Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Sacred twenty three extremely extremely exciting.
Speaker 1: It's finally, finally two thousand twenty three. That means only
Speaker 1: funny things can happen this year. That's your intro to
Speaker 1: the That's right. Welcome, Welcome to Christ, buddy. I want
Speaker 1: to hear any criticism welcome to happen here? Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm gonna say they're welcome, but it
Speaker 1: is good, good work. Enjoy your year of discord um
Speaker 1: as if any year of the last, like ten, has
Speaker 1: not been a year every every year previously was totally
Speaker 1: normal and not chaotic. Downhill from here. First off, welcome,
Speaker 1: welcome back. We we love some of you. Probably presumably
Speaker 1: I haven't met you any of the ones that I love,
Speaker 1: but I assume that you're out there, how's everybody doing?
Speaker 1: How's everyone's New year? Absolute slap in the face to
Speaker 1: anyone you've met on any of your live events. That's
Speaker 1: a fair so nice to meet you. Thank you for
Speaker 1: coming in person. Also, fuck you that this whole episode
Speaker 1: is a series of slaps to the face, because it's
Speaker 1: not for us. We're lying. We're all lying to them.
Speaker 1: Who knows if we make it that far today we're
Speaker 1: recording this on December two? And what is it? What
Speaker 1: has happened today? Friends? Also? Who are you? Who was
Speaker 1: on this episode? Garrison's here? As I've already spoken into
Speaker 1: the microphone. Who else has spoken into the microphone? Sreen?
Speaker 1: Question Mark? Now you have Sophie? Sophie? Yeah, James? Oh?
Speaker 1: Any one left? Oh? No, Mia, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've actually spoken into this episode yet. So now
Speaker 1: I have. You've started the day? Didn't So that's how
Speaker 1: you introduced a post. Incredibly awkward. It was perfect, magnificent,
Speaker 1: as if we had never done a podcast. But before
Speaker 1: we get to this, to some of the que days
Speaker 1: of what has happened today when we're recording it? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: today is the day? Is the one day anniversary? Of
Speaker 1: me showing Garrison. The movie Strange Days written by James Cameron.
Speaker 1: Um a New Year's classic. Such a good movie. Not
Speaker 1: seen it? Oh you gotta you gotta watch it? It
Speaker 1: is Robert got alert on his phone. That was just
Speaker 1: like Memory is one year, a lot of day one day,
Speaker 1: a lot of violence against the l A p D
Speaker 1: in that film. Today, that's what's happened has happened? Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely not a pro l a p D movie. Also,
Speaker 1: you you get to repeatedly see a couple of now
Speaker 1: prominent actors, oh faces um, which is which is great
Speaker 1: in a slightly problematic context, deeply problematic context, but a
Speaker 1: good movie anyway. What actors are in this movie? What's his?
Speaker 1: What's his? Ralph Find? Yeah, Ralph find is the main character,
Speaker 1: and he looks exactly like ten years ago Bradley Cooper.
Speaker 1: Bradley Cooper in this movie. So don't insult Ralph. Don't
Speaker 1: do that. They both that's what? Okay, Well that's Crol
Speaker 1: he's great. And Angela Bassett is fucking incredible in it. Queen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tom Sizemore is present in the movie. Alright, Well, my
Speaker 1: favorite is Vincent din Afrio. Looks exactly like Tim Heidecker's character,
Speaker 1: and that I think you should leave sketch where they're
Speaker 1: at the UFO themed restaurant. It's it's uncanny, um, know
Speaker 1: that you're still doing uh. I think you should leave
Speaker 1: references in the Lord's act. I showed my family before
Speaker 1: before they left to go see other family for Christmas.
Speaker 1: I sat, I set my family down to watch the
Speaker 1: second half of season two and magnificent. Yeah, it's designed.
Speaker 1: And that that leads into my only prediction for the
Speaker 1: next year, which is, oh, God, come on, all right,
Speaker 1: who's what's the first question? Then? Well, so the bitches
Speaker 1: want to know, Um, in an alternate universe where it
Speaker 1: could happen here, has a corporate office, does the staff
Speaker 1: get a Robert Evans book for holiday presence or a
Speaker 1: gift card? And we can we can actually answer this
Speaker 1: because despite not having a corporate office, there's still there
Speaker 1: still was a holiday gift which I have not actually
Speaker 1: received mine yet, so I can't say what mine is,
Speaker 1: but I know other people have received There's I don't know, Sophie,
Speaker 1: I ordered yours for well, well, Sophie, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: it would be like that. Tracking Its probably gonna be yes,
Speaker 1: so if you're about to ruin some ups drives day?
Speaker 1: But what did what did everyone else receive for their
Speaker 1: will be delivered by pm? Today? Out for today? There
Speaker 1: there you go. It's okay, Garrison. I didn't get shipped either.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, did buy you something that hasn't come yet? Devastatingly?
Speaker 1: What did? What did? What did everyone else get for
Speaker 1: for their holiday? Was it a Robert Evans book? No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. God, oh my god, imagine you're that fucked up,
Speaker 1: that unhanged that you're like I should by The second
Speaker 1: job I ever had, which was our third job, I guess,
Speaker 1: which was working for this accountant guy that's like like that.
Speaker 1: He was like right, He was a retirement like an
Speaker 1: advisor guy. He would help old people get their money
Speaker 1: in order to retire. It was mostly like helping him
Speaker 1: host events at like a Texas roadhouse where we would
Speaker 1: try to get old people to buy annuities. But um,
Speaker 1: so I worked for this guy. In the day I
Speaker 1: started the job, he gave me a copy of his
Speaker 1: self published novel Operation night Watch, which was about a
Speaker 1: group of Navy seals going rogue to stop drug dealers
Speaker 1: and is one of the worst things I've ever read
Speaker 1: read it. I mean I attempted to someone when I
Speaker 1: mentioned did it once on the show. Somebody found and
Speaker 1: bought a copy and give that money to someone else. Oh,
Speaker 1: he can't be alive anymore. There's no way he said
Speaker 1: it was. It was probably all eBay or something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that that man has been dead for years. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we still we still have ant, we still have
Speaker 1: answer here. We've got tiny cans mace to to a
Speaker 1: little personal maces on for the left hand one for
Speaker 1: the right hand wield. I really like it. It's very compact.
Speaker 1: New pepper spray has been on my tabiles for like
Speaker 1: months because mine was expired like a year ago. But
Speaker 1: I've never actually bought in one, and so it was
Speaker 1: perfect and that was just so tiny. I can put
Speaker 1: it in like my Fannie pack and just continue on
Speaker 1: my days. How do you know it won't work if
Speaker 1: it's expired. I just poked it up. I looked it
Speaker 1: up and I was just like, I don't want to like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I just it was on my tables.
Speaker 1: I obviously didn't buy it, and it wasn't like you
Speaker 1: don't want to hurt somebody with expired pepper spray. It's
Speaker 1: a propellant that expires. Yeah, can itself gets like make yourself? Yeah,
Speaker 1: got it? Yeah, yeah, well there you go, there you go. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see, so we're going to be going through some
Speaker 1: of the questions that we got for the previous Sorry,
Speaker 1: my cats are making as I do like a that.
Speaker 1: But that person really thought that. Robert was that person
Speaker 1: that was like, hey, happy holidays, here's my book. I
Speaker 1: do get the royalties. You're welcome. We should we should
Speaker 1: use the corporate cards to buy more copies of my book.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. Before we could just ship them
Speaker 1: to the sea. Though it doesn't matter where they go.
Speaker 1: For the next question, and we're using the questions from
Speaker 1: the previous it could happen in your livestream for this,
Speaker 1: by the way, So if we didn't get to your question,
Speaker 1: we're getting to some more of them right now. Unless
Speaker 1: your questions sucked, Yeah, yeah, very personal. Yes, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's what I meant by sucked. So do you know
Speaker 1: of a way to get involved in mutual aid without
Speaker 1: using social media? I don't really use it for mental
Speaker 1: health reasons. Good decision there to not use social media.
Speaker 1: Social media yea. Um, a lot of mutual aid organizing
Speaker 1: or you know, like requests happen on social media. UM.
Speaker 1: But I mean there's I guess it depends on how
Speaker 1: you use social media. I suppose like it might be
Speaker 1: useful to have a friend that follows some of the
Speaker 1: some of the social media stuff in your local area,
Speaker 1: whether that be on Twitter or mastered on or Instagram. Um,
Speaker 1: and then you can like relay relate to you if
Speaker 1: there's local events um, or you can just like section
Speaker 1: off like once a week you check on just a
Speaker 1: few of those things, and then you then you delete
Speaker 1: the app from from your phone again. UM. Because once
Speaker 1: you are like plugged into a local community, then people
Speaker 1: can just like directly send you flyers and stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: But you have to have those connections there in the
Speaker 1: first is. And those connections are really best made by
Speaker 1: going to things on the ground, whether it be you know,
Speaker 1: a food not bombs type thing, whether it be you know,
Speaker 1: like a clothing swap. Um. Lots of local events do
Speaker 1: happen in in in people's cities, and once you actually
Speaker 1: go there in person, that's where real community actually gets built.
Speaker 1: So it's it's just it's just it's kind of just
Speaker 1: breaking the ice to actually get to actually go to
Speaker 1: a few in person things and then and then people
Speaker 1: can send you, you know, direct fires and stuff. If
Speaker 1: you don't want to be doom scrolling well looking for things,
Speaker 1: you don't have to even have an account if you
Speaker 1: don't decide not to. You can like view profiles on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram without an account. That you can't like
Speaker 1: see the comments or whatever. But if you just want
Speaker 1: to see their profile every once in a while and
Speaker 1: check in on what they're doing, you can do that
Speaker 1: online with no account. Yeah, often as well, like and well,
Speaker 1: we're doing mutulate things here. It tends to focus on
Speaker 1: the border a lot or on the house people, and
Speaker 1: like in both cases you can just show up and
Speaker 1: you'll meet someone who's helping get in most instances, and
Speaker 1: then they can direct you and they can text you
Speaker 1: or signal you whatever. Like, there were tons of people
Speaker 1: when the migrant caravan arrived who were like much older,
Speaker 1: not on social media, often with church groups, and they
Speaker 1: didn't hugely like have um I would say, a lot
Speaker 1: of experience in that kind of area, but they deeply
Speaker 1: wanted to help and they showed up and people were like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you go to costco and get this and they
Speaker 1: want to Yeah, absolutely, and yeah and we use what's happened?
Speaker 1: It was fine, and like check around. Another option to
Speaker 1: be obviously if if you if you have like like
Speaker 1: a radical meeting space in your city, you can check their. Um.
Speaker 1: If you don't have those, you can even check see
Speaker 1: if there's any like radical coffee shops or cafes that
Speaker 1: maybe have like a bulletin board. People will often put
Speaker 1: up flyers for stuff there. Um, just you really have
Speaker 1: to do start start trying to be like plugged into
Speaker 1: your actual like I r L local community and that's
Speaker 1: generally how that goes. Um, you have to be more
Speaker 1: proactive than if you had social media is the main thing.
