Speaker 1: I was holding the baby and I farted on the couch,
Speaker 1: and the leather of the couch was a sonic created
Speaker 1: a sonic location was like discolored or something. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was merely the fabric of it all. It took
Speaker 1: it to a sonic place that it was just like amplified.
Speaker 1: It was like screaming into a megaphone. And then I
Speaker 1: got I got yelled at from across the house. But
Speaker 1: then wow, the baby. I was, like I said in Japanese,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, not see you. And then like I said,
Speaker 1: farts are funny, right, and he's just maybe nice the
Speaker 1: culture alive. We're farters in this house.
Speaker 2: You get it image that.
Speaker 3: There being like an iridescent stain or something on the
Speaker 3: It was just like my mind.
Speaker 2: Like a dried oil. S. Yeah, this is one strip sunfaded.
Speaker 2: So it's like remember those hologram stickers from the nineties.
Speaker 2: When I changed my viewing angle, it has like a
Speaker 2: different scene to it. Now it's green. Now, it's like
Speaker 2: a phosphorescent pink. You can see a face in it.
Speaker 2: I was eating shrimp tails.
Speaker 3: Oh man, Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three
Speaker 3: point fifty nine, Episode two, of Daily's.
Speaker 2: Say production of My Heart Radio. This is a podcast
Speaker 2: where we take a deep dab into America share consciousness.
Speaker 2: And it is Tuesday, October eighth, twenty twenty four. Ten good.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's National Parogi Day. It's national it says American
Speaker 1: Touch Tag Day, which I'm guessing that's just playing tag.
Speaker 1: But that's like when they're like, oh, they call it
Speaker 1: soft over there, it's touch tag I guess to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, Touch Tag Day.
Speaker 2: I don't know why it's it's it's usually all this.
Speaker 1: These national day calendars are typically from the perspective of America.
Speaker 2: You know, I enjoy like some of the britishisms of
Speaker 2: like the you know our words, but that one just
Speaker 2: we fixed it tag, guys, just tag it's cleaner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And then fluffer Nutter. It's National fluffer Nuder
Speaker 1: Day over those that love the fluffer nutter.
Speaker 2: Sure, why not? There you go, you can have it,
Speaker 2: big fluffer nutter. My name's Jack O'Brien. Aka. Why do
Speaker 2: flies sudden lee appear every time Trump is near? He's rotting? No,
Speaker 2: couldn't be migrants, dude. That one courtesy of Halcyon Salad
Speaker 2: on the discord in honor of Trump seeing a fly
Speaker 2: during a speech and saying, Oh, it's a fly. Wonder,
Speaker 2: wonder where a came from? Like Wow, he has a
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory that the fly. We're not sure entirely couldn't
Speaker 2: be that he is decomposing like the bad guy in
Speaker 2: Men in Black. Could not be that. Maybe it's because
Speaker 2: it's the first time he's ever been out of doors
Speaker 2: around people who aren't carrying his golf bags. But he
Speaker 2: he did seem confused by that fly. Hates the fly.
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co
Speaker 2: host mister Miles.
Speaker 1: Grass, Miles Gray and look in honor of a wonderful
Speaker 1: weekend for my dear Arsenal Football Club. What about some
Speaker 1: Arsenal related aka's. It's Miles Gray aka Deck trend Rice
Speaker 1: aka mchhel r Trenda aka Leean Trend Truss Art aka
Speaker 1: take Trendo, Tomiyasu uh And obviously I'm the Showgun with
Speaker 1: no Gun, the Lord of Lankersham, the Man with chronic podcast.
Speaker 2: But Miles great, thank you so much for having me
Speaker 2: back for the season. Miles talk at Trendo. We've never
Speaker 2: done that as a trending title. Really it is something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she'll have to remedy anyways. Miles were thrilled to be
Speaker 2: joined in our third and fourth seats by the co
Speaker 2: hosts of the wonderful podcast that you must go listen
Speaker 2: to right now, The Future of our former Democracy. They
Speaker 2: are the executive director and the director of Policy and Outreach, respectively,
Speaker 2: for the racial justice organization More Equitable Democracy. Please welcome,
Speaker 2: George Chung and Colin Cally Welcome. Hey guys. Thanks. You know,
Speaker 2: we like welcome lights. We like to keep the light.
Speaker 2: We have invited you into just a blank white space.
Speaker 2: We record in heavy void, the hea then the white
Speaker 2: void of old Mac versus PC commercials.
Speaker 1: Or what was the one? What isn't in willy Wonka.
Speaker 1: Where are they at when they go into that all
Speaker 1: white space? Oh they're in the TV, I think, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's in the TV. Inside the TV. Yeah, inside the TV.
Speaker 4: Hey, Colin Cole aka Mike TV.
Speaker 2: Hey, Oh you're Mike TV. Yeah. I've always been a
Speaker 2: little bit of uh whatever the guy is who gets
Speaker 2: sucked into the tube myself the uh yeah.
Speaker 1: As blue Yeah something come on, nail it, come on,
Speaker 1: I'll come to you.
Speaker 2: Germany I mix it up. My brain is glop and
Speaker 2: there it is. Shout out to super producer Victor bringing it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: liked the group a little too much. Maybe that is
Speaker 2: a movie I recently watched with my children, and it
Speaker 2: has like thirty really good minutes and it is just
Speaker 2: coasting off of our memory of the thirty really good
Speaker 2: minutes and oh really Yeah, there's a lot of it
Speaker 2: that's just like uh huh, all right, Like after they
Speaker 2: leave the Big Candy World and go on the boat ride,
Speaker 2: it does kind of grind to a halt a little bit.
Speaker 2: There's other moments, but like they are fleeting and that's
Speaker 2: just my opinion. Shame.
Speaker 1: I just remember always hating when he got all mad
Speaker 1: at Charlie. I was like, dude, what you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be cool with?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like, and as a kid, I didn't know what to
Speaker 1: make sense of that character's experience. I'm like, dude, this
Speaker 1: guy's an asshole. Let's just turn this off. I thought you.
Speaker 2: Turn it off. You never saw the end. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 2: what an asshole? Turn Yeah? Yep. George Colin, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining us from the Great Northwest. Yes,
Speaker 2: you guys are in Seattle. Is that correct?
Speaker 5: Ye Just keep going and take.
Speaker 2: A past reading. Keep going, keep going, yea, keep going,
Speaker 2: keep on. Is it is it called the five up
Speaker 2: there or it's high five up here? Just five? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's in l A. Nobody else the words highways. The
Speaker 2: importance of the five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, but it is an important interstate,
Speaker 1: you know, we love Oh that's why the ten also
Speaker 1: deserves respect, going from sea to shining sea.
Speaker 2: Oh right, they're all given the the I think in
Speaker 2: l A and only at l A. I've never heard of.
Speaker 1: Wonder what the history is of our inability to just
Speaker 1: I guess because we always want to speak differently than
Speaker 1: other people.
Speaker 4: It's a remnant of surfer culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Yeah, take on one dude over to the
Speaker 1: four oh five.
Speaker 2: They cast the one eighteen over hit Meatip and Granada Hills.
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyway, that's probably not as important as about
Speaker 1: than what we're about to.
Speaker 2: Talk about today, but I still wanted to mention that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But like I said, listeners should listen to this podcast
Speaker 2: and then also immediately go listen to the future of
Speaker 2: our former democracy. Great title, great podcast. We are going
Speaker 2: to get into a little bit of what your podcast
Speaker 2: is about it's about how our current political system is, Like,
Speaker 2: there are some things that I was taking for granted
Speaker 2: about our current political system. You guys use the this
Speaker 2: is water metaphor at the beginning of like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is just what we've always assumed is how it is
Speaker 2: and always will be, and that there are some things
Speaker 2: that can be better. Maybe I like it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: so we're gonna get into all of that, but first
Speaker 2: we want to get to know you both a little
Speaker 2: bit better by asking you each what is something from
Speaker 2: your search history that is revealing about who you are? George,
Speaker 2: why don't we start with you? All right?
Speaker 5: So I'm gonna play to my stereotypes. I'm a gay man,
Speaker 5: and I can't get enough of trying to figure out
Speaker 5: if I can get Kylie Minogue tickets that go on
Speaker 5: sale tomorrow. Okay, so for all you other people in
Speaker 5: Seattle who are also gay, man, it's on sale next week, please,
Speaker 5: so don't check you. Kylie won't be coming through to Seattle, yeah,
Speaker 5: and go ahead, go have at it. But I need
Speaker 5: my front row Kylie Minogue seats because she hasn't come
Speaker 5: to do a tour of the US for a long time.
Speaker 5: So gotta, you know, keep up the appearance.
Speaker 2: How long has it?
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like Kylie Minogue is just one
Speaker 1: of those huge artists that I'm always like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: Kylie Minogue.
Speaker 2: But it's been a long time since she's been in stateside. Uh.
Speaker 5: She had a residence in Vegues and of course I
Speaker 5: had to go do that, but she hasn't been to
Speaker 5: like around for I think maybe almost better part of
Speaker 5: a decade. Definitely pandemic, got it, got it, got it,
Speaker 5: got it.
Speaker 2: And did your fandom go all the way back to Locomo? Yes?
Speaker 5: Yes, And maybe it was those kind of feelings that
Speaker 5: I got to early on. I'm like, hmmm, I'm feeling
Speaker 5: a little different. Some of our videos were a little edgy.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh right, all right, I like this for
Speaker 5: not quite sure what reason. So uh, definitely I do
Speaker 5: the locomotion as much as I can.
