Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that Wednesday comes after Monday,
Speaker 1: and so if this part came after the first part.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Marta Kiljoy and my guest is James.
Speaker 1: It's down. Hi, Hi, James, Hi, lovely to be here.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about Wallace and Grommitt because we
Speaker 1: are terrible people and know nothing about England except Wallace
Speaker 1: and Grommit.
Speaker 2: And it's a good we we we're wre It's some
Speaker 2: Gromit respects over here. It's a high point of British
Speaker 2: culture imperialism.
Speaker 1: I think I.
Speaker 2: Haven't watched since I was a kid, but I didn't
Speaker 2: think there's anything problematic, Like.
Speaker 1: I don't know, probably the achieved that penguin. I'm not sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they did not kind to the to the sheep.
Speaker 1: Who knows, but also not problematic. It's Sophie Hi, Sophiehi.
Speaker 1: And our audio engineer is Daniel Hi. Danel Hi, Danille Hi, Daniel.
Speaker 1: Our theme music was written for us by unwoman. And
Speaker 1: if we seem a little distracted, it's because some shit's
Speaker 1: happening right now as we record that we don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, but we're not going to tell
Speaker 1: you what it is because you're you live in the
Speaker 1: future and either nothing happened last week or lots of
Speaker 1: stuff happened last week. Anyway, This is part two of
Speaker 1: a four parter about Operation Nemesis and Armenian resistance to genocide.
Speaker 1: And when we last left our heroes they were like,
Speaker 1: we don't like this. What do you mean the first
Speaker 1: Armenian genocide. That's a terrible name for a thing that's
Speaker 1: happening to us. What are you getting at Because spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: it's going to get worse than twenty years. But it's
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties and the Sultan wants to simplify his kingdom.
Speaker 1: The Sultan has overseen wide scale massacre of Armenian populations
Speaker 1: and they organize to do something about it. They started
Speaker 1: defending themselves by setting up Friend of the Pod revolutionary
Speaker 1: socialist organizations that were unabashedly into terrorism. I didn't set
Speaker 1: out to have be a friend of the Pod, but
Speaker 1: it is a thing that people have hit upon a
Speaker 1: lot in life. When you're in the middle of being
Speaker 1: mass murdered, is to resist by the means that are available. To.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does work. It's it's one of the few
Speaker 2: ways to not get mass murdered or it to minimize
Speaker 2: the mass murdering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unfortunately, well we don't really have an ab we
Speaker 1: can't like scientific death at history. But oh, that would
Speaker 1: be dark. Oh I would totally watch a TV show
Speaker 1: where people anyway whatever, like once we invent time machines
Speaker 1: and we just destroy them all. I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: off track. I love this. I love this.
Speaker 2: That would be a great podcast. Marga goes back in time.
Speaker 2: She has five Kalashni coughs. Who will she give them to?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and two boats put in the boat. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: the Marines now. Because Armenian resistance culture has always been
Speaker 1: well historically was actually pretty interestingly leftist and anti authoritarian.
Speaker 1: This goes back a long time, back to future friend
Speaker 1: of the pod, the Polician who's I'll know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce their name by the time I talk about them.
Speaker 1: More Christian rebels of the seventh century who revolted against feudalism,
Speaker 1: the superstitions of the church, and the oppression of women
Speaker 1: by men, which is pretty early to start having a
Speaker 1: revolt for those things.
Speaker 2: Yet into it, I'd love to see that. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: excited to learn more about them one day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll build a time machine and we'll give
Speaker 1: them collestional coughs and see what happens. Sick. Probably it'll
Speaker 1: be that if you take the most ardent revolutionary and
Speaker 1: give them a koalestion of cough within a month, or
Speaker 1: worse than the Zar himself, but you know whatever. Fast
Speaker 1: forward back to the eighteen nineties and these early Armenian
Speaker 1: nationalist movements. They start off honestly pretty cool as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell. They're really into forming a secular
Speaker 1: democracy that doesn't discriminate regardless of ethnicity, gender, or immigration status.
Speaker 1: Like specifically, they're like, hey, it doesn't matter whether or
Speaker 1: not you're born here, Like, we want everyone to be
Speaker 1: treated the same. This is far better than modern quote
Speaker 1: unquote democracies. Yeah, including this one. Yeah. The most famous
Speaker 1: of these organizations doesn't get called ARF, and that is
Speaker 1: a shame. It's the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or ARF. They're
Speaker 1: mostly called mostly called toshnog.
Speaker 2: Okay, also cool wood, fun wood to say, no, that's true,
Speaker 2: good bad name, that's true.
Speaker 1: ARF is just fun. Because I'm a terrible person. The fighter.
Speaker 1: They were mostly called toshnog their fighters are called Tashnog's
Speaker 1: and arf was started by mixture of anarchists, socialists, and nationalists,
Speaker 1: which is a ow the kind of thing only the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century is providing. Yeah yeah, yeah, or probably the
Speaker 1: twenty first century. Yay, but we'll know better this time
Speaker 1: and it'll be worse. They desire to create a quote
Speaker 1: libertarian socialist society in Armenia with freedom of religion and
Speaker 1: speech and assembly and all that shit. They were founded
Speaker 1: by folks in a blurry space between socialism, anarchism, and nationalism.
Speaker 1: Like it was less like I'm an anarchist and I'm
Speaker 1: joining this, I'm a socialist, I'm a nationalist. It was
Speaker 1: like a little a little stew you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that was probably a lot more common back then,
Speaker 2: Like we see that a lot of other movements around
Speaker 2: the turn of the twentieth century. Right, Yeah, you don't
Speaker 2: have to like have a flag in your bio. You
Speaker 2: can just be a person who has heterodox beliefs taken
Speaker 2: from different sources.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Now I'm like imagining what their flag. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they probably had a flag, and they also the founders
Speaker 1: this cut their teeth as part of the Russian nihilists.
