocean 1:03:50.000 --> 1:03:52.640 on your head. So that was the first thing I 1:03:52.720 --> 1:03:56.080 was thinking about, because we talk a lot about disaster preparedness, 1:03:56.120 --> 1:03:59.000 and we talk a lot about having stuff that would 1:03:59.000 --> 1:04:01.880 have been useful in this that people who were prepared 1:04:01.920 --> 1:04:05.000 and had water set aside and food set aside were 1:04:05.000 --> 1:04:07.880 certainly in a better situation, because those both very quickly 1:04:07.920 --> 1:04:10.760 became problems. I mean, I heard a devastating story of 1:04:10.800 --> 1:04:13.520 an old folks home that was completely cut off from 1:04:13.560 --> 1:04:19.040 the outside and didn't have enough water or food. Hoping 1:04:19.120 --> 1:04:21.280 that story ends as well as possible, but there's a 1:04:21.280 --> 1:04:24.880 lot of stories like that. But even outside of that, 1:04:25.000 --> 1:04:27.840 there were people who were prepared, who had food and water, 1:04:27.920 --> 1:04:30.880 but who wound up stuck on the roofs of their 1:04:30.920 --> 1:04:34.200 house because the water just came in so quickly there 1:04:34.240 --> 1:04:37.280 was no chance to really get much other than maybe 1:04:37.360 --> 1:04:40.480 a bag. And when you're stuck up on there, like 1:04:40.480 --> 1:04:43.360 what are you going to do if your SAT phone 1:04:43.600 --> 1:04:45.280 or you don't have a SAT phone and that doesn't 1:04:45.320 --> 1:04:48.520 work and there's no internet and there's no cell service. Well, 1:04:49.440 --> 1:04:52.240 that's why we're going to start today talking about ham radios, 1:04:52.440 --> 1:04:56.560 because those motherfuckers there's actually a I'll see if I 1:04:56.600 --> 1:04:59.680 can pull it up through this like that has been 1:04:59.720 --> 1:05:01.920 the most reliable way for people in the area to 1:05:01.920 --> 1:05:05.760 communicate with the outside world, because if it is possible 1:05:05.800 --> 1:05:10.000 to communicate using technology, you can do it with Ham. Yeah, right, 1:05:10.080 --> 1:05:12.600 Like that's just that's just how Ham radios be. 1:05:12.960 --> 1:05:16.800 Yeah, they don't need to see the sky, like yeah, yeah. 1:05:16.760 --> 1:05:18.400 They don't give a fuck it. 1:05:18.600 --> 1:05:22.080 If there is any way to communicate via technology with 1:05:22.200 --> 1:05:24.080 people in a disaster, you will be able to do 1:05:24.120 --> 1:05:27.240 it with a Ham radio. So let's chat about that, James. 1:05:27.280 --> 1:05:28.960 You have more experience with this than I do. This 1:05:29.000 --> 1:05:31.440 is something I have been working on getting into, but 1:05:31.480 --> 1:05:34.360 I certainly am not very knowledgeable on the matter. So 1:05:35.000 --> 1:05:37.400 we'll start like, what what do people need to think 1:05:37.480 --> 1:05:40.560 about when it comes to like actually getting set up 1:05:40.600 --> 1:05:44.080 to communicate with a Ham radio, Because there's definitely you 1:05:44.080 --> 1:05:47.600 could just go buy a Boofang or something like that, 1:05:47.720 --> 1:05:49.920 Like you can get ahead. They're not expensive. This is 1:05:49.920 --> 1:05:53.200 actually a very affordable thing to have right now. Kind 1:05:53.200 --> 1:05:56.120 of the most recommended model is the UV nine R Pro, 1:05:56.400 --> 1:05:59.880 which is eight watt instead of five and waterproof, That's what. 1:05:59.880 --> 1:06:01.480 I was going to say. And you can charge it 1:06:01.520 --> 1:06:03.440 off USBC, which is really nice. 1:06:03.760 --> 1:06:06.960 Yeah, they're what like thirty something bucks. Yeah, they're like 1:06:07.440 --> 1:06:10.240 you can get them cheaper in bulk. 1:06:10.320 --> 1:06:13.040 I think you steel to get them cheaper on Alley Express, 1:06:13.120 --> 1:06:14.800 but seems like they're kind of hanging them up in 1:06:14.880 --> 1:06:17.120 charging customs, so you end up not getting them cheaper. 1:06:17.240 --> 1:06:19.240 Yeah. So yeah, for real basic stuff. 1:06:19.320 --> 1:06:21.600 I think you do need to be licensed to operate 1:06:21.640 --> 1:06:24.720 these radios on certain bands, right, yes, And that's something 1:06:25.280 --> 1:06:28.680 that you you can, I believe in a case of 1:06:28.760 --> 1:06:29.640 emergency you can. 1:06:29.800 --> 1:06:31.120 You can operate on any band. 1:06:31.240 --> 1:06:33.800 No one's going to arrest you for a legal youth 1:06:33.920 --> 1:06:36.040 unlicensed used to a ham radio if you're trying to 1:06:36.040 --> 1:06:40.000 get people rescued from a flood. Yeah, right, Like that said, 1:06:40.560 --> 1:06:42.959 you should not be learning how to use a ham 1:06:43.080 --> 1:06:44.880 radio when you're hiding on your roof. 1:06:45.240 --> 1:06:48.400 Yeah yeah, yeah, Like this is like you know the 1:06:48.440 --> 1:06:50.120 people who buy guns and put them under their bed 1:06:50.120 --> 1:06:52.040 and never shoot them and expect to be right because 1:06:52.080 --> 1:06:55.439 the fucking marksman in a crisis or by medical gear 1:06:55.440 --> 1:06:58.200 and never train with it again. Right, these things you 1:06:58.280 --> 1:07:00.880 want to practice before. So we use these that bought it. 1:07:01.040 --> 1:07:04.520 We use radios to communicate. When they were higher numbers 1:07:04.520 --> 1:07:07.640 in Cucumber, my friends and I put a massive antenna 1:07:07.720 --> 1:07:09.480 on the roof of the youth center where we were. 1:07:09.720 --> 1:07:11.280 I know a lot of listeners have been out there 1:07:11.400 --> 1:07:14.160 and they've probably seen antenna that we put up, and 1:07:14.200 --> 1:07:16.000 then I was using a radio on my truck, and 1:07:16.000 --> 1:07:18.560 then we also all had personal radios, right because cell 1:07:18.600 --> 1:07:20.600 phone signal is crap out there, and it was the 1:07:20.640 --> 1:07:22.919 only way for us to communicate and it worked really well. 1:07:23.440 --> 1:07:25.360 So the things that you need if you want to 1:07:25.360 --> 1:07:27.320 get started in this first of all, some kind of 1:07:27.480 --> 1:07:31.440 education or a license. There are tons of local groups. 1:07:31.600 --> 1:07:34.200 Hand people fucking love to be ham radio people. They 1:07:34.240 --> 1:07:36.200 love to talk about hand radio. They love to teach 1:07:36.240 --> 1:07:39.640 you to do ham radio so like, and it's not 1:07:39.720 --> 1:07:41.920 like a hobby, you know, firearms people love to talk 1:07:41.960 --> 1:07:44.080 about firearms, but lots of them are really toxic people. 1:07:44.160 --> 1:07:46.800 I haven't found that hand radio is premised on talking 1:07:46.840 --> 1:07:49.120 to people all over the place and often very. 1:07:48.960 --> 1:07:50.600 Few people killed with ham radio. 1:07:50.720 --> 1:07:54.640 Yeah, I'm sure it's possible. But if you can find 1:07:54.640 --> 1:07:56.600 a local club, but that's a great way to start. 1:07:56.640 --> 1:07:58.800 They can clean you in on stuff. But I think 1:07:59.040 --> 1:08:02.040 to begin with your need someone to talk to, right, Like, 1:08:02.640 --> 1:08:04.280 if you want to practice with your ham radio, you 1:08:04.320 --> 1:08:05.880 need to be talking to other people on it. So 1:08:06.080 --> 1:08:08.280 you can just go on to different bands, different repeaters 1:08:08.320 --> 1:08:10.840 and do that, or you can get your friends and 1:08:10.880 --> 1:08:11.600 study together. 1:08:11.800 --> 1:08:13.240 Yeah, get your license together. 1:08:13.280 --> 1:08:15.760 I too bow things, you know, Yeah, give one to 1:08:16.080 --> 1:08:19.120 somebody who you live close to but not right next to, 1:08:19.400 --> 1:08:21.080 and work on it with them. 1:08:21.160 --> 1:08:23.920 Yeah, work on like, oh how far this workd you know? 1:08:23.960 --> 1:08:26.240 Like I am one of the former guests for the 1:08:26.280 --> 1:08:30.280 podcast James Corderra from Board the Kindness. He and I 1:08:30.320 --> 1:08:32.280 were doing that. Not so do't go talking to each 1:08:32.280 --> 1:08:34.960 other from our houses, but yeah you can. You can 1:08:35.080 --> 1:08:39.080 certainly get into this pretty cheap. I have a business license, 1:08:39.120 --> 1:08:41.960 which is another option for people. I would suggest first 1:08:42.000 --> 1:08:44.599 getting your ham operator's lecense and then going from there. 1:08:44.960 --> 1:08:47.880 Yeah, that's it's called a radio technicians license, right, Like 1:08:47.920 --> 1:08:49.759 that's the most basic because there's three levels. 1:08:49.760 --> 1:08:52.720 If I'm not a mistaken Yeah, I believe. So it's 1:08:52.760 --> 1:08:53.880 been a while since I did that. 1:08:54.280 --> 1:08:57.480 Yeah, I think it's Radio Technicians General and then Amateur 1:08:57.520 --> 1:08:58.200 extra if. 1:08:58.120 --> 1:09:01.320 The notes, Yeah, all right, it still And then in 1:09:01.400 --> 1:09:04.600 terms of cost, like the size of your antenna is 1:09:04.640 --> 1:09:07.040 what's going to determine, you know, how far you can 1:09:07.080 --> 1:09:09.720 transmit and how you can receive along with like line 1:09:09.760 --> 1:09:12.519 of sight, right, it's about side just as big as 1:09:12.520 --> 1:09:14.920 one possible, So you want to be a size queen 1:09:15.000 --> 1:09:17.560 like you can get yourself a really big antenna, I 1:09:17.600 --> 1:09:20.640 would say, if you're using those handheld radios. So the 1:09:20.680 --> 1:09:24.479 company called Nagoya that make pretty decent radio antennas that 1:09:24.560 --> 1:09:27.080 work with that UV nine R that I use. I 1:09:27.120 --> 1:09:30.240 have like a telescoping one and we've had pretty good 1:09:30.280 --> 1:09:33.120 luck with that, and then I also use one in 1:09:33.160 --> 1:09:35.320 my bit. So I've hard mounted a radio inside my 1:09:35.400 --> 1:09:37.800 truck and I have an antenna that uses the frame 1:09:37.880 --> 1:09:40.400 of the truck as part of the antenna, and I 1:09:40.400 --> 1:09:41.320 can get really good. 1:09:41.200 --> 1:09:43.519 Signal with that. Yeah, that makes sense if you're just 1:09:43.640 --> 1:09:44.320 doing it at home. 1:09:44.439 --> 1:09:46.680 Yeah, put something on your roof, Like you can get 1:09:46.680 --> 1:09:48.200 a pretty good antenna on your roof, you know, and 1:09:48.600 --> 1:09:50.200 it's not that hard and you can get signal. 1:09:50.280 --> 1:09:51.479 Yeah. Much further. 1:09:51.720 --> 1:09:53.920 I've been recommended a little book that you can get 1:09:53.960 --> 1:09:56.719 for twenty bucks in kindle form or it's like thirty 1:09:56.720 --> 1:10:00.360 bucks for the spiral bound, which looks pretty durable. Haven't 1:10:00.439 --> 1:10:05.479 received mine yet. Yeah, the ar rl HAM Radio License Manual, 1:10:05.520 --> 1:10:08.000 which is kind of what I was advised to buy 1:10:08.160 --> 1:10:11.200 and read through and the advice that I got and 1:10:11.360 --> 1:10:12.320 you can correct me here. 1:10:12.360 --> 1:10:14.519 But this seemed pretty hard to argue. 1:10:14.520 --> 1:10:17.040 With is that like the primary benefit to doing the 1:10:17.080 --> 1:10:20.080 training and getting the license formally rather than just buying it, 1:10:20.160 --> 1:10:23.040 is it also teaches you how to fix problems if 1:10:23.040 --> 1:10:27.160 you're trying to get this thing to work in a stressful, 1:10:27.280 --> 1:10:28.280 dangerous situation. 1:10:28.560 --> 1:10:30.880 Yeah, you want to be familiar with it if you're 1:10:30.880 --> 1:10:32.760 going to rely on it, right, just like anything else, 1:10:32.800 --> 1:10:35.800 this ham study dot org as well, which helps you. 1:10:35.800 --> 1:10:37.639 You can also do something called a software to find 1:10:37.720 --> 1:10:40.519 radio SDR. I've used those before as well. 1:10:40.920 --> 1:10:43.639 I'm sure we'll Yeah, we'll do a more dedicated episode 1:10:43.640 --> 1:10:45.320 to this kind of thing once I feel a degree 1:10:45.320 --> 1:10:48.439 of competence too. But I think what's really important with 1:10:48.479 --> 1:10:50.760 this is because I can tell you right now, as 1:10:50.840 --> 1:10:52.960 much time as I spend, like thinking about water and 1:10:53.000 --> 1:10:56.040 having a bunch of different water treatment options and spare 1:10:56.080 --> 1:10:58.160 water stored, and I have like I literally have at 1:10:58.160 --> 1:11:00.400 this point years of dried food on the problem property. 1:11:00.840 --> 1:11:04.520 I can food all the time. I have animals, obviously, 1:11:04.560 --> 1:11:07.080 I have guns, you know, I do stuff like, you know, 1:11:07.120 --> 1:11:10.280 go foraging in the woods and shit. I had completely 1:11:10.560 --> 1:11:12.280 because it's a pain in the air. It seemed like 1:11:12.280 --> 1:11:14.280 a pain in the ass. There's a lot of numbers. 1:11:14.320 --> 1:11:19.280 I hate fucking numbers, and I am choosing to use this. 1:11:19.600 --> 1:11:22.439 And we're starting out with this as coverage of Halle 1:11:22.479 --> 1:11:24.240 not because like this is the end of it. 1:11:24.280 --> 1:11:24.559 We're not. 1:11:24.920 --> 1:11:27.719 We are going to look at what's actually been happening 1:11:27.720 --> 1:11:30.200 in the community. We have people Margaret Killjoys down there 1:11:30.280 --> 1:11:32.760 right now, we have some other like friends of the 1:11:32.800 --> 1:11:35.479 pod who are in the area doing relief work. Now 1:11:35.880 --> 1:11:38.519 it's just too early for those stories, and we don't 1:11:38.520 --> 1:11:40.400 want to like really bug people who are. 1:11:40.240 --> 1:11:41.519 Doing useful work down there. 1:11:41.600 --> 1:11:44.680 Yeah, but this is the first thing that terrified me 1:11:44.840 --> 1:11:48.320 was being like, well, fuck, I have been negligent in 1:11:48.360 --> 1:11:51.240 my preparations because I don't have comms lockdown. 1:11:52.040 --> 1:11:54.920 Yeah, definitely, Like and people underestimated because it's not cool 1:11:54.920 --> 1:11:56.639 and fun, right, Like guns are fun. 1:11:56.720 --> 1:11:58.439 I have a sat phone, So I was like, that's 1:11:58.479 --> 1:12:02.360 probably fine, right been wouldn't have been an Ashville Yeah. 1:12:02.240 --> 1:12:04.439 Or people think that they can have stylink now and 1:12:04.479 --> 1:12:06.400 I think, yeah, you know, people, it's a lot of 1:12:06.520 --> 1:12:09.839 emphasis on that, but I think, yep, going back to basics, 1:12:10.000 --> 1:12:12.599 we were talking about this in our group chat. But 1:12:12.720 --> 1:12:15.920 for things that you need, having a primary, secondary and 1:12:16.000 --> 1:12:20.160 emergency way of doing that makes sense. So yes, your phone, 1:12:20.400 --> 1:12:22.200 your SAT phone. You know, I think Robert and I 1:12:22.240 --> 1:12:24.760 both use gum and in reaches like a SAT communicator. 1:12:24.880 --> 1:12:26.800 I have an in reach and I also have a 1:12:26.840 --> 1:12:30.880 Motorola smartphone that is a SAT phone through Uh god, 1:12:30.920 --> 1:12:33.479 I'm forgetting the name of the service, but a separate service, 1:12:33.600 --> 1:12:35.560 like I have two different SAT phone services. 1:12:35.840 --> 1:12:38.160 And then you got your ham radio as your backup. 1:12:38.200 --> 1:12:41.360 Well after that you got smoke signals and pigeons right. 1:12:42.240 --> 1:12:45.520 Well, that that gets us to a general idea of preparation, 1:12:45.720 --> 1:12:48.000 which I was kind of when I started. When I 1:12:48.000 --> 1:12:52.880 got advice from a colleague about war reporting, like the best. 1:12:52.880 --> 1:12:54.439 It's still to this day some of the best advice 1:12:54.439 --> 1:12:56.920 I've ever got is two is one and one is none. 1:12:57.040 --> 1:12:57.160 Right. 1:12:57.200 --> 1:12:59.519 If you have one way of doing something and a disaster, 1:13:00.080 --> 1:13:02.479 you are very close to having no way of doing 1:13:02.479 --> 1:13:06.599 it right, which brings me to transit because one of 1:13:06.640 --> 1:13:09.960 the thing that is probably going to wind up being 1:13:10.000 --> 1:13:14.360 the defining characteristic of this disaster in memory is the 1:13:14.400 --> 1:13:17.880 degree to which the ability to reach people in an 1:13:17.880 --> 1:13:21.040 area that is we're not talking, you know, there definitely 1:13:21.040 --> 1:13:23.080 are a lot of rural communities impacted by this, But 1:13:23.160 --> 1:13:26.120 like Ashville is a significant place, We're not talking the 1:13:26.120 --> 1:13:29.000 middle of nowhere. We are not talking about people living 1:13:29.040 --> 1:13:31.400 on the edge of the world, right. We are talking 1:13:31.439 --> 1:13:34.080 about like one of the what was what was up 1:13:34.120 --> 1:13:36.080 to this point, one of like the hippest and more 1:13:36.080 --> 1:13:37.640 popular parts of the Northeast. 1:13:37.880 --> 1:13:38.040 Right. 1:13:38.840 --> 1:13:43.360 The immediacy with which the ability to reach people on 1:13:43.439 --> 1:13:47.280 the ground was wiped out, and obviously while the storm 1:13:47.360 --> 1:13:48.760 was going on, there was no way to reach them 1:13:48.760 --> 1:13:51.400 from air. Like you know, a helicopter can get places now, 1:13:51.479 --> 1:13:54.560 but during the worst of the flooding, you're not reliably 1:13:54.600 --> 1:13:57.120 getting a fucking chopper into a lot of these places. 1:13:57.320 --> 1:14:01.519 So people were stranded very quick, much faster than they 1:14:01.560 --> 1:14:04.640 had been prepared for. You should be thinking about like, 1:14:05.200 --> 1:14:08.880 oh shit, I could get flooded, because you probably could. 1:14:08.960 --> 1:14:11.439 Most of the people listening to this. There's not a 1:14:11.560 --> 1:14:15.200 zero percent chance a freak storm floods your community, right, 1:14:15.280 --> 1:14:18.360 even if it never has before. It's not exactly a 1:14:18.400 --> 1:14:21.559 common problem in Asheville, right. The last massive flood thing 1:14:21.600 --> 1:14:24.400 was like nineteen sixteen, So we're not talking about a 1:14:24.400 --> 1:14:28.080 place that's used to flooding all the time. But likewise, 1:14:28.160 --> 1:14:31.040 like it's not just flooding, that fire could do this, right, 1:14:31.520 --> 1:14:34.800 I am thinking the last kind of near disaster we 1:14:34.840 --> 1:14:37.200 had where I was is in twenty twenty. You know 1:14:37.240 --> 1:14:39.120 where I live right now. I am in the city 1:14:39.160 --> 1:14:42.040 of Portland, and we were like three or four blocks 1:14:42.080 --> 1:14:44.880 away from where the evacuation orders had spread during the 1:14:44.920 --> 1:14:48.360 fires in twenty twenty. It was not a foregone conclusion 1:14:48.360 --> 1:14:50.599 that they would stop before reaching the city. 1:14:51.000 --> 1:14:51.200 You know. 1:14:51.280 --> 1:14:54.160 This is also I think people in southern California. Yeah, definitely, 1:14:54.160 --> 1:14:57.600 there's a shocking number of communities, communities with money that 1:14:57.680 --> 1:15:00.840 are really built up that if a f hit at 1:15:00.880 --> 1:15:05.200 the wrong time of year, there's no stopping it. And like, 1:15:05.320 --> 1:15:08.720 you need to be thinking about how am I preparing 1:15:08.840 --> 1:15:13.040 to be informed during the seasons where this is like 1:15:13.880 --> 1:15:18.280 of highest likelihood, because the only real safety there is 1:15:18.800 --> 1:15:23.439 paying attention to what's happening and building an understanding of 1:15:23.479 --> 1:15:26.160 how quickly things can go badly so that you get 1:15:26.200 --> 1:15:29.160 out ahead of time, because if the disaster just hits, 1:15:29.680 --> 1:15:32.360 you're not going to get on the highway and drive 1:15:32.439 --> 1:15:34.920 through a fire or through a flood. I don't care 1:15:34.920 --> 1:15:37.200 if you have a fucking Safari snorkel. I'm looking at 1:15:37.240 --> 1:15:41.439 those waters. You are not getting the most kitted out 1:15:41.520 --> 1:15:44.400 land rover on God's green Earth was not getting through 1:15:44.439 --> 1:15:45.280 some of those waters. 