Speaker 2: Really, what's up with Danny Minogue? Danny is I did
Speaker 2: say that, but you know, you know, she has.
Speaker 5: Her own career too. And yeah, the last time I
Speaker 5: went to Sydney, they had World Pride there. She kind
Speaker 5: of made a cameo appearance with her more famous sister,
Speaker 5: So it was like, you know.
Speaker 1: George, you're going to Australia to even see Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: this is the last time I went to Australia.
Speaker 5: Happened.
Speaker 2: Okay. I was just trying to gauge your minogue fandom
Speaker 2: here and I.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's pretty hot.
Speaker 2: We're going down er, yes, yes, yes, how about you, Colin,
Speaker 2: what's something you from your search history? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I'll also play a stereotype, I mean herd. And
Speaker 4: the phrase that I searched for was Warhammer word of Hermis,
Speaker 4: because I'm a big fan of the deepest lore, you know,
Speaker 4: in all my fictional franchises I participate in. And I'm
Speaker 4: going through a Warhammer book right now that made reference
Speaker 4: to a starship the word of Hermes, and I wanted
Speaker 4: to look it up on the Warhammer Wikipedia to learn
Speaker 4: more about it.
Speaker 2: Wow, what man, I'm like the I played the.
Speaker 1: Game a little bit and then then I realized, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a whole other level to this that I am
Speaker 1: not engaging with.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's okay.
Speaker 4: It's a weirdly big ip. It spans back like fifty years.
Speaker 4: It's a tabletop board game. There's hundreds of books, there's
Speaker 4: video games, there's like a whole like mock history to
Speaker 4: the actual setting. You know, twenty thousand years of backstory
Speaker 4: right been thought out to get there. It's pretty cool
Speaker 4: if you're into that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I just remember going to like in this hobby shop
Speaker 1: by my house as a kid, and I loved miniatures,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know that it was a tabletop game,
Speaker 1: but I was like, yeah, I want Like to me,
Speaker 1: they're like, these are the better version than plastic army men, right,
Speaker 1: And I was like, I want these.
Speaker 2: And I had like a little.
Speaker 1: Like piece of paper that was like fake AstroTurf that
Speaker 1: I put my little Warhammer figures out, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you play Warhammer. I'm like what these are my little
Speaker 1: dolls that I like. I sat up and then I
Speaker 1: was like my entry point.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, it's a game.
Speaker 1: This makes sense why it was sold in this shop,
Speaker 1: not just like these stationary toys.
Speaker 2: Me.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, so I grew up, you know,
Speaker 4: playing video games, building my own computer. I played Dungeons
Speaker 4: and Dragons, and I always thought Warhammer's too nerdy even
Speaker 4: for me though, and I like avoided it. And then
Speaker 4: during pandemic, a couple of friends got into it and
Speaker 4: dragged me along. And then now here I am neckty.
Speaker 5: Right, right, okay, but did they really drag you along?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: I got into it for for social activity only. I
Speaker 4: wanted nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: And now I stick word of Hermes. We're going on.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the Kingdom of Dust, that's.
Speaker 4: Right, the soul Jackal, the pyrodomon the you know, the
Speaker 4: whole thing.
Speaker 2: Damn, I know it, all those words. I mean, uh,
Speaker 2: the So it started out as a miniature war game,
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 4: That was satirizing Margaret Thatcher and conservativism in the UK
Speaker 4: and envisioned a future world where like conservatives, like ultra
Speaker 4: conservatives became the like despot humanity of the stars, and
Speaker 4: humans are the bad guys and they're out trying to
Speaker 4: make war on the alien races. And it was a
Speaker 4: big critique of of Margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 2: And I'm assuming it's always taken in that respect every
Speaker 2: time it's played today, correct, that's right.
Speaker 4: They never have to put out press releases to say, hey,
Speaker 4: this is a satire. If you think that these are
Speaker 4: the good guys, you misunderstand the setting. Please don't come
Speaker 4: to our events in Nazi regalia. They never have to
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm a big fan of Warhammer and its messages.
Speaker 1: I'm also for austerity measures every time they come.
Speaker 2: I love austerity. It's like Monopoly was originally a work
Speaker 2: of satire that was making fun of you know how
Speaker 2: America operates, and Parker Brothers took it over, and we're like,
Speaker 2: what if instead? Like what if instead that was the
Speaker 2: good guy. It's like how Rocky changed from the first
Speaker 2: one where he's like poor and then in the fourth
Speaker 2: one he's like driving a Lamborghini and like the richest
Speaker 2: man in America. They're just like, this is actually more fun, right,
Speaker 2: got to catch up. We're the best, we do good work.
Speaker 2: What number one we are? And it turns out we are?
Speaker 2: What is something? Let's stick with you, Colin that you
Speaker 2: think is underrated? Underrated or you can start with overrated?
Speaker 4: Can know, well, I'll stick here. I pas I think
Speaker 4: are over rated?
Speaker 2: M Yeah, I like I like it?
Speaker 4: But why does it have like why not have a
Speaker 4: stout sometimes? Why not have a guinness to do our
Speaker 4: our irish subject here? Why not? Uh, why not have
Speaker 4: a cider or a sour?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: Why does it always have to be a you know,
Speaker 4: a triple hate hazy imperial I p a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bloods taste buds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it felt like I feel like
Speaker 1: in the beginning of it, it was like the hack
Speaker 1: for dudes whose partners are like, don't drink so much
Speaker 1: at the bar, like I'm just having beers and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm having these like nine percent I p as trying
Speaker 1: to stop me. And then like that kind of became
Speaker 1: like the reason to drink I PAS, and I was
Speaker 1: like for me, I was like, this ship is no man,
Speaker 1: this is too happy for daddy. I can't have this,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not this is not hitting my taste buds, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel like it's it's it's coming back around.
Speaker 1: I feel like every in l A there's a lot
Speaker 1: of triple hazy I p as that people are triple hazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was one of the people who's always checking
Speaker 2: out the alcohol by volume and being like I think
Speaker 2: I'm gonna like this one that's twelve the alcohol content
Speaker 2: of a whiskey. Right. But yeah, and now I don't
Speaker 2: drink anymore as a constant wants and the like hop waters.
Speaker 2: I do enjoy the hop waters. Yeah, I just discovered.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Yeah, the like hoppy quencher whatever cool that
Speaker 2: it's delicious. It's like the hoppy becomes tropical to a
Speaker 2: point when you drink it. That's what I love about it.
Speaker 2: That's that's right. How about you, George, what's something that
Speaker 2: you think is underrated?
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go with two TV shows that were cut
Speaker 5: before they were done. I gotta say, Freaks and Geeks
Speaker 5: and My so called Life, Okay, like gotta go to
Speaker 5: like the youth angst people who are just about to
Speaker 5: launch their careers in super big ways. Maybe they had
Speaker 5: to like cut because they were all offered amazing in
Speaker 5: amazing other places.
Speaker 2: Casting was too good. It was good.
Speaker 5: It was like, here's these amazing people who yes, of
Speaker 5: course they went on to amazing things. But the shows
Speaker 5: were so good. I identified with so many of them,
Speaker 5: especially like the ma athletes in Freaking I with that kid,
Speaker 5: so it was like, you're you strumming my life with
Speaker 5: your fingers.
Speaker 2: Stuff like that with your song. Yeah yeah, I was
Speaker 2: like this is me.
Speaker 5: I feel see. So I missed those that.
Speaker 4: Whole erahead shows I got, like Firefly, Arrested Development, so
Speaker 4: many good shows that got killed before their time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm waiting for the reboots on those shows. So
Speaker 5: can you make it that happen? You all live in LA,
Speaker 5: so just like write the script and like.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you know, we're kind of we have a
Speaker 1: problem with the reboots in LA right now.
Speaker 2: It's too much.
Speaker 1: It's at the expense of letting new things be talked
Speaker 1: about all the time.
Speaker 2: This one's geeks and freaks. Oh, we're actually for grounding
Speaker 2: the geeks.
Speaker 4: It's starting very sad old Jason Siegel as a burnt
Speaker 4: out high school teacher and then.
Speaker 2: Not so busy Phillips these days are we She's so good?
Speaker 2: And uh, girls five eva. Oh, Phillips is so good
Speaker 2: and girls five eva. If people haven't seen that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I came into this episode thinking that we were surely
Speaker 2: almost out of I P and now not just the
Speaker 2: talk of the i pas, but we've got freaking geeks reboot.
Speaker 2: The my so called life Warhammer only has one film
Speaker 2: I think, is that right?
Speaker 4: Henry Cavill's working on it. Actually he's trying to make
Speaker 4: it a whole thank.
Speaker 2: God, So fuck. I was hoping we could option that
Speaker 2: first person.
Speaker 1: With that idea, I just go to bookstores, and I
Speaker 1: just try and get the rights to everything I see
Speaker 1: on the shelf.
Speaker 2: That's kind of how studios do. Kid, what are you
Speaker 2: reading there? You know who has the rights to that?
Speaker 2: All right, Calvin and hold George with something you think
Speaker 2: is overrated?
Speaker 5: Oh, people are gonna come at me. I'm gonna have
Speaker 5: to say pickleball?
