Speaker 1: From peat Fish Productions.
Speaker 2: It's the gist.
Speaker 3: I'm Mike Pesca today on the show. In the Spiel,
Speaker 3: we tackle this ponderable cities getting it wrong, thus thrusting
Speaker 3: the citizenry into the position of wondering can government ever
Speaker 3: get it right? But first, there's a guy named Peter
Speaker 3: McIndoe who was born in rural Arkansas went on to
Speaker 3: start a movement. And this movement was we think tongue
Speaker 3: in cheek?
Speaker 1: Is he serious?
Speaker 3: There are guys who are serious about stupider things than
Speaker 3: Peter macindo's movement. Peter McIndoe sought to convince us and
Speaker 3: the world that birds weren't real. It was the birds
Speaker 3: Aren't Real movement. They would show up in different cities,
Speaker 3: they would have rallies and mostly young people would come
Speaker 3: out and try to claim that birds aren't real. They're
Speaker 3: replaced by the government, huge conspiracy. I think it's a joke,
Speaker 3: could be a mass improv movement. But like I said,
Speaker 3: I would have thought that about the lizard people in
Speaker 3: the flatter if those flat earthers and lizard people weren't real.
Speaker 3: I mean, lizard people aren't real, but the people who
Speaker 3: believe in lizard people are the most wonderful people of
Speaker 3: the world, and they're real. Peter McIndoe got support, he
Speaker 3: got attention, and then Peter McIndoe died, and he's with
Speaker 3: me now.
Speaker 2: Hello, Peter, glad to be joining you from beyond the dead. Mike,
Speaker 2: thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Sorry, sorry about your death. So it's all birds except
Speaker 3: the North American tufted tip mouse.
Speaker 1: Do I have that right?
Speaker 2: You know, there are many different sects of belief within
Speaker 2: the bird truth universe. You know, it's we respect all
Speaker 2: of them. I do think that bird is a robot, though,
Speaker 2: I think every bird in North America, all twelve billion,
Speaker 2: are robots.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, I've seen signs at your
Speaker 3: rallies that say reject the Saint Louis Cardinals, which is true.
Speaker 3: That's say big bird or a picture of big bird
Speaker 3: equal big lie.
Speaker 1: That's also true.
Speaker 3: Should I choose my fandom based on rejecting mascots? Does
Speaker 3: that do anything to oppose the Philadelphia Eagles unless they're
Speaker 3: playing the Arizona Cardinals, And then I don't know who
Speaker 3: to root for one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's really just about what control do we
Speaker 2: as the civilian have. We have control over where we,
Speaker 2: you know, spend our money, where we offer supports. And
Speaker 2: the more that we you know, blindly go along and
Speaker 2: support these bird mascot teams, the more that we accept
Speaker 2: the propaganda that the government has forced upon us by
Speaker 2: making us cheer for the concept of a bird. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like a massive public humiliation ritual. They want to
Speaker 2: put the bird in the middle of the field and
Speaker 2: then have everyone applauding and cheering for it. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: I do think it's wise to go for teams without
Speaker 2: the bird mascot if you care about, you know, your
Speaker 2: purity on this earth.
Speaker 3: Now, there were birds and then the government, you tell me,
Speaker 3: because you know you're in on this, the government systematically
Speaker 3: killed them or they were killed and then replaced with
Speaker 3: these surveillance spots.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a great question. So it's a great question.
Speaker 2: There were twelve billion birds in the American skies before
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties. Around then, Alan Dolister, the director of
Speaker 2: the CIA, decided, Hey, there's twelve billion birds up here.
Speaker 2: We could kill them, swap them out, replace them with
Speaker 2: surveillance drone replicas in disguise designed to splay on the
Speaker 2: American people. So what they did is they got to
Speaker 2: a plane, a bunch of planes actually from a wonderful
Speaker 2: company called Boeing who's been up to all kinds of
Speaker 2: good things this year. And Boeing helped them fly over
Speaker 2: the entire country almost like a large lawnmower, spraying a
Speaker 2: poisonous toxin down onto birds which would then make them
Speaker 2: very sick, was contagious. They'd fall on the ground and
Speaker 2: pretty much disintegrate upon landing. As this was happening, you know,
Speaker 2: for every bird that fell, a drone rose, and the
Speaker 2: drones over the course of a forty year, systematics filled
Speaker 2: diskuies to the point where we're by two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: upon the signing of the Patriot Act, these guys are
Speaker 2: filled with twelve billion birds, and the American people are
Speaker 2: none the wiser.
Speaker 3: And the presence of all these birds spying on us,
Speaker 3: what intel has it revealed?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's been a long process, you know,
Speaker 2: with the birds, our real movement that it's been around
Speaker 2: since the nineteen seventies, and we're always looking for evidence
Speaker 2: and proof to show the people what's going on, you know,
Speaker 2: because I think like we intuitively have a mix of
Speaker 2: like prophetic dreams and no things passed down from other activists.
Speaker 2: But it's important to show the cold audience, you know,
Speaker 2: the people that may not be already identifying with the
Speaker 2: truth what's going on. So we've talked with ex CIA agents, specifically,
Speaker 2: this man named Eugene Price rest in Peace, who talked
Speaker 2: with us, sat down and said, listen, I worked for
Speaker 2: the CIA in the seventies. I did this, and I
Speaker 2: worked on the program. I worked on the bird Room
Speaker 2: surveillance program, and I am drenched in guilt. He said,
Speaker 2: every day he feels extremely guilty about what they did,
Speaker 2: specifically just killing twelve billion birds, and how he was
Speaker 2: complicit in turning America into the surveillance state, you know.
Speaker 2: So it was a great interview. We got him to
Speaker 2: sit down on camera with us, and I think that
Speaker 2: was some of the most compelling evidence in convincing the public.
Speaker 3: Also, I have noticed, and I don't know if your
Speaker 3: movement has picked this up, but there are signs out
Speaker 3: there by people who know the truth, and they've appeared
Speaker 3: over the years. For instance, the lyrics to free bird.
Speaker 3: If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me?
Speaker 3: That exactly parallels what happened to the birds and other
Speaker 3: Leonard Skinner lyrics. I mean, they're kind of an err
Speaker 3: attex for this movement. Can you smell that smell?
Speaker 2: There?
Speaker 3: A there's a slight different odor to the robotic birds
Speaker 3: than to the real birds.
Speaker 1: For the people who were there, whose life span spans
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: I do think that there are a lot of and
Speaker 3: I don't know how much of this, you know, it
Speaker 3: just occurs to me. Once you open my eyes to it.
Speaker 3: I began to see it everywhere.
Speaker 2: It starts unraveling. You start seeing, oh, why is why
Speaker 2: why do the presidents not talk? They tweet on the
Speaker 2: bird app and then the tweets are covered on the
Speaker 2: bird logo media on NBC with a with a peacock
Speaker 2: right in our.