1:15:45.320 --> 1:15:48.040 I'm sorry, Yeah, you need a submarine. Like I remember 1:15:48.200 --> 1:15:50.840 my house flooded when I was probably seventeen eighteen, and 1:15:50.880 --> 1:15:53.519 I remember that. A couple of the things I remember, 1:15:53.560 --> 1:15:56.280 first of all, was like, most of your shit is 1:15:56.280 --> 1:15:59.040 not that important to you. I remember being seventeen and 1:15:59.080 --> 1:16:01.599 being like, oh man, we got it back then. Having 1:16:01.640 --> 1:16:03.840 a widescreen TV was a big deal for us. And 1:16:03.920 --> 1:16:06.400 just yeah, then thinking like, oh, my name is an 1:16:06.400 --> 1:16:08.120 eighty something, like I fuck the TV. 1:16:08.320 --> 1:16:09.679 I need to check off those people, okay. 1:16:09.880 --> 1:16:13.679 And then people completely overestimating the capability of their vehicles 1:16:13.680 --> 1:16:15.439 in floodwater, yeah, which. 1:16:15.439 --> 1:16:16.880 Which they always will do. 1:16:17.080 --> 1:16:19.280 It will always be the people with the biggest trucks 1:16:19.280 --> 1:16:22.120 that cause the most problems for everyone else to overestimate 1:16:22.160 --> 1:16:23.559 where their vehicles can get them. 1:16:23.720 --> 1:16:26.120 Yes, And like you can die in your vehicle crossing 1:16:26.160 --> 1:16:27.479 relatively shallow floodwater. 1:16:27.600 --> 1:16:29.919 This isn't yeah, you know, it's a serious business. 1:16:30.160 --> 1:16:33.000 Or get burned to death, which happens all the time, 1:16:33.040 --> 1:16:36.400 has happened very recently in communities in like California, you know, 1:16:36.479 --> 1:16:42.160 people just get fucking incinerated, So don't be that person. 1:16:42.520 --> 1:16:43.120 Pay attention. 1:16:43.600 --> 1:16:45.760 Like one of the things to pay attention to is 1:16:45.800 --> 1:16:48.240 like when the warning started to come in. There will 1:16:48.280 --> 1:16:50.840 be good breakdowns fairly soon in places like the New 1:16:50.920 --> 1:16:53.880 York Times on when warnings came in and how much 1:16:53.920 --> 1:16:55.439 time people actually had. 1:16:55.680 --> 1:16:55.760 Ye. 1:16:56.000 --> 1:17:00.640 But don't gamble with stuff like this fucking dry to 1:17:00.800 --> 1:17:05.080 high ground or you know, drive to whatever seems like 1:17:05.160 --> 1:17:07.920 the safest place and fucking crash in your car if 1:17:07.920 --> 1:17:11.000 you have to. And this is why again, when it 1:17:11.000 --> 1:17:13.200 does come to survival stuff, I'm a big fan. If 1:17:13.240 --> 1:17:16.200 you have the money, spend two hundred bucks on one 1:17:16.200 --> 1:17:18.599 of those buckets of dried food. Because you can keep 1:17:18.640 --> 1:17:21.760 a bucket of dried food and five gallons of water 1:17:21.800 --> 1:17:23.720 by the door, you can throw that son of a 1:17:23.720 --> 1:17:26.880 bitch in your car and carrying the waters might be 1:17:26.880 --> 1:17:28.040 a pain in the ass, but if you have to 1:17:28.040 --> 1:17:30.680 get out and run, those buckets of dried food with 1:17:30.760 --> 1:17:33.360 a weak or so of food in them are not 1:17:33.520 --> 1:17:36.000 that hard to carry. You hold it under your arm, 1:17:36.080 --> 1:17:37.960 you keep a backpack on your back, and you run 1:17:38.000 --> 1:17:41.120 like a son of a bitch to whatever evacuation exists, 1:17:41.360 --> 1:17:41.880 and you'll have. 1:17:41.920 --> 1:17:43.080 Some food with you. Yeah. 1:17:43.200 --> 1:17:45.720 You know, like this is one of the ways I 1:17:45.760 --> 1:17:48.720 think about stuff like this. You know, it's obviously preferable 1:17:48.920 --> 1:17:51.439 if you can just hunker down in your fucking house 1:17:51.600 --> 1:17:54.559 full of gear and equipment. But I'm sure there were 1:17:54.640 --> 1:17:56.880 I'm sure there were people who had to evac or 1:17:56.880 --> 1:17:59.920 who got flooded out in Ashville and their house that 1:18:00.080 --> 1:18:01.400 got flooded out was full. 1:18:01.240 --> 1:18:03.360 Of survival gear. I know for a fact that that 1:18:03.479 --> 1:18:04.200 happened to people. 1:18:04.320 --> 1:18:07.320 Yeah, and it happens everywhere to people right talking of happening, 1:18:07.400 --> 1:18:10.599 but what should be happening right now is an advertising break. 1:18:10.680 --> 1:18:13.960 Oh shit, should have happened ten fucking minutes ago, James, Yeah, 1:18:13.960 --> 1:18:15.840 but he but here we are. 1:18:25.080 --> 1:18:25.639 We're back. 1:18:26.439 --> 1:18:26.640 You know. 1:18:26.720 --> 1:18:30.040 When it comes to talking about like the degree to 1:18:30.120 --> 1:18:36.559 which people's high tech and expensive equipment, including vehicles, has 1:18:36.960 --> 1:18:40.000 run out very quickly, one of the stories that has 1:18:40.040 --> 1:18:42.840 been most interesting to me is of like one of 1:18:42.880 --> 1:18:45.360 the first groups of people to be able to get 1:18:45.400 --> 1:18:49.280 supplies and significant quantities to some of these isolated mountain 1:18:49.320 --> 1:18:54.000 regions was a guy with a shitload of donkeys. Oh yeah, 1:18:54.000 --> 1:18:57.280 the mule team. The mule team guy he was one second. 1:18:57.560 --> 1:19:00.280 Let me pull this up. I've got this bookmarked. Yeah, 1:19:00.360 --> 1:19:03.400 Mountain Mule Packer Ranch, which I'm guessing is just some 1:19:03.439 --> 1:19:05.479 sort of like a you know, you go there to 1:19:05.560 --> 1:19:08.439 vacation and do like mule trips, mule hights and stuff. 1:19:08.439 --> 1:19:10.639 It's kind of people who want to backpack or take 1:19:10.680 --> 1:19:12.280 like a really luxurious camping set up. 1:19:12.360 --> 1:19:12.960 Yeah. 1:19:13.040 --> 1:19:15.599 Yeah, they've been doing mule trains into a town call 1:19:15.720 --> 1:19:19.280 into a Weaverville. It looks like and yeah, like a 1:19:19.400 --> 1:19:22.160 mule can carry. It's something at least based on this 1:19:22.240 --> 1:19:25.519 people article I'm looking at, they're saying about two hundred 1:19:25.560 --> 1:19:29.439 pounds of supplies per animal, which you know is actually 1:19:29.600 --> 1:19:31.960 very significant. That's not a whole lot more than you're 1:19:31.960 --> 1:19:34.240 going to be fitting in like a compact car at 1:19:34.320 --> 1:19:37.000 least obviously a truck's carring more. But you're not getting 1:19:37.040 --> 1:19:39.720 a truck into a lot of these areas. And it 1:19:39.880 --> 1:19:41.960 just kind of goes to I'm not saying like everyone 1:19:42.000 --> 1:19:45.040 go buy a mule. That's not really practical for most people, 1:19:45.120 --> 1:19:49.240 although if you've got some land, maybe considered getting the mule. 1:19:49.720 --> 1:19:53.000 They're real handy. They do come in very useful in 1:19:53.120 --> 1:19:56.519 situations like this yeah, thinking companion animals as well. I 1:19:56.520 --> 1:19:58.840 think people haven't, Like, if you have a hole or whatever, 1:19:59.200 --> 1:20:01.280 I'll pack us too, but they can't carry so much, 1:20:01.360 --> 1:20:03.720 but I'll pack up. Packing is a thing, and in 1:20:03.800 --> 1:20:07.200 like Montana, in places like that, Yeah, they're great. You know, 1:20:07.200 --> 1:20:09.440 if you've got to fight in the mountains of Afghanistan 1:20:09.479 --> 1:20:12.200 a mule, you know you can. You can do a 1:20:12.200 --> 1:20:15.160 lot there, So very useful in a wide variety of situations. 1:20:15.200 --> 1:20:17.800 And a lot of our listeners are actively fighting in 1:20:17.840 --> 1:20:20.639 Afghanistan right now, so that that could be very handy 1:20:20.680 --> 1:20:21.120 for you. 1:20:21.240 --> 1:20:24.599 Yeah, proud of you guys. Yeah. Yeah. 1:20:25.160 --> 1:20:27.400 America said we're done there, but you said. 1:20:27.200 --> 1:20:27.519 Not me. 1:20:27.840 --> 1:20:32.479 It can happen here. You can't stop me going back 1:20:32.479 --> 1:20:33.120 with my mule. 1:20:34.439 --> 1:20:36.799 That's why this is the official pocast of the Islamic 1:20:36.840 --> 1:20:38.280 State Couruson Province. 1:20:38.360 --> 1:20:40.760 That is that's that's uh, oh, James, we shouldn't be 1:20:40.760 --> 1:20:47.000 saying stuff. We can hopefully hopefully the government's busy. 1:20:46.280 --> 1:20:49.640 Well apparently because they ain't doing ship in Ashville. 1:20:49.800 --> 1:20:52.960 Yeah, so, you know, I saw a lot of One 1:20:53.000 --> 1:20:55.960 of the more heartbreaking posts that I saw was this 1:20:55.960 --> 1:21:00.679 this lady posting a picture of her parents and her daughter, 1:21:01.560 --> 1:21:04.920 who was six on the roof with them, and she 1:21:05.080 --> 1:21:07.400 was like a few minutes later the roof collapsed and 1:21:07.439 --> 1:21:11.400 they were dead. Like she apparently managed to just kind 1:21:11.439 --> 1:21:15.479 of barely survive and get out of there. But there's like, 1:21:15.520 --> 1:21:18.720 I think a lot of people whose last act was 1:21:18.760 --> 1:21:22.759 trying to get a good photo or video of their location, 1:21:23.160 --> 1:21:26.519 you know, to post on social media. I don't want 1:21:26.520 --> 1:21:28.200 there to be a lot of people who made the 1:21:28.240 --> 1:21:30.800 decision to stay longer than they should have because they 1:21:30.840 --> 1:21:33.040 wanted to get a good shot for social media. But 1:21:33.080 --> 1:21:35.080 I'm sure that number wasn't zero. I'm not saying that's 1:21:35.080 --> 1:21:38.040 what happened to that lady. There's also a matter of like, well, 1:21:38.040 --> 1:21:39.519 if you are stuck up there, what else are you 1:21:39.560 --> 1:21:41.880 going to fucking do but document it? Yeah, I have 1:21:41.960 --> 1:21:45.000 some sympathy for that. Yeah, I'm not trying to shit 1:21:45.080 --> 1:21:47.479 on these people, but it is one of these there's 1:21:47.479 --> 1:21:50.960 that post that goes around every time there's a disaster 1:21:51.240 --> 1:21:54.880 like this, where you know, climate collapse is watching a 1:21:54.920 --> 1:21:57.800 series of horrifying videos on cell phones until one day 1:21:57.800 --> 1:21:59.080 it's you holding the phone. 1:21:59.320 --> 1:22:01.680 Yeah, And I think that that. 1:22:03.200 --> 1:22:05.760 Not that we shouldn't think about, Like what's happened, you know, 1:22:06.080 --> 1:22:09.639 to North Carolina, to Tennessee, to these affected communities. There's 1:22:09.680 --> 1:22:12.679 places in Georgia that got hard hit. Obviously that's a focus. 1:22:12.760 --> 1:22:16.760 But from a practical standpoint, the only good that you 1:22:16.800 --> 1:22:19.519 can make of a disaster like this is to try 1:22:19.520 --> 1:22:22.400 and pay attention to what happened, to what went wrong 1:22:22.520 --> 1:22:25.559 for other people, and make yourself less vulnerable, because the 1:22:25.600 --> 1:22:28.120 less vulnerable you are one of the things that we 1:22:28.200 --> 1:22:30.720 see every time there's something like this hits, you know, 1:22:31.080 --> 1:22:32.519 and this is I would call this a hand of 1:22:32.560 --> 1:22:35.200 God event. Right, You had a bunch of communities that 1:22:35.280 --> 1:22:38.920 were a part of the developed, you know whatever term 1:22:39.200 --> 1:22:42.760 first world one day, and we're completely cut off from 1:22:42.840 --> 1:22:46.600 everyone else on the planet the next. And all you 1:22:46.680 --> 1:22:50.280 can really do in the immediate aftermath of something like 1:22:50.360 --> 1:22:53.640 that is try to figure out what can I do 1:22:53.800 --> 1:22:57.080 to make it less likely that I'm a strain on 1:22:57.560 --> 1:23:00.400 resources during an event like this, And obviously the best 1:23:00.400 --> 1:23:02.320 way is to not be there, because then you're not 1:23:02.360 --> 1:23:05.360 a strain on resources. But the next best thing is 1:23:05.360 --> 1:23:08.000 to have to pay attention to what went wrong for 1:23:08.080 --> 1:23:10.760 other people and try to make yourself less vulnerable to that, 1:23:10.840 --> 1:23:13.559 because not only does that protect you, but you protect 1:23:13.560 --> 1:23:18.040 other people by not needing the resources that rescuers can 1:23:18.080 --> 1:23:20.559 bring to bear, which will be terribly limited in the 1:23:20.600 --> 1:23:21.959 immediate wake of the disaster. 1:23:22.520 --> 1:23:25.400 Yeah, I think like in terms of resources. Obviously, Margaret 1:23:25.400 --> 1:23:27.679 does an excellent podcast quotedly if the world is dying, 1:23:27.800 --> 1:23:30.479 we can hear more about that stuff. I think the 1:23:30.600 --> 1:23:32.880 thing that you can buy, I guess right now, if 1:23:32.920 --> 1:23:35.200 you have like thirty to fifty bucks and you want 1:23:35.439 --> 1:23:38.240 to be a little bit more prepared, because I understand 1:23:38.280 --> 1:23:39.880 that for some people this will be an oh shit 1:23:40.000 --> 1:23:42.960 moment right where this is something that it ought to be. Yeah, no, 1:23:43.000 --> 1:23:46.360 it really should be. Like you know, you've seen a 1:23:46.439 --> 1:23:49.839 city that thought it was completely invulnerable, be very vulnerable. 1:23:50.160 --> 1:23:53.559 You can buy a Sooya Squeeze for like thirty bucks 1:23:53.600 --> 1:23:55.559 right now. You can set them up in a off 1:23:55.560 --> 1:23:58.360 a five gun and bucket yep, or you can use 1:23:58.400 --> 1:24:00.320 the bag that comes with You can buy back from 1:24:00.360 --> 1:24:03.599 a company called knock cnoc, which is a much better bag. 1:24:03.720 --> 1:24:06.839 I would recommend that, but like you can spend thirty 1:24:06.840 --> 1:24:09.719 bucks there. Like we said before, you should have backup 1:24:09.720 --> 1:24:12.960 and other water filtering options. But yeah, there are whole 1:24:12.960 --> 1:24:15.600 countries that use Sayer squeezes, right, the Marshall Islands. I 1:24:15.680 --> 1:24:18.840 made a thing about Liberia uses in too, And you 1:24:18.880 --> 1:24:21.599 can filter rain water with that, and you could pretty 1:24:21.640 --> 1:24:23.439 much have a supply of water for as long as 1:24:23.479 --> 1:24:24.559 you need it if you backflush it. 1:24:24.760 --> 1:24:26.639 Right, You've got like a family of four and a house. 1:24:26.680 --> 1:24:28.880 You have one or two five gallon buckets full at 1:24:28.880 --> 1:24:31.400 any time, and you have a Sawyer squeeze, and you 1:24:31.439 --> 1:24:34.599 can you know, in this kind of situation, you could 1:24:34.680 --> 1:24:38.400 keep filling it up with you know, disaster water for 1:24:38.520 --> 1:24:40.840 lack of a better word. And in that sort of 1:24:40.880 --> 1:24:43.800 situation too, you can double up and triple up, which 1:24:43.800 --> 1:24:47.880 I always recommend in an emergency. I've nearly diet of dysentery, 1:24:47.960 --> 1:24:50.599 so I don't fuck around with this. Yeah, get a 1:24:50.640 --> 1:24:54.360 filterration option that's not the only one. Filter your water 1:24:54.520 --> 1:24:57.800 and add iodine tablets too, right, like you know, filter 1:24:57.880 --> 1:24:59.680 your water and use something. 1:24:59.479 --> 1:25:01.479 Like a UV. 1:25:01.000 --> 1:25:05.120 Light, Yeah, a stery pan, sterry pan. You know, don't 1:25:05.160 --> 1:25:08.120 just rely on one method. Double up, there's no You're 1:25:08.160 --> 1:25:09.920 not going to have a lot to do other than 1:25:10.000 --> 1:25:12.120 make sure your water doesn't kill you. And that's a 1:25:12.160 --> 1:25:13.840 real good thing to focus on. 1:25:14.120 --> 1:25:16.680 Yeah, you could even use bleachhouse help bleach. Just make 1:25:16.680 --> 1:25:19.160 sure you'll each sucking around it's not scented, et cetera. 1:25:19.400 --> 1:25:21.280 But yeah, you want to look up that ratio just 1:25:21.600 --> 1:25:23.400 or not fucking up the ratio with them. But like, yeah, 1:25:23.439 --> 1:25:25.679 that's a great you know. I keep a I usually 1:25:25.760 --> 1:25:28.759 keep one or two just big fifty gallon barrels of water. 1:25:29.320 --> 1:25:33.960 There's like water stabilization tablets or in liquid that you 1:25:33.960 --> 1:25:36.479 can drop in there because water doesn't store indefinitely. But 1:25:36.520 --> 1:25:39.880 you can use bleach too. People do I keep at 1:25:39.880 --> 1:25:41.439 all times. I just have this as part of my 1:25:41.479 --> 1:25:43.160 outdoor kit, but it's a good thing to have for 1:25:43.200 --> 1:25:46.559 a disaster. You can have a camelback with one company 1:25:46.600 --> 1:25:49.160 that makes them as called catod In Kata. 1:25:48.720 --> 1:25:51.400 D Ynn Catadyne. Yeah, Catadyne. 1:25:51.400 --> 1:25:53.280 Sorry, but there's a couple of different water filters that 1:25:53.320 --> 1:25:55.960 you can screw directly onto your camelback. So you pour 1:25:56.040 --> 1:25:58.240 water in the camel back and by the time you 1:25:58.280 --> 1:26:00.519 get the water in your mouth, it has on through 1:26:00.800 --> 1:26:04.439 a very serious filter arrangement, and that again, that could 1:26:04.439 --> 1:26:06.000 be part of your I pick this up and I 1:26:06.080 --> 1:26:08.240 take this with me, and no matter where I go, 1:26:08.320 --> 1:26:10.200 I could pour water into the camel back and me 1:26:10.240 --> 1:26:11.840 and my family can drink off of it, or we 1:26:11.840 --> 1:26:13.840 have two camelbacks or whatever. You know, I have four 1:26:13.920 --> 1:26:17.000 leaders on you. This is not free, but it's not 1:26:17.160 --> 1:26:21.559 prohibitively expensive. It's certainly not like buying nice firearms, right, 1:26:21.600 --> 1:26:24.599 and it is considerably likelier to save your life than 1:26:24.600 --> 1:26:25.360 an AAR fifty. 1:26:25.840 --> 1:26:26.040 Yeah. 1:26:26.120 --> 1:26:28.720 Yeah, there are magazines of ammunition that would cost you 1:26:28.760 --> 1:26:32.160 more than this would. And like yeah, yeah, with all 1:26:32.160 --> 1:26:34.760 of these things, once it's dirty, it's not clean, right, 1:26:34.800 --> 1:26:37.559 So like your camelback bladder is now dirty water bladder 1:26:37.560 --> 1:26:41.559 and stuff, especially in a disaster situation, to be mixing 1:26:41.560 --> 1:26:43.840 a match, just get a shoppie and run it. 1:26:43.960 --> 1:26:46.840 Likewise, I have a jerry can. 1:26:46.840 --> 1:26:48.720 I just wrote the bleach amounts on it with a 1:26:48.800 --> 1:26:50.960 paint pen and it's there now, and now I know, 1:26:51.120 --> 1:26:54.680 like none of this stuff is hugely complicated, and like 1:26:54.760 --> 1:26:57.000 everything else, right, like the more familiar you are with it, 1:26:57.080 --> 1:26:59.519 that if you go camping a lot. Yeah, like Robert 1:26:59.640 --> 1:27:01.400 was saying, you already have a system in place, so 1:27:01.479 --> 1:27:02.640 you're already ready for that. 1:27:02.880 --> 1:27:03.080 Yeah. 1:27:03.080 --> 1:27:05.000 I keep something called a grail on me, which is 1:27:05.080 --> 1:27:07.599 just like a cup that has a filter. Like it's 1:27:07.640 --> 1:27:10.719 a two part like almost kind of a thermos type deal, 1:27:11.120 --> 1:27:13.040 and you fill the bottom part with water and you 1:27:13.120 --> 1:27:15.799 press the top part in and it fills an internal 1:27:16.240 --> 1:27:19.400 reservoir with filtered water. And then I'll drop a tablet 1:27:19.400 --> 1:27:22.439 in there or something and you know, or I'll pour 1:27:22.520 --> 1:27:25.080 that into a larger thing and put the tablet in there. 