Speaker 2: Well, hold on, how old do you think our audience is?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I know the grandparents out there might
Speaker 1: be getting mad at it. I feel like younger people
Speaker 1: who like pickleball aren't as militant.
Speaker 2: But yeah, is it take? Is it? Like? Is it
Speaker 2: everywhere in Seattle too?
Speaker 5: I mean it's encroaching on my tennis courts and we
Speaker 5: have to have some words, so like a surist, so
Speaker 5: you know, off my lawn slash tennis court.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is there a lot of a lot of tension between
Speaker 1: the tennis players and then the encroaching pickleballers who are like.
Speaker 2: I'm going to use a third of this, can you go?
Speaker 5: I mean they are my moral enemies.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, okay to say so right, okay, good
Speaker 1: to know, good to know.
Speaker 2: Just if you're not athletic enough to play tennis, they
Speaker 2: have doubles, which is like you can play doubles without
Speaker 2: moving around very much. Yeah, exactly like doubles.
Speaker 5: I could teach you, but i'd have.
Speaker 2: To charge that. What I have to say, thank you?
Speaker 2: How about you calm? What's something you think is underrated?
Speaker 4: I don't know if this is true in California, where
Speaker 4: you all are from, but around most of the country,
Speaker 4: I feel like winter is underrated.
Speaker 2: Mmmm.
Speaker 4: People don't like being cold.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 4: Driving in like ice and slush kind of sucks.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 4: But also, you get to you get to wear cool jackets.
Speaker 4: I'm a sucker for a cool jacket. You get to
Speaker 4: have a sweater, you you, You just get to have
Speaker 4: more variety. Know, I was wearing a T shirt and
Speaker 4: shorts every day. I like being able to switch it up.
Speaker 4: I think fires are really cool. They're too hot in
Speaker 4: the summer. There's nothing like sit out on the porch
Speaker 4: on a cold day with a hot drink, like some
Speaker 4: winter experiences are unparalleled.
Speaker 2: And you are now singing miles of lift with you.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah right now, I have tears coming
Speaker 1: down my face.
Speaker 4: And what's the coolest jacket you on?
Speaker 2: Myles? Oh? In here now? I don't have it. I'm
Speaker 2: I have a look.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which the
Speaker 1: average temperature throughout the year is basically like eighty five degrees,
Speaker 1: you know, like essentially, and I since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I always yearned for seasons. So whenever I have the
Speaker 1: chance to go somewhere, like I mean, we might have
Speaker 1: to go this place at this time here it's pretty cold,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, yes, yes, I want to wear a jacket.
Speaker 2: I want to know cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have one, Like I'm really proud of
Speaker 1: to be honest, I'm like, I want to get a
Speaker 1: nice winter coat, but that's just there's no need for
Speaker 1: that in La so I you know, I'll just get
Speaker 1: yelled at for buying another jacket I'm not going to use.
Speaker 1: But I'm I love a jacket, I love a scarf.
Speaker 1: I love outside in the cold. It's all very yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan. And it like it to your point,
Speaker 1: when the weather, you know, like just like when it's hot,
Speaker 1: there are activities you have to do because it's so hot,
Speaker 1: and you socialize differently when the weather's super hot, and
Speaker 1: I think in the cold, it's very similar too, and
Speaker 1: I yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: I love winter. It's properly rated. But yes, I feel
Speaker 1: like we should embrace it even further.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, hell two coolest jackets. I got an orange
Speaker 4: bomber jacket like brown accents and some like reflectors on it, okay,
Speaker 4: and then a Alaska Airlines blue trench coat raincoat hooded.
Speaker 2: I think a parka kind of thing.
Speaker 4: It's it's more like a business, like a like a
Speaker 4: not quite parka okay, but like you can work with
Speaker 4: the soup, do you could work?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah? Oh wow, aren't we doing well?
Speaker 4: My my my grandfather flew for a Asca Alaska Airlines,
Speaker 4: uh and so I had some connections and got one
Speaker 4: of their surplus like uniform jackets.
Speaker 1: Was that like really a thing where you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I get that jacket? Or you just like came
Speaker 1: up on you like they're not going to miss this
Speaker 1: might it was?
Speaker 4: It was the first one. So for a long time
Speaker 4: I've wanted like a nice raincoat. I have like ones
Speaker 4: that you can wear with a T shirt or whatever,
Speaker 4: but we wearing like a big poofy rain jacket with
Speaker 4: like a button down shirt and a tie, like you
Speaker 4: kind of feel like a fool. And I wanted to
Speaker 4: the nice and they're all like two thousand bucks, and
Speaker 4: it was or they didn't look very nice, like they
Speaker 4: weren't rain jackets, they weren't waterproof, they didn't have a hood.
Speaker 4: And I've been complaining to this about about this, to
Speaker 4: George actually for like months.
Speaker 5: And no, no years years.
Speaker 4: At one they were getting on in Alaska Airlines flight
Speaker 4: together and I'm like, that jacket, That's what I want.
Speaker 4: And then and then I was like, how do I
Speaker 4: get one of those jackets? And George said, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I want you to email the CEO or something. And
Speaker 4: then I thought, wait a minute, Yeah, my grandpa used
Speaker 4: to fly. Maybe I just do email the CEO. And
Speaker 4: I said, hey, my grandpa used to fly for you,
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. Can you guys help me out?
Speaker 2: And they do hear, mister Airlines, really, I write to
Speaker 2: you today.
Speaker 5: And I was just saying that to like get him
Speaker 5: to stop talking about it.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's just email the ceo. CEO. Yeah, by George,
Speaker 2: you do have quite an idea. All right, let's let's
Speaker 2: uh take a quick break and we're going to come
Speaker 2: back and we're going to talk about the future of
Speaker 2: our former democracy and uh, you know how we could
Speaker 2: maybe change a couple of things. We'll be right back
Speaker 2: and we're back. So George Colin, like I said, the
Speaker 2: podcast is really good. You kind of start out talking
Speaker 2: about this idea that we are super accustomed to this
Speaker 2: one feature of our political process that doesn't need to
Speaker 2: be this way. And in fact, when other countries have
Speaker 2: changed this feature, they've been and much happier, not one
Speaker 2: a plus is across the board, as that will never
Speaker 2: be the case with politics, but much happier and more functional.
Speaker 2: But I did just want to like start out by
Speaker 2: asking why now everything seems to be going so well
Speaker 2: with our current political system. No, I mean when when
Speaker 2: our conversation was starting out, you know, we don't want
Speaker 2: to spend all our time talking about how things bad,
Speaker 2: because I think most of our listeners know that, But
Speaker 2: we did start out in the place of we're facing
Speaker 2: an election where the stakes are kind of more of
Speaker 2: the same or burn it all down in fascism, and
Speaker 2: you know, you guys even pointed out that, like our
Speaker 2: current situation is terrifying to people in other countries, like
Speaker 2: the assassination attempts, the multiple yes, yeah, you know, the
Speaker 2: politicizing of those assassination attempts and just you know, the
Speaker 2: rhetoric is all pretty scary. But are you what are
Speaker 2: you hearing from people who are kind of keeping one
Speaker 2: eye on our current electoral politics.
Speaker 5: I think everyone understands that there are some huge challenges,
Speaker 5: and yet we don't really have the imagination to think
Speaker 5: about how to solve these problems. Like we feel stuck
Speaker 5: and all we can talk about is like, get this
Speaker 5: one person elected and somehow that'll save our democracy. No
Speaker 5: one believes that, but we're kind of grasping for straws
Speaker 5: in terms of what do we actually do to get
Speaker 5: out of this this vicious cycle that we're in. Maybe
Speaker 5: one quick aside in terms of the origin story, like
Speaker 5: we're really talking about our electoral system, how we cast
Speaker 5: our ballots and how those ballots are translated into seats.
Speaker 5: This all started in terms of our American electoral system
Speaker 5: well before we were even a country, Like we have
Speaker 5: to go way back to twelve fifteen. Ah, yes, yes,
Speaker 5: twelve fifteen is a signing of the Magna Cardo where
Speaker 5: King John of England see just a little bit of
Speaker 5: control to this new parliament. Essentially the English aristocracy, Like
Speaker 5: you know, he relied on them for tax dollars to
Speaker 5: fight these foreign wars, and they kind of got fed
Speaker 5: up with having all their money taken away to fight
Speaker 5: a war that they didn't necessarily believe in, and so
Speaker 5: they demanded some power. Magna carta get signed no more
Speaker 5: absolute monarchy. They started elections in twelve sixty five using
Speaker 5: essentially what we now know as a winner take all
Speaker 5: system where you select one top one wins, and we
Speaker 5: largely have not changed that system since that time. We
Speaker 5: as us, as we were a former British colony, we
Speaker 5: essentially inherited all of those British English systems, like the
Speaker 5: legal system, it's a British British common law system. The
Speaker 5: electoral system is the same, and so we've never really had.
Speaker 2: To be fair. We did get rid of the whigs,
Speaker 2: that's true. The barristers don't do that anyway.
Speaker 5: But I mean there's some things we should have kept
Speaker 5: because that was cool.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, the lawyers wouldn't be total jackasses.
Speaker 2: If you're like dude, I gotta sorry, sorry, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be.