Speaker 1: Face at peacock right right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really egregious. It's really egregious. And the more
Speaker 2: that you see, the more you tug on that little string,
Speaker 2: the more it all unravels.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then for people who are like, oh, there are
Speaker 3: no conspiracies, you list a bunch in the beginning of
Speaker 3: the book, and some of them are bird related, right,
Speaker 3: not just uh, Operation mocking Bird. But I don't know
Speaker 3: if you know Project artichoke, which was trying to get
Speaker 3: people to become assassins.
Speaker 1: That was originally named Project Bluebird.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, No, that that That's the thing is. It's
Speaker 2: not all out there. It's not a new crazy concept
Speaker 2: you can google, folks. You know, it's really not you want,
Speaker 2: I mean, the thought that the government would do something
Speaker 2: dastardly and devious in the realm of avian beings, it's
Speaker 2: right there in on paper. There's proof. Also if you think, oh,
Speaker 2: the government would never do something like this, the government
Speaker 2: would never kill something, the government, the American government killing something,
Speaker 2: killing an innocent thing, killing something and replacing it with surveillance.
Speaker 2: There are far, far, far worse things that the United
Speaker 2: States government has done. They're on Wikipedia. You can look
Speaker 2: them up right now. MK ultra operation paper clip. You
Speaker 2: know these aren't these are conspiracies, folks. This is you know,
Speaker 2: it's what our country was founded on. Really, yes, and
Speaker 2: and unless you want to live in a you know,
Speaker 2: patriotic delusion about uh, you know, the the altruistic nature
Speaker 2: of our government, it's important to do your own research,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe live in reality a little bit, and
Speaker 2: then you'll though how to react to a lot of
Speaker 2: things that are about to happen in the future that
Speaker 2: may not be very good.
Speaker 3: So I'm not going to do the cliched and scene,
Speaker 3: but I will ask Magataz that was that was fun,
Speaker 3: That was great. We could go on forever, and you
Speaker 3: did for years and years. I'm not gonna say never
Speaker 3: breaking character. But you founded this movement, you committed to
Speaker 3: the movement. But I sensed in our back and forth
Speaker 3: you weren't one hundred and two percent trying to sell
Speaker 3: me on this. I think if you were, you'd probably
Speaker 3: adopt a different persona that was a little off and
Speaker 3: a little crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing that was the persona for four
Speaker 2: years that I really embodied. You know. I started Birds
Speaker 2: Aren't Real in Arkansas and became very almost obsessed with it,
Speaker 2: with the idea of method acting this character as much
Speaker 2: as I could. You know, so here in our conversation
Speaker 2: it's a bit tongue in chic. It's a bit butt uh,
Speaker 2: buy right, Bud. You know, back in the day, I
Speaker 2: would talk with journalists, I would talk with people who
Speaker 2: were really just trying to decipher is this movement real?
Speaker 2: Is what this guy is talking about? Serious? You know?
Speaker 2: Not that they were considering birds may not be real,
Speaker 2: but they thought that I thought the birds weren't real.
Speaker 2: And then I was claiming I belonged to a movement
Speaker 2: that had been around since the fifties. And then we
Speaker 2: started growing a real movement in real life, you know,
Speaker 2: the thousands started joinings. Then the media is calling me saying, hey,
Speaker 2: who are you? What's going on? And you know, I
Speaker 2: would spend sometimes hours on the phone with journalists, break
Speaker 2: breaking down, you know, and you know, sometimes going into
Speaker 2: fits of rage because of how little the media understood
Speaker 2: what was going on.
Speaker 3: Were you trying to literally fool them or was it
Speaker 3: more you were trying you were happy enough that if
Speaker 3: they got it enough to present your supposed character and
Speaker 3: information as a bit of a bit, because if it
Speaker 3: was a bit, then people might cot into it, and
Speaker 3: the right people, the kind of people who would come
Speaker 3: out to a rally and be mostly young people quote
Speaker 3: unquote in on the joke play acting, it would become
Speaker 3: almost like a spontaneous improv everywhere type Right, So is
Speaker 3: that what you were looking for, where you're looking for
Speaker 3: really really fooling people?
Speaker 2: The answer is yes. The answer is both of those.
Speaker 2: I was trying to accomplish, and that's what we were
Speaker 2: able to do. You know, the idea was a bit
Speaker 2: of a rorshack test for boomers and gen z or
Speaker 2: for people that may not be as literate on meme culture,
Speaker 2: you know, or as aware of pranks and absurdist late
Speaker 2: Internet humor. You know a lot of people forty plus
Speaker 2: or not, and so you know, they would see the
Speaker 2: idea rorshack test immediately go, oh my god, this country
Speaker 2: is going to shit. This is you know, things are
Speaker 2: falling apart, conspiracies are sweeping the nation. We need to
Speaker 2: talk about this. Whereas if you're someone that you know
Speaker 2: kind of grew up on Twitter, you see this like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is clearly some messing around, you know. And so
Speaker 2: that created a really interesting duality where we had this
Speaker 2: improv everywhere type audience and we'd go hold rallies. I
Speaker 2: had a birds on real Vans satellites on the top,
Speaker 2: covered in decals, riddled with typos. We'd go around holding
Speaker 2: rallies and you know, we'd have hundreds of people show up,
Speaker 2: not people that actually believe birds weren't real, but people
Speaker 2: who understood the wink of it all. You know, they
Speaker 2: they understood the twinkle in the twinkle in the eye
Speaker 2: to every deadpan thing. Yeah, but it was and the wink.
Speaker 3: The wink was built in there though, to give people
Speaker 3: the out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's an interesting game. You know, that's a
Speaker 2: delicate place to strike because it's really easy to make
Speaker 2: people uncomfortable, for instance. You know, it's really it's really
Speaker 2: really easy to kind of throw people up in the air.
Speaker 2: What's hard is to you know, give them that wink
Speaker 2: and let them know this was a joke, which then
Speaker 2: makes that makes the rest of it kind of unlocks it.
Speaker 2: It makes it valuable, you know. I know Andy Kaufman
Speaker 2: had this great performance where he's on stage and he's
Speaker 2: bombing the stand up set and it's so awkward in
Speaker 2: the room and everyone's so uncomfortable, and then he starts
Speaker 2: crying and wheezing. But then somebody rolls out congas and
Speaker 2: his wheezing is on the rhythm of the congress, and
Speaker 2: he starts playing the congas to the wheezing, and it's
Speaker 2: this unspoken reveal to the audience that it was all
Speaker 2: planned from the beginning, you know, without even saying anything,
Speaker 2: and the audience, you know, erupts an applause, they get it,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's a similar kind of game of
Speaker 2: okay if you if you're looking at it almost like
Speaker 2: a trapeze artist. You can throw somebody up in the air.