Speaker 1: You still have to show up either way, right, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: and do you know who else wants you to show
Speaker 1: up online? Robert Evans, I don't these products and services
Speaker 1: that want you to. We're now exclusively only sponsored by
Speaker 1: Robert's books. Yes, and here's an excerpt. All right, and
Speaker 1: we're back speaking of the Internet. Robert or anyone I suppose,
Speaker 1: do you think there's a way to get back to
Speaker 1: fulfilling the promise of the early Internet Uh No, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't. I think the early Internet was a thing
Speaker 1: that happened that in part was the way that it
Speaker 1: was because our brains did not have any kind of
Speaker 1: tolerance or or or like we're not like prepared for it, um,
Speaker 1: and it it kind of grew up as we became
Speaker 1: capable of like I don't know, like the the the
Speaker 1: Internet grew more social as we got used to it.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that can ever happen again, like
Speaker 1: those those weird little moments where I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my my answer is no, I don't think it will
Speaker 1: ever happen again, in the same way that like you're
Speaker 1: never going to get those weird little moments that you
Speaker 1: you had, like the birth of you know, the printing
Speaker 1: press or whatever. Like you know, it's a unique moment
Speaker 1: in history and it's never going to come again. Which
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that something else won't happen. Um, But the
Speaker 1: Internet is not Like the fact that we've all lived
Speaker 1: through the social media area means even once all these
Speaker 1: companies go bust, our brains have still been changed by
Speaker 1: them too much to ever go back to posting the
Speaker 1: way we once did. No, we're too far gone. I
Speaker 1: think on a kind of similar note, in a few
Speaker 1: days we have an episode from Andrew on digital commons
Speaker 1: and this that kind of involves around this same kind
Speaker 1: of question. So in a few days will have will
Speaker 1: have an episode kind of about this topic ran by
Speaker 1: Andrew Um. But James, you had you had something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sometimes like obviously, like the Internet is terrible in many ways,
Speaker 1: but like when we talk about like what happened in Myanma,
Speaker 1: that series Robert and I did, like that seems to
Speaker 1: me like it's delivering on some of the promises of
Speaker 1: the early Internet. Like it's it's mad that you know,
Speaker 1: a young person like who is facing a coup and
Speaker 1: wants democracy in this part of Asia can go online
Speaker 1: speak to some dude in these aren't real place like
Speaker 1: people are spoken to about like some some guy in
Speaker 1: his garage in Ohio who's three ly printing guns, and
Speaker 1: that person can help the other person on themselves and
Speaker 1: defend their right to choose who governs them or if
Speaker 1: they're governed at all, Like that is really fucking cool,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't happen without the Internet, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also yeah, it's it's not that there's not going
Speaker 1: to be good things done with the Internet, or that
Speaker 1: it can't be made better but it's never going to
Speaker 1: be what it was. Yeah, we we simply know too much. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see what are some inspiring recent examples of cooperation
Speaker 1: increasing survival odds to show the type that thinks they
Speaker 1: just need AMMO to survive. Another good touchstone with for
Speaker 1: this would be the movie trimmers Um, which which shows unfortunately,
Speaker 1: actually he's survival player. Nobody lives with that community unfortunately unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I think Rabbit actually is correct here. More broadly, this
Speaker 1: person is like and couch sleep paraphrasing kokin right, but
Speaker 1: like we have all just lived through a pandemic and
Speaker 1: me are stilling through a pandemic I guess which has
Speaker 1: changed the world killed hundreds of thousands, millions of people.
Speaker 1: And like the reason a lot of people got through that,
Speaker 1: A lot of people who didn't weren't able to work
Speaker 1: or were immuno compromised, you can got as much is
Speaker 1: because other people helped them. Like no one shot COVID
Speaker 1: and no one fed themselves in the lockdown because they
Speaker 1: had tons of five five six talked away like a
Speaker 1: ton of mutual aide. Happened a lot of a terrible
Speaker 1: ship happened as well, but that's a bigger example. I think,
Speaker 1: mm hmm, what genres of music have each of you
Speaker 1: been listening to lately? M I'm a big classical head.
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's like I. I also listened
Speaker 1: to a lot of classical the best. When you're driving,
Speaker 1: everything becomes like cinematic and it's calming, and sometimes words
Speaker 1: distract me. So my go too is classical to what
Speaker 1: I would consider classical music, which is second and third
Speaker 1: wave SCAH basic basically the only classical music in my opinion.
Speaker 1: I listened to the Clash Suade and the Manics, Ree
Speaker 1: Preacher is more or less exclusively. Yeah, they're the only
Speaker 1: bands that matter. Yeah, I think if it's not classical,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like the I don't know, I'm like
Speaker 1: dancing around. So it's either like it's like two extremes
Speaker 1: for me, either classical and I'm like chill, going to sleep,
Speaker 1: or I'm getting ready and I want to feel something.
Speaker 1: What about you, man? I have the most absolutely dogship
Speaker 1: music case Brave, but the music that I listened to
Speaker 1: it I think it's legitimately good. That's not like power
Speaker 1: metal or like weird ship is I've I've been going
Speaker 1: back to like my Youth and my Youth is a
Speaker 1: combination of like surf rock. I was like, this is
Speaker 1: a safe space, like what okay, like Pat Pat Benatar
Speaker 1: sort of like that that there's a sort of era
Speaker 1: of like I don't know what you care like lesbian
Speaker 1: glam rock, I don't know yourself. This is a safe space.
Speaker 1: You keep saying that. I don't think we ever agreed
Speaker 1: to this. I usually listened to a lot of music, well,
Speaker 1: writing and researching. I just finished up to two pretty
Speaker 1: big writing projects. I've been listening to a lot of music. Um,
Speaker 1: most of it's like ambient electronica. Uh, some classicals thrown
Speaker 1: in there if I need to get a little bit
Speaker 1: more like energy, but listening to some Trent Resiner kind
Speaker 1: of ambient stuff, um and like a lot of I
Speaker 1: also listened to a lot of remixes of the Mario
Speaker 1: Galaxy soundtrack. Okay, okay, s O, I like that. Wait, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I need to I need I need to
Speaker 1: plug a truly awful song. Don't no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: we got it. Okay, look, Donkey Kong has to slam
Speaker 1: this way, it has to be this way, X space
Speaker 1: Jam x d k Rap. I need I need to
Speaker 1: know that this exists, is there's there's is incredible. It
Speaker 1: is another worldly experience that's also a version of it.
Speaker 1: That's also what mean angel? Okay, I think this Garrison.
Speaker 1: Do you listen to Max Richter? I think he was
Speaker 1: like Max Richter, He's like he has a lot of
Speaker 1: soundtracks for shows, so his stuff is kind of like
Speaker 1: melancholic and piano ee, but I think you might like it.
Speaker 1: I will look him up. Good name, Yeah it spelt Richer. Yeah, okay, great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should also listen to the Mighty Mighty Boss Towns,
Speaker 1: who did a wonderful album. No, No, don't don't speak
Speaker 1: out The album That George Floyd song is incredibly appropriate,
Speaker 1: deeply appropriate. Yet speak of listening to things, speaking speaking
Speaker 1: of things that are problems? What is what is the
Speaker 1: most troubling thing that isn't being reported on or isn't
Speaker 1: taken seriously by the wider public. The fact that none
Speaker 1: of you said you listened to any rap music or
Speaker 1: any type of music that wasn't just I thought Tupac
Speaker 1: wasn't given Okay, Okay, trachical question I listened to. I
Speaker 1: listened to a little bit of Biggie every now and again,
Speaker 1: and I got my most deaf always loaded up, especially
Speaker 1: around the new Year. I love listening to Life and
Speaker 1: Marvelous Times Sides as a hell of an album. I've
Speaker 1: always been more Biggie. There's a guy code and Christian
Speaker 1: Parish takes a gun. He rapped by Superman. He's like
Speaker 1: from the Coronation. I think it. Stuff is cool. The
Speaker 1: most troubling thing that isn't that isn't being reported on
Speaker 1: are taken seriously enough by the wider public besides our
Speaker 1: musical tastes. Well, I'm going to be and always say
Speaker 1: like at least your news and Palestine and like cair
Speaker 1: and balance reporting and even like Syria and uh, Yemen
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff, I think none of that
Speaker 1: gets enough attention. Absolutely, I'm gonna say, fucking scams um Like,
Speaker 1: just on a daily basis, I feel like my phone
Speaker 1: gets uh six to eight scam calls scam calls at least,
Speaker 1: and like it's uh And And someone was making a
Speaker 1: note of this earlier because like a bunch of scams
Speaker 1: stories have been people have been sharing them. This year.
Speaker 1: But like there's all sorts of fucked up things like
Speaker 1: if a relative gets arrested as soon as the police
Speaker 1: post um the like the they're the fact that like
Speaker 1: like publicly posted they've been arrested, like the family if
Speaker 1: they have numbers that scammers can find, will start getting
Speaker 1: auto dialed by like accounts claiming to be the police
Speaker 1: saying that, like you need to put money in their account.
Speaker 1: Now where they're going into general population and it's all
Speaker 1: these are all like low hanging fruit things like they're
Speaker 1: they're they're not They're targeting people who are not very
Speaker 1: savvy UM often people who have some sort of like
Speaker 1: mental disability, right, so folks who are kind of living
Speaker 1: a marginal existence in a lot of ways as it
Speaker 1: is UM and they are like it. It's making it
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult for and and folks who have like are
Speaker 1: cognitively impaired for whatever reason, including the fact that they're
Speaker 1: they're elderly. There's just like this. It's never been like
Speaker 1: this before, the sheer density of scams that people have
Speaker 1: to wade through. And again, most of you, we've all
Speaker 1: kind of noticed it getting more common, but you may
Speaker 1: not have noticed how kind of brutal. It's gotten because
Speaker 1: you're not the target demographic for this stuff, right, That's
Speaker 1: why they all have like filters in them to try
Speaker 1: and weed out the people who are savvy enough to
Speaker 1: know that they're being scammed. But it's there's a number
Speaker 1: of things. This is the result of decisions that the
Speaker 1: the FTC made, um like like in order to like
Speaker 1: make it a lot easier for people to use ship
Speaker 1: like auto dialers and to carry out like phone based scams.
Speaker 1: But it's it's just been punt on by every presidential
Speaker 1: administration in our lifetime. As the Internet has made it
Speaker 1: easier to automate this stuff, and the the explosion of
Speaker 1: machine learning tools that are widely available, these kind of
Speaker 1: AI s that people are joking about right now, like
Speaker 1: it's all going to create the capacity to more effectively
Speaker 1: automate scams. I had one that could have gotten me
Speaker 1: the other day where I got a call from my
Speaker 1: bank that was listed as from my bank is and
Speaker 1: like on it like it was my bank's phone number,
Speaker 1: like it was. It came up as them on the
Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, you know, someone has there's
Speaker 1: some some charges. Can we run them by you? We
Speaker 1: want to make sure, and they were like charge things
Speaker 1: I had not bought. They were like wire transfers and
Speaker 1: ship and they're like, oh, it looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody's gotten access to your account. And the call dropped
Speaker 1: before I could finish it, so I called them back,
Speaker 1: and when I called my bank back, they were like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was someone spoofing our number. They were trying to
Speaker 1: get personal information out of you. Um, this ship is
Speaker 1: so fucking endemic and no one is doing a goddamn
Speaker 1: thing about it. There's like one anemic attempt in Congress
Speaker 1: to slightly address it, primarily through like education, but it
Speaker 1: is a massive problem. It's part of what's breaking society,
Speaker 1: the fact that like everyone is constantly flooded by this
Speaker 1: low level cloud of people trying to destroy their financial lives. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's real bad. Do you know what else is
Speaker 1: trying to destroy your financial lives? The products and services
Speaker 1: that support this podcast, Garrison and Robert's books, and we
Speaker 1: are back for one final time for this episode. This
Speaker 1: is this is actually a question that I feel is
Speaker 1: pretty important that I wish people thought about a bit more,
Speaker 1: at least within like, you know, our our general sphere
Speaker 1: where do you draw the line between fascist politics and
Speaker 1: non fascist conservative politics. Well, at the moment in the
Speaker 1: United States, I don't think there's a line to be
Speaker 1: drawn because the mainstream of the Republican Party has completely
Speaker 1: thrown themselves in behind one of or both of two fascists. Um.