Speaker 1: They were like just part of the people run around
Speaker 1: trying to explode the czar or I think that this
Speaker 1: was people's will who are a little bit distinct but
Speaker 1: are not I don't know, whatever the blurry speaking of
Speaker 1: a stew of revolutionary terrorists, that's where they come from,
Speaker 1: the stew of revolutionary terrorists in Russia. The arf is
Speaker 1: still around somewhere along the way. They got shitty, at
Speaker 1: least according to an Armenian that I talked to, they
Speaker 1: started leaning way more into the nationalism and like homophobia
Speaker 1: and like pure bloodlines and if you're not the right
Speaker 1: kind of Christian you're bad, they know, and less on
Speaker 1: the socialism and not at all in the anarchism these days.
Speaker 1: I think that this shift started happening in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: probably in the interwar period, like shortly after the events
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about this week and next week,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't promise you. But in the meantime, before
Speaker 1: they became reactionaries, they started off really cool. I think,
Speaker 1: as justus as I can figure, they did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of other groups as well, including
Speaker 1: one that's like more properly Marxist, but they're less woven
Speaker 1: into this particular story. And so these groups they just
Speaker 1: went around defending Armenian people, and they did that by
Speaker 1: killing collaborators and spies and dumping their bodies on the
Speaker 1: streets with like notes attached to them being like, shouldn't
Speaker 1: a snitch, motherfucker. I don't know what the notes said.
Speaker 1: The notes said, do you know, shouldn't snitch? Motherfucker? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they raised money for their cause by kidnapping wealthy
Speaker 1: Armenians and holding them for ransom. Okay, impressive, real Robin
Speaker 1: hood vibes. Yeah. And their other big thing that they
Speaker 1: were into was handing out illegal firearms to villagers so
Speaker 1: that people could themselves defend themselves from me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every time they get a little bit cooler, I know. Okay,
Speaker 1: and then here's where they either peak cool or start
Speaker 1: going bad. Who knows. If you just read about it
Speaker 1: and out of context, it's kind of like neat flavoring
Speaker 1: because they are these anarchist socialist nationalists, Christian Holy Army
Speaker 1: fighting for a secular state in gender equality through gorilla
Speaker 1: campaigns and terrorism. But they are like also into all
Speaker 1: this religious iconography even though they're fighting for a secular state.
Speaker 1: The volunteer fighters take on a name that means devotee.
Speaker 1: Some workers for the party were called apostles, and the
Speaker 1: gorilla fighters in the hills were called martyrs for the
Speaker 1: cause because they weren't expected to survive. Interesting, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Get lots of and I'm thinking specifically of the Kurdish
Speaker 2: freedom gorillas, So you use their culture of martyrdom is
Speaker 2: very developed there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like outside of a religious context. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is like within a religious context but also within a
Speaker 1: pro secular Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's reading like, yeah, they're religious, but they're not like
Speaker 2: a theocrat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a culturally religious thing. Again, the best
Speaker 1: I can read about this, you know, and the word
Speaker 1: for their actions like what we would call like an
Speaker 1: action or a direct action or a military campaign or
Speaker 1: something they would call a holy task. Oh wow, the
Speaker 1: holy work. I don't know. I like, I just like
Speaker 1: the idea of this like holy work of ensuring religious freedom,
Speaker 1: including freedom from religion. Yeah, I can appreciate that. And
Speaker 1: then before they would go into battle, priests would come
Speaker 1: out and bless them. But despite this resistance, Muslim violence
Speaker 1: against the Christians continued, and it's like, again, we can't
Speaker 1: ab test. It's possible that this was not as complete
Speaker 1: because of this culture of resistance. We do know that
Speaker 1: ARF was incredibly influential, but the massacre of Armenians, the
Speaker 1: culture of massacre continues. They are especially priests, get it.
Speaker 1: I think this is when they start crucifying everyone. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get into the specific examples because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it later when we talk about the genocide
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, but it feels necessary, so I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna do it this time. So, but it's bad, It's
Speaker 1: really bad. And so the ARF and the other groups
Speaker 1: are like, well, how the fuck do we get the
Speaker 1: world to know about what we're facing? And this is
Speaker 1: a major problem that Armenians continue to face to this day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so they're like, well, why don't we go raid
Speaker 1: and occupy a huge bank that's owned by the Westerners,
Speaker 1: the Imperial Bank Ottoman. Okay, love this, yeah, no, this
Speaker 1: is watching a movie about all of this. In eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, they do just that. Two dozen Tashnag fighters
Speaker 1: run into the bank, throwing bombs, they shoot and kill
Speaker 1: a guard, they get hostages, like dozens of hostages, and
Speaker 1: they occupy the building, and they go through the building
Speaker 1: and they put dynamite on every floor so that like
Speaker 1: if someone fucks with them, that they're all going out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the early mutually issued destruction. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I love this era because, like the I feel like,
Speaker 2: at no point, possibly we're approaching another point where this
Speaker 2: will be the case again, has the state and just
Speaker 2: like random groups of people motivated by whatever been like
Speaker 2: roughly at a par in terms of their capacity to
Speaker 2: do violence, right, Like, everyone has fucking dynamite. People are
Speaker 2: getting maxim guns, you know, like, yeah, there's nothing the
Speaker 2: cops have that you don't. There's no Apache helicopter to
Speaker 2: come after you.
Speaker 1: No, that's a good point. Although there is artillery involved
Speaker 1: in this story, but I mean soon enough, there's artillery
Speaker 1: in all sides, right, yeah, it's just a tube. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the Sultan is like, well, it's not my
Speaker 1: fucking bank. I'll just kill you all. Fuck the hostages.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna kill everyone. But the Western forces that
Speaker 1: are like kind of occupying this place already because they
Speaker 1: have so many economic interests, they tell the Sultan they
Speaker 1: point guns at the Sultan's palace and they are like,
Speaker 1: if you blow up our bank, we will level the
Speaker 1: palace of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. It's when
Speaker 1: you know, capitalism done taken out of the yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so this three way standoff. One of the arf
Speaker 1: guys was this twenty four year old who went by
Speaker 1: the name of Arman Garo and he's later going to
Speaker 1: become one of the masterminds of Operation Nemesis and like
Speaker 1: a big important, like Armenian politician, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: him a bunch. He was born into a wealthy family
Speaker 1: and he had been studying abroad in France when he
Speaker 1: learned about how Armenians were being treated back home and
Speaker 1: he was like, not fuck that, and he volunteered to
Speaker 1: fight and he didn't show up and like I'm in charge.