Speaker 2: It's really easy to do that, or easy to make
Speaker 2: somebody uncomfortable or question something. But the hard thing to
Speaker 2: do is to catch them. You know. That's the hard
Speaker 2: part of trapeez.
Speaker 3: So you don't and from what I understand, you didn't
Speaker 3: know about Kandy Kaufman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right now. You know, I have
Speaker 2: this biography on my shelf right here. I become obsessed
Speaker 2: with them. But yeah, whenever I was, I think it
Speaker 2: was on an interview with The Daily Beasts in twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen or something. And you know, during these interviews, you know,
Speaker 2: right now, I think you know now that I talk
Speaker 2: about this after coming out of character, six seven years
Speaker 2: after the project, I like joking around about it. But
Speaker 2: in that day I decided the funniest thing I could
Speaker 2: do was be as serious as possible, you know, like
Speaker 2: that that that the concept of the character was the joke,
Speaker 2: and that if I were to, you know, do micro jokes,
Speaker 2: would kind of you ruin the point. So I would
Speaker 2: be in these interviews and be like almost on the
Speaker 2: virgin's ears and talking about something that really matters to me.
Speaker 2: And if they were to say, okay, but what are
Speaker 2: you joking, It's like, what are you talking about? Like
Speaker 2: why why would you call me and accuse me of that?
Speaker 3: You know, there are clear antecedents for uh, some of
Speaker 3: the ideas that you based the birds aren't real aesthetics
Speaker 3: on and claims on. And you know, we listed a
Speaker 3: bunch of them in the beginning. But Q, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of que in there. Maybe you could tell me.
Speaker 1: What sort of Q inspirations there were.
Speaker 3: That van that's definitely Caesar Sayak and his van with
Speaker 3: like a thousand memes pasted to it, right.
Speaker 2: Caesars, I've actually never heard of Caesar Sayak. There's the
Speaker 2: van was actually inspired by. There's a conspiracy called a
Speaker 2: Stephen King killed John Lennon. If you look that up,
Speaker 2: there's a man. It's really just a man who thinks
Speaker 2: that Stephen King, the author killed John Lennon. And so
Speaker 2: he has made a van covered. Indeed he actually has.
Speaker 2: He is like a fleet of these vans covered and
Speaker 2: Decal's explaining this, you know, and it really.
Speaker 1: Is you gotta Caesar.
Speaker 3: Sayak was the guy who mailed or like in effective
Speaker 3: pipe bombs to all these public officials, and his van
Speaker 3: was covered in right wing memes. This is around twenty eighteen, Like, oh,
Speaker 3: he obviously read that story. But Stephen maybe the Stephen
Speaker 3: King guy was based on Sayak? Maybe side these things
Speaker 3: all perpetuate themselves crazy.
Speaker 2: Right, Wow, Yeah, I just looked up this van. I'm
Speaker 2: seeing I'm seeing it now. We actually had real similar
Speaker 2: design to this, and I think that, you know, we
Speaker 2: researched conspiracy vans a lot.
Speaker 1: Decal design maker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's the thing. When you really
Speaker 2: put yourself in the mindset of someone who truly believes
Speaker 2: something is the case they're trying to get out to
Speaker 2: anyone who will listen, they will cover whatever they have
Speaker 2: in it. You know, they'll wear the T shirts, will
Speaker 2: get their van, and it really and the maximalist design
Speaker 2: is really interesting too. There's not much aestheticssibility going on there.
Speaker 3: But you know Sayak and you know he was like,
Speaker 3: damn it, I got a four inch by three inch
Speaker 3: space that's just white. What do I do with it?
Speaker 3: It's like one of those overly tattooed guys. It's very
Speaker 3: hard to cover up the old tattoo with the new tattoo.
Speaker 1: And then one off hiss.
Speaker 3: It's like, wait a minute, Obama, he just changes his mind.
Speaker 3: Obama is not a Kenyon. He's he believes in Reverend
Speaker 3: Jeremiah White.
Speaker 1: What do I do? How do I address that on
Speaker 1: my van?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's your billboard to the world, you know, in
Speaker 2: his mind. It's like the I mean, I mean from
Speaker 2: really putting myself in the mindset of a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 2: and why the van made sense was like, well, I'm
Speaker 2: censored on the internet, you know, like they can't censor
Speaker 2: me in physical reality, like I you know, it was
Speaker 2: like a real almost triumphant move. It's like, all right,
Speaker 2: well go gotcha. Government, Like you can't stop these stickers
Speaker 2: on my van, you know.
Speaker 3: But right, government is nothing, can have no say in
Speaker 3: a motor vehicles on the roads.
Speaker 2: Exactly. You asked about QAnon, though, which is a really
Speaker 2: interesting thought. I think a lot of people ask us
Speaker 2: about qan on which is interesting because birds aren't really
Speaker 2: started before QAnon, but two years before, which I mean,
Speaker 2: to your point is interesting because QAnon, I guess or
Speaker 2: the you know, millions of people are parts of q
Speaker 2: and on now or were, but all those people were
Speaker 2: exist things a year prior, two years prior. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like what were they doing then? What was what
Speaker 2: led them to that? You know, you don't go from
Speaker 2: being totally normal chilling normal life too. I'm you know,
Speaker 2: dedicating my life to the thought that democrats are eating
Speaker 2: are eating babies and like in my basement talking about
Speaker 2: that all day on forums. And yeah, I think I
Speaker 2: grew up around I know I did actually around people
Speaker 2: that now are part of QAnon. You know, I go
Speaker 2: on my my Facebook from back in the day, and
Speaker 2: I really only used Facebook in my early teenage years
Speaker 2: and then logged off for you know, ten years. And
Speaker 2: I remember I got on a few years ago, like
Speaker 2: what's going on Facebook? And it was all these people
Speaker 2: from my hometown on there. You know, they were my
Speaker 2: only friends, and it was crazy. It's like actual q
Speaker 2: and on theories, real conspiracies everywhere, And that became one
Speaker 2: of one of my biggest inspiration sources, was just Facebook.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think it was just that fringe right
Speaker 2: conspiracy crowd in Arkansas that I really took a lot
Speaker 2: of inspiration from unintentionally for this, but I guess just
Speaker 2: like anyone says inspiration from their real life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the real conspiracy theorists, and I've talked to
Speaker 3: a lot of people who've chronicled them.
Speaker 1: And when we.
Speaker 3: Wrote a book about the flat earthers, there's off and
Speaker 3: then after there's it's usually occasion by some horrible crime.
Speaker 3: They delve into a community. First it was four chan,
Speaker 3: then it was eight chan, and there's this thing going
Speaker 3: on where the joke or the fact that it is
Speaker 3: a joke kind of helps the people who are the
Speaker 3: true believers. And so you have this mix because before
Speaker 3: you were talking about you know, people my age or
Speaker 3: people your age, not my age.
Speaker 1: People who are.