Speaker 5: That would definitely make it more fun for sure, and
Speaker 5: so you know, I think what we have to do
Speaker 5: is start to allow ourselves to imagine other options. There
Speaker 5: are other countries, as you said, that have become democracies
Speaker 5: since we had you know, since we've expanded the franchise
Speaker 5: and thought about these challenges of how do we do
Speaker 5: other than just elect a delegate to tell the king
Speaker 5: how we don't like a SAX policy. Now we're trying
Speaker 5: to think about Okay, now that the franchise has expanded,
Speaker 5: well beyond just men with lots of property to lots
Speaker 5: of different people, and so you can't have a one
Speaker 5: size fits all approach to representation. All these other countries
Speaker 5: have picked something else that allows for that representation, for
Speaker 5: minority groups across the board to have real representation, and
Speaker 5: so being able to give ourselves permission to get beyond
Speaker 5: our American exceptionalism and say we have things to learn
Speaker 5: from other places, other people, other societies. Why don't we
Speaker 5: understand what choices they had and what decisions they made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very American to do the winner take all.
Speaker 2: Like American's most comfortable in a casino. You know, we
Speaker 2: love a casino. We love a story that makes it
Speaker 2: a line I put people putting it all on the
Speaker 2: line one in a million, and we just follow the
Speaker 2: one person out of a million who actually wins to
Speaker 2: tell ourselves that. But yeah, we love high stakes stories,
Speaker 2: right and yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt Colin.
Speaker 4: Oh well good, Well, so so zooming in on like
Speaker 4: some of the problems. So we all know the electoral
Speaker 4: college sucks. We're not going to talk about that so
Speaker 4: much unless we want to. But talking about it.
Speaker 2: On that idea already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're ready for some alternatives, man, right, But when.
Speaker 4: We talk about electing people of the Congress or your state
Speaker 4: legislature or your city council, I think most folks, most
Speaker 4: folks know jerry mandering is bad. Maybe you don't know
Speaker 4: like the details of how it works, but you know
Speaker 4: it's manipulating the lines, manipulating the systems to get the
Speaker 4: outcomes that you want. People are concerned about that, and
Speaker 4: folks are concerned about this idea of polarization that are
Speaker 4: two sides are getting further apart and they're starting to
Speaker 4: hate each other. But there's not really many thoughtful ways
Speaker 4: about how to grapple these problems. We just say, oh,
Speaker 4: we should elect more moderates, Like we just need to
Speaker 4: find a pace to compromise more at the middle. We
Speaker 4: need to draw the lines better. But all of these
Speaker 4: ideas are like kind of abstract, they're maybe not actually good.
Speaker 4: Maybe electing more moderates actually doesn't lead to more people
Speaker 4: feeling like your voices are heard. And you know, gerrymandering
Speaker 4: is kind of a reality. Like democrats and progressives tend
Speaker 4: to live in cities, People of color tend to live
Speaker 4: in cities. More conservative white folks, working class folks often
Speaker 4: live in rural areas. Like, you can only manipulate the
Speaker 4: lines so much. And so if those are the problems
Speaker 4: that you want to solve, you can't just do the
Speaker 4: current thing that we're doing better. The current thing that
Speaker 4: we're doing is the problem that leads to all of
Speaker 4: those outcomes, Like we have to come up with something different.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of what we're trying to explore in
Speaker 4: the podcast, is if we wanted to explore from a
Speaker 4: totally different starting point how to conduct elections and how
Speaker 4: to build our government, how can we make some of
Speaker 4: those problems obsolete?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, you know, I'm always struck when I was listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast, and when we were talking on our
Speaker 1: yesterday's episode, just sort of given what our options are
Speaker 1: in the United States and how a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't fit under you know, the these gigantic umbrellas of
Speaker 1: just either of these parties, right, and the discourse or
Speaker 1: the rhetoric we hear so much is like, you know,
Speaker 1: you have this sacred right to vote, you know, and
Speaker 1: you can vote, and you're able to vote, and that's sacred.
Speaker 1: But you know, as listening to your show, the other
Speaker 1: part of this that I feel like we don't talk
Speaker 1: about is what about do we have a right to
Speaker 1: be represented? Because it's one thing to say, here's the
Speaker 1: fucking menu, which one do you want? And you're like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: according to my diet restrictions, I've none of these. Actually
Speaker 1: is there something else, like no, sorry, so you can have,
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of terrible reaction to what's on offer,
Speaker 1: or just not not engage into the in the process
Speaker 1: at all. What I mean is that something like we
Speaker 1: should really be thinking about is that it's not just
Speaker 1: about our ability that we can cast a vote, but
Speaker 1: that we also need to have some We should have
Speaker 1: the right to have our own beliefs or values, represented
Speaker 1: in the people that we do ultimately send to Washington
Speaker 1: to legislate.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, George, Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say that, just
Speaker 5: to build off of that. The challenge of a winner,
Speaker 5: take all system as it relates to folks of color
Speaker 5: is that our options are very limited. We have this
Speaker 5: Voting Rights Act, landmark piece of legislation that obviously people
Speaker 5: died to get past, and it's been interpreted that the
Speaker 5: only way that folks of color in particular, or other
Speaker 5: minority groups that can have representation under this or take
Speaker 5: all system is when we have when we can draw
Speaker 5: majority minority districts, And that kind of makes sense at
Speaker 5: some level, like Okay, you put a lot of like
Speaker 5: minded folks together into a district and they are more
Speaker 5: than fifty percent, they get representation. But ironically that requires segregation,
Speaker 5: and do we want segregation as a means to an
Speaker 5: end in order to achieve better political representation? So I
Speaker 5: think it's really challenging to have that, as you mentioned,
Speaker 5: the right to vote, when that doesn't necessarily translate into
Speaker 5: real representation.
Speaker 2: Now it depends on how intricately you draw those lines
Speaker 2: when you're jerrymandering. We can really right, I'm really good
Speaker 2: at tracing, very fine.
Speaker 4: There's also like two different dimensions of representation that we lack.
Speaker 4: I mean there's a lot that we lack. Well, there's
Speaker 4: two big ones. So one is just if you want
Speaker 4: to buy like that we live in a two party system.
Speaker 4: We don't like we want to envision something else, but
Speaker 4: like that's the world we live in today. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's millions of Republicans in California who effectively have no representation.
Speaker 4: Their vote for president doesn't count because we know a
Speaker 4: Democrat's gonna win. Their vote for governor largely doesn't count
Speaker 4: for the most part. The members of Congress and state
Speaker 4: legislature like it doesn't matter, like we already know in
Speaker 4: advance a Democrat's gonna win those seats, And the exact
Speaker 4: same thing is true for Democrats in Texas and Alabama,
Speaker 4: in Mississippi and Missouri. There's so many folks who just
Speaker 4: know five years in advance, I'm not going to elect
Speaker 4: someone who I care about at any level of government.
Speaker 4: So of course people are like tuning out and not participating.
Speaker 4: But you actually have the same problem sort of within
Speaker 4: the parties. So like I live in Washington State, I
Speaker 4: know ahead of time, a Democrat's gonna win governor and Congress,
Speaker 4: everything that was just saying. But as a result, that
Speaker 4: means the November election, even if you're a Democrat in
Speaker 4: Washington doesn't really matter because you know the Democrats going
Speaker 4: to win. The election that really matters is the primary,
Speaker 4: you know, a few months earlier, that picks which Democrat
Speaker 4: is going to win. And primary elections are mostly older, wealthier,
Speaker 4: wider folks, so you end up having a teeny tiny
Speaker 4: subset of the population pick the one option everyone else
Speaker 4: has to choose from in November. And so like in Washington,
Speaker 4: we have seven Democratic members of Congress. Six of them
Speaker 4: I would say, come from sort of the moderate Hakeem Jeffreys,
Speaker 4: Nancy Pelosi wing of the party, and one of them
Speaker 4: comes from sort of the AOC Bernie Sanders wing, even
Speaker 4: though consistently the Bernie Sanders wing of the party is
Speaker 4: about half of all the Democrats in Washington state, so
Speaker 4: those people aren't represented either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the critiques I've heard from like a more
Speaker 2: representative system, well one of them is like, yeah, it
Speaker 2: might work for those like small homogeneous European nations, but America, like,
Speaker 2: you know, America has racism, so how could that work here?
Speaker 2: Which is a terrible argument, But it's especially interesting that
Speaker 2: you are drawing on Northern Ireland being the example, because Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it would just be instructive for people to
Speaker 2: hear about sort of the context of civil rights in
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd be happy to start. I first started thinking
Speaker 5: about Northern Ireland. Actually not well. I guess when I
Speaker 5: was a kid growing up during the time of the
Speaker 5: troubles in Northern Ireland. I just watched TV and I
Speaker 5: just thought, Wow, white folks hating on white folks, Like,
Speaker 5: I don't get it, Like, what did they do that
Speaker 5: makes them so angry? Fast forward? I remember reading this
Speaker 5: kind of mostly born report that a colleague organization of
Speaker 5: ours came up with that was making the case for
Speaker 5: pro poorsh representation, and they basically it was like two
Speaker 5: lines that said, when communities don't have any recourse to
Speaker 5: have any voice whatsoever in policy, their only option in
Speaker 5: most times is political violence. And that's what happened in
Speaker 5: Northern Ireland, and that was resolved largely through power sharing
Speaker 5: that included a change to the electoral system as part
Speaker 5: of the nineteen ninety eight agreement, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 5: what I remember a big to do about Senator George
Speaker 5: Mitchell and President Clinton at the time leaning in and
Speaker 5: getting folks to put down their arms and to come
Speaker 5: to an agreement. But it was kind of like a revelation, like, actually,
Speaker 5: there's so much to learn from and as we started
Speaker 5: to kind of dig deeper, and in the end we
Speaker 5: ended up bringing a bunch of our colleagues to Ireland
Speaker 5: and Northern Ireland to observe the elections earlier this year.
