Escalating Protests and Roadblocks in Bolivia

This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human. Is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth History is full of mysteries. L how people ever survive before modern laundry detergent? Luckily, TideE's here with boosted stain fighting for cleaner, whiter, brighter, and fresher laundry versus tide simply. No wonder it was America's number one detergent in sales last year. If it's got to be clean, it's got to be tide. TideD is a proud sponsor of the Elttenjoh Impact Awards honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first, on the iHart Radio app and everyverywhere podcasts are heard. It's America's two hundred fiftieth, but you deserve some presence too. Simon Malls, Mills, and preremium outlets have can't miss sales july third to fifth Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon d. comot Grab the fam, head to a Simon center and make it a day for the books. It's the celebration thing. Sign up today at Simonplus dot comot Rewards program terms applly. seeee Simonpllus dot com for details If you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car, start at Carmax and shop your way. If you want to browse with confidence, get free qualified online with no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget, from luxury cars to family rides Carmax has options for almost every price range, including more than twenty five thousand cars priced under twenty five thousand dollars. So hey, want to get started? Just head to cararmax dot com for details and get pre qualified today. wantant to drive Carmax This is Matt Altmix from How to Money, and we are all about comparing prices to save money on so many things in life. So why wouldn't you compare prices for your next rides share Taking a few seconds to check lift can save you real money on your next ride. And I did this last time I caught a ride home from the airport after some travel and guess who came out on top? Lift So don't just price check with flights and phone planes and your groceries, comparing rideshare prices will help you to save money every time you ride Save money Check lift Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package. for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's got to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions Welcome to It Could Ha here. Ashoba things Falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis Today I amm joined by James Stout Hello Hi G. I'm excited to see what's falling apart today Well, that's our elections, which have, as we all know, been rigged for as long as I can remember, which is kind of true considering when I was born, Sirka. The year two thousand. Oh yeah, beia The famous the Great and Democratic election of the year two thousand the United States The flawless election of two thousand. Yeah But no, we are going to be talking about Trump's continuing claims that the twenty twenty election was rigged and his investigation of election fraud in not just the twenty twenty election, but also the twenty twenty four election. which if you callall was not rigged against Trump considering One that election, including the popular vote. Yeah, he won every every way slice that up. A sweeping victory. Yeah. It was a fat L for the Democrats But a lot of the investigations into election fraud actually do revolve around the twenty twenty four voter rolls, which we will discuss in a bit. But first, let's go back a few weeks Executive disorder, I reported that Cash Patel went onto Fox News a few weeks ago and announced that the FBI would soon be making arrests related to Trump's claims that the twenty twenty election was stolen tells saying it was a conspiracy and quote They try to thwart our elections and rig the entire system We got all the evidence We've got all the evidence. I can announce on your show that we've got all the information we need. We're working with our prosecutors, the Department of Justice and A attttorney General Todd Blanch And we are going to be making arrest and it's coming and I promise you, it's coming soon Patel also claimed on Fox News, quote We have the information to back President Trump's claims A about a week and a half later The DOJ announced, quote, multiple aliens charged with illegally voting in federal elections It's multiple James. Its multipleultip case yes. we' looking at three? No, no, more than three more than three. Okay. four. It was four. for me Okay Just for people who are'f familiar with the skirt of the United States, that's not a statistically significant number when it comes to electoral outcomes. Generally they are decided by several multiples of four. Usually. Yeah. Patel commented, quote, Securing our elections from criminal actors here at home and around the world is one of the top priorities for this FBI Non citizens voting is a federal crime, period And while other administrations may have looked the other way in the past, those days are over. We will continue to work around the clock with our interagency partners to ensure those who engage in such conduct will not get away with it So these arrests too place in New Jersey And these quote unquote, multiple aliens wereere four permanent residents who registered to vote and cast ballots in at least one federal election before applying for naturalization via the N four hundred N four hundred form has a section where it asks if the applicant has ever registered to vote or has voted in a federal, state or local election Three of the people charged in New Jersey no in the box asking if they had voted, the other