1:27:25.640 --> 1:27:28.880 But you can always have multiple options for water. And 1:27:28.920 --> 1:27:31.240 it's the kind of thing where like there's no reason 1:27:31.320 --> 1:27:33.840 not to a camelback and a filter plus a bunch 1:27:33.840 --> 1:27:36.800 of pills, plus some sort of like canned pump rig 1:27:37.240 --> 1:27:40.519 you're maybe out one hundred and fifty bucks. You have 1:27:40.560 --> 1:27:42.880 three different methods of keeping your water clean. 1:27:43.000 --> 1:27:45.040 Yeah, I think they're surtplusing out a lot of the 1:27:45.120 --> 1:27:47.760 MSR Guardians so the US military used to buy. You 1:27:47.760 --> 1:27:50.080 can get those pretty chair those are great, like I have. 1:27:50.240 --> 1:27:53.200 I was just in the dairying gap. I used one 1:27:53.240 --> 1:27:57.280 of those and then chemical treatment and like, yeah, I'm okay, 1:27:58.479 --> 1:28:01.400 And you can if you can also bulk process with 1:28:01.439 --> 1:28:03.639 the gravity guiding, you could do ten leads at a time. 1:28:04.280 --> 1:28:06.760 You know, we're in this kind of conversation. We are 1:28:06.800 --> 1:28:10.400 triaging by what we think is the most important stuff 1:28:10.439 --> 1:28:14.280 which is in a disaster like this, water in comms, 1:28:14.439 --> 1:28:18.040 and I kind of keep those as relatively equal because obviously, 1:28:18.120 --> 1:28:22.439 like you can survive without comms in some situations, yeah, 1:28:22.479 --> 1:28:25.519 and you can't in any without water. But if you 1:28:25.600 --> 1:28:27.600 are in a situation where you're on the roof of 1:28:27.640 --> 1:28:29.679 your house and your roof is not going to hold 1:28:29.680 --> 1:28:32.880 out much longer in the floodwaters, colms suddenly become the 1:28:32.960 --> 1:28:35.840 number one problem that you have, right your inability to 1:28:35.880 --> 1:28:37.880 reach someone who might be able to get you out 1:28:37.880 --> 1:28:38.200 of there. 1:28:38.400 --> 1:28:39.720 Yeah, if you need to get help, then you need 1:28:39.760 --> 1:28:41.400 to be able to ask for help. Yeah. 1:28:41.600 --> 1:28:43.040 I guess the other thing I would say is if 1:28:43.040 --> 1:28:45.599 you rely on any medicine, think about how and where 1:28:45.640 --> 1:28:46.360 you store them. 1:28:46.560 --> 1:28:46.880 God. 1:28:47.600 --> 1:28:50.360 Yes, a lot of people have been having to figure out, 1:28:50.400 --> 1:28:53.280 Like I've been reading stories about people needing to set 1:28:53.360 --> 1:28:56.320 up like battery and solar or generator situation, like their 1:28:56.320 --> 1:28:59.360 fucking seapap machines, and they're like, you have people who 1:28:59.400 --> 1:29:01.960 are on diet, We're going to need to get evacked 1:29:02.040 --> 1:29:04.320 because there's not going to be reliable dialysis you know, 1:29:04.400 --> 1:29:06.040 in town in a while, right, Like. 1:29:06.040 --> 1:29:08.200 That kind of stuff, Like some of that, you know, 1:29:08.280 --> 1:29:10.639 like I have a big cooler and I can chuck 1:29:10.680 --> 1:29:12.280 ice in there, and I can have enough insulin in 1:29:12.320 --> 1:29:14.840 that bad boy for a year, you know. Yeah, and 1:29:14.920 --> 1:29:16.879 other medicines. You know, he's putting them in a waterproof 1:29:16.920 --> 1:29:19.840 bottle and having that in your well. I live in California. 1:29:19.840 --> 1:29:22.160 We have a bag for fives and earthquakes, right, everyone 1:29:22.160 --> 1:29:24.840 here does. And just having a few days of your 1:29:24.880 --> 1:29:26.800 medicine so you can grab and go. You don't have 1:29:26.840 --> 1:29:29.040 to think about it. You don't forget something that you 1:29:29.120 --> 1:29:29.720 rely on. 1:29:30.360 --> 1:29:32.519 Yeah, And that's that's also what you should be thinking, 1:29:32.640 --> 1:29:35.160 is like, if it takes me two or three days 1:29:35.600 --> 1:29:38.160 to get evact and out to an area where I 1:29:38.160 --> 1:29:40.680 can like spend money again to get access to the 1:29:40.720 --> 1:29:43.800 things that I have on a daily basis, what shit 1:29:43.960 --> 1:29:47.160 can't I survive without until I get to a part 1:29:47.160 --> 1:29:49.800 of the world where I can get access to things again, 1:29:49.880 --> 1:29:52.679 right right, Which is again why we're kind of focusing 1:29:52.720 --> 1:29:55.400 on comms so that you know what's happening, so that 1:29:55.479 --> 1:29:59.200 you can maybe reach people water and then underwater like 1:29:59.320 --> 1:30:03.120 food and obviously things like thank god we are not 1:30:03.200 --> 1:30:05.280 in a time of the year when this happened where 1:30:05.560 --> 1:30:08.160 people are going to like freeze to death immediately right 1:30:08.280 --> 1:30:11.400 in the middle of something like this. But that would 1:30:11.439 --> 1:30:14.679 I would say, like access to warm and dry clothing 1:30:15.120 --> 1:30:18.360 could be up there, equal with you know, water and cobs. 1:30:18.400 --> 1:30:21.200 If you're talking about a kind of disaster that might 1:30:21.240 --> 1:30:23.799 put people out of their homes in an area where 1:30:23.960 --> 1:30:26.080 you can die in minutes in the front, like if 1:30:26.080 --> 1:30:28.479 you live out in the fucking Great Lakes region, depending 1:30:28.479 --> 1:30:30.439 on the time of year, we're talking about a disaster 1:30:30.560 --> 1:30:32.600 that could be right up there. You know, you know 1:30:32.680 --> 1:30:34.800 what you need based on where you live, but be 1:30:34.880 --> 1:30:38.400 thinking about what keeps you alive. That's really a lot 1:30:38.400 --> 1:30:41.960 of disaster preparedness is actually trying to understand what is 1:30:42.040 --> 1:30:45.120 it that keeps me alive. A lot of our economy 1:30:45.280 --> 1:30:47.400 exists in having that not be obvious to you. 1:30:48.280 --> 1:30:52.639 Yes, yeah, yeah, in putting your priority selfwhere But yeah, 1:30:52.720 --> 1:30:54.439 think about what stuff's you dying. 1:30:54.760 --> 1:30:57.080 Maybe have a couple of spats and have it in 1:30:57.120 --> 1:30:57.559 a place. 1:30:58.160 --> 1:30:59.920 Having all this stuff is great, if it's in seven 1:31:00.240 --> 1:31:03.519 different tote bags in your attic, that's not much use 1:31:03.640 --> 1:31:05.200 to you when you don't have very long to get 1:31:05.200 --> 1:31:07.680 out your house. So having stuff like Robert said by 1:31:07.720 --> 1:31:11.559 the door in your car, in a backpack whatever, like, yeah, 1:31:12.000 --> 1:31:14.800 that you can easily access and be okay. Then you 1:31:14.840 --> 1:31:16.880 have it and then you when you need it, it's 1:31:16.920 --> 1:31:17.880 there and you know where it is. 1:31:18.720 --> 1:31:18.960 Yeah. 1:31:19.360 --> 1:31:24.120 Yeah, well James, how we do it. It's happened here, buddy, 1:31:24.320 --> 1:31:27.280 It's happened here. Yeah, like we said it would. Yeah 1:31:27.280 --> 1:31:29.200 it could like could, like we keep saying. 1:31:29.479 --> 1:31:32.880 This was like the messages I was sharing with people 1:31:32.880 --> 1:31:36.040 immediately after this was like, oh, this is the one. 1:31:37.000 --> 1:31:39.280 This is the one we were worried about. This is 1:31:39.320 --> 1:31:42.160 the hand of God sweeping into a community and just 1:31:42.600 --> 1:31:44.280 knocking it off the edge of the earth. 1:31:44.600 --> 1:31:44.840 Yeah. 1:31:45.200 --> 1:31:47.679 You know, not that this kind of thing doesn't happen, 1:31:47.760 --> 1:31:50.679 but this is the first one, at least since I've 1:31:50.720 --> 1:31:52.960 been really focusing on this stuff in the US, where 1:31:52.960 --> 1:31:55.920 it hits somewhere that just was not on my radar 1:31:56.080 --> 1:31:57.920 as a super vulnerable place. 1:31:58.000 --> 1:32:01.000 Definitely. Yeah, and it'll happen again, thanks Jaron. This week. 1:32:01.040 --> 1:32:04.000 It'll happen again. Yeah, and it'll surprise you. It'll surprise 1:32:04.040 --> 1:32:05.080 you again where it hits. 1:32:05.160 --> 1:32:05.360 You know. 1:32:05.560 --> 1:32:09.439 That's the thing. There's no climate haven. Yeah, it doesn't exist. 1:32:09.680 --> 1:32:11.080 Yeah, yeah, not on this planet. 1:32:11.800 --> 1:32:13.720 I would say, like, if you have money and you 1:32:13.720 --> 1:32:16.000 want to help, you too, late disaster relief a great. 1:32:16.240 --> 1:32:19.439 Yes, let's talk about that. Let's go to ADS one 1:32:19.479 --> 1:32:21.000 last time, and then when we come back we will 1:32:21.040 --> 1:32:23.240 tell you who you can send some money to to 1:32:23.360 --> 1:32:25.600 help people who are actively suffering. 1:32:35.200 --> 1:32:38.440 And we're back. Before we bounce, we wanted. 1:32:38.120 --> 1:32:41.360 To suggest some places where you could donate if you 1:32:41.479 --> 1:32:44.320 are looking to help people who are in Ashville other 1:32:44.360 --> 1:32:47.440 parts of North Carolina. One of the first places recommended 1:32:47.479 --> 1:32:54.080 to me is Appellation Medical Solidarity. They are providing I mean, 1:32:54.120 --> 1:32:56.360 it's obvious what they're providing a lot of like medical 1:32:56.840 --> 1:32:59.360 care and support, a lot of equipment and stuff that 1:32:59.360 --> 1:33:03.720 people need. Their venmo is at app med solid Their 1:33:03.760 --> 1:33:09.040 cash app is dollar sign Streets one de put flood 1:33:09.040 --> 1:33:11.880 support in the description if you send them money through that. 1:33:12.720 --> 1:33:17.280 The other place is mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Their PayPal 1:33:17.479 --> 1:33:20.840 is mutual Aid Disaster Relief at gmail dot com. Their 1:33:20.920 --> 1:33:24.920 venmo is at mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Yeah, just google 1:33:24.960 --> 1:33:26.439 them if you want to find out more about what 1:33:26.479 --> 1:33:28.720 they're doing. James, did you have anyone else that you 1:33:29.400 --> 1:33:30.439 wanted to throw out there? 1:33:30.840 --> 1:33:32.800 Those are the two we did an episode I didn't 1:33:32.840 --> 1:33:34.559 Upsot a couple of years ago with mutul a disafter 1:33:34.600 --> 1:33:37.160 relief that you can now find in your podcasting app. 1:33:37.640 --> 1:33:39.439 Those are the two big ones I think, you know, 1:33:39.640 --> 1:33:41.479 if you're on the ground, help each other. 1:33:41.600 --> 1:33:42.599 I'm sure you already are. 1:33:42.800 --> 1:33:45.639 Yeah, yeah, those would be the two that I would suggest, 1:33:46.080 --> 1:33:48.360 you know, if you buy yourself your water filter and 1:33:48.439 --> 1:33:49.519 you have ten bucks to help out. 1:33:49.680 --> 1:33:53.880 Yeah, how we make the world better? Yep. So until 1:33:53.920 --> 1:33:54.400 next week. 1:33:54.640 --> 1:33:58.559 Solidarity to the people who are in the Atlanta area 1:33:58.640 --> 1:34:02.800 right now where chemical fire, very similar chemical fire to 1:34:02.840 --> 1:34:04.240 the one that happened in a place I used to 1:34:04.280 --> 1:34:07.040 live West Texas, has just blanketed the air in Chlory. 1:34:07.600 --> 1:34:10.760 So remember, folks, weird disasters could hit too. 1:34:11.520 --> 1:34:12.400 We're living the dream. 1:34:12.439 --> 1:34:16.599 We're not just talking about hurricanes and fires here. 1:34:18.120 --> 1:34:20.320 Anyway. That's that's it for now. 1:34:20.360 --> 1:34:24.840 Everybody, good luck, stay safe, make sure you drink plenty 1:34:24.880 --> 1:34:25.240 of water. 1:34:46.320 --> 1:34:48.519 I just want to start off by saying I love you. 1:34:48.880 --> 1:34:51.519 Oh God, yeah, I love you. 1:34:52.800 --> 1:34:53.040 Yeah. 1:34:53.200 --> 1:34:55.400 I don't think jd Vance should be saying the word 1:34:55.439 --> 1:34:57.840 love because it it just makes it clear every time 1:34:57.880 --> 1:34:59.599 he does that he's never felt that emotion. 1:35:00.000 --> 1:35:04.280 Oh No, there was something particularly unsettling about him saying that. 1:35:04.240 --> 1:35:06.639 It's like when I try to order food in French 1:35:06.760 --> 1:35:09.280 and it's like, Robert, you're not fooling anyone if you 1:35:09.320 --> 1:35:12.200 look this up on Google right before getting to the restaurant, Like, 1:35:12.240 --> 1:35:15.120 you're not going to impress anyone. No, I guess let's 1:35:15.120 --> 1:35:18.040 start with fuck Mary kill for the guys that know 1:35:18.240 --> 1:35:20.280 the Secret Service will get pissed at us if we 1:35:20.320 --> 1:35:20.920 do that one. 1:35:21.080 --> 1:35:24.000 No, it could happen here. 1:35:24.040 --> 1:35:27.920 And this is the who gives a shit VP Debate episode. Yeah, 1:35:27.960 --> 1:35:31.040 I'm Sophielix Triven. I'm here with Kirsten Davis and Robert Evans. 1:35:31.400 --> 1:35:34.360 Yeah. Wow, what a great use of two hours that was? 1:35:35.400 --> 1:35:36.160 That really was? 1:35:36.840 --> 1:35:39.840 I am behind this week horribly, still haven't picked the 1:35:39.880 --> 1:35:44.000 subject for this week, desperately desperately behind. And I sure 1:35:44.040 --> 1:35:46.559 did love that. This was a complete waste of all 1:35:46.600 --> 1:35:49.439 of our fucking time. Not a complete waste because we 1:35:49.520 --> 1:35:52.880 learned something important, which is that the Democrat who seemed 1:35:52.920 --> 1:35:55.480 to have the best understanding of how to fight Republicans 1:35:55.800 --> 1:35:59.280 maybe just got lucky or or got coached into some 1:35:59.439 --> 1:36:02.639 very bad vice by a Democratic should have known better. 1:36:02.720 --> 1:36:04.439 Hey, Robert, I just want to say thank you for 1:36:04.479 --> 1:36:06.120 saying that, Like I agree with you, I just want 1:36:06.160 --> 1:36:07.800 to say thank you for saying, Zoby. 1:36:07.600 --> 1:36:10.120 You and I are great friends. Everything you say is 1:36:10.240 --> 1:36:13.000 terrible and wrong, but I agree with you on most of. 1:36:12.960 --> 1:36:15.320 It, and thank you, thank you, and thank you for 1:36:15.400 --> 1:36:17.200 saying that. I just really appreciate that. 1:36:17.360 --> 1:36:21.000 You know, whoever told him that Americans wanted to see 1:36:21.120 --> 1:36:24.559 him be friendly with jd Vance was not a friend 1:36:24.560 --> 1:36:26.040 of the Republic or of him. 1:36:26.200 --> 1:36:27.360 I think I. 1:36:27.240 --> 1:36:31.280 Don't think it'll work. I've been wrong before. It definitely 1:36:31.320 --> 1:36:34.439 seems to have worked. If your recollection of like what 1:36:34.720 --> 1:36:37.800 Fox and the other anchors were saying, they seem to 1:36:37.800 --> 1:36:40.439 be pretty positive on Walls's performance, So it may be 1:36:40.479 --> 1:36:42.839 working on like media ghoules. 1:36:43.200 --> 1:36:46.120 But that's who watched the VP debate. 1:36:46.320 --> 1:36:47.599 That is who watches the debate? 1:36:48.200 --> 1:36:50.760 Yeah right, I mean that is that is the audience. 1:36:50.920 --> 1:36:54.560 Yeah, only the fucking sickos who are keating on politics 1:36:54.760 --> 1:36:56.120 watch the VP debate. 1:36:56.360 --> 1:36:59.240 I guess I don't really believe this, but I'm going 1:36:59.280 --> 1:37:02.759 to like my devil's advocate would be maybe it's smart 1:37:02.800 --> 1:37:05.800 strategy to accept that only media gorules listen to this. 1:37:05.920 --> 1:37:08.320 The only real way for the debate to matter is 1:37:08.360 --> 1:37:10.599 if you like fuck up, sure, and there was more 1:37:10.680 --> 1:37:13.160 risk of seeming like a lunatic if he went in 1:37:13.200 --> 1:37:16.479 there attacking JD as hard as he could and getting 1:37:16.479 --> 1:37:19.320 negative press, as opposed to this, which probably is not 1:37:19.400 --> 1:37:20.679 going to get him negative press. 1:37:20.960 --> 1:37:24.439 I think he probably had multiple strategies, And like if JD. 1:37:24.520 --> 1:37:26.200 Vance had come in there and started saying some of 1:37:26.200 --> 1:37:28.280 the things that he normally says, which are fucking weird 1:37:28.320 --> 1:37:31.720 and creepy, but he didn't and unhinged and fascist and misogynistic, 1:37:31.760 --> 1:37:35.320 and I could continue, But then we might have seen 1:37:35.360 --> 1:37:36.679 it different Tim Walls. 1:37:36.720 --> 1:37:37.559 But because JD. 1:37:37.680 --> 1:37:41.639 Vance's entire strategy was like, hey, I can appear normal 1:37:41.720 --> 1:37:42.559 even though I'm not. 1:37:43.200 --> 1:37:47.000 Well, I don't quite understand the hesitancy to then actually 1:37:47.040 --> 1:37:50.320 bring those things forefront. They were there, and why not 1:37:50.360 --> 1:37:52.880 talk about it, because like my initial takeaway here is 1:37:53.479 --> 1:37:56.040 I don't think anyone necessarily clearly one. I think both 1:37:56.040 --> 1:37:59.559 of them did just fine. But if anyone comes out 1:37:59.600 --> 1:38:03.599 slightly better than what they were going in, I would say. 1:38:03.439 --> 1:38:04.960 It is Vance. It's Vance. 1:38:05.080 --> 1:38:10.479 I would agree, because somehow Walls was able to humanize Vance. 1:38:10.600 --> 1:38:12.600 Over the course of the debate, they were. It was 1:38:12.640 --> 1:38:16.360 a very very friendly exchange, and that just serves to 1:38:16.439 --> 1:38:20.160 undercut the months of work that Walls has done to 1:38:20.520 --> 1:38:24.439 paint Vance as a weird, unhinged extremist, which he is, 1:38:25.000 --> 1:38:27.800 and instead making him seem like just a reasonable politician 1:38:27.840 --> 1:38:30.000 that although we may disagree on a few things, we 1:38:30.040 --> 1:38:31.600 actually agree on a lot of a lot of the 1:38:31.640 --> 1:38:32.680 problems and solutions. 1:38:32.880 --> 1:38:36.360 We both care about this country. We're trying to help people, 1:38:36.640 --> 1:38:38.640 and like, no Jade Vance. Like there was that bit 1:38:38.680 --> 1:38:40.600 where they were talking about mass shootings and he was like, 1:38:40.640 --> 1:38:43.800 I truly believe that Vance cares about these kids. That 1:38:43.880 --> 1:38:46.599 Jade Vance didn't give a shit about dead kids, never has, 1:38:46.640 --> 1:38:49.599 never will. He's not capable of it. And it undercut 1:38:49.720 --> 1:38:52.679 one of the more powerful moments that Walls had where 1:38:52.720 --> 1:38:55.120 he was like, my son was at a mass shooting. 1:38:55.360 --> 1:38:56.559 Christ have mercy. 1:38:57.840 --> 1:39:01.360 It was so interesting too, because Walls is and I 1:39:01.400 --> 1:39:03.000 know that I'm coming into this as the guy who's 1:39:03.000 --> 1:39:05.720 generally pretty anti gun control, but I'm just from perspective 1:39:05.720 --> 1:39:10.400 of Democratic Party strategy. Number one, this is something they 1:39:10.439 --> 1:39:13.960 go after hard, so you can't half asset right. This 1:39:14.080 --> 1:39:16.639 is not like the border where they really do feel 1:39:16.640 --> 1:39:19.439 the need to lean into the right wing argument. The 1:39:19.479 --> 1:39:22.519 dims are very unequivocal about what they about, like the 1:39:22.560 --> 1:39:26.200 fact that they want to ban Ir fifteen's. Walls didn't 1:39:26.240 --> 1:39:28.640 really commit to that until a little bit when he 1:39:28.760 --> 1:39:31.040 was specifically pushed on whether or not he agreed with 1:39:31.040 --> 1:39:35.040 an assault weapons ban, and instead his language up until 1:39:35.040 --> 1:39:38.840 that point was not very different from Vance's aside from 1:39:38.880 --> 1:39:41.880 their disagreement over fortifying schools. But it was all stuff 1:39:41.960 --> 1:39:45.640 around the guns, whereas the Democratic parties line and the 1:39:45.640 --> 1:39:48.759 line of most Democratic politicians has been it's about the guns. 1:39:49.120 --> 1:39:52.160 And I did find it interesting that Walls he had 1:39:52.200 --> 1:39:55.920 to kind of be goaded into really embracing that by 1:39:55.960 --> 1:39:56.680 the moderator. 