Speaker 1: In terms of like personally, I guess it depends on
Speaker 1: whether or not people support their being like things like
Speaker 1: penalties on on on it do people like does somebody
Speaker 1: support banning books to somebody support arresting folks for expressing
Speaker 1: political opinions that differ from there's does somebody support, um,
Speaker 1: you know, expanding the penalties for petty crimes to include
Speaker 1: like violence, Like those are all things that can suggest
Speaker 1: that somebody is a fascist. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, anybody who supports the Republican Party right now
Speaker 1: is supporting a fascist movement. So I don't feel there's
Speaker 1: any sort of I don't draw a line in my
Speaker 1: head anymore, to be entirely honest, because they they alighted
Speaker 1: the line. I try to be very specific when I
Speaker 1: say fascist versus just like a regular conservative. In my reporting,
Speaker 1: like when we were inside Colorado, we talked to people
Speaker 1: who were conservatives who were who were against fascists, and
Speaker 1: I against local fascists in their community and actually doing
Speaker 1: things to help stop fascists from gaining power within their
Speaker 1: local community. UM. I think if you look at a
Speaker 1: lot of the rhetoric around queer people right now, whether
Speaker 1: it be like drag shows or trans people, that's a
Speaker 1: specific style of rhetoric that is like innately fascist. UM
Speaker 1: like talking about like there was there was there was
Speaker 1: a tweet from um is his name? Like lindsay, James,
Speaker 1: what's that? What's what's that guy? Yeahs he put out
Speaker 1: He put out this little like meme being like, don't
Speaker 1: call them drag queens, call them um like like it
Speaker 1: was some some bullshit groomer thing, Like I forget the
Speaker 1: exact thing, but like that that specific style of rhetorical
Speaker 1: framing is is is like a pretext to extermination and
Speaker 1: genocide like that that is what that is what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and I think that is right now is what it
Speaker 1: crosses the line is when when they're creating these scapegoat
Speaker 1: groups that that are going to be targeted and posing
Speaker 1: these groups as like a threat to civilization. UM, That's
Speaker 1: where I kind of use that word it's like fashions
Speaker 1: like that that is generally in in my research where
Speaker 1: I start employing that versus you know, some random guy
Speaker 1: who I'm talking to, who you know wants there to
Speaker 1: be lower taxes and less regulation. Because yeah, that that position,
Speaker 1: as we've seen now, can eventually lead to the type
Speaker 1: of fascist policies. But I think that there is when
Speaker 1: it comes to like people in your personal life, and
Speaker 1: when it comes to like regular people who are not politicians.
Speaker 1: I think having a little bit more discretion is useful
Speaker 1: because I think there's still a chance that some people
Speaker 1: who are currently conservative can not become fascists. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would agree. I think in the US context one sort
Speaker 1: of useful litmus test for people on the right. It's like,
Speaker 1: are the rules of the game more important than the
Speaker 1: outcome of the game? Like, so when you look at
Speaker 1: like the sort of fascism we saw around Donald Trump, right,
Speaker 1: like there was a point where the outcome of the game,
Speaker 1: the maintenance of power, right became more important than the
Speaker 1: rules of the game. I like basic human rights, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's a useful definitely a useful sort
Speaker 1: of it's this person dangerous, it might like I like
Speaker 1: Paxton's definition of fascism generally, it's not great, but it's
Speaker 1: which has elements useful. Yeah, it's useful. And I think
Speaker 1: your scapegoat group group one is really key. When people
Speaker 1: a scapegroading people and they don't really give a funk
Speaker 1: about how they eliminate those people or stop quote unquote right.
Speaker 1: When when people are seeking to use the machinery of
Speaker 1: state to eliminate people and ideas that they find uncomfortable
Speaker 1: by using the force of law against them, um, they're fascists.
Speaker 1: And when people are supportive of ending democratic like ending
Speaker 1: the democratic transfer of power in order to support an
Speaker 1: individual that they think embodies their conception of like what
Speaker 1: their country is, those people are fascists. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that it's one thing, and I don't think it's
Speaker 1: usually useful if you're having a conversation with an individual
Speaker 1: to call them a fascist, even if they're behaving in
Speaker 1: ways that are kind of fashy, if you think that
Speaker 1: a productive conversation can be had, Um, that might move
Speaker 1: them in one direction or the other. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, if somebody is supportive, for example,
Speaker 1: of a third term for Donald Trump, um, that person
Speaker 1: is supporting a fascist movement, and I don't think that
Speaker 1: there's a I don't think I don't think it matters that.
Speaker 1: Like their individual reasons for doing it maybe less fascy
Speaker 1: than someone else's, Like at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: they are supporting that, and that's that's kind of what
Speaker 1: matters to me. I think. I think it's also worth
Speaker 1: taking a little bit of a look at what happened
Speaker 1: to your conservatism in order to sort of understand what's
Speaker 1: going on here, because I think there was an important
Speaker 1: sort of fracture a in terms of the fact that
Speaker 1: George Bush like basically orchestrated like yeah like bait bait,
Speaker 1: Like he didn't technically create a coupe, but he like
Speaker 1: he he he rigged an elections such as to put
Speaker 1: it it's like, so as to put him in power, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's what the Brookes Brothers riot was. That's what
Speaker 1: that's that's sort of the process that gets us the
Speaker 1: Bush wouldn't shot in two thousand's and there you know
Speaker 1: that this is this is an interesting moment because if
Speaker 1: you look at what happens to conservatism over the sort
Speaker 1: of like the I don't know, the last twenty five
Speaker 1: years of the twentieth century, there's this interesting pivot where
Speaker 1: they make where in order to you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at like what what is the conservative response to
Speaker 1: communism in nineteen like thirty nine, right, it's just like
Speaker 1: we're going to be fascists. Right, It's like literally we
Speaker 1: are going to be the Nazis. But you know, by
Speaker 1: by by the time you get to like post wor wartching,
Speaker 1: and by time it gets really to like the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties, they start realizing that, like people don't generally
Speaker 1: like fascism that much, and so the form of anti
Speaker 1: communism that they take starts to be this sort of
Speaker 1: like rights based like weird supports like freedom and human
Speaker 1: rights and like free markets and democracy and there there
Speaker 1: there's this point where that stuff meets with like another
Speaker 1: kind of fascist politics, which is sort of like the
Speaker 1: two one era state of exception stuff that happened after
Speaker 1: where you know, like people are talking about the gloves
Speaker 1: coming off and this is this is this is getting
Speaker 1: into your sort of like like looking at like multa
Speaker 1: benjam means like conception of what fascism is or my
Speaker 1: blanking on the guy's name like Carl Schmidt's stuff right
Speaker 1: where it's like, here is a part of the state
Speaker 1: that can just like destroy like they have, that has
Speaker 1: sovereign power and can just sort of trample over the
Speaker 1: entire legal order in order to perpetuate it. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is like, okay, suddenly after two thousand one, like
Speaker 1: after nine eleven, they were just like people disappearing into
Speaker 1: torture dungeons, right, and you get this moment where on
Speaker 1: the one hand, yeah, like because Georgia w. Bush is
Speaker 1: one of these people who's like the sort of like
Speaker 1: freedom democracy people, but then beneath him is you know,
Speaker 1: it collapses very quickly into this we are the torture
Speaker 1: dungeon stuff, and this willing is literally to rig elections.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the sort of important because like
Speaker 1: because like there are sort of normal conservatives right who
Speaker 1: still have that kind of like freedom and liberal democracy
Speaker 1: whatever thing, and they're not really that fascist kind of
Speaker 1: but in some sense it doesn't it doesn't matter that
Speaker 1: much institutionally because the part of the Republican Party that
Speaker 1: survived was a combination of the torture dungeon, which is
Speaker 1: like Gina Hospital like and then Trump, who is this
Speaker 1: the sort of emblem of this like like the sort
Speaker 1: of sort of like we're gonna we're gonna take the election,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take power, We're gonna use the power of
Speaker 1: the state to just like murder everyone we don't like.
Speaker 1: And I don't know like I think I I think
Speaker 1: like you can find individual people who are conservatives who
Speaker 1: I guess like art Nazis, but the the way that
Speaker 1: neo conservatives and fragmented and the way that that kind
Speaker 1: of state of exception politics and that politics have sort
Speaker 1: of just like mass torture, and then also the willingness
Speaker 1: to just steal elections like that. I don't know that
Speaker 1: stuff I think forms is this another sort of core
Speaker 1: fascism that's they're alongside the sort of queer extermination of
Speaker 1: stuff and there I don't know, these things fused together
Speaker 1: in ways. And Yeah, I've rambled for long enough. We're
Speaker 1: gonna do one more question. And I think we cover
Speaker 1: a lot of upsetting things on the show, some things
Speaker 1: that maybe are not you know, super fun to think about, um,
Speaker 1: but we also cover some like hopeful stuff as well.
Speaker 1: But what's what's one thing at the crew who works
Speaker 1: in the show. Due to decompress and clear our minds after,
Speaker 1: you know, wading through the trenches of the digital hellscape.
Speaker 1: Uh pass, I feel like we might have answered something
Speaker 1: similar to this on the line. I saw Robert playing
Speaker 1: cyberplunk last night, so I know there's at least one thing.
Speaker 1: It does allow me to pretend that Keanu Reeves is
Speaker 1: my friend, which is nice to meet him. First. I
Speaker 1: like to go camping. I like to go outside, like
Speaker 1: I like to swim in the ocean and raban bike
Speaker 1: and hike and camping. Yeah, yeah, I second that I
Speaker 1: need to go outside and just even like a simple
Speaker 1: walk with trees and hiking. I think it really helps
Speaker 1: me just decompressed and be present again, hanging out with
Speaker 1: queer people's not and intentionally not talking about Twitter bullshit.
Speaker 1: It just like going and doing something, just like varying
Speaker 1: around in the grass and just like talking about gay ship.
Speaker 1: It rules. It's the self that heals the heart. Absolutely well. Uh,
Speaker 1: thank thank you everybody. Me. Oh see, I was gonna
Speaker 1: try to just like no, just just just like Google
Speaker 1: that wrap up the episode in a nice little bow.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've I've been trying to get back
Speaker 1: into doing more kind of art stuff with my camera,
Speaker 1: and whether that be photography or filmmaking. Um, in like
Speaker 1: short form stuff. Uh, what else I've been doing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Taking drugs? Sure, there it is. Shrooms
Speaker 1: are healing, shocking, shocking. Yeah, incredible start on the podcast now,
Speaker 1: now you can wrap it up if you want to. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you everyone for listening to ours. That's what I
Speaker 1: do to relaxe. Thank you. See, that's the thing to do. Actually, actually,
Speaker 1: actually there's one person who has tried to skirt past
Speaker 1: this this question. Sophie. Yes, Sophie, what the hell she looks?
Speaker 1: What do you want? Sophie, You not only have to
Speaker 1: deal with, you know, all of the bad stuff that
Speaker 1: we talked about, but you also have to also have
Speaker 1: to deal with us. Um So what what do you
Speaker 1: do to compress? And clear? Clear, clear, compress? Well, first
Speaker 1: of each and every one of you are the best,
Speaker 1: So let's let's start there. Uh. I really like uh
Speaker 1: making food for my friends, and uh like meeting a
Speaker 1: friend for coffee and just like walking outside or like
Speaker 1: finding like a little place that's like a local place
Speaker 1: and just when and when you go in there's like
Speaker 1: barely anyone in there. But then you get to talk
Speaker 1: to the people that work there and then order a
Speaker 1: nice little dessert or something. It's that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm like, I have friends. That's literally what
Speaker 1: I read it. I said it and sounded horrible. Um.