Speaker 3: Younger immediately recognize this as a parody. But you know, parody,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna say becomes reality. But there are people
Speaker 3: who are generally they hate Joe Biden. They actually do
Speaker 3: hate Joe Biden, and they know that QAnon isn't real,
Speaker 3: but they love putting the memes out there, or they
Speaker 3: love putting Pepe the Frog out there without necessarily believing
Speaker 3: all the Pepe the Frog stuff, or they call themselves
Speaker 3: gropers and sometimes they're called shit posters, So there is
Speaker 3: the ability to say I'm in on the joke, but
Speaker 3: also to perpetuate the joke. I know that it was
Speaker 3: probably that didn't happen with birds Aren't Real. Maybe it did,
Speaker 3: but my question is analyze that. What's the role of
Speaker 3: people who are there for the humor or there for
Speaker 3: the lulls, right, but also do provide some wind beneath
Speaker 3: the conspiratorial wings.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. I don't know if you looked
Speaker 2: into Pepe the Frog at all, you're that phenomena. Have
Speaker 2: you looked into that? R? Yes, yes, yeah, really interesting.
Speaker 2: I think is kind of the similar eraror that you're
Speaker 2: talking about. Yeah, it's just this image of a frog,
Speaker 2: this cartoon that was a joke originally but then became
Speaker 2: co opted and became a symbol that represented something entirely different.
Speaker 2: I think that was a big fear with birds Aren't
Speaker 2: Real of mine, honestly, and that was the reason why
Speaker 2: I came out of character as well. So I wanted
Speaker 2: there to be something researchable, concrete somewhere where someone could
Speaker 2: say this, I made this up in Memphis. This has
Speaker 2: not been around for fifty years, you know, and I
Speaker 2: did feel, gosh, I guess that was twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: a sense of responsibility, I think gratefully though, I was
Speaker 2: able to see how a lot of people interpreted the idea.
Speaker 2: It's hard to tell on the internet, right, especially when
Speaker 2: people are kind of in character with you in the comments.
Speaker 2: It's a bunch of numbers. You don't really know who
Speaker 2: your audience is or how your idea is impacting people.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that all the time, but you know,
Speaker 2: people I see with big numbers, you don't really know
Speaker 2: your audience, especially when you're operating in this satirical tongue
Speaker 2: in chek world, you know. So we started holding these
Speaker 2: rallies and I almost let out a big sigh of
Speaker 2: relief in twenty nineteen or so when I saw that
Speaker 2: everyone showing up was totally tongue of cheek. They totally
Speaker 2: got it, totally got the bit. And I mean, I
Speaker 2: think it was because we planted a series of winks
Speaker 2: throughout our work to where, you know, if you were
Speaker 2: the media looking for a sensationalized piece on you know,
Speaker 2: on whatever publication, you would report on its reel. But
Speaker 2: if you go three clicks deep, you can read about
Speaker 2: our history and see, Okay, when the government decided to
Speaker 2: kill all the birds, Alan Dalls was pissed because birds
Speaker 2: were pooping on his car in the parking lot and
Speaker 2: it really didn't help him out a lot, and he
Speaker 2: had like a real personal vendetta against these things. He
Speaker 2: called them flying demons and you know, wanted to get
Speaker 2: rid of them. And it's like it clearly gets to
Speaker 2: this absurd points deep down, and we tried to plant
Speaker 2: that wink and everything. But yeah, I mean, I remember
Speaker 2: the rallies were really being a good validator. And the
Speaker 2: last rally that we held at Washington Square Park in
Speaker 2: New York City, there were about three thousand people there
Speaker 2: and it was like this perfect massive, improvisational, immersive theater
Speaker 2: sort of experience where everyone was in character together for
Speaker 2: you know, two hours, being a raving bird mob.
Speaker 3: Don't you think some percent of a q Andon rally
Speaker 3: or a conspiracy theory online are people who are telling
Speaker 3: themselves essentially that yeah, I know, ques not real, but
Speaker 3: it's fun. If pokes the people I want to poke,
Speaker 3: it gets them upset. Plus there is community to it.
Speaker 3: Maybe a certain group of people show up with their friends.
Speaker 3: See the wackier people inside the community, and that propels
Speaker 3: them along. I think that you're getting at not just
Speaker 3: the human dynamics that exposes the dearth of depth of
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories, but you're also even though you're kind of
Speaker 3: an anti conspiracy theory, you're also a conspiracy theory, like
Speaker 3: you're operating on a lot of the same human dynamics
Speaker 3: that they are, even if you have a metacognition. My
Speaker 3: point is that not everyone within the actual harmful conspiracy
Speaker 3: theories don't have at least that self concept that, oh,
Speaker 3: it's all a big joke and we're here for the lull.
Speaker 2: I think that's a very very good point. Yeah, I have,
Speaker 2: I guess, gotten to talk with a lot of people
Speaker 2: throughout the years who are in those communities, and I
Speaker 2: think you nailed it when you said they get community
Speaker 2: out of it. I certainly think there was a bit
Speaker 2: of trolling, you know, but when you commit your life
Speaker 2: to something right, commit your life, which is which is
Speaker 2: what these people do their entire public persona, it's all
Speaker 2: they talk about with their families, you know, it completely
Speaker 2: encompasses them. I think that that happens when you hit
Speaker 2: the nail on the head. They get community from this
Speaker 2: not just community, but they get a sense of purpose,
Speaker 2: right I have, I have a direction in my life.
Speaker 2: My days are not for nothing and meaning, you know,
Speaker 2: you get a sense of identity, you know, like these
Speaker 2: are like some of the most core human needs, the
Speaker 2: things that I'm looking for every day, you know. And
Speaker 2: I think that it's certainly, you know, when you get
Speaker 2: into birds aren't real. There are certainly parallels of why
Speaker 2: people would join a meta fake movement and why people
Speaker 2: would join a real conspiracy theory, because maybe it has
Speaker 2: less to do with the truth that you're believing, but
Speaker 2: more so the belonging or the sense of belonging that
Speaker 2: that belief provides.
Speaker 3: Do you think the standard way we diagnose them by we,
Speaker 3: I mean, let us say people who are affiliated with
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party, the very rational parts of the Republican Party,
Speaker 3: the mainstream, the establishment universities, most TV networks other than Fox.
Speaker 3: Do you think the way they die The New York Times,
Speaker 3: Washington Post, the way they diagnose the problem of misinformation
Speaker 3: and disinformation.
Speaker 1: They're worried about it. They think that there are conspiracies.
Speaker 3: I've read a lot of reporting, including reporting on what
Speaker 3: you've done, that understands a lot of where the scholarship is.
Speaker 1: But are they getting anything wrong or missing some major factors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean I've spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time with I guess like disinformation experts over
Speaker 2: the past couple of years, since I came out out
Speaker 2: of character, got invited to the fact Checking conference and
Speaker 2: in Germany last year, and just got to meet people
Speaker 2: and see that people don't know how to stop this problem.