Speaker 5: The parallels between our societies are so astounding that we
Speaker 5: essentially are both the creations of English settler colonialism. At
Speaker 5: some point, the English beat the socks off of the
Speaker 5: Irish elite, they fled, and basically they started. The English
Speaker 5: started sending tens of thousands of people to Northern Ireland,
Speaker 5: to this region called Ulster, who essentially populated and control
Speaker 5: it because they needed to have this buffer the back door,
Speaker 5: to prevent France and Spain from attacking from the backside
Speaker 5: and so setling colonialism. They had all this manipulation, using
Speaker 5: gerrymandering and limiting the franchise to essentially create one party
Speaker 5: rule for fifty years, and then the result was a
Speaker 5: civil rights movement in the late sixties early seventies that
Speaker 5: really started to make the case of we need housing,
Speaker 5: we need jobs, and we need one person, one vote.
Speaker 5: And so going there and being able to see mural
Speaker 5: after mural and statues of Frederick Douglass, famous anti slavery
Speaker 5: activists who actually traveled to Ireland during the time of
Speaker 5: what we know as the potato famine, they call it
Speaker 5: the Great Hunger, Great starvation, and talked about the parallels
Speaker 5: between the treatment of African Americans in American slavery and
Speaker 5: the treatment of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland. And so
Speaker 5: I just thought, wow, there are so many things that
Speaker 5: are just like parallel track that we should see. Did
Speaker 5: how did they actually resolve their deep, deep polarization.
Speaker 4: And their civil rights movement didn't just result in Oh,
Speaker 4: they got granted rights because they marched in the streets,
Speaker 4: like just like in ours riot, police were marshaled against them.
Speaker 4: You had militia groups formed to you know, throw rocks,
Speaker 4: fire hoses were spread. It just it wasn't It was
Speaker 4: not a peaceful process. And what we saw in the
Speaker 4: late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies is very similar what
Speaker 4: we're seeing in the US today, which is this increasing
Speaker 4: rate of political violence, of folks feeling like they're not
Speaker 4: heard of, folks marching in protest and counter protests to
Speaker 4: each other, not just exchanging ideas, but exchanging bullets, getting
Speaker 4: into fights, there being this ramp up of political violence.
Speaker 4: And it's really familiar the parallels in which the sort
Speaker 4: of political dynamics mirror what we're feeling a lot of today.
Speaker 2: And that preceded what's known as the Troubles, right or
Speaker 2: that was the Troubles, and then it kind of turned
Speaker 2: to open warfare in the seventies and into the eighties, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so the system that you're describing came together in
Speaker 2: the aftermath of this horrible kind of civil war that
Speaker 2: happened in the streets of Northern Ireland. And so I
Speaker 2: want I want to just kind of get into how
Speaker 2: that system could be transferred to the US. Next. Let's
Speaker 2: take a let's take a quick break, and we'll be
Speaker 2: right back, and we're back. We're back, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to hear kind of from you guys
Speaker 2: what your vision is for how that system that is
Speaker 2: currently a representation, a representative democracy like how that could
Speaker 2: take hold in the United States.
Speaker 5: Just let me throw one quick historical footnote, then I'll
Speaker 5: turn over to Colin. Actually, their implementation of what Colin
Speaker 5: will refer to shortly actually started in nineteen twenty one
Speaker 5: Northern Ireland, and as they were partitioning Northern Ireland away
Speaker 5: from the South, which then became the Irish Free State.
Speaker 5: Basically the British said, okay, well, why don't we agree
Speaker 5: as part of this end of this war with the Irish,
Speaker 5: that both sides will have some form of power sharing
Speaker 5: built into their systems because both sides have minorities that
Speaker 5: they wanted to protect. Northern Ireland gets rid of it
Speaker 5: as soon as they can, because they see the writing
Speaker 5: on the wall. They're like, one party control, let's do it.
Speaker 5: Ireland actually keeps it for a full hundred years, and
Speaker 5: that's still the system that they use today. So actually,
Speaker 5: in nineteen ninety eight when they actually re implemented it,
Speaker 5: something that they actually had for about roughly ten years
Speaker 5: beginning in the nineteen twenties. So I'll kick it or column.
Speaker 4: Well, and we'll come back to the sort of forgotten
Speaker 4: history question in a moment too. So the system that
Speaker 4: they use in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
Speaker 4: is a system of proportional representation, so called because each
Speaker 4: segment of the population has the power to win their
Speaker 4: fair share their proportion in government. So if Irish Republicans,
Speaker 4: who are different from US Republicans, they want to join
Speaker 4: the Republic of Ireland, Irish Republicans or Irish Nationalists win
Speaker 4: thirty three percent of the vote, they're going to win
Speaker 4: about one in three seats in Parliament. And what you
Speaker 4: might have it happen is you might have say, forty
Speaker 4: percent of the vote go to Irish Unionists, folks who
Speaker 4: like being part of Great Britain. Maybe forty percent of
Speaker 4: the vote goes to Irish nationalists, and then another twenty
Speaker 4: percent of the vote goes to people who say, oh,
Speaker 4: we don't really care about that, we care about jobs,
Speaker 4: or we care about housing, and then that ends up
Speaker 4: being the makeup of your parliament. And in terms of
Speaker 4: what they could look like in the US, it's interesting.
Speaker 4: So there are there's a path to get it here.
Speaker 4: There's an act that's been introduced into Congress every year
Speaker 4: since twenty seventeen, the Fair Representation Act, that would just
Speaker 4: move the US congressional seat system to that system. So
Speaker 4: instead of electing, you know, instead of Massachusetts electing ten Democrats,
Speaker 4: they would probably elect six or seven Democrats and three
Speaker 4: or four Republicans. And instead of you know, Alabama electing
Speaker 4: all Republicans, they would elect you know, two Republicans and
Speaker 4: a Democrat or whatever whatever the population might be, and
Speaker 4: you could have these smaller chunks breakthrough. But what's really
Speaker 4: interesting is that the specific version that they use that
Speaker 4: is proposed for this bill, that they use in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 4: it's a form of ranked choice voting, and I say
Speaker 4: a form of rank choice voting, because a lot of
Speaker 4: folks might have heard of our CV rank voice voting.
Speaker 4: But there's a bunch of different ways to do it.
Speaker 4: The way they do it in Minneapolis is different than
Speaker 4: the way to do it in Maine, which is different
Speaker 4: than the way to do it in New York, which
Speaker 4: is different than the way that they do it in Ireland.
Speaker 4: But back in the nineteen tens, twenties, thirties, forties, cities
Speaker 4: in the US actually use this Irish version of proportional
Speaker 4: ranks choice voting. Cities like New York City, Cincinnati, and
Speaker 4: Cleveland Sacramento in California, and you saw again back in
Speaker 4: the forties at the height of Jim Crow, well before
Speaker 4: the Civil Rights movement, you saw black communists from Manhattan
Speaker 4: get elected to the New York City Council. And that's
Speaker 4: just sort of it's hard to imagine today, let alone
Speaker 4: during the Red Scare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is. We always talk about the way
Speaker 2: that these facts that aren't part of the system as
Speaker 2: currently constructed get just memory hold from history and kind
Speaker 2: of erased from history. So that's super interesting.
Speaker 1: And you said that, someone told be like, what is
Speaker 1: that from a marvel like reality or black this is
Speaker 1: like Manhattan is a city councils.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's real. That's real in the context of
Speaker 2: racial justice and equity like in the US. Like when
Speaker 2: listening to your show, I was thinking about we had
Speaker 2: a lot of energy behind that cause in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: but we it feels like we no longer have the
Speaker 2: attention of the mainstream Democratic party right now, and you know,
Speaker 2: having a party that is focused on that cause and
Speaker 2: is always there even if you know they're not the
Speaker 2: majority in power, but they're always being represented. Could it
Speaker 2: like that that's just a thing that I had taken
Speaker 2: for granted as like impossible, and that that would just
Speaker 2: be amazing to have that, like you know, there would
Speaker 2: always be people doing work for racial justice and equity
Speaker 2: in the US, like in government, right does not see
Speaker 2: it's wild that is such a basic idea, but like it's.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, because you think of how like platforms change
Speaker 1: every year, like the Democrats platform looks completely different now
Speaker 1: than it in twenty twenty. Like, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: think we use too much like political capital to be
Speaker 1: talking about used to form this go round. So let's
Speaker 1: put that on the back burner and become fully pro
Speaker 1: cop this year, because you know, we kind of were
Speaker 1: a little in our policies can be nebulous at times,
Speaker 1: And I think that's like it really gets to what
Speaker 1: really affects voters and makes people so that you just
Speaker 1: get to this point where you're totally disaffected. You become
Speaker 1: ambivalent to the process because you feel like, well, what
Speaker 1: about all these other real problems And the only way
Speaker 1: to enter the conversation is this very rigid system where
Speaker 1: unless you're reading from the same hymnal, your chances of
Speaker 1: getting elected aren't really possible. And I think that's really
Speaker 1: a great way for I think that would help a
Speaker 1: lot of people also become much more involved, because what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is something that does give people a
Speaker 1: fair shake where it's like, no, if you have the numbers,
Speaker 1: like you can get a seat at the table. That's
Speaker 1: just it is what it is. And then guess what,
Speaker 1: people will have to have coalition governments where they are
Speaker 1: going to have to work with you to get the
Speaker 1: kinds of majorities you need to achieve certain things.