1:39:56.760 --> 1:39:58.519 Now, one of the first things I noticed from watching 1:39:58.520 --> 1:40:01.320 the debate, which just happened like once or twice. Then 1:40:01.320 --> 1:40:03.280 I realized this was just like a reoccurring trend across 1:40:03.320 --> 1:40:06.519 the whole night, is that each candidate would try to 1:40:06.600 --> 1:40:09.880 separate the other yeah from their running mate, to be like, 1:40:10.240 --> 1:40:12.920 I'm sure Walls or I'm sure Vans agrees with me 1:40:13.000 --> 1:40:15.840 on this, but their running mate doesn't, and that's the 1:40:15.840 --> 1:40:19.160 real problem. And this just kept happening. They kept trying 1:40:19.200 --> 1:40:22.160 to like be nice to the actual opponent in the 1:40:22.200 --> 1:40:25.599 debate by separating them out from their running mate, who's 1:40:25.640 --> 1:40:27.360 the real source of the problem. And that's just like 1:40:27.400 --> 1:40:29.439 it just just kept happening, Like what are you doing, 1:40:29.600 --> 1:40:31.840 Like you're running out a joint ticket. There's no reason 1:40:31.880 --> 1:40:34.240 to do this. And I think kind of part of 1:40:34.280 --> 1:40:37.880 what their strategy may have been. Yes, these debates are 1:40:37.920 --> 1:40:40.439 probably only watched by freaks, but I think there are 1:40:40.439 --> 1:40:45.160 also certain freaks who are like weird, like independent centristy freaks, 1:40:45.680 --> 1:40:46.920 and I think this. 1:40:46.840 --> 1:40:47.800 Is who they were going after. 1:40:48.000 --> 1:40:50.920 Yep, this this entire debate was focused on appealing to 1:40:50.960 --> 1:40:54.479 the center. It wasn't really based on like going heavy 1:40:54.560 --> 1:40:57.240 into like each side's own base because people they've already 1:40:57.280 --> 1:41:00.639 made up their minds. And I think the the issue 1:41:01.040 --> 1:41:03.000 for me at the end of this debate is because 1:41:03.040 --> 1:41:05.599 both of them were we're trying to court the center vote. 1:41:06.200 --> 1:41:10.719 I think Vance did about just as good as Walls 1:41:10.760 --> 1:41:13.439 did going after the center by and and Walls kind 1:41:13.439 --> 1:41:17.320 of even even helped him. And in effect, if Vance 1:41:17.360 --> 1:41:19.519 comes off as just a slightly better debater when they're 1:41:19.520 --> 1:41:22.240 going after the same base, that just leaves Walls with 1:41:22.320 --> 1:41:24.880 like not really making any ground where he could have 1:41:24.960 --> 1:41:28.200 actually just hit hit Vance quite hard and actually gone 1:41:28.400 --> 1:41:31.439 more on like a party line, or actually just like 1:41:31.600 --> 1:41:34.040 gone more towards like all the reasons that Advance is 1:41:34.080 --> 1:41:36.040 fucked up, which he just would, she would, she just 1:41:36.040 --> 1:41:40.200 avoided to do. Yeah, So my main takeaway was, like, 1:41:40.640 --> 1:41:43.080 if they're both courting the center and Vance kind of 1:41:43.120 --> 1:41:46.519 barely edged him out in some in some regards, maybe 1:41:46.640 --> 1:41:49.000 Walls should have just actually been way more aggressive, and 1:41:49.120 --> 1:41:51.760 the kind of lack of aggression really only hurt the 1:41:51.800 --> 1:41:55.280 Democrats because in the end it kind of benefits Vance. 1:41:55.320 --> 1:41:58.200 If you give this like half assed mediocre performance. 1:41:58.080 --> 1:42:00.760 We'll see where it Because again, this is not being 1:42:00.840 --> 1:42:03.240 listened to by average people in the same way that 1:42:03.400 --> 1:42:06.160 like the last presidential debate was. This is not I 1:42:06.200 --> 1:42:08.120 don't think moves the needle one way or the other. 1:42:08.560 --> 1:42:11.080 Because it was so close, I would be inclined to 1:42:11.120 --> 1:42:13.160 agree with you that I think Vance did more of 1:42:13.200 --> 1:42:15.160 the things he needed to do for this to be 1:42:15.240 --> 1:42:17.599 a benefit to him. I'm not sure in a way 1:42:17.640 --> 1:42:20.320 that helps the campaign, because most of what Vance did 1:42:20.320 --> 1:42:23.080 that probably helps him was stuff that I think would 1:42:23.120 --> 1:42:25.240 set him up better in a world where Trump doesn't 1:42:25.280 --> 1:42:28.400 win reelection. Sure that would set him up to continue 1:42:28.439 --> 1:42:31.320 to have a career and to be re embraced by 1:42:31.400 --> 1:42:36.120 respectable kind of politics. The thing that makes me kind 1:42:36.120 --> 1:42:39.880 of doubt myself because I think there's a possibility this 1:42:39.960 --> 1:42:42.519 comes out as a Walls win, and if that is 1:42:42.560 --> 1:42:44.639 the case, it will be entirely because of the last 1:42:44.720 --> 1:42:48.880 question on January sixth, Because the way these things tend 1:42:48.880 --> 1:42:51.439 to work in popular memory, not again people like us 1:42:51.479 --> 1:42:53.519 who sit through the whole thing, all of nearly all 1:42:53.560 --> 1:42:57.680 of whom are journalists or unusually engaged voters. But the 1:42:57.680 --> 1:43:00.360 thing that there's two moments that are most like one 1:43:00.400 --> 1:43:02.840 from each of them, in my opinion, to get clipped 1:43:02.840 --> 1:43:05.360 out and go viral. And for Vance it was the 1:43:05.439 --> 1:43:09.200 January sixth thing where Walls drilled him, and I think 1:43:09.240 --> 1:43:12.240 this was actually one of his few fairly effective aggressive 1:43:12.240 --> 1:43:15.120 moments where he was like yeah, forced him to answer, 1:43:15.560 --> 1:43:18.080 and Vance refused to answer as to whether or not 1:43:18.120 --> 1:43:20.280 he thought Trump had lost in twenty twenty in a 1:43:20.320 --> 1:43:23.120 way that was I think kind of embarrassing for him 1:43:23.120 --> 1:43:25.479 and is easy, probably pretty easy to clip out. That 1:43:25.560 --> 1:43:28.759 might wind up being the big kind of viral moment 1:43:28.760 --> 1:43:31.160 of the night if it's not that it'll be Walls flubbing. 1:43:31.600 --> 1:43:33.560 We should talk about the China question now. Yeah, but 1:43:33.600 --> 1:43:36.200 I don't think the China question that Walls flubbed is 1:43:36.240 --> 1:43:39.760 on an issue that like Americans overall care about, which 1:43:39.800 --> 1:43:43.080 is Tim Walls now maybe exaggerating when he talked about 1:43:43.120 --> 1:43:45.479 his vacation in China one time in the eighties. 1:43:46.640 --> 1:43:49.719 Yeah, let's take a quick break and then let's dive 1:43:49.760 --> 1:43:50.680 in a little bit on that. 1:43:51.320 --> 1:44:02.200 Yeah. 1:44:02.920 --> 1:44:06.679 So, first off, everyone in this debate pronounced China correctly, 1:44:07.040 --> 1:44:09.400 which is a step forward from the ones that have 1:44:09.439 --> 1:44:12.360 involved Trump the last couple of cycles. The downside is 1:44:12.520 --> 1:44:14.479 no one knows how to say it on not a 1:44:14.520 --> 1:44:15.600 single person. 1:44:15.439 --> 1:44:17.920 And not a single mention of Ukraine. 1:44:18.240 --> 1:44:20.920 Oh yeah, well that was interesting to me. 1:44:21.080 --> 1:44:21.799 That is interesting. 1:44:21.960 --> 1:44:25.240 Yeah, not one moment where we talked about Ukraine, which. 1:44:25.040 --> 1:44:29.360 They kind of blazed past foreign policy really quickly, which 1:44:29.400 --> 1:44:32.920 is a little surprising considering the events of this morning. 1:44:33.320 --> 1:44:36.599 There are literally missiles landing in Tel Aviv right now, 1:44:36.800 --> 1:44:39.559 like people are talking with I think some reason as 1:44:39.600 --> 1:44:42.200 to whether or not Israel might consider a nuclear response, 1:44:42.320 --> 1:44:44.800 like shit is legitimately a problem. 1:44:44.560 --> 1:44:47.080 I mean, And this is how they started the debate. 1:44:47.120 --> 1:44:49.400 They started by talking about how this was going to 1:44:49.400 --> 1:44:53.280 be like a debate focused on how presidents or these 1:44:53.360 --> 1:44:56.320 vice presidents will handle like America in a sudden crisis 1:44:57.080 --> 1:45:00.760 as you've seen with the hurricane this weekend. Yeah, and 1:45:00.800 --> 1:45:04.200 now escalating war in the in the Middle East. And 1:45:04.240 --> 1:45:06.920 although that was their kind of opening framing, they really 1:45:06.960 --> 1:45:09.400 got over those hurdles quite quick and then started talking 1:45:09.400 --> 1:45:11.800 about me extremely boring shit for the rest of the 1:45:12.160 --> 1:45:12.880 hour and a half. 1:45:13.080 --> 1:45:17.200 The very first question was basically, you know, Iran's bombing Israel, which, like, 1:45:17.280 --> 1:45:19.280 I don't know, did Israel do anything to fucking Lebanon 1:45:19.400 --> 1:45:23.679 right before that? Like interesting context from the journalist there, 1:45:23.720 --> 1:45:27.880 But Iran's bombing Israel. If you're in the situation room, 1:45:27.920 --> 1:45:30.400 Tim Walls, what do you tell the president if you're 1:45:30.439 --> 1:45:33.160 the last voice, should he let Israel carry out a 1:45:33.200 --> 1:45:36.759 strike on Iran? And his response was a carbon copy 1:45:36.800 --> 1:45:39.360 of what Kamala has said every time she's been asked 1:45:39.360 --> 1:45:41.960 on it. Israel has a right to defend itself. October 1:45:42.000 --> 1:45:45.920 seventh was horrible, but you know, civilian casualty is bad too, 1:45:46.000 --> 1:45:47.720 So it was a non answer, but it was the 1:45:47.760 --> 1:45:51.479 same non answer that the campaign has always given, so 1:45:51.520 --> 1:45:53.800 I was not surprised by it. It was exactly what 1:45:53.840 --> 1:45:54.840 I expected from him. 1:45:54.880 --> 1:45:57.280 Started off a little shakey, certainly sounded nervous. I think 1:45:57.320 --> 1:45:59.960 this immediately kind of gave Vance a head up. 1:46:00.320 --> 1:46:03.160 His first like three minutes, he was clearly uncomfortable. 1:46:03.240 --> 1:46:05.840 He got better, especially because like Vance has like debate 1:46:05.920 --> 1:46:09.840 kid energy, right. But Walls did start getting better as 1:46:09.880 --> 1:46:12.120 soon as he pivoted away from this question to just 1:46:12.160 --> 1:46:14.160 attacking Trump, which is kind of his strong suit. 1:46:14.280 --> 1:46:17.040 Yeah, I think Vance's responsor is interesting. So Walls gave 1:46:17.120 --> 1:46:19.120 He was a little shaky, I think just because they 1:46:19.160 --> 1:46:21.280 had started because he got better on that, But he 1:46:21.320 --> 1:46:24.120 gave what has become the standard non answer answer for 1:46:24.200 --> 1:46:24.840 the campaign. 1:46:25.400 --> 1:46:25.679 JD. 1:46:25.880 --> 1:46:29.400 Vance started his answer on the question of what would 1:46:29.400 --> 1:46:31.360 you tell the president if he was asking if he 1:46:31.360 --> 1:46:36.080 should allow potentially, you know, a massive escalative strike by 1:46:36.120 --> 1:46:38.760 Israel and Iran. What would you tell him if you're 1:46:38.760 --> 1:46:40.360 the last guy in the situation room? 1:46:40.600 --> 1:46:41.000 And JD. 1:46:41.080 --> 1:46:43.800 Vance started the response to that by summarizing the book 1:46:43.840 --> 1:46:47.280 He'll Billy ellig That was in fact, the bulk of 1:46:47.320 --> 1:46:49.680 his response was him talking about who he is and 1:46:49.720 --> 1:46:52.040 where he comes from and then being like yeah, I 1:46:52.040 --> 1:46:54.799 guess it's fine if Israel does whatever. It was an 1:46:54.880 --> 1:46:57.640 incredible response, and it struck me as the response of 1:46:57.680 --> 1:46:59.720 a guy who doesn't think his partner is going to 1:46:59.720 --> 1:47:00.519 become president. 1:47:00.560 --> 1:47:02.759 Again, I thought that was very odd. 1:47:02.840 --> 1:47:03.120 Yeah. 1:47:03.200 --> 1:47:06.519 Yeah, he was positioning himself for future jobs, correct. 1:47:06.760 --> 1:47:09.040 Yeah, I mean he was different kind of than the 1:47:09.080 --> 1:47:11.000 other answers. Maybe it was just they were both a 1:47:11.040 --> 1:47:12.240 little bit off their game. 1:47:12.320 --> 1:47:13.040 First question. 1:47:13.240 --> 1:47:15.080 You know that happens to everybody in a debate. 1:47:15.160 --> 1:47:16.360 They both were nervous. 1:47:16.479 --> 1:47:19.320 Yeah, yeah, I mean, and this is this also when 1:47:19.400 --> 1:47:22.840 Vance deployed his one of his reoccurring catchphrases is a 1:47:22.960 --> 1:47:23.839 peace through strength. 1:47:24.160 --> 1:47:25.800 Yeah. Oh, I hated that. 1:47:26.280 --> 1:47:29.080 I hated that because it's also I mean, that is 1:47:29.560 --> 1:47:32.479 very close to the quote from the Brotherhood of Nod 1:47:32.520 --> 1:47:34.439 and Command and Conquer and JD. 1:47:34.560 --> 1:47:37.960 Vance, you are no Kine, you know who lives in death. 1:47:38.000 --> 1:47:38.519 By the way. 1:47:38.920 --> 1:47:40.960 In general, I think Vance painted Trump is having like 1:47:40.960 --> 1:47:44.920 approvable track record of proving him as like like Trump 1:47:45.000 --> 1:47:47.519 is going to end the chaos that we faced as 1:47:47.840 --> 1:47:50.560 a nation the past four years, whether that be economic 1:47:50.760 --> 1:47:51.719 or with war. 1:47:52.000 --> 1:47:54.040 He was extremely consistent on that. 1:47:54.320 --> 1:47:57.320 And he's trying to point to like, was your life 1:47:57.360 --> 1:48:01.400 better under Trump? Especially economically, and like everyone's brains were 1:48:01.400 --> 1:48:03.720 completely fired by twenty twenty, so we actually no one 1:48:03.720 --> 1:48:06.120 remembers what twenty seventeen was like at all, So you 1:48:06.120 --> 1:48:10.760 actually can't recall that because whatsoever, let alone kind of 1:48:10.960 --> 1:48:13.759 Trump's mishandling of the pandemic led to like the biggest 1:48:13.760 --> 1:48:17.400 recession in modern history, which also for some reason Walls 1:48:17.479 --> 1:48:18.240 just never brought up. 1:48:18.600 --> 1:48:20.400 No, well, he did it. He did a little. 1:48:20.400 --> 1:48:22.360 He said that, Like he talked about how when they 1:48:22.400 --> 1:48:24.719 came in they were dealing with a massive recession. 1:48:24.960 --> 1:48:25.719 Yeah. Yeah. 1:48:25.800 --> 1:48:29.799 The second thing they talked about was climate change, which 1:48:30.200 --> 1:48:33.519 was Jesse Waters of Foxies was very mad that that 1:48:33.640 --> 1:48:35.080 was the second thing they talked about. 1:48:35.320 --> 1:48:37.879 We were framing through Hurricane Helene. 1:48:38.600 --> 1:48:41.360 Yeah, he was very He was very upset about it, 1:48:41.400 --> 1:48:43.280 which is okay, sir. 1:48:43.840 --> 1:48:47.799 Vance Oddly, you know, quickly accepted the climate change framing 1:48:47.880 --> 1:48:51.000 for the sake of the argument. Talked about how moving 1:48:51.080 --> 1:48:54.120 energy production from the quote unquote dirtiest parts of the 1:48:54.160 --> 1:48:57.840 world back to America, where we are the cleanest, would 1:48:57.880 --> 1:48:59.960 be one way to help. 1:49:00.680 --> 1:49:03.240 I think it would have worked on my dad. That response, 1:49:03.400 --> 1:49:06.439 Like the whole you know, well, weird claim, so we 1:49:06.479 --> 1:49:10.040 just got to bring back manufacturing. You know, it was 1:49:10.520 --> 1:49:13.840 not a bad answer in terms of doing what he 1:49:13.920 --> 1:49:17.719 needed to do. It was obviously nonsense, and the moderator 1:49:17.760 --> 1:49:20.400 called him very well on that, liked by just being like, 1:49:20.439 --> 1:49:23.320 by the way, like there's no argument amongst scientists about 1:49:23.680 --> 1:49:28.280 like how carbon impacts global warming. I think overall a tie, 1:49:28.479 --> 1:49:32.120 maybe slightly favoring walls that whole section. Like he did not, Oh, 1:49:32.200 --> 1:49:33.719 I don't think he did badly there. 1:49:33.920 --> 1:49:35.880 No, I think Wills did a good job connecting the 1:49:35.880 --> 1:49:39.000 economy to the environment. Yeah, how as the environment gets worse, 1:49:39.040 --> 1:49:41.479 the local economy gets worse, especially for like farmers, not 1:49:41.520 --> 1:49:43.880 like for yeah green New Deal Democrats, but for like 1:49:43.920 --> 1:49:47.160 everyday farmers, and again pivoted very quickly to just attacking 1:49:47.160 --> 1:49:49.880 Trump and Trump's climate denial. Tried to press Vance on 1:49:49.920 --> 1:49:53.679 Trump's climate denial, and Vance kind of you know, again, 1:49:53.800 --> 1:49:56.960 tried to just blame for manufacturing, saying that Kamala's like 1:49:57.040 --> 1:50:01.360 Rhetorican record does not match her actual action, which are 1:50:01.479 --> 1:50:05.160 increasing foreign manufacturing in general. Vans kind of fell back 1:50:05.200 --> 1:50:08.080 on a whole bunch of like nationalistic framing regarding the 1:50:08.160 --> 1:50:11.880 environment and regarding like the economy, especially manufacturing. That was 1:50:11.880 --> 1:50:13.800 one of his reoccurring talking points. 1:50:14.160 --> 1:50:16.120 Yeah, so we are getting to see some of the 1:50:16.160 --> 1:50:18.879 times as spend in real time where they just published 1:50:18.960 --> 1:50:22.599 Ross Duthat's article Vance's dominant debate performance shows why he's 1:50:22.600 --> 1:50:26.360 Trump's running mate, And the url of the article shows 1:50:26.360 --> 1:50:29.120 that it was initially put into the CMS about a 1:50:29.120 --> 1:50:32.080 week ago on the twenty fifth, and they dropped the 1:50:32.200 --> 1:50:34.240 article about halfway through the debate. 1:50:34.400 --> 1:50:35.400 So cool. 1:50:36.160 --> 1:50:38.200 That said, it's kind of unclear to me how the 1:50:38.240 --> 1:50:39.479 rest of this is going to shake out. 1:50:39.600 --> 1:50:42.639 I also could have written two articles, one where Vance 1:50:42.680 --> 1:50:45.920 did well and one where Walls did well. Yeah, but 1:50:46.120 --> 1:50:47.439 that is still that's funny. 1:50:47.680 --> 1:50:49.760 I don't know that that'll matter either. We'll see where 1:50:49.800 --> 1:50:51.840 people land. It was interesting to me Walls did do 1:50:51.920 --> 1:50:54.680 something that I liked twice. Neither time did he give 1:50:54.720 --> 1:50:57.680 it enough force, But he pointed out twice that a 1:50:57.720 --> 1:51:00.240 big part of the housing crisis is vcs buying up 1:51:00.240 --> 1:51:03.240 affordable housing, jacking up the price, jacking up the price 1:51:03.240 --> 1:51:03.639 of rent. 1:51:03.640 --> 1:51:06.559 That that is like a massive issue. He brought that up. 1:51:06.600 --> 1:51:09.679 He said housing shouldn't be treated as a commodity, which 1:51:09.760 --> 1:51:12.519 I never expected to hear from a candidate in one 1:51:12.560 --> 1:51:15.680 of these debates, but he brought them both up, like 1:51:15.680 --> 1:51:17.960 like a guy on a debate who is like just 1:51:18.040 --> 1:51:20.040 kind of throwing out a side point so you don't 1:51:20.040 --> 1:51:22.920 forget to say it as opposed to someone emphasizing it. 1:51:23.000 --> 1:51:24.599 The thing to do with jd. Vance is to point 1:51:24.600 --> 1:51:27.240 that you are one of those venture capitalists. You are 1:51:27.320 --> 1:51:29.919 one of the people who was hollowing out this country. 