Speaker 1: And then like all guys obviously like having pets and
Speaker 1: being around animals is really solid. But um, it's also
Speaker 1: just like having a healthy balance of you know, focusing
Speaker 1: on a lot of the negative stuff but really also
Speaker 1: putting your energy into a lot of the positive stories.
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people feel like it
Speaker 1: could happen here is tends to lean towards the negative,
Speaker 1: but I really feel like we're a hopeful show, and
Speaker 1: I feel like as as a network cools, the media
Speaker 1: tries to to to lean lean towards the hope and
Speaker 1: find you know, the good and the bad. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's what we have shows like cool People did cool stuff,
Speaker 1: which is with Margaret Killjoy that that really helps balance
Speaker 1: out a lot of the other things. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think finding the good in the bad, uh, eating yummy
Speaker 1: food with your friends and petting all the you can.
Speaker 1: You know. I also think a huge thing for all
Speaker 1: of us is taking plenty of alpha brain supplements. Um,
Speaker 1: I like, all right, people listening to it could happen
Speaker 1: here if you have have have a have a good
Speaker 1: year of discord. Oh, Cricky no, I literally because Garrison
Speaker 1: is so mean about about the UK. I literally almost
Speaker 1: got Garrison all UK thing gifts for so many things.
Speaker 1: When I got to see if there was a tea
Speaker 1: pot with the flag, it was so horrible. I didn't
Speaker 1: do it because I knew, but it was. It could
Speaker 1: happen here a podcast. Do you guys want to hear
Speaker 1: my Boston accent? No, that's it, that's that's that's my
Speaker 1: Boston Interson literally started growling as you did that. That's
Speaker 1: how much he needs everybody. Everybody gets angry at my
Speaker 1: best in Austen Jesus Australian, what do you do it?
Speaker 1: Boston is the Australia of the northeast. So this episode
Speaker 1: we're going to be going through our predictions. Prediction number one,
Speaker 1: Robert might not make it. Oh Sofa, you predict that
Speaker 1: every year and it's barely ever true. Little piece of
Speaker 1: you guys, every year, Robert's gonna get true. Trunk could
Speaker 1: buy a plane ticket to Boston, then get lost and
Speaker 1: never returned. It's Okay, I can. I can blend in,
Speaker 1: blend in with my seamless Boston accent. No, you'll no
Speaker 1: one will be able to understand you in a foreign country,
Speaker 1: just like trying to like, why are you just doing Australia.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's Boston, you know at the Home of
Speaker 1: the Koala be so not my fault that all accents
Speaker 1: of interesting possibly trying to get back on track. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: what are we doing today? What are we doing? Who
Speaker 1: are we trying? We're trying. We'll work it up in here.
Speaker 1: There's the same people on this one this last episode
Speaker 1: as Sharene Me Garrison, James Sophie, our producer Mia and
Speaker 1: Bad Boston impersonator Robert Evans. And we're talking about what
Speaker 1: we think might happen in I feel I don't I
Speaker 1: don't remember all of our predictions for last year, but
Speaker 1: I feel like we got most of them correct. I
Speaker 1: think we were right about everything. Yeah, so to to
Speaker 1: continue that to trend um, what do we think is
Speaker 1: going to happen this year? Um? I think Elon Musk
Speaker 1: might wind up sad to pieces by the saudiast. It's
Speaker 1: like there's like a solid there is a non zero chance,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, The thing, the thing that's actually the
Speaker 1: most sort of surprising me about that is that the
Speaker 1: SoftBank guy is still alive, like as as as much
Speaker 1: Saudi money as Elon has blown through the SoftBank guy
Speaker 1: like like fucking SoftBank guy lit the GDP of a
Speaker 1: regular country on fire, like the most batship companies in
Speaker 1: the world. It's money by being landlords. Do you know
Speaker 1: how hard it is to lose money with a landlording business.
Speaker 1: It's a German guy who wrote a book about it.
Speaker 1: Oh anyways, I think we'll get a really good leak
Speaker 1: from the British royal family doing something absolutely despicable and
Speaker 1: then but like it really high but high quality audio
Speaker 1: or video hopefully video, and then uh and video of
Speaker 1: what Prince Andrew's doing, and then it will make and
Speaker 1: then it will make UK politics even worse than it
Speaker 1: already is. Not. Yeah, yeah, that that part I disagree with.
Speaker 1: But yes to horrifying leak from the British Royal horrifying league.
Speaker 1: Horrifying leak yeah from like I honestly I don't know
Speaker 1: how British politics could be worse. Starm is going to
Speaker 1: win an election and somehow make it even worse despite
Speaker 1: being notionally the left party in the United Kingdom. I
Speaker 1: gotta say, somebody has to get you people on lockdown
Speaker 1: for the names Keir Starmer, that's not a that's not
Speaker 1: a name you know familiar with, Kiar Starma, the leader
Speaker 1: of the opposition. Unbelievable. I'm livid. M Yeah, well wait
Speaker 1: but no I'm not. We had Boris Johnson and it
Speaker 1: really can't get anywhere. Yeah. I I never forgave you
Speaker 1: guys for letting a Boris into power. Can I get
Speaker 1: my bad please? I think I think Pete Davidson will
Speaker 1: date a high a high profile politician in the next year.
Speaker 1: I think Sophie better that's a that's a free space. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I have, I have, I have, I have A better
Speaker 1: one is Pete Davidson is going to date Grimes. That's
Speaker 1: on everybody's list. That's seven times he's going to impregnate
Speaker 1: some that's take that's boring. Um. I think that we're
Speaker 1: going to find out something juicier all right, well, um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it'd be easy to stick with like
Speaker 1: pretty grim predictions like oh there's going to be a
Speaker 1: mass shooting at a drugs like it happen, because that
Speaker 1: seems that that's let's let less to prediction and more
Speaker 1: just like looking at where the temperature is going. Can
Speaker 1: I do my hack version of that that's situless hack,
Speaker 1: which I think. I think we're going to get an
Speaker 1: actual shootout between armed fascist and armanti fascist in a
Speaker 1: city that the press actually cares about, so not portland'
Speaker 1: that is entirely possible. We haven't. We haven't had a
Speaker 1: shootout in Portland yet. I mean, that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: there's been an exchange of gunfire. Why don't you all
Speaker 1: talk at the same fucking time and make Daniel's life
Speaker 1: hard one of you speak, Daniel, Welcome to d Yeah,
Speaker 1: the year we break Danial. Um, we have had an
Speaker 1: exchange of gunfire though, no, we have not. I think
Speaker 1: she means like, oh my god, it has not gone better.
Speaker 1: It has gotten better. We have had a person shooting
Speaker 1: into a crowd and another person shooting that person. We
Speaker 1: have had people fire at each other, Um, But we
Speaker 1: have not had two different people exchange gunfire with each
Speaker 1: other a group like and neither if we had groups
Speaker 1: of people exchange gunfire with each other, that has not
Speaker 1: occurred yet. Um, I agree. I think there's a real
Speaker 1: good chance it does. Um. I'm I'm more worried about
Speaker 1: the police opening fire on a group of anti fascists
Speaker 1: and the fascists joining them. But like, all of those
Speaker 1: things are on the fucking table, and it gets more
Speaker 1: likely every time we roll the dice on that ship. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that gives me some hope is how the
Speaker 1: recent events in Texas have been going. Um, the size
Speaker 1: of the community that has been showing up at the
Speaker 1: last couple of drag events. Um. And how outnumbered the
Speaker 1: right has been as a general rule, if anything is
Speaker 1: going to make it less likely that either the police
Speaker 1: or the fascists fire, Um, it's being tremendously outnumbered. Um.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I'm I'm in between a hopeful
Speaker 1: and despairing about like where the future of that's going
Speaker 1: to be. Here's my hopeful prediction, Crypto dot com Arena
Speaker 1: will not be named Crypto dot Com Arena by the
Speaker 1: end of the year. Yeah, that is my hope and dream.
Speaker 1: I do think that crypto dot com is well. I mean,
Speaker 1: it looks like binances on its way to collapsing slightly
Speaker 1: less badly than ft X did, but it looks like
Speaker 1: it's not going to be around much longer. UM in
Speaker 1: Crypto dot Com is kind of in a similar space.
Speaker 1: I think there's actually a real chance that we see
Speaker 1: the functional death of cryptocurrency UM that we've already seen
Speaker 1: it be named a normal thing and not something viciously embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Robert It's it's it's still going to be embarrassing because
Speaker 1: they paid for that. I think it's just like f
Speaker 1: t X paid like a hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: up front to get their name on that stadium and
Speaker 1: Florida UM. They are trying to change it, but I
Speaker 1: think they're stuck with it for a little while. Stadium
Speaker 1: I'd rather be called scam Stadium literally, Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: Charles Ponzi Memorial Stadium. How you go from here's office
Speaker 1: supplies to that. It's so embarrassing and like it doesn't
Speaker 1: even flow. Okay, I could we're not doing this right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that we should change the Crypto dot Com stadium.
Speaker 1: We should name it after Bad Dragon, that company that
Speaker 1: makes buildos themed after mythological creatures based Yeah. I this
Speaker 1: isn't like hopeful, but I feel like there's going to
Speaker 1: be another virus because there are some people that are
Speaker 1: going too hard in the other direction. I feel like
Speaker 1: every year there might be a new virus introduced that
Speaker 1: we're going to yeah, and with theories about where it
Speaker 1: came from. Yeah. But then like, but we're like past
Speaker 1: the point of being able to lock down, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like I think, like that's what's gonna
Speaker 1: make it start. Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah. Part of
Speaker 1: one of the scary things about the COVID response is
Speaker 1: that the how politicize the concept of a lockdown or
Speaker 1: mask wearing has gotten means that there's effectively no way
Speaker 1: for US culture to stem the spread of an airborne virus.
Speaker 1: Like it's impossible, there's not even a chance. Um, we've
Speaker 1: done used to parachute and use it again. We we
Speaker 1: we lit the parachute on fire. Yeah, Yeah, to own
Speaker 1: the lips. Yeah. I I've been wanting to do this
Speaker 1: for a long time, but I haven't done because I
Speaker 1: don't think it's fees able for work. But I would love.
Speaker 1: I think people are going to start using flip phones more.
Speaker 1: They think, like people are going to step away to traditions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's even like a psychological study going on right
Speaker 1: now where a bunch of teens did that, and like
Speaker 1: they've reported much better lives or whatever the ship. So
Speaker 1: I would love to myself, but I think more people
Speaker 1: are going to go. I saw a graph the other
Speaker 1: day saying the happiest that American teens have reported themselves
Speaker 1: being was the early two thousands, right around when I
Speaker 1: graduated high school, and all we could do with our
Speaker 1: phones was text each other to buy drugs and play Snake.
Speaker 1: And that's all kids need is the ability to play
Speaker 1: Snake and buy ketamine um happy at the same time. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's what it's going to do. The arena next, it's
Speaker 1: going to be the ktamine arena. Well do you know
Speaker 1: do you know who could buy the arena? Rob Evans,
Speaker 1: any of these products and services that that support this podcast,
Speaker 1: And we're back in this is this is this is
Speaker 1: a section that we're calling death. This is who is
Speaker 1: going to die? Can I start this one? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna be No Chomsky. That's That's that's who
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I think No Chomsky is gonna die. I
Speaker 1: think we're going to have the worst two or three weeks.