left the box blank But when later questioned by an immmigration serervices officer at the U.S CZIS interview This applicant answered no or have not voted. Yeah. Interestingly Only two out of the four are actually charged with quote voting by an alien in a federal election. Hey Three are charged with false statements in relation to naturalization., and two are charged with procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully Yeah, I'm guessing the goal here would be to denaturalize them, right? For the people that were naturalized, that looks like that will that will be part of what they do going forward Yeah I know I've reported on this in ED before, but like large parts of USCIS have denaturalization targets, right in the same way that we've seen deportation targets for IC and CBP. So like that will be the reason that those the specific charges, right? That is the easiest way to denaturalize someone. I was gonna to say the only way but I think there are technically other ways, but like the bulk of times you're going to see someone denaturalized, it's because they concealed Previously it had been that they had concealed like Sil loyalty to like like a terrorist group, right? or perhaps. There are bars for like Communists and Nazis like like with capital letters that I'm not I'm not talking about. the political affiliation. I'm talking about like Being a member of a party with a party card there, and I'm not talking about the view necessarily That's a whole other like tangent. There's there's Back and forth rulings, if you can really daturalize someone for being a member of a C commommunist Party still depends what they mean by commommunist Party. That's kind of like a vague term false statements in relation to naturalization. As it allegedly lying on the form by checking a box conflicts with what the federal government is alleging is a much more clear cut route to denaturalization. Yeah. One of the people charged is a green card holder from Liberia who immigrated as a refugee in nineteen ninety eight named David Nilli He's currently seventy three years old He allegedly registered to vote in New Jersey in two thousand three and attested he was a U.S citizen complaint claims Nilli voted by mail in the twenty twenty general election and submitted a provisional ballot in person on november fifth, twenty twenty four with that general election Next May, it's may twenty twenty five Nueeli submitted A N four hundred, claiming he had never voted in the US admitted to voting twice in the naturalization interview. He is charged with voting byy an alien in a federal election and false statements. Yeah Those are the charges he's facing That's interesting. because see he like he seems to have clarified it in the interview, right? Correct. I don't quite know how that works, but like yeah, he did admit in the interview that that he that he did vote They're still charging him with false statements based on the N four hundred. It w will be interesting to follow because. could be pretty hard to stick the landing on that given that he I mean, I guess technically what you put on the form is there's no take backacks, I guess. but him using the interview to clarify, it certainly seems like he's trying to do what is in spirit of the things asking him to do Yeah, that would be an interesting one to follow. This was also interesting because it shows the investigative capacity of the FBI. this guy admitted to that. Like he admitted to this in the USCIS interview The FBI did not like crack the case Yeah ye Like there. Yeah, yeah, definitely. L yeah, he told he told the cubs he did it. Yeah When was his USCIS interview I'm not sure when the interview was he submitted the N four hundred in may twenty twenty five. Okay, so Trump two years It have been in late twenty twenty five. Yeah. this was at least within the last year. Yeah. Yeah yeah, well some of those N four hundred is st forever now. Totally. It's kind of interesting. Yeah, I'm just wondering to what extent previously I don't actually know to what extent previously USCIS would like refer people for prosecution That is that is a good question. Yeah Wait, wait, here it is here it, here it is. august twenty twenty five. Okay was when he was interviewed according to the criminal complaint Ratively fast turnaround I wonder if that's just a part of the country he's in or whether because Like they wanted to get in the office, right? and then I had to clarify or detain him because he has voted And then in October, USCAS denied the application due to a laawful acts of voting in the twenty twenty and twenty twenty four elections and the false statement on the N four hundred. We will take an ad break here and then talk about the three other cases after these messages We are back. Aden Koreresh forty three years old is a green card holder who immigrated from Israel on a B two visa in twenty fifteen In twenty twenty one, Kreh allegedly registered to vote in New Jersey, asserting he was a U.S citizen and voted in person in the twenty twenty two midterm election Grash later submitted an N four hundred in twenty twenty five Based on his charges, I believe his citizenship was granted. He's charged with voting by an alien in a federal election and procurement of citizenship. or naturalization unlawfully A lot of these criminal complaints are quite short around seven pages. Okay. Jacynthic Zoom is a seventy year old green card holder who has lived in the US since two thousand after immigrating from Jamaica She allegedly registered to vote in twenty eighteen and voted by mail in the twenty twenty general