Speaker 1: He actually the actual military commander of this operation was
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old named Babkinsuni and he was killed
Speaker 1: during the takeover, and so I think Arman wound up
Speaker 1: in charge or because he's like so important and immortalized.
Speaker 1: Later I kind of get the sense that maybe they
Speaker 1: were like he was there, so therefore he's in charge.
Speaker 1: Because the later he's in charge of everything, right, post promoted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm not sure. Maybe he was in charge.
Speaker 1: He ended up negotiating with the Westerners, and the Westerners
Speaker 1: negotiated surrender with the Sultan, and the bank occupiers were
Speaker 1: all whisked away to Europe. Some of them were deported
Speaker 1: to Argentina. And the implication is that it did not
Speaker 1: go well for them. They were never heard from again. Okay,
Speaker 1: none of their demands were met. Meanwhile, during the bank occupation,
Speaker 1: Turkish paramilitary is just like angry militia's classic villain of
Speaker 1: the pod. These Islamic students in white turbans with clubs
Speaker 1: filled with nails went around and killed thousands of Armenians
Speaker 1: in the streets of Constantinople. It's like one of those
Speaker 1: things where like, wow, this has happened in Western Europe,
Speaker 1: we would fucking know about this, you know, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's done a good They've done a good job
Speaker 2: of like kind of hiding this from most people's knowledge
Speaker 2: of world history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the moment this did bring the ARF action,
Speaker 1: did bring the whole oppression of the Armenian people into
Speaker 1: the international spotlight. So the AARF saw it as a victory,
Speaker 1: but like kind of in this like god were so
Speaker 1: fucked way where they're like, yeah, hooray, thousands of us
Speaker 1: were going to die anyway, and thousands of us died.
Speaker 1: But people were looking and no, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do an ad transition there as too too. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get another paragraph before I do it. Can't do it,
Speaker 1: She's podcast enough. Yet after the bank occupation, nothing was
Speaker 1: getting better, and so the ARF was like, well, this
Speaker 1: is the end of the nineteenth century and let's just
Speaker 1: kill the sultan. Yeah, why not go for broke? Yeah,
Speaker 1: much like you can go broke, I mean four broke
Speaker 1: with all of our gambling ads, go gamble. That's always
Speaker 1: a good idea. Wow, wow, thanks Gat, Thanks proud of myself.
Speaker 1: Here they are and we're back, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about assassinating world leaders in history.
Speaker 2: I like you added that that's a special caveat to
Speaker 2: keep us from getting an FBI visit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they were like, you know, he's particularly good
Speaker 1: at assassinating world leaders. You know, he's famous for it.
Speaker 1: Who do you think the ARF is gonna call their
Speaker 1: anarchist friends? Yep, yes, I love it. They're like, we
Speaker 1: need to get ourselves some anarchists. It's possible that a
Speaker 1: fuck ten of them were anarchists themselves, and it just
Speaker 1: wasn't noted in the text that I read, you know,
Speaker 1: because the two things. Okay, I have learned that if
Speaker 1: it's not written by a socialist, it leaves out all
Speaker 1: of the left right. And if it was written by socialists,
Speaker 1: it leaves out the anarchists. And if it was written
Speaker 1: by anarchists, it leaves out women. All of them leave
Speaker 1: out women. This is the Margaret rule of history books
Speaker 1: written in the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is true, and you get there are some
Speaker 2: good books on anarchist women in Spain.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, but they had to be written because
Speaker 1: of the twenty the historians the twentieth century, which is okay.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I'm annoyed is that all of
Speaker 1: the anarchists who were like doing the shit and all
Speaker 1: the revolutionaries who were doing the shit were like, half
Speaker 1: of us are women. We love we're fighting for gender equality.
Speaker 1: Check out, I'm going to name drop all the people
Speaker 1: who are doing all this cool shit. And then the
Speaker 1: like fucking armchair historians of the twentieth century were like
Speaker 1: and then de Rudy single handedly save Spain or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I often see that de Ruti like single handedly
Speaker 2: like led their resistance to the coup, Like now, I
Speaker 2: see it on social media, and it's just yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a betrayal of everything he would have staid for.
Speaker 1: And so this is a example of both of these
Speaker 1: categories that have been largely left out. But now that
Speaker 1: they have an assassin, they can't leave out the anarchists completely.
Speaker 1: So they went and they got two Belgian anarchists, a
Speaker 1: married couple. You will be shocked to know that I
Speaker 1: don't know the woman's name. I can't find it. Oh god.
Speaker 1: I had to reinsert her based on context, knowing that
Speaker 1: she was absolutely part of this plot and absolutely involved
Speaker 1: because she had to run from the cops in the end. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Margaret is angry at historians. Yeah, it's a story of
Speaker 1: that's the free space these days on the Bingo. So
Speaker 1: the narrative is always a Belgian anarchist named Edward Joris
Speaker 1: came and helped them, even though his wife was one
Speaker 1: hundred percent part of the plot. Fuck you history books.
Speaker 1: I know more about Edward, so I'm gonna talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about him. He was a man whose anarchist
Speaker 1: politics led him to believe quite strongly an anti colonial struggle,
Speaker 1: so he was down to get involved. And they all decided,
Speaker 1: let's do a time bomb. Let's do a car time bomb.
Speaker 1: And they called it Operation Dragon because the Armenians they
Speaker 1: are good, solid namers, just classic names. Operation Dragon, operation Nemesis.
Speaker 2: Nemesis is a fantastic one, like you can't go wrong
Speaker 2: with that. No, no, they're yeah Dragon unless they find
Speaker 2: your plans and they pretty much know you're going to
Speaker 2: blow shit up with Operation Dragon.
Speaker 1: I have the word sedition tattooed on my hands, so
Speaker 1: I like to believe that this my speech will somehow
Speaker 1: apply in the court situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why Margaret was unforciate, unable to attend January
Speaker 2: to sixth.
Speaker 1: I was so mad that the seditionists. So one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that this is interesting to me that they
Speaker 1: plan this car bomb to kill the Sultan is because
Speaker 1: history does record the anarchist as inventors of the car bomb.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that, but yeah, I hate a car bomb.