1:51:30.280 --> 1:51:33.080 And you know, Walls was good at trying to repeatedly 1:51:33.120 --> 1:51:36.240 say it's not migrants who are ruining like housing in 1:51:36.280 --> 1:51:40.080 this country, but he failed to connect enough and he 1:51:40.160 --> 1:51:43.400 had the pieces there to be like, it's guys like you, Yeah, 1:51:43.439 --> 1:51:46.720 it's fucking it's fucking white dudes in suits and earpieces 1:51:46.760 --> 1:51:49.840 who have made housing expensive. It is not people coming 1:51:49.840 --> 1:51:52.840 here from fucking Honduras, like it's people like you who 1:51:52.920 --> 1:51:54.519 need to be reigned in by the government. And he 1:51:54.600 --> 1:51:58.000 just wasn't willing to commit to the answer that he 1:51:58.160 --> 1:52:00.000 clearly had in his post. 1:52:00.360 --> 1:52:02.760 No, he just never went on the attack. And it's 1:52:02.800 --> 1:52:05.760 just odd because he kept he was probably coached on this, 1:52:05.840 --> 1:52:08.040 but like I think it's coaching. He did not do 1:52:08.120 --> 1:52:10.400 any of the things that gave him this job in 1:52:10.439 --> 1:52:13.720 the first place. He didn't play to any of his strengths. Instead, 1:52:14.000 --> 1:52:17.400 Vance was able to play to Vance's own strengths, and 1:52:18.040 --> 1:52:21.919 Walls was able to just be a slightly less polished moderate, 1:52:22.240 --> 1:52:24.040 Which why are you trying to frame him as a 1:52:24.040 --> 1:52:26.679 slightly less polished moderate going up against a debate kid 1:52:26.760 --> 1:52:30.240 like Vance? Walls needs to be like on the attack. 1:52:30.280 --> 1:52:34.040 He actually needs to show like a strong resistance in 1:52:34.120 --> 1:52:36.240 order to actually like make a large impact in the debate. 1:52:36.240 --> 1:52:38.240 And that's why I think this kind of largely swung 1:52:38.320 --> 1:52:40.599 towards Vance. Yes by the end, if they're both trying, 1:52:40.640 --> 1:52:43.679 if they're trying to court this same like moderate vote. Now, 1:52:43.880 --> 1:52:47.040 as always, the immigration section of these is always frustrating. 1:52:47.560 --> 1:52:50.120 No one talks about how fentanyl is largely brought in 1:52:50.439 --> 1:52:53.000 via citizens. No one feels the need to bring that up. 1:52:53.880 --> 1:52:56.880 CBS did have a little fact check, or not a 1:52:56.920 --> 1:52:59.120 fact check necessarily, but like a little comment talking about 1:52:59.160 --> 1:53:04.000 how the majority of Americans pulled are in favor of deportations. 1:53:04.240 --> 1:53:08.600 But they specifically asked Vance, like, how is your military 1:53:08.640 --> 1:53:11.519 deportation plan going to work? And willly separate like children 1:53:11.520 --> 1:53:13.920 that are born in the United States from illegal immigrants, 1:53:14.240 --> 1:53:17.400 and Vance just refused to answer that question repeatedly to 1:53:17.479 --> 1:53:20.000 try to get him to answer multiple times, he continually 1:53:20.040 --> 1:53:23.400 refused it, instead saying that, like Kamlass, border policy is 1:53:23.439 --> 1:53:26.000 already a child separation policy. 1:53:27.320 --> 1:53:27.559 Yeah. 1:53:27.880 --> 1:53:29.920 There was a great moment there where he got angry 1:53:29.920 --> 1:53:33.000 at them for fact checking, fact checking specifically on. 1:53:33.080 --> 1:53:35.840 His close but illegal immigrants in Springfield. 1:53:36.240 --> 1:53:39.479 Yeah, yeah, because those migrants in fact had legal status. 1:53:39.840 --> 1:53:41.519 And he was like, you guys said you weren't going 1:53:41.560 --> 1:53:42.120 to fact check. 1:53:42.160 --> 1:53:44.960 No, no, no, he didn't say, he shouted, yeah. 1:53:44.760 --> 1:53:47.559 He yelled the rules were that you were not going 1:53:47.640 --> 1:53:51.679 to fact check that. He just explained how immigration like works, 1:53:51.720 --> 1:53:52.960 how legal immigration works. 1:53:53.000 --> 1:53:55.720 They were like, thank you for explaining how immigration were 1:53:55.920 --> 1:53:56.280 thank you. 1:53:56.200 --> 1:53:59.040 For explaining the legal process of immigration. This has been 1:53:59.080 --> 1:54:01.400 one thing that it has been doing on the campaign trails, 1:54:01.439 --> 1:54:03.679 just explaining the legal process of immigration and just saying 1:54:04.040 --> 1:54:06.920 I'm still going to call this illegal because I wanted 1:54:07.000 --> 1:54:09.760 to be illegal, And you're like, okay, you can't, Like 1:54:10.560 --> 1:54:12.360 I guess, I guess we could just use words to 1:54:12.800 --> 1:54:13.719 read whatever we want. 1:54:13.960 --> 1:54:14.800 Sure, why not? 1:54:15.800 --> 1:54:20.160 Yeah, if this comes out in the public opinion being 1:54:20.160 --> 1:54:23.040 in Walls's favor, it'll be because of those moments that 1:54:23.080 --> 1:54:25.439 one at the end, in those moments where Vance was 1:54:25.479 --> 1:54:29.920 like yelling and they cut out his mic at one point. Yeah, 1:54:29.960 --> 1:54:32.600 like that kind of stuff. I don't think. 1:54:32.840 --> 1:54:34.560 I don't know. Again, I don't think. 1:54:34.440 --> 1:54:36.880 Anyone's going to really listen to this be debate enough 1:54:36.880 --> 1:54:39.640 for there to be it to make much of an impact. 1:54:39.680 --> 1:54:41.960 But those were not great moments for him. 1:54:42.120 --> 1:54:44.200 Yeah, but those are the kind of things that get 1:54:44.200 --> 1:54:47.520 clipped out and spread across the internet. Yeah, so we'll see, 1:54:47.880 --> 1:54:50.680 and so the people that didn't watch the entire thing, 1:54:50.840 --> 1:54:53.240 well some of them will see clips like that. 1:54:53.440 --> 1:54:53.680 Yeah. 1:54:53.720 --> 1:54:57.400 I think the immigration section certainly showed kind of Walls 1:54:57.400 --> 1:55:00.440 in his stronger moments, talking about how the past year 1:55:00.440 --> 1:55:03.600 we've actually seen a decrease in opia deaths. He continued 1:55:03.640 --> 1:55:06.080 to talk about how Trump killed the bipartisan, a conservative 1:55:06.080 --> 1:55:08.920 immigration bill, which we're probably not fans of, but he's 1:55:08.960 --> 1:55:12.560 trying to make it play well electorally, and then pivoted 1:55:12.560 --> 1:55:15.800 to Springfield and said how like the Republican mayor came 1:55:15.840 --> 1:55:17.280 out and said none of this stuff was true, but 1:55:17.320 --> 1:55:20.200 Trump and Vance kept viewing it. State law enforcement had 1:55:20.200 --> 1:55:23.400 to escort kids to school. But even in this like 1:55:23.440 --> 1:55:26.480 Springfield section, which Walls was the first one to bring up, 1:55:26.880 --> 1:55:30.240 Vance was the big driver of this lie. But even 1:55:30.280 --> 1:55:33.520 in Walls's mention of this, he tried to separate Vance 1:55:33.520 --> 1:55:36.800 from Trump. He primarily blamed Trump for this and totally 1:55:36.880 --> 1:55:41.120 just like ignored Vance's massive contribution to this like big 1:55:41.160 --> 1:55:44.600 misinformation campaign that led to these bomb threats. He just 1:55:44.720 --> 1:55:47.080 let Vance get off easy. And I think this part 1:55:47.160 --> 1:55:49.560 was saved. Kind of buy this little fact check and 1:55:49.640 --> 1:55:54.200 Vance's little meltdown over this legal immigration comment. But still 1:55:54.680 --> 1:55:57.240 it kind of showed a little bit of Even in 1:55:57.280 --> 1:56:00.880 Walls's stronger moments, he refused to like really harp on 1:56:01.000 --> 1:56:02.360 Vance for being weird. 1:56:02.920 --> 1:56:06.960 Yeah, speaking of people who watched the debate, I don't 1:56:06.960 --> 1:56:16.160 think our sponsors did because they have real jobs. 1:56:20.640 --> 1:56:22.800 Hello, we are back now. 1:56:23.000 --> 1:56:25.480 One of the biggest issues for me in this campaign 1:56:25.840 --> 1:56:30.280 is how much time exactly did Walls spend in Hong Kong. 1:56:30.400 --> 1:56:33.960 This is literally one of the primary issues impacting my vote. 1:56:34.200 --> 1:56:36.600 There were one hundred and fifty thousand people in the 1:56:36.680 --> 1:56:40.600 streets in New York City today demanding to know whether 1:56:40.720 --> 1:56:44.480 or not Tim Walls was really in China during the 1:56:44.520 --> 1:56:46.200 Taneman Square uprisings. 1:56:46.240 --> 1:56:49.560 You know, thankfully CBS News is on the case. 1:56:50.120 --> 1:56:54.800 Yes, we didn't have a second for Ukraine, not one second. 1:56:55.520 --> 1:56:58.520 There was at no point any questions asked about the 1:56:58.560 --> 1:57:01.000 loss of life due to the had a side in Gaza, 1:57:01.080 --> 1:57:01.480 not one. 1:57:01.960 --> 1:57:05.400 But by god, this this was really goofy. 1:57:05.480 --> 1:57:08.080 Basically, they asked Walls with this comment he made in 1:57:08.080 --> 1:57:11.000 twenty fourteen about being in Hong Kong during the Taneman 1:57:11.040 --> 1:57:14.640 Square massacre, when kind of reporting shows that he only 1:57:14.760 --> 1:57:17.560 arrived in August basically like two or three months later. 1:57:17.880 --> 1:57:21.560 And I don't know if either Walls just misunderstood the 1:57:21.680 --> 1:57:25.400 question or purposely avoided it. But instead of talking with this, 1:57:25.600 --> 1:57:28.920 he summarized his entire career, both as a school teacher 1:57:28.960 --> 1:57:33.400 and in politics, and then emphasized that although he spent 1:57:33.520 --> 1:57:37.360 time in China, he is loyal to the United States. 1:57:37.800 --> 1:57:40.200 And it was just really odd and like you can 1:57:40.240 --> 1:57:44.360 even see events like slowly like smirking the longer. Walls 1:57:44.480 --> 1:57:47.520 just kept going on about his career, and at the 1:57:47.640 --> 1:57:51.520 end of his like weird like non answer about his 1:57:51.520 --> 1:57:55.200 commitment to the United States, the moderators asked again, They're like, well, 1:57:55.520 --> 1:57:57.880 were you there for the massacre, and then he very 1:57:58.080 --> 1:58:00.800 quickly clarified. I was like, uh, I mean, yeah, I 1:58:00.880 --> 1:58:04.120 might have. I might have misspoke. I don't understand why 1:58:04.160 --> 1:58:06.480 you wouldn't just very clearly say yeah, I misspoke. I 1:58:06.560 --> 1:58:09.320 was there for the aftermath of the massacre. I was 1:58:09.360 --> 1:58:10.720 there during the uprising. 1:58:10.840 --> 1:58:14.040 More I got misquoted. I was there the year of 1:58:14.080 --> 1:58:14.880 the uprising. 1:58:15.040 --> 1:58:17.240 Yeah, he was there during some of the uprising, but 1:58:17.280 --> 1:58:19.800 he was but he arrived in the aftermath of the massacre. 1:58:20.040 --> 1:58:21.360 I don't know why I can just say, yes, I 1:58:21.440 --> 1:58:24.520 arrived the aftermath of the massacre. I misspoke ten years ago. 1:58:24.960 --> 1:58:28.120 Like it's very simple. Your weird, long, two minute avoided 1:58:28.160 --> 1:58:32.440 answer just makes you, like look like weak and unnecessarily slimy. 1:58:32.720 --> 1:58:33.760 It doesn't make any sense. 1:58:33.880 --> 1:58:37.560 It just is weird because of course were gonna ask 1:58:37.600 --> 1:58:40.640 that question. Why why did you not have a prepared answer? 1:58:40.960 --> 1:58:43.880 I mean, this only became a new story today like this, this, 1:58:43.880 --> 1:58:46.120 this only became a new story like like a few 1:58:46.120 --> 1:58:46.720 hours ago. 1:58:47.080 --> 1:58:50.680 Still have some kind of a prepared generic answer. 1:58:50.960 --> 1:58:51.960 I'm sure he did. 1:58:52.240 --> 1:58:54.360 My guess is that if I was debate prepping him, 1:58:54.360 --> 1:58:56.400 I would have assumed they were going to ask one 1:58:56.440 --> 1:58:58.800 of the questions about his service based on all of 1:58:58.800 --> 1:59:01.360 like the different sort of like totally right wing shit 1:59:01.400 --> 1:59:04.480 coming out. Everything about his performance was the result of 1:59:04.520 --> 1:59:08.760 a guy who was over prepared and prepared by people 1:59:08.800 --> 1:59:11.800 whose focus was on him not upsetting the apple cart 1:59:11.840 --> 1:59:14.400 and embarrassing the campaign, not on him winning. That is 1:59:14.480 --> 1:59:17.280 how he was coached, and he was well prepared. As 1:59:17.320 --> 1:59:19.400 a general rule for the most part. 1:59:19.600 --> 1:59:20.080 When JD. 1:59:20.240 --> 1:59:23.320 Vance would like make a claim about Fitanel, he had 1:59:23.360 --> 1:59:26.000 a counter fact right that he could bring up, and 1:59:26.040 --> 1:59:29.680 he did that reasonably well. He seemed confident about the 1:59:29.720 --> 1:59:32.920 information he clearly put in the work, but none of 1:59:32.960 --> 1:59:36.080 what he was prepared for was hurting Vance. He was 1:59:36.200 --> 1:59:41.040 entirely prepared to not make an easy fuck up, which 1:59:41.160 --> 1:59:43.240 maybe is the smart move if you're just like, we 1:59:43.360 --> 1:59:46.320 just don't want this to upset anything, because there's no 1:59:46.360 --> 1:59:49.680 way it'll help. Like, my guess is that he was 1:59:49.760 --> 1:59:53.400 told going into this by his handlers, this debate is 1:59:53.440 --> 1:59:55.520 not going to win us the election, but it could 1:59:55.560 --> 1:59:57.400 lose us the election. So what we need to make 1:59:57.440 --> 2:00:00.480 sure happens is that you don't fuck anything up or 2:00:00.560 --> 2:00:03.840 seem too mean or seem too weird. Yourself, so we 2:00:03.920 --> 2:00:07.600 are going to like train you to be as boring 2:00:07.640 --> 2:00:09.280 as possible, and they did. 2:00:09.120 --> 2:00:11.880 That, and like, as a follow up, Vance was asked 2:00:11.920 --> 2:00:15.720 about his previous like anti Trump like Hitler comments and 2:00:15.760 --> 2:00:17.920 specifically was asked, like if he can be trusted to 2:00:18.000 --> 2:00:20.720 actually like give Trump good honest advice and not just 2:00:20.760 --> 2:00:23.680 to say whatever he thinks Trump wants to hear, which 2:00:23.760 --> 2:00:27.120 Vance gave us similarly avoidant answer and just talked about tariffs. 2:00:27.400 --> 2:00:28.640 And then the moderators did not. 2:00:28.760 --> 2:00:31.960 Follow up with Vance no about his avoided answers, So 2:00:32.240 --> 2:00:34.879 there you go. The abortion segment is basically a rehash 2:00:34.880 --> 2:00:37.440 of what happened in the in the Kamala Trump debate, 2:00:37.920 --> 2:00:41.280 with like Vance talking about a villain Minnesota who that 2:00:41.360 --> 2:00:43.760 he claimed like leads to the death of of like 2:00:43.880 --> 2:00:47.640 babies who were aborted like after birth or like some 2:00:47.640 --> 2:00:50.800 some some kind of odd thing that just isn't true. Yeah, 2:00:50.960 --> 2:00:54.200 that was That was pretty silly. This was one of 2:00:54.240 --> 2:00:56.760 the issues where he was weakest, and I think we 2:00:56.760 --> 2:00:59.600 were als maybe slightly upset that that Walls again was 2:00:59.760 --> 2:01:02.840 kind of was kind of hands off on this. Historically, 2:01:02.960 --> 2:01:05.440 Vance has made some a lot of crazy comments on 2:01:05.480 --> 2:01:09.920 podcasts about this topic, and neither the moderators nor Walls 2:01:09.960 --> 2:01:12.920 really pressed him super hard on it, and Advanced himself 2:01:13.000 --> 2:01:15.200 tried to largely be on the attack with this like 2:01:15.400 --> 2:01:19.320 late term abortion, killing babies after birth thing that Walls 2:01:19.360 --> 2:01:21.040 just tried to easily kind of brush aside. 2:01:20.760 --> 2:01:22.400 As just not being true. 2:01:22.840 --> 2:01:26.720 Speaking of healthcare, Vance oddly tried to claim that Trump 2:01:26.880 --> 2:01:30.240 like saved Obamacare. At this point in the debate, things 2:01:30.320 --> 2:01:33.120 just kind of started getting a little bit boring. I 2:01:33.120 --> 2:01:35.960 don't think this debate had as many like good questions 2:01:36.000 --> 2:01:38.720 as the last one. It was a very like twenty 2:01:38.800 --> 2:01:40.040 twelve style debate. 2:01:40.160 --> 2:01:41.480 It just flat. 2:01:41.640 --> 2:01:44.080 It was flat, It didn't feel kind of like present. 2:01:44.480 --> 2:01:48.760 So they talked about Obamacare, how Trump saved Obamacare, and 2:01:48.880 --> 2:01:51.600 Walls talking about how Trump hurt Obamacare. Just kind of 2:01:51.640 --> 2:01:54.520 boring back and forth, and then finally the last question 2:01:54.680 --> 2:01:57.640 was about like democracy in January sixth, election denial, that 2:01:57.720 --> 2:02:00.560 kind of stuff, and Vance opened by set like, we 2:02:00.640 --> 2:02:04.720 have other issues to solve beyond election denial. He said 2:02:04.720 --> 2:02:07.280 that we should we should have like open debate about 2:02:07.360 --> 2:02:10.720 the issues of the twenty twenty election. He then downplayed 2:02:10.760 --> 2:02:14.640 January sixth and emphasized instead the bigger threat to democracy 2:02:15.040 --> 2:02:20.680 was Facebook censorship and how people are like ending friendships 2:02:20.720 --> 2:02:25.840 over political disagreements, and this was bizarre. I think this 2:02:26.000 --> 2:02:28.720 was Wall's strongest moment. He talked about how there was 2:02:28.840 --> 2:02:31.800 one hundred and forty police officers assaulted on January sixth, 2:02:32.280 --> 2:02:35.520 some who later died. He mentioned this other story about 2:02:35.520 --> 2:02:38.120 how like on January sixth, there were similar protests in 2:02:38.120 --> 2:02:40.360 a whole bunch of different states, and he mentioned one 2:02:40.360 --> 2:02:43.040 in Minnesota where people threatened to march to his home 2:02:43.480 --> 2:02:45.480 and his kid and his dog needed to be like 2:02:45.600 --> 2:02:48.880 escorted out by police because people were like threatening to 2:02:48.920 --> 2:02:51.040 go to his home saying that there might be casualties. 2:02:51.080 --> 2:02:52.560 I thought that was maybe that was That was a 2:02:52.560 --> 2:02:55.600 pretty good moment. Four Walls brought up how people in 2:02:55.680 --> 2:02:58.920 January sixth tried to kill Mike Pence, which everyone seems 2:02:58.920 --> 2:02:59.360 to forget. 2:03:00.480 --> 2:03:02.120 It's not talked about enough. 2:03:02.560 --> 2:03:05.640 I mean, yeah, look, that's one of those things where 2:03:05.680 --> 2:03:08.040 like my issues, so there are political, not about the 2:03:08.080 --> 2:03:09.200 specific add yes. 2:03:09.160 --> 2:03:11.320 Yes, yeah. 2:03:11.520 --> 2:03:13.600 Vance tried to be like, hey, you know, everyone does 2:03:13.600 --> 2:03:17.040 a little election denial. In twenty sixteen, there was Russia Gate, 2:03:17.560 --> 2:03:20.000 and I think Walls did a pretty good follow up 2:03:20.280 --> 2:03:24.320 by saying, like January sixth wasn't about Facebook ads, It 2:03:24.400 --> 2:03:27.160 wasn't like that wasn't the problem. The problem was the 2:03:27.160 --> 2:03:29.920 people storming the capital trying to kill everyone inside, like 2:03:29.960 --> 2:03:32.800 that was the real issue. And real censorship is stuff 2:03:32.840 --> 2:03:34.840 like book banning. First time we had a mention of 2:03:34.840 --> 2:03:37.000 any of that. But even in this section about Jay 2:03:37.040 --> 2:03:40.120 six he still like thanked Vance for having this conversation 2:03:40.200 --> 2:03:43.560 and then asked him if Trump lost the election, which 2:03:43.920 --> 2:03:49.920 Vance just avoided avoided answering, instead asking Walls, did convalesce 2:03:50.040 --> 2:03:53.920 censor Americans on Facebook? Which is just great. Yeah, it's 2:03:54.040 --> 2:03:56.080 a great, equally important problem. 2:03:56.320 --> 2:03:59.920 Yeah, these two issues, And unfortunately Walls's initial response was 2:04:00.200 --> 2:04:04.480 like I don't run Facebook, which just say he's lying, Like, 2:04:05.920 --> 2:04:09.120 just call him a liar to him, Yeah, he's a liar. 2:04:09.560 --> 2:04:12.800 It's wild that like we're talking about like January sixth, 2:04:13.120 --> 2:04:16.400 and Advance's biggest concern is people being banned on Facebook, Like, 2:04:16.560 --> 2:04:18.320 I think that's not going to play well for him. 2:04:18.560 --> 2:04:19.560 It's not going to play well. 2:04:19.600 --> 2:04:22.520 But also, yeah, it was just a missed opportunity. There 2:04:22.520 --> 2:04:23.160 were a lot of those. 