Speaker 2: It's almost a scary thing. You know, we need a
Speaker 2: new approach to this. Clearly the approach we're going off
Speaker 2: of is not working, and it does seem like a
Speaker 2: generally powerless, hopeless thing. You know, I'm sitting down with
Speaker 2: these people from Meta or Twitter who are trying to
Speaker 2: like control like rampant awful things online. They see the
Speaker 2: worst stuff online, not just conspiracy theories, but horrible criminal things,
Speaker 2: and you know, they're sitting there like we have no
Speaker 2: idea what to do, Like we're all all the fact
Speaker 2: checkers are in therapy for PTSD and for like they're
Speaker 2: going through insane things every It's a brand new problem.
Speaker 2: The world's never had this problem before, you know, so
Speaker 2: how do you solve it? I think that a big
Speaker 2: thing the media is missing is addressing it on a
Speaker 2: level of like I was saying, belief versus is belonging
Speaker 2: by telling people, Hey, your truth is wrong and you
Speaker 2: should believe in this truth, which clearly is not going
Speaker 2: to help anyone, you know. I think that there's also
Speaker 2: an there's an expectation of people to abandon their belief
Speaker 2: systems in a way that I think is unrealistic and
Speaker 2: that we need to adjust the expectation and think about, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's a way that we can you know, play these
Speaker 2: play this game smarter, you know, go about it from
Speaker 2: you know, if our goal is to live in a
Speaker 2: shared reality with others, and what's the most you know,
Speaker 2: productive means to get there. And I think there is
Speaker 2: a way to validate people's core sense of identity and
Speaker 2: self while criticizing, you know, something above that. For instance,
Speaker 2: you know, you can't you can validate someone's religious belief system,
Speaker 2: you know, if it's not hey full or something awfully.
Speaker 2: And I think that a mistake that I see establishment
Speaker 2: media making a lot or even just people in our lives,
Speaker 2: are you know, expecting people to abandon their religion and
Speaker 2: their political party at the same time, which is like
Speaker 2: when you say it like that, it's like, oh, of
Speaker 2: course people aren't doing that, you know, especially when they're
Speaker 2: just being told it, you know. And so I think
Speaker 2: that there are different types of approaches.
Speaker 3: When you were deep into this was everyone you knew
Speaker 3: and who was in on it. Were they sending you
Speaker 3: every research, every bit of scientific or even just popular
Speaker 3: research showing crows could do this or magpies can do that,
Speaker 3: the repository of all interesting bird facts.
Speaker 2: I feel like I know everything about birds. I feel
Speaker 2: like I know everything about not only birds, but also
Speaker 2: real bird drone surveillance that happens. Whenever I had made
Speaker 2: up this idea, I thought this is the most absurd
Speaker 2: possible thing, you know, But if you look up bird
Speaker 2: drone surveillance, India, bird drown surveillance, Chrya, they're doing it.
Speaker 2: They're like openly, you know, it's certainly not twelve billion
Speaker 2: of it. I'm certainly not every bird. But it is interesting,
Speaker 2: how I guess, with how technology has developed, that is
Speaker 2: a real thing.
Speaker 1: Now do you like birds?
Speaker 2: Oh? I love birds. I love birds. That's something a
Speaker 2: lot of people common misconception is I think birds are awesome.
Speaker 2: I think birds are a fascinating special creature.
Speaker 1: Did you start off liking birds? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always This is great. I've never had this conversation,
Speaker 2: but I'm glad it's gonna go out of the public.
Speaker 2: I love birds. I've always loved birds. I you know,
Speaker 2: there was a chickadee in our backyard in Ohio growing
Speaker 2: up before I moved to Arkansaw that I just, you know,
Speaker 2: loved and got a little chickade stuffed animal. Believe it
Speaker 2: or not, So maybe maybe it's been deep in my
Speaker 2: subconscious that the thought of a fake bird since I
Speaker 2: had that little chickeny stuffed animal. Who knows.
Speaker 1: How did you make money while you were in the
Speaker 1: throes of doing this?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Have you heard of OnlyFans?
Speaker 1: You're addressed up in a bird outfit?
Speaker 2: No, birds aren't real. We sold t shirts. We sold merchandise.
Speaker 2: You know which is funny? It is it is almost
Speaker 2: similar to how a real conspiracy group, you know, would
Speaker 2: run the I think when it gets down to it,
Speaker 2: if you identify with an idea enough and there's an
Speaker 2: opportunity to represent it, you will. If it feels like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, a good representation of a part of
Speaker 2: your personality that you want to express to people on
Speaker 2: the billboard. That is a T shirt. You know, it's like,
Speaker 2: here's who I am. I'm you know, here's my beliefs.
Speaker 2: And if your beliefs are meta and ironic and sort
Speaker 2: of reflecting a culture of lunacy with lunacy, I don't
Speaker 2: know because I've thought about it. People really love the
Speaker 2: shirts and it allowed us to do this as a
Speaker 2: job for six years, believe it or not.
Speaker 3: You know, see, if you were a real conspiracy, you
Speaker 3: probably have less compunction about direct fundraising and just ripping
Speaker 3: off your followers. And that's the reason that real conspiracies
Speaker 3: have have more momentum behind them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we never asked our followers for money. Maybe we
Speaker 2: should have. Maybe that would have turned it into a frenzy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, commit to you think you're committed to the bit
Speaker 3: This would be great set up. Put the monthly recurring payment,
Speaker 3: show your show your alpha burder.
Speaker 1: There are three levels.
Speaker 3: We got the bald eagle, we got the golden eagle,
Speaker 3: we got the parrin falcon.
Speaker 2: Which tier are you? Yeah? That is funny though, you.
Speaker 3: Know, if you're if you're a current student, you could
Speaker 3: donate a chickadee level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did have a like a boots on the
Speaker 2: ground activism network we called it, you know, not not
Speaker 2: people that pitched in money, but people that we would
Speaker 2: send stickers to. You know, we wanted to start chapters.
Speaker 2: That was a big part of spreading this idea.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Now and now the movement has millions of followers, but
Speaker 2: at the beginning, it was very difficult to get anyone
Speaker 2: to care about it on social media. You know, we
Speaker 2: were in Arkansas, We didn't have any connections or we
Speaker 2: didn't know anybody or have any money to do anything,
Speaker 2: you know, so we're like, how do you get an
Speaker 2: idea out there into the world. And we thought that
Speaker 2: a big part of marketing that people are missing in
Speaker 2: the modern day is the physical space, is planting, you know,
Speaker 2: baits and lures for people to be messengers to the
Speaker 2: internet for you know, we didn't have an audience necessarily,
Speaker 2: but a lot of people did, and if we could
Speaker 2: bait those people into posting about us, then boom, we're
Speaker 2: into the zeitgeist. And so you know, we started these chapters, right,
Speaker 2: we want fifty chapters in every state, you know, and
Speaker 2: even if they just had a couple people at them.