Speaker 1: That's sad. I've been subject to no probmity to car bombs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one. In nineteen twenty, the Wall street car bombing,
Speaker 1: which was bad and it was fucked up and I'm
Speaker 1: mad about it, but it was done by anarchists.
Speaker 2: You know, we have the first podcast network to live
Speaker 2: podcast a car bomb, Margaret, that's one of our claims.
Speaker 2: Like really, yeah, I know. Robert and I were we
Speaker 2: were having drinks on the roof of a building just
Speaker 2: to opposite the Thai Burmese border when a car bomb
Speaker 2: went off and I happened to be recording on my
Speaker 2: little little little podcasting machine and you can hear you
Speaker 2: can hear us being like oh ah, and then wondering
Speaker 2: when we're going to hear the airplane because like thinking
Speaker 2: it was a regular bomb and it'd be like no,
Speaker 2: and then everyone sort of being like are there any
Speaker 2: more bombs? And then someone found on Facebook, like almost instantly, right,
Speaker 2: and it did. These folks love to be posted on Facebook,
Speaker 2: and there were pictures of this car bomb that we were.
Speaker 2: We tried to get across too closer to visit it,
Speaker 2: but it was not possible at that time.
Speaker 1: So that's fair. I'm glad you all chose to continue
Speaker 1: to be alive instead of prioritizing getting close to the bomb.
Speaker 1: The real real win for cool sat and media though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: head crews have done that, has he? Yeah, so anarchists
Speaker 1: were the first podcast yeah yeah, yeah, and twenty one
Speaker 1: hundred years prior to that, we get called the first
Speaker 1: car bombers for a shitty bombing. But fifteen years before that, uh,
Speaker 1: we tried to car bomb the Sultan and it was
Speaker 1: a larger pluralistic We'll talk about the pluralism of that movement,
Speaker 1: but you know, the Belgians were involved. Their target. The
Speaker 1: Sultan was really paranoid about being assassinated. He like had
Speaker 1: this thing he was like he felt like he shouldn't
Speaker 1: get assassinated. He'd prefer not to you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it chose if you've lived a good life, if
Speaker 2: you're worried about multiple people trying to assassinate you, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. For some reason, he was aware of the
Speaker 1: fact that he was like massacring a ton of people.
Speaker 1: And this was like also the peak era of like
Speaker 1: what if the solution is just to kill that one
Speaker 1: guy though? Yeah, And every night he slept in a
Speaker 1: different room of his palace and he fed his meals
Speaker 1: to his cats and dogs to test for poison. But
Speaker 1: he was the formal leader of Islam, so he had
Speaker 1: to go to a public service every Friday. The way
Speaker 1: I know women were involved in this plot is because
Speaker 1: the way that they scouted was that they would all
Speaker 1: dress up as young couples looking for blessings for their weddings.
Speaker 1: So at least half of the scouts were women, unless
Speaker 1: they were substantially ahead of their time. I did manage
Speaker 1: to find one woman's name who was involved in the plot.
Speaker 1: This makes us I'm clearly pro this plot like whatever
Speaker 1: as a Marxist bombmaker named Anna Nellon's her and her
Speaker 1: also bomb maker husband died later that year in a
Speaker 1: tragic and entirely foreseeable We were making bombs at home
Speaker 1: and then the bombs went off accident.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's now bomb area, you know. Yeah, don't
Speaker 2: be smoking if you're making your bombs at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something like the ultimate like Devil Make Care archetype
Speaker 1: is the smoking bomb maker in an apartment in like
Speaker 1: the Lower East Side in like eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've interviewed a couple of bomb makers who have
Speaker 2: had a lot of substantial parts of their bodies to
Speaker 2: smoking while making bombs. Yeah, it's so like, it's so
Speaker 2: it's obviously a terrible and traumatic event. But like again,
Speaker 2: we met these bomb makers, Robert and I, and we
Speaker 2: were having a couple of beers and guys like, yeah,
Speaker 2: so telling good stories and he's like, oh yeah, my friend,
Speaker 2: my friend we always made the bombs together. And we're like,
Speaker 2: what happened to your friend? And he's like, well, one
Speaker 2: day we were making bombs. And then you could just
Speaker 2: see everyone being like, well you're smoking a cigarette, bro.
Speaker 2: It'll be like we went for a cigarette affect for
Speaker 2: fuck's sake.
Speaker 1: Fuck. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that's like tip for you today, vape if your
Speaker 2: if your bomb maker, I guess we'll get.
Speaker 1: Get large when you when you pick amateur bomb maker
Speaker 1: as you're like profession it's because you're like, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna live very long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're probably in a bit of a pickle anyway
Speaker 2: to be considering it as a career move.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe some people do it for the purity of
Speaker 1: the art, you know, sure, yeah, totally. So they made
Speaker 1: this car time bomb. They slipped the bomb car into
Speaker 1: the procession of wagons alongside with the sultan, and then
Speaker 1: the fucking sultan stopped to talk to someone for like
Speaker 1: a minute, and so the bomb went off and missed him.
Speaker 1: This killed one of the bombers, and it killed twenty
Speaker 1: six members of the Sultan's retinue. But sadly, no Sultan
Speaker 1: always blowing up the bridesmaids, never blowing up the brides.
Speaker 1: That's true for Obama and true for anyway. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: a dark joke. Thank you, thank you. Yeah. In response
Speaker 1: not to my joke, but to the assassination attempt on
Speaker 1: the leader of all of Islam and the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: hundreds of folks were arrested and tortured, including the Belgian
Speaker 1: anarchist guy. His wife slipped authorities, and then there was
Speaker 1: this massive protest movement in Belgium to put pressure on
Speaker 1: the salt and to free him. Love that. And then
Speaker 1: here's where you know that the Ottoman Empire is a
Speaker 1: little bit weak to the west right now. It worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, if Belgium is pushing you around that, he said,
Speaker 2: yeah for the person who tried to blow up your leader.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Still huge win for Belgians and got no
Speaker 1: and Edward Joris, who went home and presumably presumed a
Speaker 1: happy and hopefully on event. I would rest on those
Speaker 1: laurels for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, Ector Joris, maybe maybebe went straight
Speaker 2: back to the bump factory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who fucking knows. Meanwhile, the ARF aren't the only
Speaker 1: folks who hate the Sultan. Those young Turks. It's either
Speaker 1: a click or secret society. It depends on We won't
Speaker 1: put it of Ottoman officers. They wanted the constitution back. Well,
Speaker 1: not for very long, but they claimed that they wanted
Speaker 1: the constitution back. Formally, their name is the Committee of
Speaker 1: Union and Progress, but everyone calls them the Young Turks
Speaker 1: ARF and the Young Turks. In nineteen oh eight, they
Speaker 1: pull it off. They stage a bloodless coup and they
Speaker 1: take power away from the Sultan, who stays on briefly
Speaker 1: as a figurehead. Everyone was like, holy shit, this rules.