election. She submitted an N four hundred in twenty twenty one and was granted citizenship based on what the DOJ is calling a false statements She's charged with two counts of false statements in relation to naturalization Tw counts would be, I guess registering to vote and voting. She's oddly enough one of the ones who's not actually charged with voting in a federal election.. She's just she's just charged with two false statements. This is I think one in the interview and the other on the N four hundred Oh, okay, yeah that kind can make sense to Yeah ye. ye. it's interesting that they didn't charge maybe like I guess they're like eyes on the prize trying to denaturalize someone Yeah, I mean been like a big part of the FBI's messaging in this is, you know, we found people who illegally voted. But Half of the people here aren't actually charged with that and I quuite know why maybe The dreirectly possible those chargees could be added later, but at least in the original Criminal complaints issued when DOJ made this announcement EZoom is not actually charged with voting even though Even though the criminal complaint says that she did, but it' not it's not one of the charges. Yeah The normal pattern with federal charges is to have a lot of charges and like most of these federal Cases will end in plea bargains, right? Because the exposure is so high So it's interesting that that's not there when normally the pattern is putut as much as you can in front of the person so that you end up with a blue varget This last guy is also not charged with illegally voting in a federal election Hina done, Vig is a thirty three year old green card holder who immigrated from India in twenty twelve He's alleged to have registered to vote in twenty sixteen and subsequently voted in person for the twenty sixteen general election and then by mail in twenty twenty. Vig later submitted an N four hundred in twenty twenty three But he only faces one charge, procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully So again, a lot of these charges, even though the criminal complaints allege a lot of the same stuff Actual charges vary greatly And it's it is unclear why exactly that is. Yeah. A different they're all in New Jersey. All Newersey It the same USA attorney. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting it'll be interesting to follow those cases as well. Like I know like I said that they have some sort of denaturalization targets so where the Yeah I just focusing their energies on that It could be a case or it could be something to do with the specifics of that crime that I just don't know about of voting when I' not a citizen. Yeah, there could be some procatorial reason that they aren't pursuing it in certain cases, but are in others. Yeah. And they're alleged to have voted in federal elections, right? That's Yeah ye Yeah in at least one federal election, either presidential general election or midterm general election.. New Jersey does not have local election voting for non citizens. Yeah A few days before, Patel announced the imminent arrests on Fox News The Department of Justice sent a letter to the chief election official for Wayne County, Michigan demanding Wayne County hand over all ballots from the twenty twenty four election The letter said that DOJ and its civil rights division is authorized to investigate and prosecute individuals who may have registered to vote or voted in violation of U. S law The letter included Three instances of recorded allegations and convictions in Wayne County in quote unquote recent years related to voting fraud push by the DOJ to get their hands on ballots or voter rolls is part of a much larger pattern Yeah. In January, during Operation Metro's surge in Minneapolis, one of the demands from now former Attorney General Pam Bondi during negotiations with Governor Tim Walls was for the DOJ to be granted access to the state of Minnesota's voter rolls, quote to confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal law, unquote Trump's DOJ has actually sued over thirty states for not complying with requests to gain access to their voter rolls Cases against Arizona, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have been dismissed As have cases in California, Michigan and Oregon But the DOJ is appealing those rulings At least fifteen states have complied or said they will comply with requests by handing over voter registration lists, including driver's license and social seecurity numbers. These are largely red states like Alabama, Alask, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Missippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina. Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming in a March hearing in the case against Rhode Island to gain access to their voter rolls Eric Neh The acting chief of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ said that after receiving the voter rolls, quote, Our intention is to run this against DHS's save database, unquote That's the systematic alien verification for entitlement database.. Exange don't it briefly explain explain what the database is and how it's used in very In basasic terms, it is a database. so you have like EVverify, right? would be an example of a DHS database that employers can use to check if somebody is able to accept employment legally in the United States, right? SV is there for government agencies, not individuals and they should be able to determine Whether or not somebody's eligible for certain benefits, right? There are things called public charge rules. If people want a more in depth