Speaker 2: We would send them activism kits, you know, so we'd say, hey,
Speaker 2: here's fifty stickers. If you put these up this month
Speaker 2: and take pictures of them, we'll send you fifty for you,
Speaker 2: and then fifty more to put up, you know, and
Speaker 2: it would It started the snowball effects where the more
Speaker 2: stickers that would up, the more people joined the local groups.
Speaker 2: And then before we knew it, you know, we had
Speaker 2: thousands of people in chapters across the US, and fifty
Speaker 2: of them, you know. So that's when we got the
Speaker 2: van and thought, okay, we're going to hire a minister
Speaker 2: of the Bird Brigade, that's what we called it. And
Speaker 2: we got you know, we hired our dear friend Claire,
Speaker 2: who wore a cloak and would get on zoom meetings
Speaker 2: with the fifty leaders of the chapters and they would
Speaker 2: all hold candles and discuss, you know the future of
Speaker 2: the movement. And I think that it was that real
Speaker 2: world efforts that really boosted this. You know, I think
Speaker 2: birds are Reel is considered like a very Internet thing,
Speaker 2: you know, but the I guess method to get to
Speaker 2: the Internet was very much reality. Yeah, using physical space.
Speaker 3: Now, the one constant of almost all conspiracy theories, and
Speaker 3: the author of the Flat Earth book bore this out
Speaker 3: is anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure you knew that.
Speaker 3: But I'm sure you didn't want to seem so real
Speaker 3: as to lease your content with any of that.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, but you're right. No. I mean, I've researched
Speaker 2: a lot of conspiracy theories throughout the day, and it
Speaker 2: is it kind of always astounds me how many of
Speaker 2: them go down to anti Semitism. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: you go even the goofy ones like oh flat Earth,
Speaker 2: you know, what's what's going on with flat Earth? You
Speaker 2: look into that, and a lot of these have yeah,
Speaker 2: hateful roots. It's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always two steps to the Jews.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you specifically about Fox, because Fox
Speaker 3: did you were on their show?
Speaker 1: You were on the Jesse Water Show. There was a
Speaker 1: guest host there.
Speaker 3: But they also put together a documentary about you, and
Speaker 3: I have to say I didn't pay the premium to
Speaker 3: watch it, but was the tone I sensed? Yeah, I
Speaker 3: just sensed that the tone was they were talking about
Speaker 3: you as if you guys were nuts. But did they
Speaker 3: think you believed it or what did you think they
Speaker 3: thought of your movement.
Speaker 2: It's a great question. Yeah. I mean Fox reached out
Speaker 2: to me and said, hey, Fox Nation wants to do
Speaker 2: a documentary about the Birds Aren't Real movement, Not even
Speaker 2: the movement, but the conspiracy they said, And it was
Speaker 2: part of a conspiracy series they were doing where there's
Speaker 2: flat Earth, there was JFK, and there's birds Aren't Real,
Speaker 2: you know. And I mean that was honestly great news
Speaker 2: for me. Whenever I was planning birds Aren't Real. It's
Speaker 2: exactly what I wanted was not to be not to
Speaker 2: compete with satire groups or think of ourselves as comedy,
Speaker 2: but to think about it as this idea we were
Speaker 2: trying to see in society, so it would be you know,
Speaker 2: we were our competition was flat Earth, you know, as
Speaker 2: an idea. So when people thought of conspiracy, they think
Speaker 2: of oh, JFK, the bird robot thing and flat Earth.
Speaker 2: You know, we wanted to be in that because if
Speaker 2: you're there, that idea never goes away. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not like flat Earth was viral and then goes away.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just this word of mouth concepts to
Speaker 2: fixture and culture forever. But yeah, when Fox News reached
Speaker 2: out to us. I thought, Okay, they must know this
Speaker 2: is satire, but I'm just gonna play it straight with them,
Speaker 2: even though I came out of character two years ago.
Speaker 2: Their Fox News would be fun to fuck with them,
Speaker 2: And so I went in and it was very odd.
Speaker 2: They didn't seem to know that I was a character,
Speaker 2: or they didn't seem to have done their research necessarily,
Speaker 2: and I was just really messing with them, you know.
Speaker 2: And there was this one guy on set that was like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's an improp. It's like improv, but he wasn't the producers,
Speaker 2: and the producers were feeling very strange about it. So
Speaker 2: I was able to really just be like a total
Speaker 2: freak in the Fox News documentary, which was really fun.
Speaker 2: And that's when they ended up saying, Hey, we want
Speaker 2: to promote this documentary. Can you come on Jesse Waters,
Speaker 2: you know and talk to our host live? And I
Speaker 2: was shocked because I had never thought I'd be on
Speaker 2: live news again after I had, you know, vomited on
Speaker 2: Live News and you know, done a variety of different stunts.
Speaker 2: But they invited me on and I'm sitting down with
Speaker 2: their hosts in the studio and he looks over at
Speaker 2: me before the cameras turn on, and he goes, okay,
Speaker 2: wait one question before would the movement was started in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy or nineteen sis seventy six? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: he doesn't know. He doesn't know it's twenty seventeen, Like
Speaker 2: he has no idea. It's like, oh my gosh. So
Speaker 2: I just looked him straight in the eyes and said,
Speaker 2: oh no, it's nineteen seventy six, soh okay, and wrote
Speaker 2: it down and then the entire interview was totally serious,
Speaker 2: totally serious, saying okay, how do you believe this? What's
Speaker 2: going on? And I was I was stunned. I was stunned.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think he was interviewing it as if, by the way,
Speaker 3: who do you remember who the guest host was?
Speaker 1: It wasn't Jesse.
Speaker 2: I it wasn't Jesse. I was so disappointed. And that
Speaker 2: was this guy named Pete, A guy named Pete.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Pete Hesse Pete. Hegeth that guy. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: on the morning show now.
Speaker 3: And I think he was conducting it as if he
Speaker 3: said to himself, look, this is a crazy guy. I
Speaker 3: think he's crazy. I meet him like a third of
Speaker 3: the way by saying, yeah, there's some drum surveillance, sure,
Speaker 3: because you know not, you can't just discount the fact
Speaker 3: that the government is in surveillance all the t time
Speaker 3: for that audience. But also, I think and he didn't
Speaker 3: keep you on for that long. It was a short segment.
Speaker 3: I think he was like, all right, Uh, Fox News
Speaker 3: Nation is promoing this documentary.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to rebut it or embarrass anyone at
Speaker 1: the network.
Speaker 3: So he gave you a yeah, Now do you think
Speaker 3: I didn't watch a documentary? What was the tone of that?
Speaker 3: Did they mock the idea or did they credit the idea?