2:04:23.720 --> 2:04:25.880 The entire debate was a missed opportunity. 2:04:25.920 --> 2:04:29.840 RT yeah, and like Walls is I think slight fumble here. 2:04:29.960 --> 2:04:32.120 You can point to his like closing statements saying like, 2:04:32.360 --> 2:04:35.040 I'm surprised that we have this coalition from like Bernie 2:04:35.120 --> 2:04:38.320 Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift. You're like, yeah, 2:04:38.320 --> 2:04:40.920 that is that is a little surprising. Maybe that's the 2:04:40.960 --> 2:04:41.760 bit of the problem. 2:04:41.920 --> 2:04:44.000 Oh, that was a nightmare line for me. 2:04:44.280 --> 2:04:48.640 Of all the names to drop Dick Cheney. 2:04:48.360 --> 2:04:51.040 Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift hand in hands. 2:04:50.840 --> 2:04:53.480 Well, because like even among moderates, do you think Dick 2:04:53.600 --> 2:04:54.640 Cheney's popular? 2:04:54.840 --> 2:04:57.400 That was That was my last straw. I was like, 2:04:57.480 --> 2:05:01.000 who who prepped him? Who who did his debate prep? 2:05:01.040 --> 2:05:02.320 Who agreed that statement? 2:05:02.440 --> 2:05:05.840 Someone who really likes fucking Dick Cheney? Was it Carl Rove? 2:05:05.920 --> 2:05:06.960 Did they get Carl Rove? 2:05:07.000 --> 2:05:08.200 Again? God damn? It? 2:05:08.280 --> 2:05:10.400 Was Hillary involved with this debate prep? 2:05:10.440 --> 2:05:12.360 Like? Shoot, like, I know the Clinton's were involved with 2:05:12.360 --> 2:05:14.520 with Kalmwall's debate prep. Were they involved with with Tim 2:05:14.520 --> 2:05:15.440 Wallas's debate prep? 2:05:15.520 --> 2:05:15.760 Yeah? 2:05:15.960 --> 2:05:18.120 I'm not sure, But I think this kind of underlines 2:05:18.520 --> 2:05:20.000 I know this is kind of a larger issue with 2:05:20.040 --> 2:05:22.360 like the Democratic Party in the year twenty twenty four, 2:05:22.760 --> 2:05:24.960 but I think this also underlines, like my issue with 2:05:25.040 --> 2:05:29.040 Walls's performance here is, like this debate, both candidates were 2:05:29.080 --> 2:05:32.000 going after the Dick Cheney voter. They were going after 2:05:32.120 --> 2:05:34.879 like neo Khns and independence. 2:05:34.640 --> 2:05:38.480 The literal devil, yes and like for that base. 2:05:38.680 --> 2:05:42.000 I think Vance does appeal to them more in this debate. 2:05:42.040 --> 2:05:43.880 I think Vance did a better job appealing to those 2:05:43.880 --> 2:05:46.320 people in this debate, which left Walls coming off is 2:05:46.400 --> 2:05:49.600 just slightly worse and not really giving him any like 2:05:49.680 --> 2:05:53.200 standout like performances. I think if if Walls actually like 2:05:53.280 --> 2:05:56.120 emphasized all the reasons that Vance is a freak and 2:05:56.240 --> 2:05:58.400 is bad, I think that may have showed him to 2:05:58.400 --> 2:06:00.360 be more of a unique candidate. In stead dead they 2:06:00.360 --> 2:06:02.480 both came off as just kind of boring moderates, which 2:06:02.520 --> 2:06:04.520 just doesn't make sense because that's like the opposite reason 2:06:04.760 --> 2:06:06.839 that both of these men were picked for their chops. 2:06:07.120 --> 2:06:09.600 They were both picked to represent this slightly more extreme 2:06:09.600 --> 2:06:11.760 wing of the party, with Walls being a bit more 2:06:11.800 --> 2:06:14.760 progressive and Vance being a bit more fascist. Now it 2:06:14.800 --> 2:06:17.720 makes sense that Vance is going to go after the moderates. 2:06:17.800 --> 2:06:21.120 I just don't think Walls needed to agree. That's kind 2:06:21.120 --> 2:06:23.920 of all my all my thoughts on this riveting to 2:06:24.040 --> 2:06:24.920 our debate. 2:06:24.920 --> 2:06:25.920 I have to say me too. 2:06:26.000 --> 2:06:29.960 Man, Well, we've got a flash poll from CBS News 2:06:30.040 --> 2:06:32.960 forty two percent for Vance, forty one percent for Walls 2:06:33.160 --> 2:06:34.640 sixteen percent set a tie. 2:06:34.920 --> 2:06:38.040 Great, Yeah, that was the general. That was the general. 2:06:38.480 --> 2:06:39.560 That was the general vibe. 2:06:39.720 --> 2:06:43.520 Yep, Fox Fox News was Walls was good enough. Vance 2:06:43.560 --> 2:06:44.440 did just fine. 2:06:45.160 --> 2:06:51.480 No moderator's obnoxious, moderators smug an arrogant bias, but that's 2:06:51.520 --> 2:06:52.360 just typical. 2:06:52.640 --> 2:06:55.520 I think the moderators were fine. I think overall it 2:06:55.560 --> 2:06:58.160 wasn't a very well laid out debate. I think the 2:06:58.240 --> 2:07:01.480 fact that Vans was able to to be humanized with 2:07:01.520 --> 2:07:05.320 the assistance of Walls makes Vance kind of the winner 2:07:05.400 --> 2:07:07.480 in the way that like this did more to benefit 2:07:07.520 --> 2:07:10.240 Advance than it did to benefit Walls. And the fact 2:07:10.280 --> 2:07:13.640 that Walls kind of acted counterintuitively to his whole line 2:07:13.680 --> 2:07:16.680 of messaging from the past year is a fundamental mistake 2:07:17.000 --> 2:07:20.360 that I think. I hope that Democrats would like reevaluate 2:07:20.560 --> 2:07:23.120 going forward, but they're the Democrats, So. 2:07:24.000 --> 2:07:27.600 Just interesting, interesting take that I've seen online, and also 2:07:27.640 --> 2:07:31.400 a take for my Midwest moderate Democrat mother is she 2:07:31.480 --> 2:07:34.280 said to me, just remember Tim is from the Midwest. 2:07:34.360 --> 2:07:38.360 In Minnesota is the most Midwest there is. It is 2:07:38.400 --> 2:07:41.320 not it is nature to be anything but polite. Not 2:07:41.440 --> 2:07:44.000 what we're used to seeing in a debate, but it 2:07:44.040 --> 2:07:45.320 was a little refreshing. 2:07:45.560 --> 2:07:48.880 So okay, So I'm just. 2:07:48.920 --> 2:07:51.760 Saying, yeah, if you went into this already liking Walls, 2:07:51.800 --> 2:07:53.240 this won't make you dislike Walls. 2:07:53.200 --> 2:07:54.960 I'm already My mom definitely already liked. 2:07:54.960 --> 2:07:56.520 Right like and like. That's why I think this is 2:07:56.560 --> 2:07:59.520 largely just largely inconsequential. Even a vance got a little 2:07:59.520 --> 2:08:02.440 bit of a like up, it is largely inconsequential. 2:08:02.640 --> 2:08:04.160 Do you know who the winner of the debate was? 2:08:04.440 --> 2:08:07.680 Minnesota sounds like a great place to live, got great 2:08:07.720 --> 2:08:08.560 pr tonight. 2:08:08.760 --> 2:08:12.640 I guess so Walls was clearly doing the best here 2:08:12.760 --> 2:08:15.720 when he was like just talking about how nice Minnesota is. 2:08:16.200 --> 2:08:18.720 It's great here, and Tim, we. 2:08:18.680 --> 2:08:20.480 All know what the winters are like there. You're not 2:08:20.480 --> 2:08:25.360 fool You're not fooling anybody, Like, come on, sir. That said, 2:08:25.400 --> 2:08:27.760 if you live in the Portland area or really anywhere 2:08:27.800 --> 2:08:31.560 in southern California, move to Minnesota. Just get on out 2:08:31.600 --> 2:08:33.840 of here. You'll love it. You're gonna have a great time. 2:08:34.080 --> 2:08:37.200 Everyone in Minnesota is gonna love you. People love Californians 2:08:37.240 --> 2:08:40.800 when they move other places, it goes well. It's always happy, 2:08:40.960 --> 2:08:43.560 always always a good time. So if I had any 2:08:43.720 --> 2:08:46.720 advice to end on, it's people who are currently in 2:08:46.760 --> 2:08:50.280 Los Angeles move to Minnesota. You will be beloved. People 2:08:50.280 --> 2:08:52.200 will want to listen to your policy ideas. 2:08:52.600 --> 2:09:14.440 It'll be great. Hello and welcome. Pick it happened here 2:09:14.480 --> 2:09:16.040 the podcast where I take. 2:09:15.920 --> 2:09:17.960 An entire clidvine, put it in my mouth at once, 2:09:18.080 --> 2:09:20.040 and then try not to suffocate. 2:09:21.600 --> 2:09:23.440 That's that's what's already happened. You missed that. 2:09:23.880 --> 2:09:26.640 Maybe if you were a subscriber to Cooler Zone Media 2:09:27.160 --> 2:09:28.879 you would have been you wouldn't. 2:09:29.080 --> 2:09:32.280 I'm sorry, I'm not doing that, not doing them with FCC. 2:09:32.440 --> 2:09:35.160 Note, Cooler Zone Media will not provide you access to 2:09:35.160 --> 2:09:37.800 footage the games Choking Client far. 2:09:38.920 --> 2:09:42.720 Yeah, that's only in a premium package. But we're not 2:09:42.800 --> 2:09:45.600 here today to talk about snacks. Sadly, that will be 2:09:45.720 --> 2:09:48.080 another podcast. We are here today to talk about my 2:09:48.240 --> 2:09:52.320 recent trip to the daddy En Gap in Panama. So 2:09:52.360 --> 2:09:55.400 I guess to start off with we should probably explain, 2:09:55.720 --> 2:09:57.240 like do you think me or I need to explain 2:09:57.280 --> 2:09:58.480 like where it is and what. 2:09:58.760 --> 2:10:03.200 Look I would the school with a kid who actually 2:10:03.840 --> 2:10:07.480 this happened multiple times more. No, I'm thinking back on it, 2:10:07.640 --> 2:10:10.560 like people who thought that the Arabian Peninsula was in Mexico. 2:10:10.960 --> 2:10:14.280 So like we in fact need to explain this. 2:10:16.000 --> 2:10:21.160 Yeah wow, yeah, okay, I'm just imagining that what a color? 2:10:21.280 --> 2:10:22.760 So how got it mixed up with mixed up with 2:10:22.760 --> 2:10:27.760 the Yucatan. It was really sort of wow, incredible stuff 2:10:27.800 --> 2:10:29.680 happening in my schools. 2:10:31.000 --> 2:10:32.800 Yeah, fascinating. 2:10:33.000 --> 2:10:35.560 Yeah, okay, So for those of you who are not familiar, 2:10:35.920 --> 2:10:39.240 the Dadian Gap is an area between Colombia and Panama 2:10:39.680 --> 2:10:44.200 that has historically, like I've seen a lot of characterizations 2:10:44.200 --> 2:10:46.880 of this which I think erased the existence to indigenous people, 2:10:46.920 --> 2:10:50.800 which shouldn't be shocking given the corporate media, right, But yeah, 2:10:51.000 --> 2:10:54.400 people have lived in this area for thousands of years. 2:10:54.680 --> 2:10:57.160 They have happy and fulfilled lives. 2:10:57.200 --> 2:10:57.600 They thrive. 2:10:57.640 --> 2:11:00.480 There is no desolate place. It's just a place that 2:11:00.480 --> 2:11:03.760 hasn't made itself amenable to capitalism. Really, it's a place 2:11:04.040 --> 2:11:07.520 between Colombia and Panama where there are no roads, there 2:11:07.520 --> 2:11:11.320 are not navigable rivers. It is extremely mountainous. It's one 2:11:11.320 --> 2:11:14.240 of the most humid places on Earth. It is covered 2:11:14.320 --> 2:11:19.160 in incredibly dense jungle. There are fast flowing rivers which 2:11:19.200 --> 2:11:22.280 you have to cross as you travel there. And for 2:11:22.520 --> 2:11:25.160 about half a million migrants last year, it was the 2:11:25.160 --> 2:11:27.640 only way that they could come from South America to 2:11:27.720 --> 2:11:31.360 Central America and they continue their journey on to North America. 2:11:31.880 --> 2:11:34.760 From a minder saying like, this isn't just people like 2:11:35.160 --> 2:11:38.120 from South America, Like, there's a bunch of other people 2:11:38.120 --> 2:11:40.520 who come into South America because it's easier to get 2:11:40.520 --> 2:11:42.160 in who are taking this route too. 2:11:43.040 --> 2:11:43.880 Yeah, that's right. 2:11:43.960 --> 2:11:47.480 So for most people who are coming to want to 2:11:47.520 --> 2:11:50.000 come to the United States, they can't fly directly the 2:11:50.080 --> 2:11:52.280 United States, right, it's quite rare to get their asylum 2:11:52.320 --> 2:11:55.520 that way, very rare. And there's a HNV Cuba, Haiti, 2:11:55.600 --> 2:11:59.360 nicaragu Venezuela program which in theory allows that it's backed 2:11:59.440 --> 2:12:03.520 up for like two years. So most people will fly 2:12:03.800 --> 2:12:06.400 to a country in South America. The most regular one 2:12:06.440 --> 2:12:09.480 is Brazil because Brazil doesn't impose visas on countries that 2:12:09.560 --> 2:12:12.560 don't impose visas on it, and then from there they 2:12:12.600 --> 2:12:16.680 begin making their way north. Geography understanders will realize that 2:12:16.720 --> 2:12:18.880 Brazil is a very long way from the United States. 2:12:19.000 --> 2:12:23.720 Yeah, that's very bad. Like that's that's not good. That's yeah, 2:12:23.760 --> 2:12:24.640 it's not good at all. 2:12:25.080 --> 2:12:27.680 Short of Argentina, you really, you really can't get that 2:12:27.760 --> 2:12:30.720 much further away, you know, in the continental southern America. 2:12:31.360 --> 2:12:34.880 So what people tend to do, especially so I spoke to, 2:12:35.720 --> 2:12:37.560 just off the top of my head, people from Nepal, 2:12:37.680 --> 2:12:42.800 people from India, people from Venezuela, people from Colombia, people 2:12:42.800 --> 2:12:48.280 from Angola, people from Cameroon, Togo, Iran. I spoke to 2:12:48.320 --> 2:12:51.280 a Kurdish guy that he was from Iran. I'm trying 2:12:51.320 --> 2:12:53.040 to think off the top of my head, that's most 2:12:53.040 --> 2:12:53.360 of them. 2:12:53.400 --> 2:12:57.280 Probably China, I know, there's I didn't speak to any 2:12:57.360 --> 2:13:00.480 Chinese migrants. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. 2:13:00.560 --> 2:13:03.160 I went fully prepared with like a machine to translate 2:13:03.200 --> 2:13:07.040 and everything, and I didn't see any Chinese migrants, which 2:13:07.080 --> 2:13:08.720 is quite surprising. 2:13:08.760 --> 2:13:10.680 Haitian people, of course, respectal Lo Haitian people. 2:13:11.240 --> 2:13:14.160 The Chinese were coming through the dairy and gap in 2:13:14.200 --> 2:13:16.800 big numbers last year. The only thing I heard about 2:13:17.000 --> 2:13:20.600 Chinese migrants was that someone had seen the remains of 2:13:20.640 --> 2:13:26.200 someone who they described as Chinese. Yeah, so if you're 2:13:26.200 --> 2:13:29.720 not familiar with the journey. It is the most dangerous 2:13:29.760 --> 2:13:33.040 part of the migration route in the Americas right, It's 2:13:33.080 --> 2:13:35.920 one of the most dangerous migration routes on Earth. People 2:13:36.080 --> 2:13:40.200 have to walk for between two days and a week. 2:13:40.360 --> 2:13:43.280 I've heard even fifteen days, but the accounts I had 2:13:43.360 --> 2:13:46.520 maxed out a week. There is nowhere to get water, 2:13:46.680 --> 2:13:49.440 there is nowhere to get food. You have to walk 2:13:49.520 --> 2:13:51.920 through mud that can come up to your waste. You 2:13:51.960 --> 2:13:54.520 have to cross rivers that are higher than you are tall. 2:13:55.920 --> 2:14:00.440 You have to climb boulders, shemier across cliff faces. The 2:14:00.480 --> 2:14:02.960 accounts I heard and the things I saw were pretty horrible, 2:14:03.080 --> 2:14:05.760 like and we've kind of had a fun introduction, but 2:14:06.920 --> 2:14:12.160 I would rather go back to the uncertainty I had 2:14:12.200 --> 2:14:14.840 of like being in Syria last year and knowing that 2:14:14.840 --> 2:14:18.400 there were bombs falling on people every night, then have 2:14:18.480 --> 2:14:21.920 to see some of that stuff again. It's horrific. Like 2:14:22.000 --> 2:14:25.680 I can't really. I'm obviously working on a scripted series 2:14:25.720 --> 2:14:28.440 and we'll have that out soon. But like, in terms 2:14:28.440 --> 2:14:31.480 of the things that we do to each other, a humans, 2:14:31.680 --> 2:14:35.280 like little children die in the dairying gap all the time. 2:14:36.280 --> 2:14:40.760 People carry their babies across rivers on their shoulders. People 2:14:40.800 --> 2:14:44.000 carry other people's babies when people are too tired from 2:14:44.040 --> 2:14:45.120 carrying their own children. 2:14:45.880 --> 2:14:48.160 And not everyone who enters sleeves. 2:14:48.400 --> 2:14:48.560 Right. 2:14:48.840 --> 2:14:51.360 It's if you drink the water from the river, you'll 2:14:51.360 --> 2:14:55.400 probably die because there are dead bodies and upstream, right, 2:14:55.480 --> 2:14:58.440 this human waste in that river. If you fall and 2:14:58.440 --> 2:15:01.880 break your leg, you'll die. If you run out of water, 2:15:02.880 --> 2:15:05.320 You're not really in a place where anyone has any 2:15:05.320 --> 2:15:06.560 spare water to give you. 2:15:07.200 --> 2:15:11.160 It's horrific. Every single account of the gap that I 2:15:11.240 --> 2:15:14.480 heard was that no one should do it, that it's 2:15:15.200 --> 2:15:18.360 it's terrible, that it's in human, it's like nothing people 2:15:18.400 --> 2:15:21.560 have ever seen. But people don't have a choice, right, 2:15:21.920 --> 2:15:25.600 it's the only way for people I spoke to, Probably 2:15:25.840 --> 2:15:28.640 I have over one hundred interviews recorded, you know, I 2:15:28.680 --> 2:15:31.240 spoke to more people than that. The bust bulk of 2:15:31.240 --> 2:15:33.800 them were from Venezuela and a place where I used 2:15:33.800 --> 2:15:39.200 to live, And like, I understand that they lots of 2:15:39.240 --> 2:15:41.360 them have children, Some of them are bringing their children, 2:15:41.400 --> 2:15:43.480 some of them are going ahead and trying to send money, right, 2:15:43.520 --> 2:15:45.200 remittances back to their children. Right. 2:15:45.880 --> 2:15:48.000 And everyone said the same thing, that there's no future 2:15:48.040 --> 2:15:50.640 for them in their country, that they don't see a 2:15:50.680 --> 2:15:55.240 way of succeeding, of raising their families, of having a 2:15:55.280 --> 2:15:59.560 future for themselves. There, I met a translady from Venezuela 2:15:59.600 --> 2:16:03.200 who is saying that there are legal things in place 2:16:03.240 --> 2:16:06.480 that won't allow her to have her gender affirmed by documents. Right, 2:16:06.480 --> 2:16:09.720 she wasn't able to graduate with her degree. 2:16:10.160 --> 2:16:11.000 Jesus Christ. 2:16:11.400 --> 2:16:16.480 Yeah, like things are just completely deliberately torpedo. 2:16:16.040 --> 2:16:18.640 Your life just being who you are as yourself. Right. 2:16:19.200 --> 2:16:25.120 People aren't doing this because they want this fictional housing 2:16:25.120 --> 2:16:27.840 assistance or whatever it is that Trump and jadivans. People 2:16:27.880 --> 2:16:30.600 are doing this because they don't see a future for themselves. 2:16:30.640 --> 2:16:34.240 I spoke to Iranian women right who had been on 2:16:34.280 --> 2:16:37.800 the road for nearly a year trying to avoid prosecution 2:16:38.000 --> 2:16:41.320 at home for having participated in protests for like basic 2:16:41.600 --> 2:16:47.360 human rights. It's just the things I heard and saw 2:16:48.000 --> 2:16:53.199 were deeply, deeply upsetting. And I think it's really important 2:16:53.240 --> 2:16:56.640 that we, I guess, kind of bear witness to this 2:16:56.760 --> 2:17:01.440 because it doesn't really get discussed when the US media 2:17:01.480 --> 2:17:04.680 talks about migration. Maybe, if we're lucky, they'll come to 2:17:04.720 --> 2:17:07.200 the southern border for a day, right, And do some 2:17:07.240 --> 2:17:10.880 impressionistic peace on it. But like, pretty often they talk 2:17:10.920 --> 2:17:13.480 about migrants, but they don't talk to them, and so, like, 2:17:13.720 --> 2:17:15.280 I think it's important that we talk to them, and 2:17:15.320 --> 2:17:16.959 I think it's important that we face up to the 2:17:17.000 --> 2:17:21.000 fact that, like, this is a choice that the people 2:17:21.440 --> 2:17:25.520 who have been elected in this country have made. They've 2:17:25.600 --> 2:17:29.320 decided that the only way, for instance, the only place 2:17:29.320 --> 2:17:32.160 to use CBP one right is in southern. 