Speaker 2: And I think that's.
Speaker 1: Super I think underrated and underrated thing about it, because
Speaker 1: I think most people will just go to the factor like, oh,
Speaker 1: so what you want more Republicans And it's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: that's really not the case. You just want something, you
Speaker 1: want it to actually be representative of what's there. And
Speaker 1: I feel like it sounds like too and just listening
Speaker 1: to the show, like we had a moment when we
Speaker 1: were writing the Constitution where they're like, what if Congress
Speaker 1: looked like everything we see out there in America? And
Speaker 1: it's like, and that's like one of those forks in
Speaker 1: the roads where our destinies like, and we decided it's
Speaker 1: not that new of a concept, like these are things
Speaker 1: we've been grappling with since the beginning of this country.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, there's a few other things that are kind of
Speaker 5: mind blowing. When we talked about Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland,
Speaker 5: one story that keeps coming up is that whenever we've
Speaker 5: talked to folks on the ground there, they kept saying,
Speaker 5: you might have some concerns in the US about getting
Speaker 5: far right parties elected and taking seats, and that might
Speaker 5: freak some people out, but in many ways that's important
Speaker 5: because in the Northern Ireland experience, they saw that there
Speaker 5: were people who were shut out of the political system
Speaker 5: that they had no alternative but to be violent. And
Speaker 5: so when you have people win seats their fair share,
Speaker 5: maybe they win one or two in a city council,
Speaker 5: and they have to grapple with balancing the budget, closing
Speaker 5: a hospital, dealing with pensions, then it's harder to be
Speaker 5: completely anti government when you actually have some power and
Speaker 5: you have to grapple with some collective decisions that you
Speaker 5: just can't just throw rocks at at the house. One
Speaker 5: other interesting thing that we learned about that kind of
Speaker 5: blew my mind is how power sharing was taken to
Speaker 5: the logical extreme in both Ireland and to more so
Speaker 5: in Northern Ireland. So our winner take all system we
Speaker 5: understand it, particularly in our electoral system in terms of
Speaker 5: there can only be one winner when you have one
Speaker 5: member per district. But when you think about the winner
Speaker 5: take all system in terms of legislative governance, we understand like,
Speaker 5: if you're the majority party, you get to pick all
Speaker 5: the committee chairs. It's like to the winner go the spoils.
Speaker 5: That seems obvious to us, right right, That's not how
Speaker 5: neither Ireland nor Northern Ireland does it. If you win
Speaker 5: forty percent of seats in the Parliament, you win forty
Speaker 5: percent of committee chairs. They have this process it's called
Speaker 5: the Dahunt method, whereby it's like the NFL draft. Your
Speaker 5: party as like the team gets to pick in a
Speaker 5: particular order which committee chairs you want. So if you're
Speaker 5: the first pick, you'll probably get to pick like the
Speaker 5: Taxation ways and means committee because it's likely the most
Speaker 5: powerful justice as usually second, something like that, and so
Speaker 5: you just kind of go down the list in terms
Speaker 5: of who deserves the next pick. Added to that logical
Speaker 5: extreme in terms of Northern Ireland, if once again, if
Speaker 5: your party is forty percent of the seats, in parliament,
Speaker 5: you get forty percent of the cabinet seats in government
Speaker 5: itself as a way to make sure that everyone has
Speaker 5: a fair share. There are critiques in terms of sometimes
Speaker 5: it grinds to a halt because those parties almost never
Speaker 5: agree on lots of big things, and so sometimes it
Speaker 5: shuts the government down, which is its own problem. But
Speaker 5: the idea that they are committed to power sharing in
Speaker 5: order for everyone to feel like they have a stake
Speaker 5: in governance, that's a really key idea that's really missing
Speaker 5: in our debates here in the.
Speaker 4: US, and it's something that Northern Ireland folks we talked
Speaker 4: to kept emphasizing that, like, oh, like there's a lot
Speaker 4: of critiques about power sharing this specific model we have
Speaker 4: through these how many seats, but the elections being proportional,
Speaker 4: like that's a no brainer, Like no one, no one
Speaker 4: debates that at all, Like that's obvious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah, I mean in Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: the thing that's scary about it to people is that
Speaker 2: they're planning to like clear house and just make all
Speaker 2: the cabinet entirely one thing. So that that's interesting. I
Speaker 2: feel like maybe after this next presidential administration, there might
Speaker 2: be more appetent. It could be the last one, folks,
Speaker 2: but it could be the last election, not for the
Speaker 2: reasons he's saying. But oh yeah, well yeah, go ahead,
Speaker 2: Sorry Miles, I interrupted, Oh no, no, no, I was
Speaker 2: just saying.
Speaker 1: And also like the visibility right, because I think, especially
Speaker 1: in the United States, we have this version of like
Speaker 1: the amount of extremists there are in the United States,
Speaker 1: you would think, depending on where you're watching news, like
Speaker 1: they're outnumbered.
Speaker 2: There's seven billion of these people.
Speaker 1: And it's always interesting to see like when people like
Speaker 1: are like in in Europe when they're having their elections,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, they're far right parties only got like
Speaker 1: a fraction of what people thought they were going to do.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also helps too for people to
Speaker 1: understand like, Okay, there is this group of people that exist,
Speaker 1: but they aren't nearly as large or influential they would
Speaker 1: want you to think, which I think also helps people
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a clear understanding of like
Speaker 1: truly like what we're dealing with in the country in
Speaker 1: terms of like who who's sort of like where everyone's
Speaker 1: ideologies sort of lie. Because yeah, I think it's very
Speaker 1: easy to sort of obscure that with our media in
Speaker 1: this country and have people kind of thinking like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, like what's all happening, Like what are we
Speaker 1: up against? And yeah, knowing that I think putting being
Speaker 1: able to quantify that, I think is a big benefit.
Speaker 4: And that's part of the risk of a winner take
Speaker 4: all system is you can have a fringe element, right
Speaker 4: that wins it all. People forget that. Back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: if you looked at Poles, most Republicans didn't actually like
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, but they were split between Chris Christy and
Speaker 4: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and John Kasich and Mitt Romney.
Speaker 4: And Romney wasn't running in twenty sixteen, was he? No, No,
Speaker 4: he was not running.
Speaker 2: The spirit anyway, yeah, right, spirit of.
Speaker 4: John Huntsman point is like they were the winner take
Speaker 4: all system. Let's a fringe element if they win more
Speaker 4: than others in a primary process or whatever, win everything.
Speaker 4: Like a portional system caps your ceiling at your actual support,
Speaker 4: so you never have a fringe party take over every
Speaker 4: chamber of government.
Speaker 2: I do want to just go back to this idea
Speaker 2: that you know, it doesn't say anything about two parties
Speaker 2: or parties of any sort in the in the Constitution,
Speaker 2: and yet and like George Washington was like kind of
Speaker 2: against parties in general. He was just a downer, didn't
Speaker 2: didn't like to party, but he like America just kind
Speaker 2: of snapped to a two party system and like kind
Speaker 2: of keeps going back to a two party system and
Speaker 2: like staying in this two party system. And so for me,
Speaker 2: that's one of my big questions is like, is there
Speaker 2: just something about America and our at the central lie
Speaker 2: at the heart of America where it's like we're we
Speaker 2: are a representative democracy and also the system is completely
Speaker 2: designed to keep the dispossessed without power, Like that's been
Speaker 2: the deal kind of from day one, Like when you
Speaker 2: look at the wording of the Constitution and then like
Speaker 2: what who those words actually applied to. I'm just I
Speaker 2: guess that's the big question for me is like how
Speaker 2: you know, in the experience of granted, a winner take
Speaker 2: all primary system, but like the primary system of a
Speaker 2: progressive and widely popular Bernie Sanders, you know, getting a
Speaker 2: lot of attention and enthusiasm, and then it just kind
Speaker 2: of felt like you were always up against this entrenched machine.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious how you guys, think about the existing
Speaker 2: kind of inertia and money and power of the system
Speaker 2: as it currently exists, and how you could potentially see
Speaker 2: this idea overcoming that overtime.
Speaker 4: George, can you mind meld with me real quick? I
Speaker 4: want to say something.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna I'm gonna go back to French class.
Speaker 2: The name is due Verge. Yes, and I of course
Speaker 2: know what that means. But the listeners, George, and no
Speaker 2: further questions? All right?
Speaker 5: Do Verge was a French philosopher that basically came up
Speaker 5: with this theorem or this law that basically said, any
Speaker 5: winner take all system is going to end up with
Speaker 5: only two major parties that can contest for power because
Speaker 5: when there is like another faction, another party that tries
Speaker 5: to buy and play within the confines of a winner
Speaker 5: take all system, they almost never win. And if you
Speaker 5: try us several times, you'll have to give up, because
Speaker 5: how do you tell people to vote for us if
Speaker 5: you can never turn their votes into actual seats that
Speaker 5: is actual political power.
Speaker 4: You actually increase the odds that your opponents win, Like
Speaker 4: if Bernie Sanders runs a viable candidacy, that increases odds
Speaker 4: Republicans win, so like it just turned. The logical conclusion
Speaker 4: is only have two candidates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like a bad system almost.