Speaker 1: A lot of times the media that we've seen in years.
Speaker 1: It's gonna make it's gonna make it's it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna make pog patrol discourse look like tame, like we're
Speaker 1: like people, people are good, people are on ironically gonna
Speaker 1: be doing Stalin as a POC discourse again. And as
Speaker 1: you have to explain it, you have to. You have
Speaker 1: to pause and explain all of this because nobody reason
Speaker 1: to understanding. We have to. We have to blaze through
Speaker 1: that and pretend it never happens. I don't know what
Speaker 1: pog patrol is. I imagine how you don't. Okay, I
Speaker 1: I legitimately refused to explain that. Um if if if
Speaker 1: you want me to great, you need to pay me
Speaker 1: more that I'm being paid. Okay, alright, I'm sure someone
Speaker 1: will DM me now to explain it. Thank you very
Speaker 1: They're the they're they're the people who are behind all
Speaker 1: of this insufferable left wing discourse that occasionally breaks through.
Speaker 1: They did round two of Ann Frank, white privileged discourse
Speaker 1: that happens. Jump off a bridge anyway, death death, who
Speaker 1: you think is gonna die. It's like I'm making a
Speaker 1: hail Mary Elon Musk. It's gonna be musk drug addiction.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe he maybe he shoots himself yoga in his
Speaker 1: duffle bag when he shoots himself in the back of
Speaker 1: the head by accident. That's very specific, James. It's almost
Speaker 1: like you planned that out. It's almost like someone already
Speaker 1: did it. What I think, I think Joe Biden's gonna die. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's just makes sense, busy law like. I
Speaker 1: have that in my head too. I didn't specificly Joe,
Speaker 1: I said, whoever is? I said, one of the two
Speaker 1: people running for president in that are the clear front runners,
Speaker 1: one of the two will die, causing it, causing the
Speaker 1: election to be even more stupid than it already. Is
Speaker 1: My runner round Nancy Pelosi, but that she'll be at Vinyards,
Speaker 1: She's gonna be thriving, and all that will happen. If
Speaker 1: Pelosi said, people will sell out of those weird political
Speaker 1: like action figures, We're just we'll just to sell out
Speaker 1: of all the Nancy Pelosi ones. That that's all that
Speaker 1: will happen. If if if I'm not saying I want
Speaker 1: her to die or not want her to die, I
Speaker 1: just think those are the two people that every time
Speaker 1: I see them. I'm like, how are how you know?
Speaker 1: I thought that with Boris Johnson, I think he like
Speaker 1: that man has lift a rough one. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: shown to if he you know, what would be the
Speaker 1: funniest terminal gout? You know, would be the funniest thing
Speaker 1: based on what if? What if? What if the king
Speaker 1: does a year after the queen. There's a decent chance
Speaker 1: you've seen his fingers, that man is not healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be so funny. It would be pretty funny
Speaker 1: if it ended up with Megan Marckwell being queen after
Speaker 1: you will, just because he has so much mighty funny
Speaker 1: what I what I will throw out there. I think
Speaker 1: there's a decent chance it's Fuintes. I think he's gotten
Speaker 1: Nick Fuintes his his his profile has increased so much
Speaker 1: so quickly, that he gets killed by one of his Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a good chance it's one of the
Speaker 1: fans he's already had. That wasn't Louis Rockwell. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean hack of a fraud. Part of why I
Speaker 1: think that there's a chance of that is the weird
Speaker 1: sex related drama he's had with a number of his followers,
Speaker 1: Like he's already messing in those like wading into those waters. Um,
Speaker 1: he's he's done ship like going over their rooms with
Speaker 1: a black light and stuff like. He's had weird, uncomfortable
Speaker 1: relations like relationships with his followers that are like distressingly personal.
Speaker 1: Um in a way that makes me think that one
Speaker 1: of them might lose it on him. Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think there's a non zero chance it's flintes get Yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets swatted. I'm less worried about that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think like murdered by another weirdo, right winger. There's a
Speaker 1: decent chance, said a good thing come out. I think
Speaker 1: Rudy's dying. Oh here's something which Rudy Giuliani. I disagree.
Speaker 1: You think he's gonna forever. Yeah, I think he died
Speaker 1: four years ago. To be fair, that man, he's made
Speaker 1: of wax and melting. He is thriving. Another example of that.
Speaker 1: I just read a great interview with him in Cigara
Speaker 1: Ficionado magazine. Um, my favorite fact about Rudy. So you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to inhale cigars unless you're one of a
Speaker 1: tiny chunk of people who think that that's the right
Speaker 1: way to smoke them and Rudy's in Hailer. Rudy sucks.
Speaker 1: Do you know? Do you know who else is it
Speaker 1: in Hailer is Stephen Crowder and we know that he's
Speaker 1: had a series of pretty significant medical issues. I think
Speaker 1: Stephen Crowder goes back in the hospital and I think
Speaker 1: I think he'll survive, but he will have to like
Speaker 1: live like like he'll have to be like hooked up
Speaker 1: to like machinery to be able to keep going. So
Speaker 1: he's gonna he's gonna be doing his show while hooked
Speaker 1: up to medical equipment. I think that is That is
Speaker 1: another one of my is not healthy right? He still
Speaker 1: he's ever that's gonna happen. There's a Twitter dedicated to
Speaker 1: He's gonna die or not There there is a Twitter
Speaker 1: dedicade into if Twarn Peterson is going to die or
Speaker 1: not good good? Speaking of with Twitter accounts, I do
Speaker 1: think I do think this is the year Kissinger. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I am never kissing always bet against kissing Er. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's going to stay alive at least to see another
Speaker 1: election rig somewhere in the world or a coup. But
Speaker 1: he's ninety nine, Okay, I think I think he gets
Speaker 1: to a hundred one, he gets he gets to like
Speaker 1: a hundred eight. He carries a longer, way longer than
Speaker 1: what he should a hundred hundred nine. Maybe, how are people,
Speaker 1: because I know several of us have said this in
Speaker 1: the past, how are people feeling about Kanye? I think
Speaker 1: I think there's a decent chance, like, absolutely, seriously, absolutely seriously,
Speaker 1: there there's a decent chance that he dies from a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Yeah, Garrison and I have talked about
Speaker 1: this a lot, and we both are on that side,
Speaker 1: So we think that's yeah, that's yah. I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, huh, Well, I think the real money
Speaker 1: is on, does con you take anyone with him? Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, my god, what if he takes what if?
Speaker 1: What if? Together? Garrison, there's not terrible numbers on that
Speaker 1: that's so likely that that is not a zero percent. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just gotta just got a single spark of hope
Speaker 1: in my dead soul. I think I think this is
Speaker 1: a year we lose Ojay. Oh wow. I saw him
Speaker 1: given interview the other day, and I mean it was
Speaker 1: he looked unwell. Oh Jay is just a kissinger. He
Speaker 1: somehow keeps winning even though he shouldn't. Ye, the smart
Speaker 1: the smart money is never on betting against the juice.
Speaker 1: Oh god, alright, well, uh do you do you know
Speaker 1: who else loves betting the products and services that weird,
Speaker 1: things that are autoact Michael Jordan's dad for a while, Robert,
Speaker 1: that man was murdered. Yeah, Cambodian guy. He left betting problem. Alright,
Speaker 1: break or is this all before the break? Okay? Who's
Speaker 1: to say so? Who's to say we have no idea?
Speaker 1: All right, we're bad mentions like any last throws. I'll
Speaker 1: just say I really hope it is in Britney spears.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Oh my god. Alright, um, let's see.
Speaker 1: Uh so final predictions. Um, you know there is not
Speaker 1: the mid terms, right, there's no there's no significant kind
Speaker 1: of election this year, at least inside the US. UM.
Speaker 1: I think this is this is a prediction that's that's
Speaker 1: gonna hurt Sophie. I think something really bad comes out
Speaker 1: about Harry Styles, and I'm praying for it. I'm first
Speaker 1: of all that something really damaging is going to come
Speaker 1: out about Harry Styles. I saw that I saw the
Speaker 1: only fictions I saw about hair styles that he was
Speaker 1: going to come out with a vow of celibacy. I
Speaker 1: let's go with that instead that honestly, that that is
Speaker 1: so likely. I think Garrison is on the right track, though.
Speaker 1: I think, whether it be something there or somebody else,
Speaker 1: I think there's going to be a huge, huge pop
Speaker 1: celebrity scandal. Hopefully it's not here. Yeah, well there was one.
Speaker 1: I mean every year there's a celebrity scandal. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Take card that's right, Sothy, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I think it's I think we're
Speaker 1: going to learn going through some ship with I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sexual assault. Yeah, it was in the early two thousand.
Speaker 1: He assaulted a bunch of people and the main person
Speaker 1: that's yesn't their backstreep brothers who are backstreep? I'm like backs,
Speaker 1: but I'm likely actually who are streams? Isn't That isn't
Speaker 1: that correct? But I think some one more relevant than
Speaker 1: Carter will will be expec another another prediction. It's like
Speaker 1: less of a less of a prediction. Were just like
Speaker 1: looking at current trends and recent reporting, um that there
Speaker 1: will be a big shift away from like a shift
Speaker 1: away from solar towards nuclear fusion. I think that we're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna. I think I think stuff is too far out.
Speaker 1: I but no, no, no, I think on the governmental level,
Speaker 1: whether or not it works or not, there's going to
Speaker 1: be a big shift towards talking about fusion as the
Speaker 1: solution to climate stuff. I think that will particularly be
Speaker 1: influential around people who don't want to support meaningful climate
Speaker 1: change mitigation activities. Now like, yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: There like a shield, I have a chin to take,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, okay, so all right, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to get good information about exactly what so okay. One
Speaker 1: of the things, the thing that's been happening as a
Speaker 1: certain result of the protest is that CCP is done
Speaker 1: like yeah, I don't know. They're doing a traditionally really
Speaker 1: stupid CCP response, which is that they've they've they've they
Speaker 1: basically flip their policy like on its head, on its
Speaker 1: head in a lot of places, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of like they've they've they've gone very quickly from mobilizing
Speaker 1: state resources to like keep people in lockdowns, to mobilizing
Speaker 1: state resources to forcing people to go to work. And
Speaker 1: it's it's really unclear exactly what like how bad like
Speaker 1: the COVID waves they're going to get is I Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to be as bad as
Speaker 1: like the Really there's there's a lot of predictions that
Speaker 1: are like like a like a million people are gonna
Speaker 1: die in like six months, is like, No, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's true. But I think if COVID actually does
Speaker 1: get into this sort of like China has this very
Speaker 1: large population of like very like very very not vaxed
Speaker 1: like old people basically like particularly in rural areas, and
Speaker 1: if COVID gets into those people and those people start dying,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna see ship in China that makes
Speaker 1: like the current protests look like a fucking joke. Like
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna see like like people like like
Speaker 1: party officials are gonna be getting like dragged to the
Speaker 1: fucking streets like it's I don't know, Like I this
Speaker 1: has been one of my long running beliefs about Chinese society,
Speaker 1: which is I don't think you can actually kill a
Speaker 1: million people in China and not like like even even
Speaker 1: like a like forty or fifty people. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think you can have the government just straight up
Speaker 1: to policies that killed that many people without stuff going
Speaker 1: really really fucking wild really quickly. And I think people
Speaker 1: are underestimating the extent to which expect, especially in in
Speaker 1: in these rural areas. If if those people start dying
Speaker 1: on mass I think it's gonna get fucking wild. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my. That's my that's that's that's that's that's that's
Speaker 1: my that's my China hot take. Alrighty, already, I bet
Speaker 1: does something horrific of a three D printed gun of
Speaker 1: some kind somewhere and there's a whole bunch of panic.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that was the next thing I was going
Speaker 1: to say. My prediction was gonna be there was going
Speaker 1: to be significant pressure on a federal level to ban
Speaker 1: the production of three D printed guns and on international level, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think there's a really good chance that happens
Speaker 1: somewhere in Europe in the same way that like you had,
Speaker 1: you had the bottom Clout massacre kind of done using
Speaker 1: remilitarized demail like prop guns, and I think there's a
Speaker 1: good chance that we get something maybe out of Germany, um,
Speaker 1: with a high body count that that pushes internationally for
Speaker 1: restrictions and crackdowns anyone to have a prediction on who
Speaker 1: Trump will pick as is running me Oh, Sarah Payton,
Speaker 1: I think it could be back. I think I could
Speaker 1: get honestly, honestly, honestly though, like if you're if you're
Speaker 1: on the ground in Alaska, like almost every single person
Speaker 1: that because Jamie was just was working on a story
Speaker 1: for us, and that's Bassa. They like her. They're they're
Speaker 1: like she's bad. We don't get it. Literally, she's so popular. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't know who who Trump's gonna pick. There's
Speaker 1: so many people he could that feel like too obvious
Speaker 1: or too much like they're too popular that they could
Speaker 1: threaten Trump's like like singular brand, because I don't think
Speaker 1: he wants another big voice. I don't want someone to
Speaker 1: be slightly passive. I don't think he's not going to
Speaker 1: pick yeah exactly, I don't know which one, but I
Speaker 1: think he'll pick a black Republican. I think that's that's
Speaker 1: who Loud. I don't think he can't shall Walker Garrison
Speaker 1: crazy don't speak that into being. I don't, but also
Speaker 1: I can imagine that I think that is That is
Speaker 1: my prediction. I think Walker lost and he does not.