2:17:31.840 --> 2:17:34.000 Mexico or north of Mexico City. 2:17:34.440 --> 2:17:37.119 Can you explain what CVP one is for people who 2:17:37.160 --> 2:17:37.800 don't remember. 2:17:38.240 --> 2:17:41.040 Yeah, sorry, So CBP one is an app that allows 2:17:41.040 --> 2:17:45.879 people to apply for an interview for asylum. Just to 2:17:46.000 --> 2:17:49.080 sort of skip ahead, I guess people understand that they 2:17:49.080 --> 2:17:51.800 have to use CBP one, and they understand that they 2:17:51.800 --> 2:17:54.000 can only do it in Mexico. And the people who 2:17:54.040 --> 2:17:56.320 I met in the dai Enna are now in Mexico. 2:17:56.400 --> 2:17:56.520 Right. 2:17:56.520 --> 2:17:58.800 They take a series of buses north, not all of them, 2:17:58.959 --> 2:18:01.080 I'll explain why of them haven't been able to leave 2:18:01.120 --> 2:18:03.840 Panama yet. They take a series of buses north and 2:18:03.879 --> 2:18:06.200 they get to the Guatemala Mexico border and they cross 2:18:06.240 --> 2:18:09.160 in Tapatula and then they work out the CBP one 2:18:09.320 --> 2:18:13.000 is not compatible with the vast majority of cell phones. 2:18:13.640 --> 2:18:17.280 It doesn't work with older Android like Samsung phones. 2:18:17.400 --> 2:18:18.560 Oh my fucking god. 2:18:18.879 --> 2:18:25.240 Yeah, yeah, it works with iPhones. And I didn't see 2:18:25.240 --> 2:18:27.760 a thing or person with an iPhone. If you're wealthy, 2:18:28.800 --> 2:18:30.600 you can avoid the daily end, right. There are ways 2:18:30.640 --> 2:18:32.920 you can go around in a boat. There are ways 2:18:32.920 --> 2:18:34.680 that you can sort of take a shorter route. The 2:18:34.760 --> 2:18:38.560 route that I was on is the route that people 2:18:38.560 --> 2:18:40.880 who do not have the resources to avoid this dreadful 2:18:40.959 --> 2:18:44.000 journey take. And now they get to Mexico and they 2:18:44.040 --> 2:18:46.560 realize that, yeah, you have to get to Mexico to 2:18:46.560 --> 2:18:48.600 make the application right, and the way to get there 2:18:48.680 --> 2:18:50.520 is to cross the dairy end. And then when you 2:18:50.560 --> 2:18:52.959 get there, you realize that this thing requires you'd have 2:18:53.000 --> 2:18:54.920 a special telephone that you don't have. 2:18:55.879 --> 2:18:59.280 And it's just very bleak. It's a level of human evil, 2:18:59.520 --> 2:19:01.760 both in the sense of it has been actively designed 2:19:01.840 --> 2:19:03.680 like this and in this sense that they don't give 2:19:03.720 --> 2:19:06.520 a shit, like the fact that that fucking app doesn't 2:19:06.600 --> 2:19:08.800 work on androids, it doesn't work older androids, the fact 2:19:08.800 --> 2:19:13.640 that the app fucking sucks shit like the entire way. Yeah, 2:19:13.680 --> 2:19:15.959 like everything about this, Johnny, it's. 2:19:15.800 --> 2:19:23.360 Designed to be painful, to kill people, to strip away 2:19:23.600 --> 2:19:24.879 like the hope that people have. 2:19:25.120 --> 2:19:26.800 Yeah, and it's and it's designed to do this to 2:19:26.959 --> 2:19:31.280 like attempt to satiate the fucking insane bloodlust of like 2:19:31.520 --> 2:19:37.080 seven dipshits and fucking like rural southern Illinois. And it's like, Okay, 2:19:37.400 --> 2:19:40.120 there's literally nothing you can do to ever appease these people. 2:19:40.160 --> 2:19:42.280 The only the only thing that will ever appease them 2:19:42.440 --> 2:19:45.560 is their own death. Like, nothing you're ever going to 2:19:45.600 --> 2:19:49.039 do to these fucking immigrants is ever going to make 2:19:49.120 --> 2:19:52.120 these people like like you could, You could, fucking you 2:19:52.120 --> 2:19:53.760 could put these people in a country that has zero 2:19:53.760 --> 2:19:55.640 immigrants at all, and they would still scream about it. 2:19:55.640 --> 2:19:57.840 There's there's nothing you can fucking do. And people have 2:19:57.920 --> 2:20:01.959 decided that in order to basically people have decided in 2:20:02.000 --> 2:20:04.520 order to try to get like a one percent higher 2:20:04.600 --> 2:20:07.199 margin in an election, they're probably still going to lose. 2:20:07.320 --> 2:20:13.840 They're going to just fucking inflict inhuman suffering on unbelievably 2:20:13.879 --> 2:20:14.800 large numbers of people. 2:20:14.959 --> 2:20:19.400 Yeah, Like I think that's the thing I want people 2:20:19.440 --> 2:20:23.120 to really like grasp is like somebody has made a 2:20:23.160 --> 2:20:27.520 decision maybe we should take an ad break care advertising break. 2:20:38.800 --> 2:20:39.680 All right, we're back. 2:20:40.200 --> 2:20:42.480 So specifically, I want to talk about what the US 2:20:42.600 --> 2:20:44.840 is doing right now in Panama, what it started doing 2:20:44.840 --> 2:20:46.760 since July. Right, that's why I wanted to go when 2:20:46.760 --> 2:20:50.800 I did. Panama had to change the presidency in July. 2:20:50.959 --> 2:20:53.800 We have Molina as president now and he's promised to 2:20:53.840 --> 2:20:57.240 close the Darien. Right, if your source was his social media, 2:20:57.280 --> 2:20:59.240 then you would think it was closed. I saw about 2:20:59.240 --> 2:21:02.200 a thousand people day crossing. None of them had seen 2:21:02.200 --> 2:21:04.240 a barrier, none of them had seen the razor wire, 2:21:04.320 --> 2:21:07.320 but he's posted about they didn't know that it was 2:21:07.320 --> 2:21:10.200 this thing. What they did know was that the US 2:21:10.240 --> 2:21:13.280 had an election in November, and everybody wants to get 2:21:13.320 --> 2:21:16.240 here before that. Yeah, you know, I tried to explain that, 2:21:16.280 --> 2:21:19.120 like we actually don't transition power immediately right that that 2:21:19.160 --> 2:21:23.000 happens in January, but everybody is concerned to get here 2:21:23.040 --> 2:21:26.680 before the election. And what the US is doing in 2:21:26.720 --> 2:21:32.480 Panama is the US is currently funding deportations, and I 2:21:32.520 --> 2:21:37.280 like saw that happening firsthand. With this is this is 2:21:37.320 --> 2:21:39.320 honestly one of those things that just really fucks me up, 2:21:39.320 --> 2:21:42.560 and like I need to ye like I don't know 2:21:42.760 --> 2:21:45.840 it just I tried to record stuff at a time, 2:21:45.920 --> 2:21:47.879 and I just it's all just me saying this sucks, 2:21:47.879 --> 2:21:51.560 this is terrible. This like what it looks like is 2:21:51.560 --> 2:21:54.800 so you leave bab Jaqito, right, which is Barjiquito is 2:21:54.840 --> 2:21:58.840 an indigenous village. It's a village of the Ember people 2:21:59.040 --> 2:22:01.240 who will wonderful. There were nothing but kind to me. 2:22:02.560 --> 2:22:04.840 I stayed in their houses for a week and slept 2:22:04.920 --> 2:22:08.240 in my hammock in their house. I shared their food, 2:22:08.760 --> 2:22:12.760 held their little babies like they were incredible and client 2:22:12.800 --> 2:22:17.360 hosts and very grateful to them. From Baljaquito, which is 2:22:17.680 --> 2:22:22.240 this tiny village right. The population of Barjiqito triples every day. 2:22:22.440 --> 2:22:24.920 Five hundred people live there. A thousand people roll up 2:22:24.959 --> 2:22:29.360 every day and then they're transported in dugout canoes, like 2:22:29.400 --> 2:22:32.920 a tiny canoe that is carved out from the trunk 2:22:32.920 --> 2:22:35.480 of a tree. They're two stroke bolted on the bag. 2:22:36.200 --> 2:22:37.720 I think I posted a picture on Twitter. If not, 2:22:37.760 --> 2:22:40.119 I will do. The micros are taken upstream. They paid 2:22:40.120 --> 2:22:42.920 twenty five bucks each and they're taken five hours upstream. 2:22:43.240 --> 2:22:46.560 If they don't have the money, there's three canoes every 2:22:46.640 --> 2:22:49.520 day that are provided for free, and they generally try 2:22:49.560 --> 2:22:51.200 and make sure that all the women and children get 2:22:51.200 --> 2:22:52.160 in those canoes right. 2:22:52.760 --> 2:22:54.240 One of the things that them but I has done 2:22:54.360 --> 2:22:55.359 has made everyone. 2:22:55.080 --> 2:22:58.000 Wear life jackets just because a lot of these people 2:22:58.000 --> 2:22:58.480 can't swim. 2:22:58.520 --> 2:22:58.600 Right. 2:22:58.600 --> 2:23:00.000 They've been crossing rivers above their head. 2:23:00.520 --> 2:23:02.760 They told me that they made human chains, right, so 2:23:02.840 --> 2:23:06.199 everybody sort of locks their arms together because the rivers 2:23:06.320 --> 2:23:09.959 wash people away. They're transported from Bajuguesel to a place 2:23:10.000 --> 2:23:14.000 called Lajas Blancas, which is the first migrant reception center 2:23:14.000 --> 2:23:16.920 in Panama. So they're now leaving like they don't have 2:23:17.000 --> 2:23:21.160 reservations in Panama. But they're in the Embra Bunan comarca. 2:23:21.200 --> 2:23:23.240 And then when they get there, they're in the daddy 2:23:23.320 --> 2:23:26.520 En Comarcas. So they're in sort of outside of an 2:23:26.560 --> 2:23:30.880 almost entirely indigenous state of Panama and in like what 2:23:30.920 --> 2:23:33.879 you would consider like Panamanian government custody. 2:23:33.920 --> 2:23:36.800 I guess when they enter in Lahas Blancas, and. 2:23:36.720 --> 2:23:39.959 When they get there, they register, right, they show their passport, 2:23:40.000 --> 2:23:42.680 they do all that stuff, and that's where the UN 2:23:42.720 --> 2:23:45.360 has shelters with the Red Cross has a facility there. 2:23:45.440 --> 2:23:50.160 The Highs has of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society Global brigades, 2:23:50.200 --> 2:23:52.000 all these big NGOs that you're used to seeing in 2:23:52.040 --> 2:23:56.519 these places have facilities there. But to leave Las Blancas, 2:23:56.600 --> 2:23:59.959 they need sixty bucks per person to get on a bus, right, 2:24:00.600 --> 2:24:02.520 and if they don't have sixty bucks to get on 2:24:02.520 --> 2:24:04.640 the bus. I was told these buses are owned by 2:24:04.720 --> 2:24:07.800 Panamanian parliamentary deputies, but I haven't been able to confirm that. 2:24:08.040 --> 2:24:09.240 Uh fucking crush. 2:24:09.360 --> 2:24:13.119 Yeah, someone is putting fifty five people on a bus, 2:24:13.320 --> 2:24:17.000 taking sixty bucks from each of them, and sending about 2:24:17.000 --> 2:24:20.920 twenty buses a day, Like someone is making a lot 2:24:21.040 --> 2:24:21.640 of money. 2:24:21.959 --> 2:24:23.920 Yeah, people will remember that. 2:24:23.879 --> 2:24:26.720 One of these buses crashed last year, killing forty two migrants. 2:24:27.600 --> 2:24:30.360 But the really big thing is it is not the bus. 2:24:30.400 --> 2:24:33.480 It's not the ten hour bus ride. Like those people 2:24:33.480 --> 2:24:35.680 are so happy to be getting on the bus because 2:24:35.720 --> 2:24:38.560 they're continuing. It's the people who don't have sixty bucks 2:24:38.959 --> 2:24:42.640 and like, yeah, they've made it this far with a 2:24:42.680 --> 2:24:46.760 combination of whatever savings they had and like incredible tenacity. Right, 2:24:46.840 --> 2:24:50.800 Like they pay someone in Columbia obviously to bring them 2:24:50.920 --> 2:24:52.760 so to get to the start of their walk in 2:24:52.800 --> 2:24:54.840 Deli end. They leave from neck or Clee in Colombia, 2:24:54.920 --> 2:24:58.160 come across on a lancha like a speedboat, and then 2:24:58.280 --> 2:25:00.520 they walk up to the Columbian border where the guides 2:25:00.560 --> 2:25:03.960 and leave them. Now the guides are obviously like this 2:25:04.040 --> 2:25:06.520 area is controlled by the golf cartel in Columbia, right, 2:25:06.560 --> 2:25:08.960 so they have safe passage through that area. None of 2:25:09.000 --> 2:25:10.920 them had anything bad to say about that area. It's 2:25:10.959 --> 2:25:12.880 when the guides leave them and they're on their own 2:25:12.920 --> 2:25:16.960 into Panama. That's when they didn't have water. They didn't 2:25:16.959 --> 2:25:19.600 have food because no one's told them they need water 2:25:19.640 --> 2:25:21.400 and food to be fair, right like that they weren't. 2:25:21.760 --> 2:25:23.080 I didn't think it was going to take as long 2:25:23.120 --> 2:25:25.200 as it was, be as hard as it was. It's not. 2:25:25.320 --> 2:25:27.400 So I've learned a little bit from tiktoks and stuff, 2:25:27.440 --> 2:25:29.560 so some of them bring a bit more. But four 2:25:29.640 --> 2:25:31.800 days of water is a lot of water, like speaking 2:25:31.840 --> 2:25:34.600 from experience. So backpack in the desert. If you don't 2:25:34.600 --> 2:25:36.280 have the right equipment, it's hard to carry. 2:25:36.600 --> 2:25:40.280 So yeah, suit is heavy, yeah right, like you like 2:25:40.320 --> 2:25:43.160 that's the other part, Like if you want four liters 2:25:43.200 --> 2:25:46.439 a person, right, that's like going to be four kilograms 2:25:46.959 --> 2:25:47.959 and that's a day. 2:25:48.360 --> 2:25:50.000 So most like that. By four days. 2:25:50.160 --> 2:25:53.600 What is it in pounds eight point eight pounds, it's 2:25:53.760 --> 2:25:57.240 four liters. Yeah, you're also carrying this like through the 2:25:57.280 --> 2:26:02.200 fucking jungle, which is just like everything's wet all the time, right, 2:26:02.240 --> 2:26:05.240 you're sweating, you're crossing rivers, your feet are always wet, 2:26:05.240 --> 2:26:08.320 like everyone's feet when they arrive in Last Blankas. 2:26:08.320 --> 2:26:09.120 I took pictures of this. 2:26:09.240 --> 2:26:11.560 But they all have these crappy boots that they buy 2:26:11.680 --> 2:26:17.119 Nika Clean Plumbia, and every bin in Baquito is full 2:26:17.120 --> 2:26:19.960 of these boots because they suck, and people like the 2:26:19.959 --> 2:26:24.360 blisters I saw, and like people getting trench foot right, 2:26:24.440 --> 2:26:26.520 like where the entire skin on their foot is just 2:26:26.560 --> 2:26:31.400 ready to slough off like a glove. Like everyone buys 2:26:31.440 --> 2:26:35.200 these crocs from a vendor in Bajiquito there, but. 2:26:35.240 --> 2:26:36.600 Like they can get through all that. 2:26:36.640 --> 2:26:39.440 They everyone who I met in Bajo Chiquito, everyone who 2:26:39.480 --> 2:26:43.959 I met on the trail, had made right. They through tenacity, 2:26:44.240 --> 2:26:45.960 and like a lot of people said it like it's 2:26:45.959 --> 2:26:48.600 a roulette. You go in there and you hope for 2:26:48.640 --> 2:26:50.920 the best. Not everyone makes it, but most of them do. 2:26:51.280 --> 2:26:54.320 So the people who had made it get to go 2:26:54.360 --> 2:26:57.000 to LaaS Blankets, right, and if they can't afford the 2:26:57.920 --> 2:27:00.680 boat from Bak to the last blank they can walk. 2:27:01.160 --> 2:27:03.640 It's non fine, it's not very hours of walking, right, 2:27:03.840 --> 2:27:05.560 And then some of those guys one day and I 2:27:06.160 --> 2:27:07.840 gave them water filters and stuff. 2:27:07.920 --> 2:27:09.119 I wasn't allowed to walk. 2:27:08.959 --> 2:27:13.640 With them, but I was able to talk with them, 2:27:13.680 --> 2:27:15.600 and I spoke to them again when they arrived, right, 2:27:15.680 --> 2:27:18.840 And they get to last blankets and they just if 2:27:18.879 --> 2:27:20.880 they don't have sixty bucks, then they don't have it. And 2:27:20.920 --> 2:27:23.320 then they stay there sometimes for months, and this is 2:27:23.480 --> 2:27:26.320 not a place to stay for months. Like they have 2:27:26.360 --> 2:27:28.840 little casitas which they have for like this one for 2:27:28.920 --> 2:27:32.320 unaccompanied children, and then others I think are allocated to families. 2:27:33.200 --> 2:27:35.200 But it's not much more than four walls in a roof, 2:27:35.200 --> 2:27:37.199 and most people don't even get that, right. Most people 2:27:37.200 --> 2:27:39.720 are looking for a flat spot to pitch the shitty 2:27:39.760 --> 2:27:43.280 tent that they bought in Colombia. And then they're just 2:27:43.560 --> 2:27:47.240 stuck there. And there's obviously a relatively new policy. They 2:27:47.320 --> 2:27:49.520 used to take five free people per bus, but they 2:27:49.560 --> 2:27:50.279 don't anymore. 2:27:51.280 --> 2:27:52.240 Like from bar. 2:27:52.280 --> 2:27:54.720 Jigito they have three free boats a day, right, but 2:27:55.280 --> 2:27:57.800 leaving last blancats, if you don't have the money, then 2:27:57.800 --> 2:28:00.720 you don't leave. And the people I spoke to there 2:28:01.440 --> 2:28:03.320 who are stuck there are still stuck there. People have 2:28:03.360 --> 2:28:06.080 been stuck there for more than a month. Their children 2:28:06.120 --> 2:28:11.039 aren't going to school, they're sleeping on the ground. This 2:28:11.120 --> 2:28:12.960 is not a place that's designed to be a long 2:28:13.040 --> 2:28:15.280 term residence. It's designed to be like one night and 2:28:15.360 --> 2:28:19.840 moving through. And every day new people arrive who can't 2:28:19.840 --> 2:28:22.720 afford it, and so the population is growing and growing 2:28:22.800 --> 2:28:26.440 and growing, and there seems to be no solution. No 2:28:26.480 --> 2:28:31.400 one I spoke to could point to what they want 2:28:31.480 --> 2:28:34.440 them to do right, Like they're being given free food 2:28:34.440 --> 2:28:36.760 by the government. Some of them said the food wasn't great. 2:28:37.440 --> 2:28:39.800 I'm not sure if it's halal like sometimes some of 2:28:39.840 --> 2:28:41.920 them said they'd seen food that had pork in it. 2:28:42.480 --> 2:28:43.879 But I didn't see any food to have pork in 2:28:43.879 --> 2:28:45.560 it when I was there, so maybe that's been changed. 2:28:46.480 --> 2:28:51.480 But they're just stuck there. Yeah, there's nothing they can 2:28:51.560 --> 2:28:53.960 do right. If they want to have money transferred there, 2:28:55.000 --> 2:28:58.119 they can do it through a local intermediary who charges 2:28:58.120 --> 2:29:01.000 the twenty five percent fee. If you don't have sixty 2:29:01.080 --> 2:29:04.440 list Yeah, like you need seventy five bucks now, right 2:29:04.480 --> 2:29:06.760 to get your sixty bucks. Now multiply that by a 2:29:06.800 --> 2:29:09.840 family of five. You can start to see where it 2:29:09.879 --> 2:29:12.080 becomes inaccessible to people. 2:29:12.400 --> 2:29:15.720 And that's that's a lot of money. Like if you're 2:29:15.720 --> 2:29:19.760 in this position, like that's yeah. 2:29:19.320 --> 2:29:22.240 It costs so much more to travel on buses and 2:29:22.400 --> 2:29:25.160 by foot across the Americans and it would to fly, Yeah, 2:29:25.160 --> 2:29:27.800 like all of them would love to fly, but they 2:29:27.840 --> 2:29:31.560 can't because we have this system that makes everyone money 2:29:31.879 --> 2:29:33.080 apart from the migrants. 2:29:33.360 --> 2:29:35.920 Yeah, And it's like it didn't fucking it didn't fucking 2:29:36.040 --> 2:29:38.360 used to be like this, Like when my family came 2:29:38.400 --> 2:29:39.840 to the US, like we didn't have to like you know, 2:29:39.879 --> 2:29:41.879 we had a bunch of fucking harrowing shit to like 2:29:42.879 --> 2:29:45.080 flee the Japanese and like get to Taiwan. But it 2:29:45.160 --> 2:29:47.440 was like like when my parents, like like their parents 2:29:47.480 --> 2:29:49.959 like came to the US, they just they fucking flew in. 2:29:50.720 --> 2:29:52.680 None of this fucking has to be the way any 2:29:52.680 --> 2:29:54.320 of this shit works. It didn't used to be the 2:29:54.320 --> 2:29:56.320 way any of this shit works. And it's like like 2:29:56.360 --> 2:29:58.600 these are people from countries and you know it's like, yeah, obviously, 2:29:58.600 --> 2:30:01.480 like my parents were like leading from Taiwan to the US, right, 2:30:01.520 --> 2:30:03.280 which makes it easier. But these are also these are 2:30:03.320 --> 2:30:06.040 people from places that the US fucking hates. Yeah, and 2:30:06.080 --> 2:30:09.200 so like you would expect them to get like at 2:30:09.320 --> 2:30:12.560 least somewhat similar treatment to people who came from like Taiwan, 2:30:12.640 --> 2:30:15.320 which is at the time, you know, like US ally 2:30:15.400 --> 2:30:17.440 anti China stuff. But like, no, we've just decided to 2:30:17.480 --> 2:30:19.240 just feed these people into a fucking meek rinder. 