Speaker 1: We fucking did it. We have a constitution. It's all
Speaker 1: roses from here on out. Muslims and Christians are literally
Speaker 1: singing and dancing together in the streets. They're like, we
Speaker 1: fucking did it together. Fuck, yeah, we rule. Yeah. A
Speaker 1: representational government might give them rights, and it might allow
Speaker 1: them to be modern enough to fend off Europe, which
Speaker 1: was buying them out piece by piece and destroying their culture.
Speaker 1: Right elected to this new parliament, is Arman Garo from
Speaker 1: the bank takeover the one who had negotiated it, and
Speaker 1: the ARF is now legitimate. And the other Armenian revolutionaries
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, this is going to go badly, y'all.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't help the young Turks. I hope enough of them
Speaker 1: were alive. Later. I told you so the ARF, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't promise. Yeah, there was this brief attempt at
Speaker 1: a counter coup from the right wing after this, you know,
Speaker 1: bloodless coup or whatever, And in the end, the old
Speaker 1: Sultan was ousted entirely. The new Sultan is a figurehead
Speaker 1: of the cup the young Turks. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you knew this, James, but did you know that
Speaker 1: power consistently corrupts revolutionaries every single time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a thing that that's been said that the
Speaker 2: people do talk about maybe bad, maybe power bad.
Speaker 1: Well, right away the young Turks became autocrats and started
Speaker 1: murdering their rivals and their allies. Cool. Soon enough, tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of Armenians are being slaughtered. Fucking again, this
Speaker 1: isn't even the This is this is like an intermission genocide.
Speaker 1: This is the second Genosid that Okay, it's dark warm
Speaker 1: up genocide. Yeah, Western Europe is starting to put together
Speaker 1: kind of like a peacekeeping intervention. They're like, hey, what's
Speaker 1: happening over there, you guys? Okay, Like we've been hearing
Speaker 1: some stuff by nineteen thirteen, but that gets interrupted by
Speaker 1: World War One. Yeah, by nineteen thirteen, the young Turks
Speaker 1: are like, just kidding, we are not doing democracy. The
Speaker 1: Central Committee is in charge. Who's the Central Committee not telling?
Speaker 1: The moderates are out? Racist nationalists are in. There are
Speaker 1: three guys who do the most of being in charge,
Speaker 1: although they're not the only people. It's Talat Pasha, Enver
Speaker 1: Pasha and Jamal Pasha. Pasha is an honorific anyone holding
Speaker 1: a top level position within the Ottoman Empire, Governor's general
Speaker 1: shit like that. I've seen the young Turks compared to
Speaker 1: the Nazis time and time again, and it seems apt
Speaker 1: I don't have like a butt here. You have sociologists
Speaker 1: and poets building up a nationalist ideology that is explicitly
Speaker 1: opposed to religious and ethnic diversity. This new country is
Speaker 1: for the Turks and only the Turks. And maybe the
Speaker 1: most in charge man is Talat Pasha. He's a huge, strong,
Speaker 1: man with a Walris mustache. He's also, like a lot
Speaker 1: of the young Turks, not particularly ethnically Turkish. He's mostly
Speaker 1: noted as a Bulgarian Muslim, although his Wikipedia says Bulgarian
Speaker 1: Romanian Turkish descent. The first inclination this is a fuck,
Speaker 1: sorry Sophie and me and the listener. The first inclination
Speaker 1: of how they like to solve their problems is how
Speaker 1: they decided to deal with the problem of stray dog
Speaker 1: in Constantinople. Oh no, they wanted to deal with straight dogs.
Speaker 1: So they wound and rounded up eighty thousand dogs and
Speaker 1: then dropped them on a small animalize each other and
Speaker 1: starve and ships passing by. I could hear the tortured
Speaker 1: howls of dogs before they died. Oh no, they did
Speaker 1: a dog genocide. They did second time in like six
Speaker 1: weeks that you and or Robert have surprised me with
Speaker 1: horrible dog genocide. I know, I was real sad when
Speaker 1: I listened to the Bastards episode that talked about it.
Speaker 1: I don't I think it's worth understanding how fucking monsters.
Speaker 2: No it is, yeah, because you've had to go to
Speaker 2: the extra step of like if you wanted the dogs
Speaker 2: to die there. You could just kill them. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: they've they've decided to put them on a genocide island.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, now popular tourists. It's not because of that, but
Speaker 2: oh great, Yeah, what's the island called?
Speaker 1: And put it in? I was like skipping through this part.
Speaker 1: I was like, Aha, what is the minimum number of
Speaker 1: facts I can put in here to get across the gravity?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah? Because fuck I dogs. Dogs are not
Speaker 1: morally culpable in the way that humans are capable of being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're all perfect angels. M h. Much like the
Speaker 1: perfect angels that we sell the ax it. I don't
Speaker 1: know how we could sell and.
Speaker 2: We can't make it. We can't make an island joke.
Speaker 2: I think we're legally prohibited from.
Speaker 1: No. No an angel joke. I was trying to Okay, no,
Speaker 1: I got nothing. I don't know why you're sad to
Speaker 1: go sad by this stuff and then come back and
Speaker 1: we're back, and now we're gonna there's a world war
Speaker 1: right now? Sorry guys. Yeah, Joe and Biden went to
Speaker 1: sleep and yeah, now he's transported back. Joe Biden, if
Speaker 1: you're listening, you are in World War one right now.