Speaker 1: He does not like losers. I think which is why
Speaker 1: he hated John McCain, who lost Vietnam. I think I'll
Speaker 1: probably I think I think I see him picking a woman. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see him picking a woman, which is what it
Speaker 1: will be good for his optics. I just I just
Speaker 1: don't know what. I just don't know a woman that's
Speaker 1: either like high profile enough but still quiet enough that
Speaker 1: love and Sarah Palin, It doesn't matter what they love.
Speaker 1: What matters is that Trump doesn't want somebody who could
Speaker 1: who has the potential of distracting attention from him, And
Speaker 1: she's been a big enough media figure in her own
Speaker 1: right that I think he'd be worried about it. I
Speaker 1: think Kanye, no, they hate each other. Now, I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that's the vibe I'm getting from what I think
Speaker 1: he what I think he thinks will help him. Like
Speaker 1: a black man that can speak kind of the same
Speaker 1: way Kanye speaks to his audience, like maybe before the
Speaker 1: antisemitic ship, but a black man Republican, I think is
Speaker 1: what will happen. I think he has two flanks that
Speaker 1: he can be hit from the Republican Party, and one
Speaker 1: flank is just like the anti vax flank, and then
Speaker 1: his second flank is like someone who tries to like
Speaker 1: tap into the evangelical voters who were kind of piss
Speaker 1: off at him, And I think I feel like I
Speaker 1: think Santist will probably go after that. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: but but but I think I think I think he's
Speaker 1: going to pick someone either to show him up in
Speaker 1: the anti vax front, or he's going to pick some
Speaker 1: like like someone who every evangelical knows and who no
Speaker 1: one else has ever heard of. I think the latter
Speaker 1: is more likely with those options, or somebody from his family.
Speaker 1: I think he's I think he's that that would be
Speaker 1: really funny. Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: going to be now it would be Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: she's too woke. She's like, I think it would absolutely
Speaker 1: be a Banca because she's on He doesn't even out
Speaker 1: of respect for the rest of them, but I doesn't
Speaker 1: want to. That's why that's that's actually not unlikely. Like
Speaker 1: if he is going to pick a woman, I think
Speaker 1: that is actually that's who I would predict. I my
Speaker 1: money is still on herschel Walker. But I think that
Speaker 1: is that that is not a non zero chance. Or
Speaker 1: or he goes somebody that's not even remotely in the
Speaker 1: game at all. Yeah, that's that's likely. That's likable in
Speaker 1: you know, either a religious community or you know, somebody
Speaker 1: that's on TV. But it isn't somebody that's on TV
Speaker 1: and in your face. Um. But yeah, so like he's
Speaker 1: not picking like a Kimberly Gilfoil or anything like that,
Speaker 1: which would be so fucking awful. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: thought about it. It's really bad for all of our ears.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I don't know it's gonna be bad. Okay,
Speaker 1: Can I ask a slightly like related election take on that?
Speaker 1: Do do you do? You do you guys think that
Speaker 1: Mike Pants is going to run against Trump? No? No,
Speaker 1: he's making a stake about No, of course not. I
Speaker 1: don't think he'll actually run. I think he'll just, um,
Speaker 1: if there's somebody that he deems that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: a true Republican and a true conservative, um, then he will.
Speaker 1: Pence will back to ship out of that hell back.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's gonna be I feel like there's
Speaker 1: gonna be another person who's not the Santist who's gonna learn.
Speaker 1: I agree, there's gonna be another Prantis like that man
Speaker 1: on a state he has no career. Robert and I
Speaker 1: don't think he's going to run. We don't think he's
Speaker 1: going to run. We think he'll waited out for the
Speaker 1: next one. I think I don't think he's going to
Speaker 1: run if Trump is running, in particular, like especially if
Speaker 1: Kanye is still in the news, like it's too messy,
Speaker 1: and he's young enough that he doesn't need to win
Speaker 1: this time, and he's so unfortunately well liked in the
Speaker 1: state of Florida that like he yeah, he's safe there,
Speaker 1: but he's smart enough to know that like going up
Speaker 1: against Trump, even if he wins, could get enough stink
Speaker 1: on him that it sucks him over in the future
Speaker 1: as opposed to just holding on. He'll be forty six
Speaker 1: in which is one of the youngest, would make him
Speaker 1: still one of our youngest presidents. Yeah, and he can
Speaker 1: spend four more years just like, you know, sniping at whoever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just being a real big old piece of ship murder
Speaker 1: giant died. Yeah. Well, I hope none of us diet
Speaker 1: next year. I hope us and anxiety breed works. I
Speaker 1: had to say it, so it's not true, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, that's how my anxiety. I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: just had to thank you, Thank you, Sharine. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I too, I too wish that. Yeah, we've got some
Speaker 1: work trips planned. Don't catastrophizes no good, And I think
Speaker 1: I think that's will die. Twitter dot com will not
Speaker 1: be a website. That's a very likely in most of
Speaker 1: my I think there'll be a big shake up with Uh.
Speaker 1: There'll be a big story about healthcare and how how
Speaker 1: certain people are not diagnosed over other people, and it's
Speaker 1: going to become a huge thing, and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a huge story about that at some point. There's Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that would. There's been you know, a little,
Speaker 1: little little baby stories about about certain things, but I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna become a a global issue. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: more we will see more bullshit about migration than we
Speaker 1: have done a good climate change is getting worse. Everything
Speaker 1: that drives migration is getting worse, and it will continue
Speaker 1: to be this fucking strong man that Republicans use. So
Speaker 1: we're already seeing like Y two k and early two
Speaker 1: thousand's nostalgia. And the bizarre thing is that there's not
Speaker 1: much of a culture after that because around that time
Speaker 1: was when we is when we started to reset into
Speaker 1: like eighties nostalgia. So I'm wondering what the next nostalgia
Speaker 1: cycle is going to be. I think like like things
Speaker 1: like like like in Britain, like there the whole landfill
Speaker 1: indie culture that came around in like they're like late
Speaker 1: the first decade of this center. Yeah, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: you're right. Maybe like hippie seventies. I saw a video
Speaker 1: of of a youth, the youth trying on one of
Speaker 1: those cursed stretch comb Ahead bands. Stop it. Those things
Speaker 1: fucking hurt. You're gonna hurt yourself. You're gonna poke something.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be bad. They're not cute. No brack, we
Speaker 1: don't read that repense already back. I already keep seeing
Speaker 1: them and the little the little plastic Bengals back. Yes, yes, yeah, God,
Speaker 1: please don't bring you back. Hurt Battle New Metals coming back.
Speaker 1: We're gonna We're gonna do it. We're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: get New Battle, We're gonna get the we're gonna get
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, like goth bullshit coming back. That's already started.
Speaker 1: My My prediction, my prediction he's bringing it back is
Speaker 1: that SKA will continue to be the most relevant genre
Speaker 1: of music in American culture. Um, a fact unchanged for
Speaker 1: thirty years. Al Right, well, thanks to our predictions episode everybody, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about We'll talk to you. We'll be back.
Speaker 1: You know it's shrines. Stop talking about a death. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: things fall apart, The center will not hold in. Journalists
Speaker 1: will make a pretty good living writing about at all.
Speaker 1: It's a good time to work the dystopia beat. The
Speaker 1: pillars of our society have been crumbling for most of
Speaker 1: my adult life and probably yours too. One exception to this,
Speaker 1: up until recently, has been the tech industry. When the
Speaker 1: rest of the economy shipped the bed back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, big tech roared into the gap to prop
Speaker 1: up the groaning timbers of capitalism. Sure, the housing market
Speaker 1: was in free fall, huge numbers of people were out
Speaker 1: of work, and American infrastructure was crumbling like a twice
Speaker 1: baked pot brownie. But then Steve Jobs magicked up the
Speaker 1: iPhone and the iPad and the app store. Google brought
Speaker 1: us Android and a dizzying array of smart and connected
Speaker 1: devices followed. Companies like Uber disrupted massive industries and briefly
Speaker 1: made hailing a cab the cheapest it's ever been, although
Speaker 1: they did this by lighting massive piles of VC cash
Speaker 1: on fire. It was in this period of what would
Speaker 1: prove to be a rational exuberance that I started my
Speaker 1: career as a tech journalist. That was the job title
Speaker 1: my boss gave me, and it's what everybody else in
Speaker 1: the industry called themselves. In reality, most of us were
Speaker 1: just extensions of big text pr agencies. All the big
Speaker 1: tech news websites of that era, Slash gear In, Gadget Boy,
Speaker 1: Genius Review, and the place I worked for I FORU News,
Speaker 1: made most of their money off the back of a
Speaker 1: peculiarity in Google search algorithm. The gist of it was this,
Speaker 1: if a bunch of websites all published articles that were
Speaker 1: basically rewritten press releases about say a new gadget, or
Speaker 1: rewrites of someone else's report on rumors about an Apple product,
Speaker 1: Google would assume that this was a hot topic and
Speaker 1: they would bump everybody up on the algorithm. You could
Speaker 1: make a tidy profit just paying a handful of writers
Speaker 1: to rewrite press releases or copy reports from some of
Speaker 1: the few sites doing actual tech journalism. And this is
Speaker 1: where I got my start. In reporting. I wrote ten
Speaker 1: articles a day, five days a week for several years
Speaker 1: until Google fixed their algorithm and wiped my silly little
Speaker 1: industry out in the blink of an eye. It's fine.
Speaker 1: In this case, we kind of had it coming. It
Speaker 1: was nice to get paid to sit home and write,
Speaker 1: and the experience putting out a shipload of words every
Speaker 1: single day that were polished enough to print was pretty
Speaker 1: good for me. But it wasn't journalism, and so while
Speaker 1: I was doing it, I started seeking opportunities to actually
Speaker 1: get out into the world and do original reporting. And
Speaker 1: that's what first brought me to the Consumer Electronics Show
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas in two thousand ten c s as.