explanation of public charge rules, you can scroll all the way back to november twenty twenty four when I made a podcast about these things We looked at a number of tools that the Trump administration might use to try and deort andly naturalized people in a podcast episode back then The problem with these databases is they're not very good the most obvious and amusing examples of e verify not being very good are when state agencies hire cops who DHS claims are not legally able to work in the United States and then the state agencies point out that they used EVverify, which is DHS's own tool for verifying. and then everyone gets quiet and wondnderers like who screwed up here, right? Because then they have done their obligation, right? Large employeers have to usually verify The same is true, I imagine for save, right? in that it is not He database, which is perfect And so rununning one against the other Also, the phrase running here is doing a lot of work, right? Like Are they going to look for name matches? Are they going to look for social security number or driver's license matches Certain non citizens will have what's called an ITIN on an SSN There are a lot of ways which this could go horribly wrong There's a reason that these two databases are not normally combined notot to mention the fact that this provides a really large disincentive for people A signing up for benefits, which we've already seen just the rhetoric from the Trump administration in the campaign provided a disincentive for people accessing benefits, but also for people registering to vote, right? Like ye peopleople who are of diaspora communities, whether or not they are citizens will be concerned about this. L and that is not a that is not an unconscious side effect, I'm sure, right? Leg That is something that they are extremely aware of as they go forward doing this. The court raised concerns about SV and said that there's been reporting of people being falsely identified as non citizens in Sfes database.. But Eric Nf responded that according to the DHS The accuracy rate of the save database is one hundred percent So I'm sure that's fine. it's just No database of dis skill. I No that's just mathematically impossible. Like it's Yeah ninety nine percent and one hundred percent are like v vastly different. Yeah But it's worth noting that in Trump's one of his early executive orders, like spring of twenty five the one about preserving the integrity of American elections of what he asked them to do there was to overhaul saave and make it like a A single source citizenship verification. Yeah, database, which it is not and it is still not And there's there that there is that push from the executive order a few months ago to create like state citizenship lists M Yeah, they've tried to go a number of ways about this, right? They also the fall of last year, they integrated Sve with with the passport database I think most people will be aware that there are Millions of American citizens who don't have passports, for instance, right? Yeah. They've added some other stuff, right the idea here is to create like And this should worry everyone, right? Like this is a citizenship database that they will then attempt to combine with their biometric databases, I'm sure. And we've seen this with like The name of the Android app is eluding me now. There's an Android app that IS officers have which is supposed to verify someone's status based on a facial recognition scan. Yeah. We knowodes doesn't work because there was one For example, one lady who was scanned twice Each result returned a differentident identity. ye. neeither of which was her This stuff is extremely dangerous for for anyone, right? L you could be a citizen or a non citizen. The idea that they got to check you against like The list of legit Americans should really worry people Yeah and unable to pass the save act in Congress, not to be confused with the same database, though they are slightly related. But unable to pass that in Congress, Trump signed executive order last March y to force The postal serervice to not deliver mail in ballots if the voter The ballot does not appear on this newly created list of pre approved voters using this state citizenship less We'll see if that actually goes through, but's that's another example of them, you know, trying to tryrying to use state citizenship lists just crack down on the number of people that are able to vote Yeah, we can all imagine that this will have different impacts across different demographics, right And then is very much not accidental The last thing for the voter rolls In Fulton County, Georgia and Maricopa County, Arizona The federal government has simply seized voting records. In Arizona, the FBI successfully subpoenaed twenty twenty election records from Maricopa County And in Georgia, the FBI raided an election warehouse in January after dubiously obtaining a search warrant. Yeah thenen on may sixth A federal judge ruled The federal government can keep the twenty twenty election materials that were seized in that raid. evenven if, quote The seizure in this case was certainly not perfect Yeah, Maracopa County is an interesting one, right? L But I think it's part of a grand jury investigation. Yes Yeah, I can remember at the time And there's a twenty twenty election like Maracopa Counties results being somehow contentious. The state Senate did their own investigation into that. Like several entities have, right? The details of that investigation is in part what was the target of the grand jury subpoena Not so much Maracopa County, but a number of