Speaker 1: Again on the Western front. He's like, what's that, Jack,
Speaker 1: you got ice cream? Yeah, that's right. All you got
Speaker 1: to do is beat the Germans and you can get
Speaker 1: some ice cream, Joe, save us from the hunt, Joseph. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Ottomans, we're almost certainly going to end up siding
Speaker 1: with Germany, but not as like certainly certainly because it's
Speaker 1: not it's not really the Ottoman Empire. It's the young
Speaker 1: Turks who are in charge, right, Yeah, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are Francophiles, right. They all come out of
Speaker 1: this like we like constitutional democracy as long as we
Speaker 1: can murder all of our rivals and not have a
Speaker 1: constitutional democracy, which frankly is also how most Western governments
Speaker 1: would prefer to be, I think. But yeah, some of
Speaker 1: them were Francophiles, others were Prussia. Files But Germany and
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire we're both like, yeah, we hate fuck Russia.
Speaker 1: We hate Russia. So that's the main reason why I
Speaker 1: was like always going to be Germany. I think the
Speaker 1: Ottomans joined the Germans, and the way they did this
Speaker 1: was firing on Russian ports from the Black Sea. That's
Speaker 1: a good way to let people know, isn't it. I know,
Speaker 1: I know. It's just just a nice little reminder that
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess to be fair, I feel like,
Speaker 1: if you're Russia, you can just kind of assume the
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empires at war with you. Yeah a moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be you don't want to be
Speaker 1: caught sleeping. And the Western Powers didn't mind that Turkey,
Speaker 1: that the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers or whatever
Speaker 1: on some level because they wanted Everyone wants Turkey, right right,
Speaker 1: it's the carving up but Turkey. I'm sure this joke
Speaker 1: has been made. That's why they want you to call
Speaker 1: it Turkia now because people will not stop. But I
Speaker 1: think they got mad about people posting pictures of Turkey's
Speaker 1: in replied to them on an x formerly known as Twitter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: seizing Turkey would be key to seizing all of the
Speaker 1: Arab areas too, and the Suez Canal, which would save
Speaker 1: you from needing to sail all the way around Africa.
Speaker 1: So like Britain and France are like, wouldn't that be sweet?
Speaker 1: You know? And then the young Turks fell for the
Speaker 1: classic blunder. James, you ever tried to invade Russia? No,
Speaker 1: I've been to Russia.
Speaker 2: But it was more in a sort of non invasive
Speaker 2: posture when I okay, okay, I just went to the
Speaker 2: hotel from the nineteen eighty Olympics and Scott really drunk
Speaker 2: with my friends for every night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. I got some stories when I used
Speaker 1: to travel way more. I like didn't go to Russia
Speaker 1: because my Greek friend was telling me about going to
Speaker 1: Russia and like the level of scrutiny and bureaucracy that
Speaker 1: they put on everyone who's coming in and how terrifying
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, Like he was on the train and
Speaker 1: he was going into Russia and they stopped him and
Speaker 1: they were like, it's like eleven fifty eight pm and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it says here that you're visas for tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You can't come in. And he's like, I don't speak Russian.
Speaker 1: And he's trying to speak in like Greek and English
Speaker 1: and stuff, you know, and and so he has to
Speaker 1: interpret through the woman sitting next to him, and then
Speaker 1: eventually the the guard. Eventually it turns midnight and he's like,
Speaker 1: can you let me in now? And they're like fine,
Speaker 1: and he says thank you in Russian, and so then
Speaker 1: the guard gets mad again and it's like you could
Speaker 1: speak Russia this old time, you fucking liar, like, and
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I'm good out of Bulgaria. But
Speaker 1: I didn't go to I didn't go to Russia. I'm
Speaker 1: sure Bulgaria was nice too. It was nice, although at
Speaker 1: the time Bulgaria is the place where everything is confusing
Speaker 1: and backwards, and there were Nazis tagging a cab over swastikas.
Speaker 2: Okay, fascinating. Acab is a grand unifying principle of a
Speaker 2: lot of organizations that wouldn't otherwise agree on very much.
Speaker 1: I know. And also a lot of organizations that totally
Speaker 1: love cops. They just want them to be their cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well that is that is an unfortunate problem
Speaker 2: with many, yeah, many organizations.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's a good book called thirteen twelve about football aultras
Speaker 2: which looks at like left and right football altras and
Speaker 2: how they abder to take the cops. Oh shit, okay,
Speaker 2: very good book, would recommend it. So Invading Russia. The
Speaker 2: Ottoman Empire decides to invade Russia in December, and that's
Speaker 2: the one two punch. Don't invade Russia. Don't invade Russia.
Speaker 2: In December, like yeah, that's yeah, bad cool. Seventy thousand
Speaker 2: soldiers died. However, overall the Ottoman Empires called the Southern Front.
Speaker 2: They did whole Constantinople, which no one expected. They fought
Speaker 2: off the British, the Australian and the New Zealanders and
Speaker 2: this one campaign and the Turkish commander told as soldiers,
Speaker 2: I'm not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you
Speaker 2: to die.
Speaker 1: Well at least you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, we had great feat of aritory theh Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like very quotable.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't feel good about it, yeah, yeah, true. And
Speaker 1: in all of this in World War One, the young
Speaker 1: Turks are like, I bet the Armenians will go over
Speaker 1: to the enemy, and like, first of all, well look sure,
Speaker 1: who could blame them? Right, yeah, why not? What do
Speaker 1: you going to lose? Yeah, Armenian freedom fighters were absolutely
Speaker 1: sabotaging the Turkish. They were cutting telegraph wires and spine
Speaker 1: and moving guns around and shit. Some a few thousand
Speaker 1: of them crossed into Russia to volunteer because enemy of
Speaker 1: your enemy and all that shit. In fact, Armangaro, the
Speaker 1: arf guy who had occupied the bank and then later
Speaker 1: been in Parliament, he went and fought for Russia. But
Speaker 1: this is a few thousand Armenians out of two million
Speaker 1: Armenians living there. The overwhelming majority of Armenians considered themselves
Speaker 1: to be part of the Ottoman Empire. And for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years Christians had been paying that extra millet tax
Speaker 1: right which actually exempted them from conscription. That was like
Speaker 1: part of the whole point. Not under the Young Turks.