Speaker 5: And so you see this playing out in basically the
Speaker 5: UK and the other former British colonies that have kept
Speaker 5: this system. In Canada, there's essentially only like the Conservative
Speaker 5: and the Liberal slash Moderate party that can win ever
Speaker 5: any election. They only have multiple parties because they have
Speaker 5: kind of regional politics of like Quebecqua Separatists that has
Speaker 5: its own political party. But for the most part, nationally
Speaker 5: they are a two party system because they have the
Speaker 5: exact same system that we have. The UK is pretty
Speaker 5: much the same. You have Labor and then you have
Speaker 5: the Tories or concernvatives. Sometimes the Liberal Democrats play that
Speaker 5: kind of in between role, spoiler role, but for the
Speaker 5: most part, du Verget's law plays out very clearly in
Speaker 5: all of these systems. And so being able to start with,
Speaker 5: you know, what is the electoral system that we want
Speaker 5: for our for our society. Is it something that is
Speaker 5: very simple and that forces a majority even though it
Speaker 5: doesn't reflect the majority interest or do you want to
Speaker 5: make sure that you have a minority representation built in
Speaker 5: to our electorate? And so by picking a proportional system
Speaker 5: whichever flavor because there's definitely variations on a theme. The
Speaker 5: fact that you will get you know, three, four or
Speaker 5: five parties means that there are coalitions. There is kind
Speaker 5: of like a shifting depending on which issue that different
Speaker 5: parties can call us and get legislation passed. So there
Speaker 5: is nothing structural or cultural about the US that pushes
Speaker 5: us towards a two point. It is the system that
Speaker 5: pushes us awkwardly into these two camps that don't fit us.
Speaker 4: And actually there's some really interesting political science. I'll give
Speaker 4: the very high level. We can put a link in
Speaker 4: the show notes if you all want, but there's some
Speaker 4: political science that's been done that shows that effectively, in
Speaker 4: the US right now there are six political parties. There's
Speaker 4: six ideologically consistent and distinct ways of being basically that
Speaker 4: most people subscribe to, and it's just that they're jammed
Speaker 4: into the two parties. Like Alexander Cocosio Ortez said a
Speaker 4: couple of years ago, in any other country on Earth,
Speaker 4: Joe Biden and I would not be in the same
Speaker 4: political party.
Speaker 5: But in the US we have to be.
Speaker 4: And so when you think about, like, you know, you're
Speaker 4: Mitt Romney, Barry Goldwater, John McCain type folks, and your
Speaker 4: evangelical Christians and your like Mago wing of American Nazis,
Speaker 4: Like they don't actually have anything in common politically. And
Speaker 4: it's the same parallels on the left. And so whether
Speaker 4: or not these six parties emerge or they become distinct
Speaker 4: factions within the two parties as we have them, there's
Speaker 4: those are probably the coalitions that we would see emerge
Speaker 4: if we moved to a proportional multi party system.
Speaker 1: I think the other part about this too is like
Speaker 1: I think at this point, we see that there is
Speaker 1: a way to do it.
Speaker 2: It is being done.
Speaker 1: We've that we've dabbled in it in the United States before,
Speaker 1: but right now, in its current form, it seems like intractable,
Speaker 1: like this is it's stuck. And I know when we
Speaker 1: were speaking a little bit earlier before we even recorded,
Speaker 1: I remember Jack and I were like, well, how do
Speaker 1: we it? Is it possible? And I felt like you
Speaker 1: brought up a few good points. Was to think about
Speaker 1: a lot of like the major changes we've had in
Speaker 1: the in the United States across you know, the storied
Speaker 1: history of this place, the years preceding those changes, it
Speaker 1: felt like this is going to be how it is forever,
Speaker 1: and then boom, we have rights. We have universal suffrage,
Speaker 1: we have civil rights, et cetera. We have marriage equality
Speaker 1: and those those kinds of things. And I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of the times too, we're also like the
Speaker 1: I feel like the de facto way we speak about
Speaker 1: it in very early kinds of political conversations when you're
Speaker 1: younger and getting into it is like it feels everything
Speaker 1: has to happen from the top down, and when you
Speaker 1: look at the current system, like there's no way these
Speaker 1: freaks are going to be like, yes, I would like
Speaker 1: to dilute my power, but it seems like this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where we can create upward pressure
Speaker 1: from a more local level, and that is happening in
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 2: We like to make things about personality and like individualism
Speaker 2: in the US, and so often the answer is actually structural,
Speaker 2: and we don't like to admit that a lot of
Speaker 2: the times because it doesn't allow for us to be
Speaker 2: the heroes of our own narrative.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so can you sort of just point to
Speaker 1: some examples of like how this is not just like
Speaker 1: you know, Cincinnati decades ago, which where things like that
Speaker 1: were happening. But like even in the year of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, there are there are movements being made that
Speaker 1: are approaching something like this that could potentially help you
Speaker 1: drive the conversation on a national level.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll start and I'll kick it over to Colin.
Speaker 5: I think the most exciting thing for folks to watch
Speaker 5: in the twenty twenty four elections, besides the presidential is
Speaker 5: what happens in Portland, Oregon. It's on the five. If
Speaker 5: you'd go north on the five, you get for the Yeah,
Speaker 5: what was really exciting. And this goes to some of
Speaker 5: the work that we do as an organization More Equitable Democracy.
Speaker 5: We support people of color led groups on transforming our
Speaker 5: electoral system in order to advance racial justice, and so
Speaker 5: our colleagues there were doing a lot of advocacy work
Speaker 5: in community of color, trying to bring more resources to
Speaker 5: their communities, and they always hit like this huge buzz
Speaker 5: saw their city commission. It was a commission whereby there
Speaker 5: was no separate executive branch from the legislative branch. They
Speaker 5: were one and the same. They were all elected at large,
Speaker 5: so you essentially had to win like a congressional race
Speaker 5: in order to win a city council seat at that
Speaker 5: always favored big moneyed interests, usually of folks who had
Speaker 5: relationships with developers, and so they understood. We did a
Speaker 5: lot of research to kind of back this up, that
Speaker 5: breaking up that system was important, but that going to
Speaker 5: the most obvious solution in the American kind of context
Speaker 5: is to go from all at large to single member districts,
Speaker 5: just like cut up the city into five equal districts.
Speaker 5: Maybe we'll be able to get two seats out of
Speaker 5: the five that are responsive to our community's needs. Those
Speaker 5: communities of color about twenty five percent of the population
Speaker 5: in Portland because of a really long anti black history,
Speaker 5: there is no one particular area that is heavily people
Speaker 5: of color. There isn't the same type of segregation that
Speaker 5: there is in other cities, and so just drawing those
Speaker 5: single member districts was not going to solve any of
Speaker 5: those problems.
Speaker 4: Into any configurational highlight. Like we said, what if we
Speaker 4: move from five to seven to nine to twelve to
Speaker 4: fifteen city councilors? You just could not do it.
Speaker 5: Not possible. And so that's why we introduced the Irish
Speaker 5: model to them, and they started to think, okay, well,
Speaker 5: if we had a larger district where we elected three,
Speaker 5: maybe we can win one or two of those that
Speaker 5: are in neighborhoods that we do a lot of organizing.
Speaker 5: And so what was really exciting was that. And this
Speaker 5: sounds when I say exciting, this will sound boring for
Speaker 5: just a second. There was a charter review process. Please
Speaker 5: don't fall asleep. This is not exactlytant.
Speaker 2: Yeah crps baby, that's me all day. We got an
Speaker 2: air horn in there.
Speaker 5: When shorter review process ah awesome, and so baked into
Speaker 5: their charter their constitution was this mandatory about once every
Speaker 5: decade Ish process whereby folks from the community were invited
Speaker 5: in to kick the tires of their system, their structures
Speaker 5: of government, and asked to come up with ideas to
Speaker 5: change it. For ninety nine percent of the time when
Speaker 5: local governments do this, it's just window dressing. They don't
Speaker 5: really mean to invite people to change things. But to
Speaker 5: their credit, everyone understood in Portland, this antiquate system that
Speaker 5: had been designed about more than one hundred years ago
Speaker 5: wasn't working. So everyone understood something needed to change, and
Speaker 5: so the ability for our partners to organize around a
Speaker 5: process where people were supposed to be invited in to
Speaker 5: come up with ideas and to really flesh them out.
Speaker 5: That's what allowed for that deep conversation about what does
Speaker 5: it mean to have an election and have everyone represented?
Speaker 5: How do we integrate or prioritize racial equity within these structures?
Speaker 5: Can a winner take all system ever be equitable? It's
Speaker 5: kind of like at odds with one another. And so
Speaker 5: that's how they came up with this design of essentially
Speaker 5: the Irish system. They ran a campaign to support the
Speaker 5: recommendation that came from that city charter review process, and
Speaker 5: they won fifty seven forty three. This is the first
Speaker 5: city that has adopted this for the first major city
Speaker 5: that has adopted this electoral system since New York City
Speaker 5: did in the nineteen thirty So it's been one hundred
Speaker 5: years of that kind of hidden history that it's been
Speaker 5: kind of outside of our imagination. Colin, do you want
Speaker 5: to say any words about like how things are going
Speaker 5: at this point?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, Also a lot of folks might be like, well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: Portland did it, but like I've seen Portland, ya, it's
Speaker 4: crunchy liberal hibbies who developed.