Arizona counties were really important in the results of the twenty twenty election, right There was a massive effort for turnout. I personally know people in indigenous communities who literally traveled for the entire day to vote The indndigenous turnout, especially the indigenous women in Arizona really did make a big difference in the twenty twenty election And Americopa Countyies the like by population The biggest county Maricopa County is fast. A number of other like Arizona counties look outside Aaricopa wall so really pivotal in the twenty election it's not surprising to see those ones being targeted. It wasn't surprising to me at the time to see them being targeted, you know? Yeah, Maracope isa Phoenix is just for people to put it on the map famous for having really great law enforcement over the years. Joe Opayo was Mo do sure if ye Oh yes. Oh Last from the past. Not so often, isn't he? like doing some running for office or something So he was was for a bit. I have not thought of Joe O Pyre for a few years though. What a life to lead. Yeah, it's been a while Joob Per born in nineteen thirty two.s That's wild Yeah, he can't be even for the United States That's easy's a little Let's even swushedig our Jeritac see a little Yeah But no Trump does continue to truth claims about Fulton County on his on his account a few nights ago. he Pull out a video of the election board. The video was edited to appear as if it was implying that there was voter fraud or that the elections were conducted. improperly And when that was not what the video is actually actually showing, but he is his truth a lot after the raid that to watch out for the results of the of the Fulton County election raid And now a federal judge is letting the Feds keep the materials that they seized, even if it was in the judge's own words, certainly not perfect Yeah, I think Fulton County plays a load bearing role in Margot's understanding of the twenty twenty election, right Yeah and Trump's own that's that is where he got the mugshot taken, right? Like this is like he is Oh I forgotten about that. personersal vendetta against Fulton County. Yes. Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense A Po, by the way, did run for mayayor of Fountain Hills in twenty twenty four. Oh my go. Yeah, just eight years before his hundredth birthday. What a country. Oh that's incredible. He did he received a whopping one thousand five hundred and twenty seven votes in the primary election. It's a thousand people who we thought the best hope we have is someone who is approaching Sheriff Joe at nearly a century of age Remarkable. Well with Age Cub's wisdom. Yeah, up to a point That does it for us today at a good half a year. We will keep a lookout for any more any more arrests by Patel who claims to have all the evidence he needs, even though The only arrest so far is just a handful of people from New Jersey. and then I think one other person from Pennsylvania was arrested like in March Again, because the actual number of voter fraud in this country is it's minimal. Aording to accccording to all investigations we've seen so far, Very low. It's statistically insignificant. Yeah Yes. veryery low to the point where it's statistically insignificant. I think if you're going to be concerned about election rigging lookingoo at the way that partisan gerrymandering has been completely, completely allowed to go through and gerrymandering over districts that were protected by the Voting rightights Act. Look at where that is polling places are. Look at the electoral college exists to be in between the popular vote and the result of of the election, right? There are many things which distort the will of the people Non citizens voting is not statistically significant in that. It's just not But this will have a re electoral or is I guess because it will dissuade people from voting, it will dissuade People who have become US citizens from voting will dissuade people who were born as U. S. citizens. And they could be pursuing charges against election officials in some of these states. Yeah like that is part of trying to seize these these ballots and voter rolls is not just to charge possibly four people who may have illegally voted by then trying to put some of the blame on election officials themselves. And ye And that is mode of intimidation is certainly part of the goal here. And that's written explicitly in some of these executive orders, threatening charges against U. S. officials for allowing certain mail in votes to be be counted when the Trump administration claims that they should not be Yeah, like the like nissance of this whole The thing is Trump's calls to electoral officials in Georgia, right? Like like the Fulton County, the whole Yeah find by elect F those votes. Yeah yeah. They better this whereere it all began So yeah, we'll keep up on this as it develops leading into the midtermal election But bye bye for now. ye for early vote often. Vote early vote option This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade Platinum pllus. 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Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon dot com d Grab the fan, head to a Simon center and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at Simonplus dot com rewards program terms apply Simon Plus. com for details The Second World War is the largest event in human history. A twenty part documentary series with Tom Higs. No part of the globe was untouched, no life unchanged. experience the ultimate account of World War II. Every single person had a story These are the stories that make us who we are Tom Hanks, new episode Monday at eight, part of History Honors two hundred fifty only on the History channel. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations. with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. Recharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning, It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you Hello and welcome to Cappen here. A Very special episode today because I am lucky enough to be joined by Molly Gonger, Hi Molly Hi, James thanks for having me. I'm excited to hear about today's topic Yeah. todayoday's topic is buuffalo if you if its just came up on your phone without you clicking it. So I guess look Buffalo, when people imagine the Great Plains before European colonization, I think, Buffalo are the fauna that they particularly imagine being present, right It's such a romantic image, right? they're gone now, but they were on so many. like Every time we drive through Southwest Virginia, I'm in central Virginia. and we drive souwestern Virginia, My husband always brings up this account that he read of someone witnessing the buffalo stampeding through the Cumberland Gap. where Oh wow Yeah, yeah, right down in the tip of Southwestern Virginia And just looking at that place and imagining buuffalo there like romanticize it. that's incredible. Yeah, that's it. The one of the coolest like American experiences I've ever had. maybe Seven or eight years ago now I was bikepacking. in like like the Colorado Wyoming border up there And I was with some friends who've been like maybe we're like three or four days in, you know, like where You kind of hit the sweet spot at that point when you haven't showered for that long and you're just kind of disconnected from the world, That's when it starts to be Molly's making a face. The sweet spot. You can't see. Just four days of human stink. It really starts to get good. Yeah it's when it gets good because you're just like that's how long it takes to disconnect, right? S looking at your phone and they go worrying about not smelling goodood stuff Becoming a beast of the outdoors. Yeah, you just return to your feral self. I'd like to return to my feral self as so of soten as possible. but we're like riding going at Walden, maybe. we're coming off this big plateau dropping into this big kind of like where where it gets kind of more plain. kind of meadow ple And we're coming down there and there's a few of us and these buffalo just come Look from the side of us And they're running alongside us, right and we're riding Gre and we're cooking lo gam twenty. twenty five miles in h' by that Buffalo were just cruising next to us because they're just trying to get like trying to check out like What are these weirdos doing? And they're just like, why the fuck would you put all your stuff on a bicycle and go ride around like this? And then we're like, Ohh, it's fuckking buuffalo. And like for like Maybe a mile, they just kind of wanted to keep it seem that they just wanted to keep tabs at us as we go down this dirt road. And then like they were getting really close, right? So they're like kicking up all this dust And you got to feel like you were like almost one of the buffalo, you know, you're like in the herd traversing the planes. I think you're supposed to keep your distance from them Right Yeah, they were we didn't have many o it' not another choice at that point. Yeah, when they like do not approach. Yeah, they were approaching us. We didn't stop. I was like pretty re pretty keen not stopping. and Molly is right. They look so petible, but they're really not. they're really. Despite their fluffy appearance, it's advice. like anytim in Yellowstone, pretty much especially in these summer months, you will find a video of a tourist approaching a buffalo and regretting that decision. They're pretty big. I've been gored by a bowl before And I I would like to look keep it to one goinging. Limes for me. One is all most people get. Yeah, ye is I was pretty Let me tell you, I thought that one was all I was going to get. I was I was ready to make my peace with the world I got a second chance Yeah, people kind of focus on a buuffalo, right They ignore many of the other species that we lost during this intense period of ecological destruction, right? And I can see why you can find images of piles of dead buffalo skulls. There's that like really haunting image of the idea of killing animals only for their capes or their tongues Often this period of genocidal violence is referred to as a buuffalo genocide And I think that She later, not just the destruction of the buffalo population, but also of the indigenous cultures that relied on that Bffalo population and of the ecology that went with it Obviously when I say destruction, I'm not saying they're gone very much still here, still present B by the government and capitalism to remove those people from their land But yeah, it is a shame that these other animals don' a don't get a fair shake. Have you ever seen a black foot ferret? When you said there was going to be something about ferrets, I was thinking about it and I realized domesticated animals were wild animals, and it never occurred to me that a ferret could live outside Oh yeah, a ferret thrives in the outdoors I really wanted to have ferrets when I was younger, like I enjoyed presence of ferrets enjoyed working with ferrets Oh He's kind of cute in a way These guys are gross. The ferreotts are very sweet Yeah, we had we had a friend with ferrets growing up so we'd use them to theyd use them to catch rabbits in the