2:30:19.520 --> 2:30:23.280 Yeah, and it gets me to my next fucking trauma. 2:30:24.120 --> 2:30:48.360 Dum let's sick an et break before the Yeah, yeah. 2:30:38.160 --> 2:30:39.720 They're back, Okay. 2:30:40.200 --> 2:30:42.760 So yeah, as me I mentioned, right, these are places 2:30:42.760 --> 2:30:46.000 that the US considers to be dictatorial or impressive regimes 2:30:46.040 --> 2:30:48.800 right around Venezuela, Cuba three to come to mind of 2:30:48.840 --> 2:30:51.640 people that I met, right, and so a lot of 2:30:51.640 --> 2:30:53.680 these people have what's called a temporary protected states in 2:30:53.720 --> 2:30:56.439 the US. It doesn't mean that they necessarily can't be deported. 2:30:56.480 --> 2:30:59.880 Sometimes they can, but sometimes it makes it a bit harder, right, 2:31:00.080 --> 2:31:04.160 deport to those countries. Panama, it's not governed by United 2:31:04.200 --> 2:31:08.520 States immigration law. Yeah, we gave On the day that 2:31:08.600 --> 2:31:13.200 Molino took office. Alejandro Majorcas himself the child of migrants 2:31:13.320 --> 2:31:17.279 from Cuba, I believe, went to Panama attended the inauguration 2:31:18.000 --> 2:31:20.480 and then announced this six million dollar aid package right 2:31:20.520 --> 2:31:24.200 which the US was going to give to fun deportations 2:31:24.240 --> 2:31:27.560 from Panama directly. And I got to see those deportations 2:31:27.560 --> 2:31:29.840 happening right like you'll hear them in my scripted series. 2:31:30.360 --> 2:31:36.480 But like watching somebody take a dad away from his baby, 2:31:37.400 --> 2:31:43.360 or a mother away from her children, or one man's 2:31:43.560 --> 2:31:48.000 brother away from his brother, Like it's just heartbreaking. These 2:31:48.040 --> 2:31:51.800 people have crossed the Daddy in right. They've undertaken a 2:31:51.879 --> 2:31:53.800 journey like I've done a lot of mountaineering. I've done 2:31:53.800 --> 2:31:55.840 a lot of climbing. I like to fuck around outside, 2:31:55.920 --> 2:31:57.560 but like I've never done anything where I didn't know 2:31:57.600 --> 2:31:59.920 if I was going to come back, really, and like 2:32:00.200 --> 2:32:03.680 they've done that. They've taken this incredibly difficult journey. And 2:32:03.720 --> 2:32:07.960 then when they get to the other side, you, you, 2:32:08.120 --> 2:32:10.160 and you, they get picked out and they get deported 2:32:10.200 --> 2:32:12.440 back right on flights that are paid for by your 2:32:12.440 --> 2:32:16.800 tax dollars and my tax dollars. And this includes flights 2:32:16.800 --> 2:32:20.280 to Cuba. This includes flights to Venezuela, right places that 2:32:20.360 --> 2:32:24.280 the US considers to be like dictatorial regimes. And now 2:32:24.280 --> 2:32:27.160 these people are back in Cuba they're back in Venezuela, 2:32:27.240 --> 2:32:29.480 but their government knows that they tried to leave, and 2:32:29.480 --> 2:32:32.840 they've spent all their fucking savings, so they're back in 2:32:33.160 --> 2:32:35.560 square one. I spoke to a few Colombians. They've also 2:32:35.600 --> 2:32:38.680 deported a lot of Colombian people. Most of the Colombian 2:32:38.680 --> 2:32:41.440 people I spoke to in Las Blancats were deported. They 2:32:41.480 --> 2:32:45.480 called all the Colombian nationals to choose the office and 2:32:45.520 --> 2:32:48.960 then these I was told that they were only deporting 2:32:48.959 --> 2:32:52.879 people who had like warrants, like pending cases. But when 2:32:52.920 --> 2:32:55.959 these people got back to Colombia, they were just free 2:32:56.000 --> 2:32:57.720 to go, right, Like if you have a pending case 2:32:57.720 --> 2:33:00.959 and someone delivers you to the government. Non expert in 2:33:01.000 --> 2:33:03.320 Colombian law enforcement, but it seems like that would be 2:33:03.320 --> 2:33:06.160 a good time to prosecute that casey, and these people 2:33:06.320 --> 2:33:08.600 tell me that they've been let go. None of them 2:33:09.080 --> 2:33:11.760 told me if they had warrants. Now, like, I'm just 2:33:11.800 --> 2:33:14.720 going off what they said. But that night they were 2:33:14.720 --> 2:33:17.080 texting me pictures themselves in handcuffs. By the next day 2:33:17.120 --> 2:33:20.560 they were back in medine telling me that they'd been 2:33:20.560 --> 2:33:23.240 sent home, including like I was talking to a lady 2:33:23.280 --> 2:33:26.920 just before we recorded who she doesn't know where her 2:33:27.040 --> 2:33:30.640 children's father her husband is right, And lots of people 2:33:30.720 --> 2:33:33.920 will have like I guess what's the English translation, like 2:33:33.959 --> 2:33:38.840 free unions, Like when they're like married for legal reasons, 2:33:38.959 --> 2:33:41.360 they don't go and have a wedding, but they're considered 2:33:41.400 --> 2:33:44.200 to be married common law marriage, I guess would be 2:33:44.200 --> 2:33:46.440 the phrase, right, like they've lived together for a number 2:33:46.440 --> 2:33:49.040 of years, share a house, etc. Often have children, but 2:33:49.080 --> 2:33:51.480 they're not like they never had a wedding. So I 2:33:51.480 --> 2:33:55.560 don't know if that document makes difference, but I watched 2:33:55.680 --> 2:33:58.640 people have their children taken out their arms and be 2:33:58.680 --> 2:34:01.040 shoved into back of trucks and be deported, and like 2:34:02.120 --> 2:34:08.120 that fucking sucks. That is not something that I want 2:34:08.160 --> 2:34:12.199 to see again. And it happens every single day there, 2:34:13.040 --> 2:34:15.640 and it happens because your taxes are paying for It 2:34:15.640 --> 2:34:19.360 didn't used to happen and now it does, and it's 2:34:19.520 --> 2:34:23.320 just heartbreaking. Like I don't really like it's there's nothing 2:34:23.440 --> 2:34:26.640 you can do. You know that there's no you know, 2:34:26.680 --> 2:34:29.640 I can't do anything to stop it. You can't do 2:34:29.680 --> 2:34:31.840 anything to stop it, right, Like what you can vote 2:34:31.840 --> 2:34:34.440 for Donald Trump, who would like to machine down every 2:34:35.040 --> 2:34:37.120 asylum secret at the border if you got a chance, 2:34:37.200 --> 2:34:41.280 or you can vote to Kamala Harris, who has presided 2:34:41.320 --> 2:34:45.080 over record migrant deaths every year of her administration, who's 2:34:45.080 --> 2:34:48.560 sending your money to deport people in Panama, who knows 2:34:48.640 --> 2:34:51.920 that the choices that she's made are resulting in like 2:34:52.400 --> 2:34:56.720 death in Panama, death here right, Like there were four 2:34:56.760 --> 2:34:59.480 people who died and then the heat wave in the 2:34:59.520 --> 2:35:02.000 first week September, four people who died in o Time 2:35:02.080 --> 2:35:04.480 mount and wilderness, like in a tiny area ten miles 2:35:04.480 --> 2:35:08.160 across of border in San Diego, and my friends had 2:35:08.160 --> 2:35:10.360 to go in search their bodies, and my friends found 2:35:10.400 --> 2:35:13.400 their remains, and I had to confront the fact that, 2:35:13.600 --> 2:35:18.080 like this is the toll of the rhetoric, Like this 2:35:18.120 --> 2:35:20.760 is what the rhetoric costs. The other thing I want 2:35:20.760 --> 2:35:22.760 to mention is that like, even in the most desperate 2:35:22.800 --> 2:35:26.879 moments of their lives, everyone looked out for one another 2:35:27.360 --> 2:35:30.160 in a way that like we don't hear. Like one 2:35:30.240 --> 2:35:33.160 of the things that really struck me was that, like 2:35:33.520 --> 2:35:36.000 everyone's kids are just kind of out and about, right. 2:35:36.040 --> 2:35:39.959 No one's particularly afraid of anyone hurting their kids, Like 2:35:40.320 --> 2:35:42.280 all of these kids, and I saw people who'd got 2:35:42.320 --> 2:35:46.000 split up in the gap, find each other again in Bahojikito, 2:35:46.160 --> 2:35:49.560 and like, you know, there were strangers who had carried 2:35:49.600 --> 2:35:52.640 someone's children for two days because that other person was 2:35:52.680 --> 2:35:54.880 so tired or they had another child they needed to carry, 2:35:55.000 --> 2:35:59.560 and like, yeah, I'm strangely comfortable, I guess in refugee camps, 2:35:59.600 --> 2:36:01.800 Like I went to Panama City after its like I 2:36:01.800 --> 2:36:03.560 couldn't have it. It was too much for me and 2:36:03.600 --> 2:36:05.800 I had to stay in my hotel room, and I 2:36:05.800 --> 2:36:10.560 guess it was just difficult, but like I feel safe 2:36:10.680 --> 2:36:14.200 in those places. I feel comfortable and like in a 2:36:14.280 --> 2:36:17.200 sense it's well, you see the best of us and 2:36:17.240 --> 2:36:21.039 the worst of us. I guess, like I can't imagine 2:36:21.040 --> 2:36:22.720 being in a place where I know I could lose 2:36:22.720 --> 2:36:26.920 my life if I slip and fall, and then thinking well, 2:36:26.959 --> 2:36:29.320 I've got to carry this little kid. Never met this 2:36:29.400 --> 2:36:31.680 kid before. I don't share a language. You know, there 2:36:31.760 --> 2:36:36.200 was a group from Angola and they'd been carrying Venezuelan children, 2:36:36.360 --> 2:36:38.840 right they can't even talk to one another, but they 2:36:39.040 --> 2:36:44.080 potentially risk their lives to help. Yeah, it's it's pretty 2:36:44.080 --> 2:36:47.199 fucking bleak. I'm staying in touch with everyone I met, 2:36:47.360 --> 2:36:50.480 and they're telling me about their journeys to the border. Unfortunately, 2:36:50.520 --> 2:36:52.400 the thing that comes next is eight to nine month 2:36:52.480 --> 2:36:55.840 delay as they apply for a CVP one appointment. And like, 2:36:56.160 --> 2:37:00.959 I wish I could offer something hopeful. Guess what I'll 2:37:00.959 --> 2:37:03.640 say is what I always say that, Like, there isn't 2:37:03.640 --> 2:37:05.920 anyone you can vote for who will fix this, Like 2:37:07.120 --> 2:37:10.120 you can vote for Cornel West with Jill Stein, Like 2:37:10.120 --> 2:37:12.800 I'm not going to vote for someone who fucking supports 2:37:12.800 --> 2:37:16.600 the policies that are creating refugees in Syria, right whatever, 2:37:16.879 --> 2:37:20.760 I'm not suggesting that that's a solution either. Like the 2:37:20.840 --> 2:37:23.400 things that you need to do are like there is 2:37:23.440 --> 2:37:26.360 a person helping moments in your community. I spoke to 2:37:26.400 --> 2:37:29.600 a Jesuit shelter. I'll put them in my scripted episode. 2:37:29.640 --> 2:37:32.760 Like I'm not a big religious shelter guy, but these 2:37:32.760 --> 2:37:36.320 guys were fucking great. These guys are saving people's lives 2:37:36.360 --> 2:37:39.200 and making sure that people have the basic necessity like 2:37:39.720 --> 2:37:41.720 literally turning up at the refuge camp and making sure 2:37:41.720 --> 2:37:46.000 everyone had toilet roll and toothbrushes and things that yeah, 2:37:46.120 --> 2:37:47.720 you don't need for one night, but you're going to 2:37:47.720 --> 2:37:49.800 be there for a month, you don't have, you know, 2:37:50.120 --> 2:37:51.560 what are you going to do spend five bucks on 2:37:51.640 --> 2:37:54.400 toothbrush and toothpaste, but that's five less bucks you have 2:37:54.440 --> 2:37:58.000 for your bus fare, right, So like I'll put them 2:37:58.040 --> 2:38:01.080 out there. I would love to do a fundraiser, like 2:38:01.120 --> 2:38:03.720 if anyone can work out how to facilitate transfers to 2:38:04.200 --> 2:38:06.960 migrants who are in the camp for free, that would 2:38:07.000 --> 2:38:10.400 be great, Like that would be a service that would 2:38:10.560 --> 2:38:13.800 make things considerably easier for people. But the way that 2:38:13.840 --> 2:38:16.720 you fix this is showing up, Like it's showing up 2:38:16.760 --> 2:38:18.800 at the border if you live near the border, it's 2:38:18.840 --> 2:38:23.600 showing up in your community. It's countering this like with 2:38:23.920 --> 2:38:27.480 people in your family and your circle, like there's a 2:38:27.520 --> 2:38:31.520 tacit agreement. I think in the entire corporate media that 2:38:31.600 --> 2:38:34.840 migrants are humans without rights, Like they're just numbers to 2:38:34.920 --> 2:38:39.200 these people, because I don't see them talking to migrants, right, 2:38:39.400 --> 2:38:43.320 Like these are people who you know, like I help 2:38:43.360 --> 2:38:45.680 them change their babies, I carried their bags for them, 2:38:46.000 --> 2:38:47.720 I played with their kids so they could go take 2:38:47.760 --> 2:38:52.000 a shower like that. They're people just like anyone else. 2:38:52.080 --> 2:38:54.920 Of course they are right that, Like, yeah, they're important 2:38:54.920 --> 2:38:58.480 to me, and it's fucking miserable to see my tax 2:38:58.560 --> 2:39:01.080 dollars use to make these people suffer. 2:39:01.400 --> 2:39:04.240 Yeah, these people should be more important than the fucking 2:39:04.320 --> 2:39:07.080 sons of boat dealers. Who's fucking got the land they 2:39:07.160 --> 2:39:10.160 live on because their ancestors fucking shot a bunch of people. Yeah, 2:39:10.240 --> 2:39:12.880 like that's that's what's happening here, is that these people 2:39:12.959 --> 2:39:14.959 who are you know, some of the most courageous people 2:39:14.959 --> 2:39:18.480 in the entire world, are being sacrificed to appease a 2:39:18.520 --> 2:39:21.680 bunch of fucking shits. It's a level of evil that 2:39:21.800 --> 2:39:28.280 is just unfathomable. Yeah, I think, like we really shouldn't. 2:39:28.520 --> 2:39:31.560 I'm somewhat ranting now, but like, yeah, the pivot that 2:39:31.640 --> 2:39:34.920 even the Democrats have done in the last four years, right, Like, 2:39:35.160 --> 2:39:37.600 those people need to be held accountable for what is 2:39:38.280 --> 2:39:40.360 resulting in like babies dying. 2:39:41.000 --> 2:39:42.720 Like I saw dead kids. 2:39:43.520 --> 2:39:47.480 I saw that because Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, whichever other 2:39:47.600 --> 2:39:51.800 fucking Democrat senators and representatives keep voting for this shit, 2:39:52.320 --> 2:39:54.760 decided that it was okay for those babies to die 2:39:54.840 --> 2:39:57.000 because they didn't want Fox News to say mean stuff 2:39:57.000 --> 2:40:00.600 about them or NBC to say mean stuff about them. Right, Yeah, 2:40:00.959 --> 2:40:03.360 of course they're trying to move that stuff as far 2:40:03.480 --> 2:40:06.160 away from you as possible. Of course, they want the 2:40:06.200 --> 2:40:08.680 deportation to be done in Panama, not here, so you 2:40:08.680 --> 2:40:11.240 don't see it in your community. And of course they 2:40:11.240 --> 2:40:13.240 want people to die crossing the Darien and not at 2:40:13.240 --> 2:40:16.800 our border, because that's removed, and you don't hear it 2:40:16.959 --> 2:40:20.200 reported on right, Like it's not a Venezuelan woman died 2:40:20.200 --> 2:40:23.720 on Thursday. We're recording this on Tuesday, like Wednesday. You 2:40:23.760 --> 2:40:26.600 don't see that reported, right, You don't see that there 2:40:26.640 --> 2:40:29.640 are little kids' bodies in the jungle reported because it's 2:40:29.680 --> 2:40:32.360 out of sight and out of mind, And like, I 2:40:32.360 --> 2:40:34.360 guess the thing you can do is constantly bring it 2:40:34.400 --> 2:40:37.720 back into people's minds and make them accountable for their choices. 2:40:37.920 --> 2:40:40.280 And like, I guess this is the point where the 2:40:40.320 --> 2:40:43.400 electoralists get mad at me. I'm not voting for someone 2:40:43.400 --> 2:40:45.879 who chose that. Yeah, like, and I never could, Like 2:40:45.920 --> 2:40:48.160 I couldn't live with myself if I did. I know 2:40:48.200 --> 2:40:51.640 a system which reduces our political engagement taking a box 2:40:51.680 --> 2:40:56.320 every four years is asinine and child like, Like I 2:40:56.320 --> 2:40:58.480 would much rather be out there every day helping people 2:40:58.720 --> 2:41:01.360 than voting once every four years, And like, you can 2:41:01.400 --> 2:41:05.400 do both, of course you can, but yeah, there's not 2:41:05.560 --> 2:41:08.039 a voting solution for this, Like, it requires all of 2:41:08.120 --> 2:41:10.000 us to do a lot of work because we're so 2:41:10.240 --> 2:41:15.320 far down the path which ends in a really terrible place. Right, 2:41:15.320 --> 2:41:17.760 it's already a terrible place that these people's lives don't matter, 2:41:18.440 --> 2:41:21.520 and that their children's lives don't matter, and that we 2:41:21.560 --> 2:41:24.760 shouldn't care if they're dying in the jungle. And we've 2:41:24.800 --> 2:41:26.200 got a lot of work to do to get back 2:41:26.240 --> 2:41:28.280 from that, because apparently it's okay with a lot of 2:41:28.280 --> 2:41:29.160 people in this country. 2:41:29.400 --> 2:41:31.920 Yeah, I think part of the reason why it's gotten 2:41:31.959 --> 2:41:34.600 this bad is that the social ruvements that had pushed 2:41:34.600 --> 2:41:37.840 the Democrats in a slightly better direction in the late 2:41:37.879 --> 2:41:43.320 twenty tens stopped social movement thing. So you know, the 2:41:43.320 --> 2:41:46.600 only thing that these people will respond to is like 2:41:46.800 --> 2:41:49.920 they're actually being mass mobilizations and them be feeling politically 2:41:49.920 --> 2:41:53.040 threatened by it. So you know, we've done it before, 2:41:53.160 --> 2:41:53.960 we can do it again. 2:41:54.879 --> 2:41:55.080 Yeah. 2:41:55.120 --> 2:41:56.960 The biggest march in this country's history was the March 2:41:57.000 --> 2:41:59.680 of migrants, Right, we can do that again. So many 2:41:59.680 --> 2:42:02.640 of us, myself included, came here to have a chance 2:42:02.680 --> 2:42:05.959 at better future. And like, even if you didn't share 2:42:06.000 --> 2:42:10.560 some solidarity with people like showing up in massive numbers. 2:42:11.280 --> 2:42:14.200 Yet these movement stop social movementing and people fell out 2:42:14.240 --> 2:42:16.200 of a little things. But like, this shit is important, 2:42:16.600 --> 2:42:19.800 and I think we can build some bridges and we 2:42:19.879 --> 2:42:23.080 need to do something to stop this because it's horrific. Yeah, 2:42:23.120 --> 2:42:25.480 and so it's a genocide in Ghaza, like we can 2:42:25.879 --> 2:42:28.080 we need to do something to stop that too, but 2:42:28.879 --> 2:42:30.119 we're not going to do it through voting. 2:42:32.920 --> 2:42:36.120 Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week 2:42:36.160 --> 2:42:38.080 from now until the heat death of the Universe. 2:42:38.600 --> 2:42:41.119 It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 2:42:41.280 --> 2:42:44.359 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 2:42:44.440 --> 2:42:47.000 cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the 2:42:47.000 --> 2:42:50.960 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 2:42:51.400 --> 2:42:53.320 You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here. 2:42:53.360 --> 2:42:56.359 Listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.