Speaker 1: It's known as a tech industry insider event for analysts, manufacturers,
Speaker 1: and media. They come and they show off new products
Speaker 1: and gadgets and apps, and journalists walk around and look
Speaker 1: at everything and then write articles about it. Companies spend
Speaker 1: millions of dollars every year on massive, multi acre show
Speaker 1: rooms for their products and dream up ludicrous demonstrations of
Speaker 1: their new tech. One that sticks out to me from
Speaker 1: again about thirteen years ago, is watching some company or
Speaker 1: another charge an electric car inductively that means there was
Speaker 1: nothing actually plugged into the vehicle. They just parked it
Speaker 1: like you would put your phone on an inductive charger,
Speaker 1: and they charged it that way. The whole process was
Speaker 1: so energy intensive that it dimmed the lights in the
Speaker 1: loss of Vegas Convention Center, which if you've never been
Speaker 1: inside of it, is about the size of a small city.
Speaker 1: The spectacle was always the best part of CS and
Speaker 1: with all the money pouring into big tech, it was
Speaker 1: a great place to be a reporter. Every big booth
Speaker 1: had free wet bars and piles of free swag. I
Speaker 1: left every year with a sack full of USB drives
Speaker 1: and thousands of dollars in products to test. There was
Speaker 1: so much goddamn money everywhere that even a dumb kid
Speaker 1: like me with no real connections could do okay. Collapse
Speaker 1: was always and has always been present at c s, however,
Speaker 1: looming in the background overdoomed product categories and vast tottering
Speaker 1: businesses that didn't realize they were already dead. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: primarily of r i Am the people he used to
Speaker 1: make blackberries here. Another good example would be Motorola in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. Their booth was one of the largest
Speaker 1: at c e S Now. Apple was and still is
Speaker 1: the biggest name on the block when it comes to
Speaker 1: making consumer gadgets, but they don't go to c e S,
Speaker 1: preferring to hold their own annual event to announce new products.
Speaker 1: This has always irritated the people who run the show,
Speaker 1: and so in the early two thousand tens, when androids
Speaker 1: started to blow up as a rival to Apple's iOS,
Speaker 1: a huge deal was made about Motorola's Droid line of phones.
Speaker 1: They actually had to license the name from Lucasfilm for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. In two thousand ten, Motorola won the Best
Speaker 1: and Show award for their droid phone, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that they hadn't actually brought a working example of it
Speaker 1: to the show, something that kind of pissed me off
Speaker 1: at the time. Now today, Motorola is basically dead. It's
Speaker 1: a shadow of its former self. It's been bought and
Speaker 1: sold several times. His companies like Samsung and HTC beat
Speaker 1: the piss out of it on the open market. Other
Speaker 1: famous collapses from c E s has past include the
Speaker 1: entire three D television market. If you can remember those
Speaker 1: heady days after the release of the first Avatar movie,
Speaker 1: the tech industry, blue billions in R and D and
Speaker 1: ad money, trying to convince everyone that people would actually
Speaker 1: sit down and their actual ass living rooms and where
Speaker 1: fucking three D glasses to watch movies or TV. It
Speaker 1: was preposterous and obviously doomed. I have fond memories of
Speaker 1: harassing pr hacks on the show floor asking them, isn't
Speaker 1: this just a big con from the entertainment industry to
Speaker 1: make it harder for people to pirate media? Are there
Speaker 1: any actual signs that regular people will pay thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars for one of these things? At one point, a
Speaker 1: rep from Samsung I think, tried to show me a
Speaker 1: glasses free three D TV. It only worked if a
Speaker 1: trained professional told you precisely where to stand in order
Speaker 1: to view it. I laughed so hard I snorted whiskey
Speaker 1: and lukewarm Starbucks onto a stack of glossy product brochures.
Speaker 1: Despite how obviously doomed it all was, the Internet filled
Speaker 1: with fawning articles about all of the exciting new three
Speaker 1: D televisions that we're surely going to be in homes
Speaker 1: in the very near future. Now, because the Internet moves quickly,
Speaker 1: most of the websites that did tech news back then
Speaker 1: are dead, and the ones that remain are filled with
Speaker 1: busted links. But you can still find monuments to the
Speaker 1: failure of three D television if you know where to look.
Speaker 1: Take the excerpt from a PC World article on the
Speaker 1: best of c E s two thousand ten uh. It's
Speaker 1: titled the three D Revolution is here, and underneath a
Speaker 1: broken link to an image that is no longer available,
Speaker 1: is the line, I don't think it's a false start
Speaker 1: this time. The three D product plans for the coming
Speaker 1: year represent the initial salvos of the coming three D revolution.
Speaker 1: Panasonics three D demos were among the most convincing, but
Speaker 1: the best implementation I saw, unfortunately, is one that won't
Speaker 1: be coming to market anytime soon. Sony showed us it's
Speaker 1: twenty four point five in three D O L E
Speaker 1: D H D t V is a technology demo only
Speaker 1: now in retrospect, I think the hilarious failure of three
Speaker 1: D TV technology is actually what prepared me more than
Speaker 1: anything for crypto. If you actually just go over that
Speaker 1: paragraph I read a little earlier, you could replace the
Speaker 1: words referring specifically to three D t V s with
Speaker 1: various shit coins or blockchain related tech, and it would
Speaker 1: more or less work. The thing that set me off
Speaker 1: with crypto was how similar the claim was that, like,
Speaker 1: this thing is obvious, Lee legit because look at how
Speaker 1: many people are talking about it. It's got to be
Speaker 1: real now, because suddenly it's all over the news. This
Speaker 1: is why folks like Sam Bankman Freed bought the naming
Speaker 1: rights to stadiums and stuck f t X and crypto
Speaker 1: dot com up as publicly as they possibly could. It
Speaker 1: was all a con to convince casual observers that the
Speaker 1: crypto market was a serious thing they should invest in.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that really made me think
Speaker 1: a lot about the role journalists play and hyping up
Speaker 1: nonsense like this, and you can see it in three
Speaker 1: D t v s and crypto in a bunch of
Speaker 1: other spaces. A big part of what convinces people that
Speaker 1: this stuff is real is suddenly they start seeing articles
Speaker 1: everywhere talking about it. Suddenly the press all over the
Speaker 1: place is talking about the price of bitcoin or talking
Speaker 1: about this this new thing is if it's it's going
Speaker 1: to actually change people's lives, and so folks who maybe
Speaker 1: are not super high information media consumers just assume that Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess this is here to stay. Um it's it's
Speaker 1: a danger that still exists. All of this brings me
Speaker 1: to c E S ME three collapse looms larger over
Speaker 1: the proceedings this year than in any other prior event
Speaker 1: I've attended. Prior to the pandemic. Attendance that c E
Speaker 1: S had topped out at around two hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: last year, though only forty thousands showed, which is probably
Speaker 1: still vastly too many folks to cram into hotel conference
Speaker 1: rooms and can see an no restaurants during a pandemic.
Speaker 1: And yes, c E twenty two was a super spreader event.
Speaker 1: Korea particularly had a problem as a result of it.
Speaker 1: The show itself for decades, a central event in the
Speaker 1: global tech industry, seems to be teetering. It is not
Speaker 1: alone there. The top ten big tech stocks lost a
Speaker 1: combined four point six trillion dollars in market cap in
Speaker 1: two that's significantly more than the GDP of the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom around three point two trillion, or the state of
Speaker 1: California three point six trillion at CES. The rot is
Speaker 1: most evident in the utter lack of any kind of
Speaker 1: hype beast product this year. So far, I've seen a
Speaker 1: flying hydrogen car, or at least I've seen three d
Speaker 1: renders of one. Also, it's meant for Formula one style race,
Speaker 1: is not actual civilian use. The guy at the booths
Speaker 1: somewhat angrily told me the anticipated retail price was around
Speaker 1: three million dollars. The MACA flying car was one of
Speaker 1: many products that I looked into at c S Unveiled,
Speaker 1: which is one of the headline events of the show.
Speaker 1: It's basically a bunch of manufacturers and booths showing off
Speaker 1: their gadgets to an audience of journalists to drink heavily
Speaker 1: from an open bar, walk around and prod things. In
Speaker 1: years past, smartphones and tablets and their consumer gadgets tended
Speaker 1: to be the main focus. But all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff is boring as hell now the smartphone market has stabilized.
Speaker 1: It's just not as exciting as it used to be,
Speaker 1: and C e S knows it. The big hype it
Speaker 1: unveiled was around a mix of electronic and autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: technology and virtual reality. Now at present, I'm not in
Speaker 1: a good position to thoroughly analyze the specific promises made
Speaker 1: by individual autonomous driving companies at CES. I'll just note
Speaker 1: that tech Crunch, normally all in for hype about this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, published an article laugh st October titled
Speaker 1: it's time to admit self driving cars aren't going to happen.
Speaker 1: Here's a relevant quote. Ford announced that it would be
Speaker 1: winding down our Goo AI, the company backed by itself
Speaker 1: and fellow automaker votes Wagon, focusing on developing full Level
Speaker 1: four autonomous driving technologies. Ford explained their justification in doing
Speaker 1: so when they release their Q three earnings a few
Speaker 1: hours later, noting that not only were they shutting down
Speaker 1: our Go, but they were also essentially deep prioritizing L
Speaker 1: four technologies altogether to instead focus on advanced driver assistance
Speaker 1: systems with internal resources. Ford CEO Jim Farley justified this
Speaker 1: by saying on the company's earnings call Wednesday evening that
Speaker 1: profitable fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off,
Speaker 1: and we won't necessarily have to create that technology for
Speaker 1: ourselves now. Obviously, autonomous technology will of course have niche
Speaker 1: applications automating transport of heavy loads at job sites and
Speaker 1: minds where routes are predictable and controlled, but mass adoption
Speaker 1: of full level four autonomous driving technologies at present a fantasy.
Speaker 1: The same is true for one of the other major
Speaker 1: product categories at CS unveiled, virtual reality metaverse nonsense. The
Speaker 1: fact that Facebook let fifteen billion dollars on fire last
Speaker 1: year chasing Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dreams has convinced some people
Speaker 1: that the idea is inevitable. This excerpt from a market
Speaker 1: Watch article published during c e S is representative. You
Speaker 1: can see the same thought process that led people astray
Speaker 1: with three D TVs and crypto. In the long run,
Speaker 1: the metaverse will be a major substitute for in person
Speaker 1: conventions like c e S, said June Nichigucchi, CEO of Tararu,
Speaker 1: a Japanese company developing its own metaverse. So one of
Speaker 1: the barriers to any kind of popular metaverse is the
Speaker 1: fact that VR is actually not as immersive as it
Speaker 1: needs to be. The technology does a pretty impressive job
Speaker 1: of convincing your eyes that you are in fact somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and this is pretty neat, but the rest of your
Speaker 1: body is inevitably standing or sitting awkwardly in a room somewhere.
Speaker 1: This has led to a whole host of products that
Speaker 1: are in development right now that attempt to engage the
Speaker 1: most of your body and basically trick it into believing
Speaker 1: that you're somewhere else. I tried two products at c
Speaker 1: e S that were meant to do this. The first
Speaker 1: was the tax Suit X from b Haptics. It uses
Speaker 1: haptic feedback technology, which is the stuff that makes your
Speaker 1: phone buzz when you press a button on your touch screen.