UK, right Yeah, the reason that these guys struggle on the landscape, it's because they need massive prairie dog towns. to feed of. Oh, do they live in like societies? Do they live like a prrairer dogs? So do ferrets live in like Ferret villages? The ferrets predate the prairie dogs. But do they live in like a village? I don't know if they live in like a I don't know what their social structure is. In Colorado, there's a national Black footed Ferret Center where you can go and see them I've cycled past it that I regret not going in. Maybe I'll make a special trip. Reach out if you're with the Ferret people Sorry I said he looks gross. Yeah, please don't cancel us Because the praie doog of towns can collapse, right their populations can collatchse pretty easily. they get like infectious diseases. so they need like a massive number of prairie dog towns in order to have a sustainable genetically diverse ferret population. Oh I get it, I get it And because we don't have those right because they are not generally amenable to agriculture And then the ecosystem is very different from it once naturally wass, that means I don't know if there are any there areg, they're not extinct genetically, but ecologically in terms of their participation in the ecosystem I don't think there are any veryair I think there are some in Charles Russell Wildlife refuge, but very few black footed ferrets, which is a shame because they're cool littleittle guys I mean, I guess given what we did to the landscape of so much of the country. I'm sure there are other animals that just like Their niche is gone And that is exactly what I want to talk about today, right? Like Specifically, I want to talk about Buffalo because of the canceling of some public land, grazing leases of Buffalo Before we do that money, We should talk about the terminology, right? The buuffalo bison discussion Right? becausecause they're not buuffalo, their're bison. They're bison bison M And as we are what five minutes into this, someone has already logged onto Reddit. They have opened already the thad already exists. It's already there.' not even to address it's l. Yeah, we should have moved this to to the front of the episode, I guess. Nand, if that is you Redditing, please stop. I am aware scientifically We should call them byson English speaking people have been calling these animals buuffaloes since English speaking people came to this continent They did so because the animals reminded them of Cpe Buffalo I actually have had a frame gored by a cpe buffalo as well. We're going through most of my gooring experience You gotta leave these big cow type creatures alone. He was ambushed. that my Goring was entirely my fault. L you shouldn't be unkind to animals and I deserved it. and it was a good learning experience for me. H wasn't I think it's just a bad overall experience being god wouldn't recommend it. I'm avoiding it Yeah, you've got this far.' probably good. I think men in their twenties are probably like peak. I say, I think once you hit thirty, your odds decrease dramatically. Yeah, you're out the win, unless you're working with cattle. Like my dad got really pretty close a couple of times when I was a kid. I remember jumping over a fence once, but I think that was more of a professional hazard then make a lifestyle choice So here's the deal, right? There are many species in the USA which have names similar to species on other continents, but they are not the same. European blackbirds and American blackbirds, right? Robins would be another example. There is a different sheep's head fish almost everywhere I have gone underwater. Everyone has a sheep's head cooler sheep's head for people wondering this is California sheep's head because it undergoes a sex change making a pretty cool fish Also it gets really cool after it transitions. it gets like these black and red stripes. It's like one of my favorite fish If you want to be sensurious about buuffalo names, I would suggest picking one of the many indigenous words that have been used to refer to this animal for far, far longer than buuffalo or bison Buffalo, it's one of the cooler words in English language. Buffalo, buuffalo, buuffalo buuffalo. Yes, exactly. Yes. It is the longest single word sentence because it's a noun and a verb and a proper noun, right Right. Like so it's buuffalo the city, buuffalo, the animal, Buffalo the verb, meaning like what to like to bully or something to like Yeah, I don't know if you've been around them, but they do do this. They sort of bother push Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm making, of course a motion with my neck and shoulders that no one apart from Molly can see that yeah, theyre they're just kind of aggressive in a sort of pokey and yeah, like It's a good verb. I don't know. hang around watch' your buffalo, you'll get it. Yeah, it's it's buuffalo the proper noun Buffalo the noun. Buffalo the verb. Alinated and noun Buffaloather verb Buffer the noun. I'm gonna have to diagram this one Yeah, yeah basically like bison from upstate New York are bullying other bison from upstate New York. Yes, That is a breakdown of the buuffalo sentence Fun trivia for everybody. Yeah, that's we'll do that at the end of the year. We'll quiz you Why are we talking about Buffalo today? I can't remember. I can. Let me tell you. It is because the Bureau of Land Management has cancellled grazing rights in seven allotments of public land in Phillips County, Montana private owned bicyc I did a bunch of reporting on this, like When this stuff happens, when stuff the Trump administration does with