Speaker 2: Damn, Kyle McLoughlin is a good mayor. That's right.
Speaker 4: But if you talk to some of the activists and
Speaker 4: colleagues of ours in Portland, what they would tell you,
Speaker 4: and I think what like looking at the elections also
Speaker 4: tell you is that Portland is like most major cities
Speaker 4: in the US, and that that has not been the
Speaker 4: people winning elections. The city council has largely been the
Speaker 4: candidate's most preferred by developers and big business. Like George mentioned,
Speaker 4: they are all folks from downtown or west of the river,
Speaker 4: which is where all the really rich people live. Like
Speaker 4: the established political I mean the political establishment that's entrenched
Speaker 4: in Portland is the same as it kind of as anywhere.
Speaker 4: And you know, one in four Portlanders is a person
Speaker 4: of color. So like, yes, it's pretty white, but it's
Speaker 4: not just like a white utopia like people might think
Speaker 4: it's it is. It is a multiracial community. And if
Speaker 4: Portland can do it, I actually think anywhere can do
Speaker 4: it that at least on the city level. Like the
Speaker 4: four of the five city councilors came out against the
Speaker 4: reform when it was being considered. The former mayor came
Speaker 4: out against it. You know, the Chamber of Commerce came
Speaker 4: out against it, like they were fighting every single established
Speaker 4: interest that existed, and they still managed to win.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And yeah, now they're doing it for the first time
Speaker 4: that they just like made sample ballots public a few
Speaker 4: days ago. And there are some other smaller cities in
Speaker 4: America that are using proportional systems Albany, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Minneapolis,
Speaker 4: Minnesota for their Parks and Recreation Board. And there was
Speaker 4: one Detroit suburb that used it for a few years.
Speaker 4: Because this is a weird story, but basically, the Obama
Speaker 4: Department of Justice brought a lawsuit that the Trump Department
Speaker 4: of Justice settled, and so under the Obama case, like
Speaker 4: they adopted a proportional system to resolve a Voting Rights
Speaker 4: Act complaint. But the Trump DOOJ said, you only have
Speaker 4: to use this system twice and then you can go
Speaker 4: back to the old system that violates the Foot and
Speaker 4: Rights Act. So they don't use it anymore. But it's
Speaker 4: not too at bats if they can't get it right
Speaker 4: and make it permanent after to it, that's that's right.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know what we're doing here. Well, guys, Honestly,
Speaker 2: I feel like we could talk to you for days
Speaker 2: about this, and I can't wait to listen to the
Speaker 2: next episode of your podcasts that drops here. How many
Speaker 2: two episodes.
Speaker 4: In two of the third drops tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Third drops tomorrow. So there we go. Everybody should go
Speaker 2: check it out. Wonderful having you and we'll have to
Speaker 2: have you back. Where can people find you, guys and
Speaker 2: hear more about all of this?
Speaker 4: So you can go to our website, which is Equitable
Speaker 4: Democracy Org. We have a link to the podcast there
Speaker 4: as well as it's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify words
Speaker 4: you listen. You can also find our organization on Twitter.
Speaker 4: That's at Equitable Demo Demo on Twitter and at Equitable
Speaker 4: Democracy on Instagram. I'm on Twitter at Colin J.
Speaker 5: Cole.
Speaker 4: That's c O L I N calling like Colin Farrell,
Speaker 4: not like Colon Powell.
Speaker 2: There you go, and you have much more Calin Farrell
Speaker 2: vibes than we saying before. Yeah we got on.
Speaker 4: Yeah he's Irish, so it's on brand.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: How about you George on X George K Chung C
Speaker 5: H E U N G. And definitely check out our
Speaker 5: podcast The Future of Our Former Democracy on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 5: or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: And we will link off to that in the footnotes.
Speaker 2: Is there a work of media that you guys have
Speaker 2: been enjoying.
Speaker 5: I'll start it's this fairly new couple that is on
Speaker 5: X and TikTok called the It's the Peacocks. It's this couple.
Speaker 5: Why I think that they're so interesting is that it's
Speaker 5: the guy is from northern in Ireland and the women's
Speaker 5: Chinese New Zealander, and they're all about teaching their kids Cantonese,
Speaker 5: which is my parents' language. And the fact that there's
Speaker 5: a white dude that speaks better Cantonese than I do.
Speaker 5: I feel a little bit of shame because you know,
Speaker 5: Chinese people, East Asian people in shame. We do shame
Speaker 5: really well.
Speaker 2: Number one.
Speaker 1: Number one is shame baby.
Speaker 5: But there's only been in my life two times that
Speaker 5: I've met a white person that has spoken better Cantonese
Speaker 5: than I do. And for better for worse. They're always
Speaker 5: Mormon missionaries, so God to love them.
Speaker 2: They they're putting, they're put in that work.
Speaker 5: They put in the work, so good job.
Speaker 1: That's like when I mean, yeah, like people like white
Speaker 1: people speak Japanese really well, and like they live here.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's going on? Like, oh my my parents
Speaker 1: are missionaries in Japan and that's why I speak Japanese.
Speaker 5: I'm like, wow, yes, they do the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about you calling?
Speaker 4: So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna stick with the
Speaker 4: Warhammer thing. We already talked about the Warhammer books. H
Speaker 4: But so I watch a lot of long form like
Speaker 4: video essays. Sure, And there's a good one that's sort
Speaker 4: of the the a good confluence of a couple of
Speaker 4: my things. It's called People Make Games, and they, you know,
Speaker 4: do longer form explorations of you know, video game industry,
Speaker 4: board game industry. But they have a video recently called
Speaker 4: the Games behind Your Government's Next War, and they dive
Speaker 4: into how governments around the world are using war games
Speaker 4: and building custom board games basically to test out foreign
Speaker 4: policy and wars and oh, well, if if we were
Speaker 4: to mobilize our fleet over here, knowing that we have
Speaker 4: this economic relationship here, you know, Miles Jack, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: have you go ahead and play China and let's just
Speaker 4: let's just play a game and simulate what comes out. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And it's this whole massive like government board game industrial complex.
Speaker 4: It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, I'm going to check that out. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the thumbnail of that right now. I'm definitely
Speaker 1: gonna look at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow. Okay, okay, right Miles, where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, find me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray.
Speaker 1: If you like basketball, you can hear Jack and I
Speaker 1: talk endlessly about the NBA on Miles and Jack got
Speaker 1: mad boosties. And if you like ninety Day Fiance, like
Speaker 1: I do to blow some steam off of the you know,
Speaker 1: horror that is being on earth at this time, I
Speaker 1: talk about ninety Day Fiance and the other podcast for
Speaker 1: twenty Day Fiance. A tweet I like, is you know
Speaker 1: the thing I love about like TikTok and stuff is like,
Speaker 1: there's so much good recipe sharing, but alongside that you
Speaker 1: get some people who begin to say, like their authorities
Speaker 1: on the kinds of cuisines that might be a little
Speaker 1: bit culturally specific. And this video, I just let me
Speaker 1: make sure I have the creator's name right. It's from
Speaker 1: Nathan underscore Ng and it's just a good sort of
Speaker 1: side by side video and I'm just gonna play it
Speaker 1: because it just kind of sums up like sort of
Speaker 1: the tone on TikTok, but just how sometimes.
Speaker 2: We see these videos. This was also my work of media.
Speaker 1: Really, if you're white to the Naked eye, but I
Speaker 1: actually have Asian taste buds, I'm not.
Speaker 4: Sure what that makes me. It makes you a white
Speaker 4: person that likes Asian food.
Speaker 2: Helps I know it may be white, but actually Asian taste.
Speaker 2: What does that say about me? Like ship? All right?
Speaker 2: Tweet I've been enjoying Strange at Strange Harbors, Jeff Saying
Speaker 2: tweeted is Todd Phillips punk? Is MasterCard a queer? Ally?
Speaker 2: Is this TV show? My friend? I thought that was good,
Speaker 2: Just summation of my internal monologue. Bullseye. You can find
Speaker 2: me on Twitter at Jack Underscore. O'Brien, you can find
Speaker 2: us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at the Daily
Speaker 2: Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and
Speaker 2: a website Daily zey guys dot com, where we post
Speaker 2: our episodes and our footnotes where we went off to
Speaker 2: the information that we talked about in today's episode, as
Speaker 2: well as a song that we think you might enjoy miles.
Speaker 2: What song do you think people might enjoy it? Uh,
Speaker 2: there's a there's an artist on TD Doci d O
Speaker 2: E C H I I. And she's a dope MC
Speaker 2: and artist.
Speaker 1: And you know, top Dog Entertainment always likes to find
Speaker 1: some of the city's best and Doci is no different.
Speaker 1: This track is called Nissan Ultima. She's just like a
Speaker 1: great lyricist, has a total sense of humor about like
Speaker 1: her in her lyrics. But is all just because she's
Speaker 1: a great MC. Like you're just like, oh that was
Speaker 1: a bar and funny and just overall.
Speaker 2: Really talented artists. So check this track out by Doci.
Speaker 2: It's Nissan Ultima. Yeah, shout out to Brian ed editor, Yeah,
Speaker 2: get it right right? That all right? Well, The Daily
Speaker 2: Guys is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 2: My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio ap Apple podcast or
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going
Speaker 2: to do it for us this morning. We're back this
Speaker 2: afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: to you all then. Bye bye,