Speaker 1: Companies like b Haptics hope to use advanced versions of
Speaker 1: the tech to mimic physical sensation. This would make the
Speaker 1: metaverse feel much less awkward and associated, and also provide
Speaker 1: a whole new market for online sex workers. There are
Speaker 1: several of these suits at c S, and all of
Speaker 1: them seem to have won Innovation Awards, or at least
Speaker 1: their honorees and the CS Innovation Awards, which is a
Speaker 1: thing that basically anyone seems to get if they make
Speaker 1: something expensive enough and bring it to the show. To
Speaker 1: be frank, I think these suits are bullshit. The one
Speaker 1: slightly cool thing about the tax suit is that the
Speaker 1: gloves it had like gloves and a feat component. Um
Speaker 1: I was able to test the gloves and the actual
Speaker 1: chest suit thing. The gloves do a pretty okay, job
Speaker 1: of emulating a physical keyboard, or at least small keyboard
Speaker 1: on like a smartphone style device. Now that is not
Speaker 1: a cool enough thing for someone to pay hundreds of
Speaker 1: dollars and deal with the hassle of wearing heavy battery
Speaker 1: powered gloves every day. The b haptics folks eagerly showed
Speaker 1: me how their suit could simulate hugging and touching another
Speaker 1: human being in VR, and this seemed to be the
Speaker 1: major selling point they saw for what they were bringing
Speaker 1: to the table. I actually tried all this and it
Speaker 1: was among the saddest experiences of my life. Hugging someone
Speaker 1: in a haptic suit through VR feels like having a
Speaker 1: dozen or so in sixty four rumble packs activate up
Speaker 1: your chest in arms. If you touch a virtual person's shoulder,
Speaker 1: your hand will buzz and vibrate. Now, buzzing and vibrating
Speaker 1: are not sensations I attribute to physical intimacy with a
Speaker 1: physical person. I actually found this attempt at mimicking the
Speaker 1: sensation of human contact much more disturbing than the lack
Speaker 1: of contact in most VR experiences. The tech industry has
Speaker 1: also penned a lot of hopes on augmented reality I
Speaker 1: think this is closer to being realistic, but there are
Speaker 1: still a metric fun ton of vape are wearing snake
Speaker 1: oil products often marketed as increasing accessibility. One example would
Speaker 1: be the Luvic. This is a device you wear around
Speaker 1: your neck. It's roughly the size of a pair of headphones.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to buzz on one side or the other
Speaker 1: of your body to let you know when to turn,
Speaker 1: all the while delivering audio map directions for you. Luvic's
Speaker 1: press materials highlight what a win this is for accessibility,
Speaker 1: saying Luvic is a device designed to solve the challenges
Speaker 1: of those who have difficulty with spatial cognition. It is
Speaker 1: an IoT Internet of Things device that is one around
Speaker 1: your neck and uses tactile notifications and bone conduction voice
Speaker 1: to guide the user along the way naturally. Now this
Speaker 1: tech does identify a real need, but I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: say it does not work at all. I tried this thing.
Speaker 1: Luvic's people put it on me and ran through a
Speaker 1: walking root of New York City. I couldn't tell which
Speaker 1: side of my body was being buzzed, so that was useless.
Speaker 1: It just felt like a smartphone was ringing on the
Speaker 1: back of my neck and the speakers weren't loud enough
Speaker 1: to hear directions. Now, when I mentioned this, the Luvic
Speaker 1: people told me, well, there's too much noise in the
Speaker 1: conference room for you to hear it, of course, New
Speaker 1: York City being famously quiet. And then there's the stuff
Speaker 1: that I suspect was just outright snake oil rather than
Speaker 1: being broken like the Luvic. This is probably best embodied
Speaker 1: by the electric circlet I saw there that's supposed to
Speaker 1: stimulate your brain to reduce your stress while you sleep.
Speaker 1: Uh they advertised. I think the number was eight percent
Speaker 1: reduction and stress while you sleep. This is not a product.
Speaker 1: I feel the need to review some claims they're not
Speaker 1: worth taking seriously, and this is one of them. So far,
Speaker 1: I've seen little at c S that struck me as
Speaker 1: likely to be a massive financial success. But there were
Speaker 1: some potentially groundbreaking products on display. Unfortunately, nearly all of
Speaker 1: these were in the realm of health and medical technology.
Speaker 1: Let me explain why this is troubling with an example
Speaker 1: from the show. The most potentially influential device I saw
Speaker 1: there was called Viral worn by Optive. It is a
Speaker 1: multiple use breath analyzer self test that will tell you
Speaker 1: if you are positive for COVID nineteen r s V
Speaker 1: or influenza. UM. It just lights up if you're positive
Speaker 1: for one of them. They promised that in the few
Speaker 1: true it will tell you what you have. But then
Speaker 1: that's still useful, right, still a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: better than anything we've got right now. Rather than sticking
Speaker 1: a thing up your nose, you just blow into this
Speaker 1: thing like a breathalyzer. It's about the size of a
Speaker 1: key fob, and you can charge it with a normal
Speaker 1: USB cable. It can be used dozens of times before
Speaker 1: being reloaded. Optive's rough price point is around a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: If this thing works the way they say it does,
Speaker 1: I cannot exaggerate what a big deal it would be.
Speaker 1: Imagine being able to blow into a little device and
Speaker 1: know in a couple of seconds if you're safe before
Speaker 1: you go into a store or a bar or a party,
Speaker 1: go see you know, an elderly relative for a birthday.
Speaker 1: Lives could be saved by this thing if it works.
Speaker 1: And to their credit, the good folks Adoptive immediately told
Speaker 1: me that this was not on sale yet, as it
Speaker 1: was still waiting for FDA approval. I take this as
Speaker 1: a good side and I sincerely hope it works as
Speaker 1: well as advertised. But products like this do present a
Speaker 1: problem for the tech press. When I'm at a show
Speaker 1: like ce S, it's generally easy to determine if something
Speaker 1: has promise. If I step into a booth for a
Speaker 1: company advertising rugged speaker, well, I can drop those speakers
Speaker 1: from a height. I can drop stuff onto them, I
Speaker 1: can throw them. I can test if they're rugged because
Speaker 1: I can try to break them, and if I can't,
Speaker 1: then they're rugged. Likewise, I can strap on a VR
Speaker 1: suit and I can tell you if it makes the
Speaker 1: experience more immersive. Neither I nor any other members of
Speaker 1: the press can tell you how well a medical diagnostic
Speaker 1: device works in the same manner. This isn't anyone's fault,
Speaker 1: but as connected tech and AI are included in more
Speaker 1: healthcare devices, the potential for snake oil and for dangerous
Speaker 1: failures to generate mass hype increases exponentially. I want to
Speaker 1: be clear that the medical devices I have seen so
Speaker 1: far at c e S do not strike me as
Speaker 1: suspicious in any way. Company representatives were extremely good at
Speaker 1: explaining what stage in the FDA approval process they were
Speaker 1: at and I saw some really cool shit. My favorite
Speaker 1: was probably a new streamlined a E D from Life
Speaker 1: a Z at a thousand dollars or thirty five dollars
Speaker 1: a month with a four to five years shelf life.
Speaker 1: This thing makes having a defibrillator on hand affordable for
Speaker 1: regular people. It's extremely light and small and can be
Speaker 1: easily carried in a backpack. I do have a little
Speaker 1: bit of medical training, and I tried this thing out
Speaker 1: on a dummy and test mode. I can confirm it
Speaker 1: appears to work like any other more expensive a D.
Speaker 1: The device is still awaiting FDA approval, but it has
Speaker 1: been approved and as being sold in France and Germany,
Speaker 1: so I feel pretty good saying this thing probably works
Speaker 1: the way Life a Z says it does. And then
Speaker 1: there's my favorite product from c E s unveiled, the
Speaker 1: nan she domestic violence app from ath Bash, which is
Speaker 1: a French company. This was first suggested to me via
Speaker 1: one of the most awkward pr emails I've ever received.
Speaker 1: Forward Media Alert Groundbreaking domestic Violence reporting app launching at CREE,
Speaker 1: and when I got it in my email, it just
Speaker 1: said forward Media Alert Groundbreaking Domestic Violence which fun thing
Speaker 1: to get in your inbox. In fairness to their very
Speaker 1: nice pr lady, there's probably not a non awkward way
Speaker 1: to title an email about this kind of thing. The
Speaker 1: app itself is really innovative, though. It provides you with
Speaker 1: options to record voice or video, to take photos of documents,
Speaker 1: or to photographically document your own injuries. All the data
Speaker 1: that you save is stored off site, so you take
Speaker 1: a picture your record audio and it's immediately off the
Speaker 1: phone and off the app. You actually can't access it
Speaker 1: without contacting the company directly to get it. All of
Speaker 1: it is stored on the cloud, and it's also on
Speaker 1: the blockchain, which is used to verify data integrity, making
Speaker 1: this probably the first blockchain related product I've ever heard
Speaker 1: of with a realistic use case. Nancy seems to be
Speaker 1: pretty well thought out from the top to bottom. Once
Speaker 1: you start recording, you can swipe away from the app
Speaker 1: and it will keep recording without being visible anywhere on
Speaker 1: your phone. So if you're in a fight with a
Speaker 1: domestic abuser and they take your phone away, they will
Speaker 1: not see that you're recording, but it will keep recording.
Speaker 1: You can also change the logo and name that the
Speaker 1: app displays itself under on your phone so that it
Speaker 1: won't say that you have Nancy anywhere. You can make
Speaker 1: it look like basically anything you want. It really does
Speaker 1: seem like they've thought this through and it's about the
Speaker 1: best version of this kind of thing that's possible. There's
Speaker 1: more oficular note at the show was an unpowered mechanical
Speaker 1: exoskeleton I got to try on. It doesn't increase your
Speaker 1: physical strength, but it does allow you to sit while standing.
Speaker 1: The manufacturer, are Kellis, sees this as a way to
Speaker 1: let workers stand on factory production lines and in retail
Speaker 1: stores all day long without straining themselves. I feel profoundly
Speaker 1: mixed about this product, more so than anything else at CES.
Speaker 1: On one hand, it it works really well. I got
Speaker 1: to try it on, and it's kind of a marvel.
Speaker 1: On the mechanical level, you can still walk perfectly well
Speaker 1: with it on, but you can just kind of sit
Speaker 1: at any point going limp and it's actually really comfortable.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it costs three thousand dollars, which
Speaker 1: means very few retail workers are ever going to see one.
Speaker 1: So far, it's primary use in the real world has
Speaker 1: been helping to keep auto workers comfortable while they shot
Speaker 1: gun more cars out into a world with far too
Speaker 1: many of them. It's all very emblematic of the way
Speaker 1: CS makes me feel these days. Inside the roiling sea
Speaker 1: of snake oil and broken ship. Are some really cool ideas,
Speaker 1: but they're all wedded to an industry that has mostly
Speaker 1: forgotten how to do any thing new. Over the coming days,
Speaker 1: I'm going to look at a new smartphone from Samsung.
Speaker 1: It rolls up, I guess, check out more VR happtick devices,
Speaker 1: none of which I expect to work very well, and
Speaker 1: I will hopefully get to lift some heavy weights wearing
Speaker 1: a powered Exo skeleton. That one I'm actually looking forward to.
Speaker 1: I am open to the possibility of finding stuff that's
Speaker 1: cool here, but at the end of the day, nothing
Speaker 1: I've seen, anything I'm likely to see, has changed my
Speaker 1: overall impression of where the tech industry is today. It's
Speaker 1: a big, bloated monster slowly bleeding out before our eyes. Hey,
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen.
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Dot com or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 1: you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool Zone media dot com, slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.