Speaker 1: How far? It was probably somewhere in between.
Speaker 2: Right, It was somewhere in between. It seemed like the
Speaker 2: people in the editing room knew it, knew it was
Speaker 2: a joke, but the producers didn't. And so the interviews
Speaker 2: are very serious and everything was serious. But then they
Speaker 2: would have a cheezy sound effect, you know or whatever.
Speaker 2: But I was watching the other ones about real conception.
Speaker 2: That's my question. How different they did it the way? Yeah,
Speaker 2: they did it the same way. They're like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is a preposterous idea, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, and then the question is why are they doing
Speaker 3: it? Is Fox specifically, it's because not to get two nefarious.
Speaker 3: I'm sure some of there are audience is exactly like us,
Speaker 3: just curious about it. Some of their audience is curious
Speaker 3: and that not so good.
Speaker 2: Way right right, And that's the thing I mean, I
Speaker 2: I know, you know different people who their only thing
Speaker 2: is Fox News, you know, that's all they watch. You know.
Speaker 3: Oh, after you did it, did you hear from people
Speaker 3: who Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you.
Speaker 2: Yes, I did, I did. I had some distant family members.
Speaker 2: Oh I always saw you pop up on Fox News,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, which is which is very funny.
Speaker 1: So you could be for a while.
Speaker 3: The book, the book is very funny, and I think
Speaker 3: it's probably the capstone to this caper. You could and
Speaker 3: you are invited to talk about disinformation from a perspective
Speaker 3: that almost no one else has. But do you think
Speaker 3: you're going to iterate and do another thing in the
Speaker 3: field of comedy and improv that might be not disinformation
Speaker 3: y or do you think you're going to stay in
Speaker 3: the world of disinformation but not you know, try to
Speaker 3: do an exact replication of conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: But this time with Woodchucks.
Speaker 2: So two answers to that. One is that we have
Speaker 2: a big other project planned and it'll be coming out.
Speaker 2: I can't really say, maybe in a few months, maybe
Speaker 2: next year, but I could not be more excited about
Speaker 2: the project, and believe it or not, I can promise
Speaker 2: you it will be much bigger than Birds Aren't Real.
Speaker 2: So it feels like we're at the beginning of something
Speaker 2: right now and I'm excited for you for you to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Birds Aren't Real was founded by I guess you
Speaker 3: could call him the sentinel Chicken of the movement. He
Speaker 3: alerted us early on to this phenomenon by Peter McIndoe
Speaker 3: his new book with Connor.
Speaker 1: Gaidos's Birds Aren't Real.
Speaker 3: The True Story of mass Avian Murder and the largest
Speaker 3: surveillance campaign in US history. Peter, congratulations on your resurrection
Speaker 3: and the book and the movement.
Speaker 2: Thanks, thank you so much. Mike, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: And now the shpiel.
Speaker 3: I was reading about a nineteen eighty six clearance of
Speaker 3: an urban encampment.
Speaker 1: I e.
Speaker 3: A shantytown, overseen by then San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein.
Speaker 3: What she did was she saw that dozens of people
Speaker 3: were sleeping outside in tents and makeshift shelters. Had been
Speaker 3: going on for five years. The citizenry was complaining, so
Speaker 3: she went in and took down the tents and makeshift
Speaker 3: shelters and put everyone in a hotel. Was it hard?
Speaker 3: Didn't seem that hard. Did it solve the problem? Did
Speaker 3: solve the problem of those people in that shanty town.
Speaker 1: The San Francisco.
Speaker 3: Chronicle interviewed a four year old girl who lived there.
Speaker 3: She is now thriving and credits the mayor for intervening. Quote,
Speaker 3: we got a new life because of that move. The
Speaker 3: mayor had us all make and I am still grateful
Speaker 3: for that. This woman grew up to be a veterinary technician,
Speaker 3: a successful manager, married with four children, and today lives
Speaker 3: in Paco's quote a tiny village where there's fresh mountain
Speaker 3: air and it's safe. Now what Mayor Feinstein did, First
Speaker 3: of all, it wasn't immedia. She was mayor for a while.
Speaker 3: The chantatown was there five years. It certainly doesn't represent
Speaker 3: a long term solution, But then again, every city has
Speaker 3: fire departments and they put out all the fires, and
Speaker 3: that's not a long term solution. And yet they still
Speaker 3: do it. They don't let those particular people catch fire
Speaker 3: or the houses next to that one house on fire,
Speaker 3: even if it's not a quote long term solution, because
Speaker 3: we don't embark on short term solutions instead of long
Speaker 3: term solutions. We embark on short term solutions as a
Speaker 3: solution to short term problems. And that is the thesis
Speaker 3: of today's shpiel. What happens when you don't do it,
Speaker 3: when you don't even commit to these short term solution
Speaker 3: Maybe because that's not a long term solution. Some will say,
Speaker 3: maybe because trying to aspire to the long term solution
Speaker 3: creates so many complications in achieving the short term solution
Speaker 3: that no solution is made. What about when you stupidly
Speaker 3: allow the problems of small towns or large cities or
Speaker 3: huge municipalities too fester. I think what you do then
Speaker 3: is you invite the idea that there are no solutions.
Speaker 3: So this is this is a defense of the short
Speaker 3: term solution. The low hanging fruit that is so often
Speaker 3: derided is not the solution to all that ails us. Yes,
Speaker 3: but it could be the solution to that thing, that
Speaker 3: one thing that's telling us right now, let us take
Speaker 3: pot shops, weed shops in New York. Little math here.
Speaker 3: In May of this year, the New York Times reported
Speaker 3: that there were two thousand rogue headshops. Do you know
Speaker 3: how many legal ones there were in New York as
Speaker 3: opposed to the two thousand operating without licenses?
Speaker 1: This is from a May article eighty five.
Speaker 3: Then a few months later Kurbed had an updated figure
Speaker 3: there were fifty seven legal weed shops in New York
Speaker 3: and twenty nine hundred illlegal ones. New York Times slightly
Speaker 3: tweaked a few months after that its numbers. The estimated
Speaker 3: licensed retailers sixty two unlicensed two thousand, nine hundred. This
Speaker 3: isn't like, oh, half the pot shops are illegal. This
Speaker 3: is sixty two out of twenty nine hundred. That would
Speaker 3: be just a little over two point two percent. New
Speaker 3: York didn't legalize weed, really, They just illegalized, arresting anyone
Speaker 3: for it, and then they did nothing. Well, now they're
Speaker 3: closing down a couple of dozen of the illegal shops,
Speaker 3: but they're not really putting the legal ones online any quicker.
Speaker 1: Even if the overall goal.