Speaker 1: Oh great, and for a little while, oh Sparta, Okay,
Speaker 1: for a little while, the Armenians were in the Turkish army.
Speaker 1: They had guns, they had officers, and shit. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're part of the Ottoman Empire. We've helped you come
Speaker 1: to power. Let's do our thing. By February nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: the Young Turks forced all of the Christians into what
Speaker 1: were called labor battalions. That's not a good thing. No,
Speaker 1: these are slave units in which the soldiers are worked
Speaker 1: to death. The point was to work them to death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anyone who had the t merity, tenacity, whatever. Anyone who
Speaker 1: didn't die while working was marched off and murdered in
Speaker 1: the desert. And so at this point people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is like bad, right, this is like,
Speaker 1: now what we want to have happened, and so you
Speaker 1: started getting resistance to this right away, and so the
Speaker 1: Christians and I think with the help of sympathetic Muslims.
Speaker 1: But I haven't done enough research about this part of
Speaker 1: it yet. I know a little bit about it. Later,
Speaker 1: they set up an underground network of in Constantinople to
Speaker 1: help people skip out on being conscripted into slave labor
Speaker 1: death camp time. And this was called the Army of
Speaker 1: the Attics, which is a sick name. Yeah, thousands of
Speaker 1: Christians were sheltered in addicts and behind false walls all
Speaker 1: through Constantinople. Like sweet. The more I read this story,
Speaker 1: the more I was like, World War One is just
Speaker 1: World War II.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, we have less like a mythology around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Western Europe is so up its own ass
Speaker 1: that at least in America, which I'm now calling part
Speaker 1: of Western Europe or whatever, that World War one is
Speaker 1: just French and German people and trenches who are sad
Speaker 1: and killing each other with machine guns, which is bad, right,
Speaker 1: But no, there's a genocide of people based on being
Speaker 1: religious minorities that kills millions, that involves people hiding in addicts,
Speaker 1: and like whatever, Yeah, it's the same shit.
Speaker 2: I think it's they're both creatures of like you have
Speaker 2: this decline of like absolute monarchy and like religion having
Speaker 2: the claim on universal truth, and then to replace that
Speaker 2: we get nationalism, and we get nationalism we do in
Speaker 2: group out group. And this is what happens in World one,
Speaker 2: this is what happens in World War two, is what
Speaker 2: happens in the Armenian genocide, it's what happens in many
Speaker 2: of the other genocides, like the creatures of the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the fascists just went a little bit harder, and we
Speaker 2: find their aesthetic a little bit more repugnant. So we
Speaker 2: created this good versus evil narrative which like fascists or evil,
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean everyone of find
Speaker 2: them is good.
Speaker 1: And so at this point, the Ottomans are saying, how
Speaker 1: do we solve the Armenian question? And that is what
Speaker 1: they called it cool, and so they decided to eliminate
Speaker 1: all Armenians living in Anatolia and basically all Christians. They
Speaker 1: disguised these as deportations and hit it by the fog
Speaker 1: of war. And they didn't say, let's do a genocide,
Speaker 1: one because no one says that, and two because that
Speaker 1: word didn't exist. That word was created in part because
Speaker 1: of what happens next, which is my opposite of a cliffhanger,
Speaker 1: because normally you want to make people excited about what
Speaker 1: comes next. For a cliffhanger, this is one of the
Speaker 1: worst things that's happened in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: But the cool people special is finding the people doing
Speaker 1: amazing things during the darkest chapters of history. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of those people and they're coming up next week. Yay, yay.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really surprised me we're reading
Speaker 1: about all this is just how much tied into all
Speaker 1: of these like revolutionary socialist organizations and all of it.
Speaker 1: It was like, like it always is. I feel like
Speaker 1: the few times I've seen it, it's been presented as
Speaker 1: it sort of just comes out of nowhere, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and very few things come out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like we do a disservice and we remove
Speaker 2: them from context, right because like how we get to
Speaker 2: a place where we can do genocide is it's shit
Speaker 2: that's extremely fucking relevant right now. Yeah, Like if we
Speaker 2: are watching a genocide happen as we are, like we're
Speaker 2: just seeing this global crackdown or refugees, Like we need
Speaker 2: to think about that too, And I think we do
Speaker 2: that with World War two as well, right we like
Speaker 2: oh right by, you know, like nineteen thirty three, poof,
Speaker 2: they're the Nazis, like totally we don't look at you know, like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, what economic recession. I want to like the
Speaker 2: thing that will never happen again.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that really stands out to
Speaker 1: me that I've been like thinking a lot about after
Speaker 1: doing this particular research, is this whole thing where like
Speaker 1: they're not allowed to be armed and everyone else around
Speaker 1: them is armed, right, Yeah. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I think about it is that, like I get why
Speaker 1: there's this like liberal and progressive desire to reduce them
Speaker 1: number of guns in our society, right, Like women are
Speaker 1: safer if their husbands don't own guns. That is just
Speaker 1: a fucking thing, you know. And so it's like I
Speaker 1: get why we're talking about all of that, And it
Speaker 1: feels like this inescapable thing that that genocide is like
Speaker 1: way more common then people tend to think that the
Speaker 1: like absolute worst things that humanity can do to each
Speaker 1: other happens way more often then people want to admit.
Speaker 1: People want to talk about the Nazis as this complete
Speaker 1: outlier with nothing else like it before or after.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, like I know, if I can maybe
Speaker 2: like bang my anarchist drama a bit, like, I think
Speaker 2: it's very hard again, if we are historians who are
Speaker 2: enabled unable to conceive of human society existing in a
Speaker 2: modern fashion outside of the state, to look at how
Speaker 2: often the state is a tool for genocide, right, and
Speaker 2: how often a state is created by or for genocide,
Speaker 2: And yeah, like that doesn't I think if you accept
Speaker 2: that analysis, then it doesn't follow that it's a good
Speaker 2: idea to allow the state to have a monopoly on
Speaker 2: the tools by which it can do killing. And that
Speaker 2: leads to people should own guns. But yeah, unfortunately, we're
Speaker 2: in a particularly fucked time in human history where you know,
Speaker 2: things like, like, we have other problems, right, Misogyny is
Speaker 2: a problem. That's why women are at risk if their
Speaker 2: domestic partner's own guns, right, or specifically male domestic partners,
Speaker 2: I guess, And we have many other societal problems of alienation,
Speaker 2: and this leads to these things like mass shootings, which
Speaker 2: are fucking horrific. Like I don't have the answer at
Speaker 2: all of those things, but yeah, I do think like
Speaker 2: like we're at a time when I don't know, if
Speaker 2: we look at things that have led to genocide, Like
Speaker 2: it's a scary fucking time in human history, is what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. And you know, the Left party right now
Speaker 2: in American politics is the party which has presided over
Speaker 2: record numbers of migrant deaths more than the fucking right
Speaker 2: party did in the trumpeter and like it's just not
Speaker 2: even a thing that we talk about very much in
Speaker 2: the mass media, and that scares the shit out of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And it's it's you know, it's like and
Speaker 1: I don't want to, like I don't know what to
Speaker 1: specifically do about it. I don't. This is not me
Speaker 1: saying like everyone should go out and get firearms, although
Speaker 1: I think that it is useful for some people to
Speaker 1: familiarize familiarize themselves with the use of them, and like
Speaker 1: safe environments and things like that. But it's like it's
Speaker 1: just a it's a sketchy time and and I think
Speaker 1: that like people are often coming and so swinging so
Speaker 1: hard on these like easy answers where they're like, of
Speaker 1: course guns are great, and you're like, well, the only
Speaker 1: reason that we should have firearms is because the other
Speaker 1: side does.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, bad, they kill people Like I just
Speaker 2: I am a person who enjoys guns. I have lots
Speaker 2: of them. I like to buy old ones and fix
Speaker 2: them up. But like, yeah, I would love a world
Speaker 2: where it didn't exist. Yeah, and like, I mean, but.
Speaker 1: Then again, you know, some of the worst atrocities that
Speaker 1: have happened in history happened with swords, you know, fucking machetes. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess that's where we'll leave it. And next week
Speaker 1: we will talk about the Armenian genocide, but we're also
Speaker 1: going to talk about Operation Nemesis and how people resisted
Speaker 1: in ways that are more complex. And it's like, no
Speaker 1: matter what, the simple version of the story is really cool,
Speaker 1: but the deeper version of the story is even cooler.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to hear that. Yeah. Hell yeah, I love
Speaker 1: a good resisted story anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anything you want to plug, I will plug building
Speaker 2: community and mutual aid. Like, I think the solution to
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck is going to happen.
Speaker 1: Is each other.
Speaker 2: It's not the state, it's not any political party. It's
Speaker 2: building community and showing up for one another, and that
Speaker 2: includes down at the border where you can come and volunteer.
Speaker 2: Someone who listened to our podcast came this week and
Speaker 2: I was so happy, like, oh hell yeah, someone do it.
Speaker 2: Came from the internet to the passenger seat of my
Speaker 2: truck and we went around and helped people. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't have to come to a border with the
Speaker 2: people who need help everywhere, and building strong communities like
Speaker 2: these strong communities that went and killed like Genesee Dais
Speaker 2: is the way to fix your problems.
Speaker 1: So do that.
Speaker 2: Make friends. You don't have to get guns, but if
Speaker 2: you can make PB and J sandwiches for hungry people,
Speaker 2: then you're doing the work.
Speaker 1: It's that either like Simpsons or Futurama. I mean that's
Speaker 1: like guns for the people who want guns and not
Speaker 1: guns for the people who want not guns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's perfect and fucking free food for everyone
Speaker 2: and to sleep and yeah if you want to gun, cool,
Speaker 2: but going to save you on your own, you make friends,
Speaker 2: look after them.
Speaker 1: And I will plug giving food away to people. It
Speaker 1: is never wrong. Sometimes it's complex. Sometimes there's like things
Speaker 1: you can get into the complicated nature of blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. But like overall, you don't know what
Speaker 1: else to do. Find your local food, not bombs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: make a fucking lentil. It's the instrument of the revolution.
Speaker 1: Oh maybe I want eat lentils. No, I I always
Speaker 1: eat dumplanes after after recording. There's not a lot of
Speaker 1: vegan comfort food. And where I live, rocery store, you're
Speaker 1: outside of the hot land of the vegan Yeah, cake,
Speaker 1: but there are dumplanes at the grocery store that happened
Speaker 1: to be vegan, and they are my comfort food. And
Speaker 1: I eat dinner later on recording nights, and now everyone
Speaker 1: knows that I'm currently hungry. That is what everyone has learned.
Speaker 1: But one of the best, like the same is like
Speaker 1: you're talking to people who come up because of the show,
Speaker 1: who are volunteering at the border. You know, I was
Speaker 1: recently talking to someone who was like, hey, cool Zone
Speaker 1: media talking about how important feeding people is. Is how
Speaker 1: I like started spending most of my time making soup
Speaker 1: for people. Oh yes, it's it's really cool. Thanks listeners
Speaker 1: for participating in creating a better culture. And Sophia, you
Speaker 1: got anything you want to plug? We're sunscreen hell yeah, damn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you said that, because I today I'm
Speaker 2: wearing a sleeveless top and it's painfully obvious that parts
Speaker 2: of me have not.
Speaker 1: Seen the sun for like ten months, and I'm extremely
Speaker 1: wear sunscreen even if you don't leave your house. I'm
Speaker 1: going to pitch the two rules of sleeves. I've probably
Speaker 1: done this on the show before, but I feel like
Speaker 1: you need to know them. James stout. The two rules
Speaker 1: of sleeves are suns out, guns out, m classic and
Speaker 1: it's corollary. Sun's gone, sleeves gone. Ah Okay, I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you have an option, Yeah, so there's no sleeves,
Speaker 1: that's the rule. Yeah, you didn't need them. They're, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, thing of the past. Yeah, we're sunscreen. All right,
Speaker 1: see you all next week. Cool People Who Did Cool
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. Or more
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Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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