Speaker 3: Was good, You know, we shouldn't be spending resources locking
Speaker 3: up pot smokers or growers. I agree, with that, but
Speaker 3: that's not an actual policy. That's an opinion. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: even a law, but it's not a policy. Now, the
Speaker 3: governor did just fire Chris Alexander, the executive director of
Speaker 3: the Office of Cannabis Management, and she did so because
Speaker 3: there was no policy. And that's on her too. When
Speaker 3: you follow up trying to get a huge policy change,
Speaker 3: right the legalization of pot, and you address that change,
Speaker 3: you do change the law, but you change a policy.
Speaker 3: No pot, that's policy. It was enforced with a lack
Speaker 3: of a policy. There's no policy. Now they're just not
Speaker 3: arresting people who sell pot. Well, you endanger the future
Speaker 3: idea of policy writ large, I get the impression that
Speaker 3: when it came to pot, the reformers had a slogan
Speaker 3: and they had an agenda item, they had an end goal.
Speaker 3: They just didn't have a plan. These weren't serious people.
Speaker 3: Or maybe the elected officials or the bureaucrats who agreed
Speaker 3: with their plan, maybe even campaigned on their plan, never
Speaker 3: really had a plan. They just had a stance or
Speaker 3: a platform. Again, not serious and right now pot Gallup
Speaker 3: has been doing polls. Seventy percent of Americans now believe
Speaker 3: that marijuana should be legal. But what do you do
Speaker 3: with the next big change that is a heavier lift?
Speaker 3: Right when it's pulling at sixty percent or even at
Speaker 3: forty five percent, But you still think it's a good policy.
Speaker 3: Government needs to work and needs to show that it
Speaker 3: does work in order to change things that people are
Speaker 3: a little nervous about. Another New York example subway breaks.
Speaker 3: They're open to the public, you know, like Linux, but
Speaker 3: for subways. I don't know how a city chooses to
Speaker 3: have open access to breaks but not bathrooms. But here
Speaker 3: we are, and like the f train veering off the tracks,
Speaker 3: there we go.
Speaker 1: Hello, thank you for writing the New York City subway.
Speaker 1: We at the MTA, we think of our writers as partners,
Speaker 1: as clients. That's why we give all of you access
Speaker 1: to the breaks. Now you might think, WHOA, that's not
Speaker 1: a great idea, but you would be surprised. It's worse
Speaker 1: than not a great idea. It's one of the most
Speaker 1: horrible ideas any municipality has ever adopted. As CBS Local
Speaker 1: News reports.
Speaker 4: Police are looking for this man wearing a T shirt
Speaker 4: saying swag Don't Come Cheap. He's seen in this grainy
Speaker 4: surveillance video surfing the northbound two train at the fourteenth
Speaker 4: Street in some of the Avenue Subway station on Tuesday.
Speaker 4: Police say he rode several stops before he pulled the
Speaker 4: emergency brakes.
Speaker 1: Who is to blame?
Speaker 3: It's those damn kids, says the head of the MTA,
Speaker 3: Jano Lieber.
Speaker 1: I've got to convince her that the kids. It's most
Speaker 1: the kids who are messing around that way. This is
Speaker 1: really unfair to other riders and it creates risk.
Speaker 3: But you heard the stats and they're the same there
Speaker 3: for twenty twenty three, same stats this year, seventeen hundred
Speaker 3: times they pulled the brakes. Thirty made sense. I'll say
Speaker 3: the same thing I said about legal pot shops.
Speaker 1: It's not like half of them don't work. Ninety percent
Speaker 1: don't even work.
Speaker 3: More than ninety eight percent of the time someone pulled
Speaker 3: the brakes. It was a mistake, it was a prank.
Speaker 5: And it was dangerous. There have been a couple of
Speaker 5: very big trained derailments. Then this report on WCBS. They
Speaker 5: hit up a professor, an NYU professor. Now this guy
Speaker 5: couldn't come in the studio. Is too busy working on
Speaker 5: complex solutions to almost intractable problems, so they wire them
Speaker 5: up remotely. It's a bad connection. It's obviously a fake background.
Speaker 5: But anyway, they needed him because only this professor could
Speaker 5: deliver the flaming arrow of insight to pierce this vexing conundrum.
Speaker 2: Professor Katsuo Kirbyashi is the Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace
Speaker 2: Engineering at the NYU tande In School of Engineering.
Speaker 6: One solution is that and we eliminated that kind of
Speaker 6: the system, and they should get rid of this kandid
Speaker 6: direct access for these people to activate the emergency break eliminate.
Speaker 1: The emergency brakes.
Speaker 3: Well there you go, Thank you, tenured Professor katsu Glad
Speaker 3: we could all tap into his expertise. I don't know
Speaker 3: how many years of instruction, learning and study it took
Speaker 3: him to the side.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't just let any puts
Speaker 1: pull the emergency brakes, because we have shown they will.
Speaker 3: We have hard problems. We've always had hard prods problems
Speaker 3: in San Francisco. Kevin Fagan who wrote about that Dianne
Speaker 3: Feinstein cleaning up the camp, you know, he acknowledged this
Speaker 3: situation has gotten much worse. They were twenty five hundred
Speaker 3: to four thousand homeless people every night in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: and in San Francisco today it's eight thousand, so it's doubled.
Speaker 3: But then again, San Francisco used to spend in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six thirty million dollars a year, so with inflation
Speaker 3: that would be ninety million dollars. You know what their
Speaker 3: budget is on the homeless now, six hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million dollars, and they have seventeen thousand beds of supportive
Speaker 3: housing and thirty eight hundred shelter beds. But still nothing
Speaker 3: gets to the root cause or the long term solution.
Speaker 1: Of course you can.
Speaker 3: You have to change the laws of San Francisco at
Speaker 3: most coastal cities to look more like Houston, which homeowners
Speaker 3: and the political class has historically been against. It's the
Speaker 3: only long term solution. Sometimes the short term solution does something,
Speaker 3: saves a four year old's life, shows the people in
Speaker 3: the city that something can be done. We have always
Speaker 3: had very hard problems, but by so pathetically addressing or
Speaker 3: managing the less hard problems, we don't just fail to
Speaker 3: solve those specific problems, we do create the greater problem
Speaker 3: of hopelessness. Cynicism a disbelief that anything can be done.
Speaker 3: Some problems are in fact extremely complex and intractable.
Speaker 1: But lots really aren't subway breaks.
Speaker 3: Let's be a tiny bit more practical, attentive, and intelligent
Speaker 3: un the solvable problems. Else we squander the will to
Speaker 3: tackle the big ones. And that's it for today's show.
Speaker 3: Cory Warra produces the gist. Joel Patterson's the senior producer,
Speaker 3: Leo Baum interns with us baumb It reminds me of
Speaker 3: the lyrics to What's Happening Baumba. Michelle Pesca is the
Speaker 3: special projects Quarternate Tricks of Peachfish productions.
Speaker 1: To advertise, go to advertisedcast dot com. Slash the gist.
Speaker 1: Super dupery, dupery Thanks for listening.