public land, the outdoors, they're like Democrats. bllue wave news panic accounts really really go kind of wild with it They did with this one, right People running whatever, like you know, occupy Demrats Pantsuit nation for change yeah, whatever. Yeah, occupy Democrats. I forgot about pantsuit nation. Wow, that's a real throwback. Yeah, I never forget about the pantsuit nation. They live forever in my mind I think like the people of that tendency have not realized is that these are not per se wild buuffalo It's not like these buuffalo have individually like, o as the population survived the genocide I've been holding out in this land in Phillips County for more than a century, right That doesn't mean that we should be le callous about this, we shouldn't So I just want to explain more I guess There are still thousandousands of buuffalo across the West on federal and private land Some of them have been grazing on public land with permits for more than four decades Having them on the landscape is a good thing, right? We need the genetic diversity, even if they're privately owned Right, so it's not just like I don't know knowing very little about this, I think a lot of the discourse around these permits for grazing on public land, is' like, well why should these farmers get to use our public land for their property, for their cattle? And I don't know enough about that to care about that at all. But in terms of What buffalo do to the grassland, like just walking around on it and eating it is part of the maintenance of that grassland. Yes. Yeah like Like the eradication of the buffalo in the Midwest caused ecological havoc, because we need them walking around and shitting on it Yeah, yeah. specifically what we need is them coming in, eating everything, trampling around, shitting everywhere, and then leaving rightight? Because that is what like So many indigenous cultures have these like traditions that the buuffalo go away and then we do a tradition and they come back, right? This that happens for a lot of migratory animals is not just buuffalo, right? because It gave shape to time in people's lives That's how they impacted the landscape, right? They didn't stay in one place They move through spaces So like If we want to restore this short grass prairie ecosystem, which is turns out why people are putting Buffalo on this particular land then we need a lot of space and we need the buffalo to be able to move around, right People who own these particular buffalo An NGO called American Prairie. Do you heard of American Prairie? used to be American Prairie Reserve? No, American Prairie Foundation. Okay. greatreat. Are they the villains or the heroes? Neither And in the Trump administration of civills, Doug Bergam specifically, I guess, is always. God I forgot about Doug Bergam. Yeah, yeah, forortunately, Doug is now interterior Secretary. Thanks to REI for signing a letter endorsing him. also fuck you American Prairie is interesting, I guess. L it's not what I would want Don't think it's evil. Sounds like most NGOs. Yeah, it sounds like most of the world because it exists. Not my preference. Yeah. Then how I would do it American Prairie is a big endo. They've been trying for about a quarter of a century to buy up private land adjacent to public land around Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument So the goal is to create like by like bridging these two pieces of public land. to create a massive reserve where Like one of the things with with Bison specifically, right? They need a lot of space and Very few bison can cross political boundaries. They don't have passports. They don't, yeah, this is one of their issues. They're undocumented, you could say. But think about the Yellowstone. Pe get really mad about the Yellowstone bison leaving the park. This is a big deal. This has been a big deal for Yeah, yeah, yeah, people like what like they're Disney cast members, Like they're not allowed to leave in Costo. Yeah, exactly. they have to return. T the head off. Yeah you have to take the head off take the body off and just wear the head you can't be walking in the parking lot. Yeah, you can't see Mickey Mouse at Fonds, so that would really ruin the magic. Yeah, people ke out of them, right for a number of reasons. The buuffalo don't know about the park. This is a thing, right? Buffalo, as it turns out They love to disrespect a fence, which I respect. I like that about them. If I had shoulders like that, I would disrespect a fence. Yeah, they so like cattle fencing is generally not sufficent for buffalo fencing. Buffalo fencing can be built. It does exist. When people are building it betteret if they are conscious of other world life, right? They can Another of the megaauna the Mgauna That has existed here for Melenia, but is now in much, much, much lower numbers are like proncn antelope. We have those here? Yes. Oh wow I don't really I've never really been out west. so you as a I'm m It's out there If you would like us to make a podcast where Id take Molly camping think across the world. Yeah. we just look at animals. That would be my ideal job, a podcast where Id just talk to someone about an animal every week L wed go camping, we see an animal, we talk about it. I didn't know ferrets lived outside. L think of all you could show me. Yeah, it'd be amazing. Yeah God, we could have so much fun if we start with the ferrets But prong horn are amazing. You've not seen prong hor What am I thinking of? like an IBEx? Yeah, I mean, IBx does live in Africa. I think some of them live on. Okay, we're gonna. Oh man, everyone's finding out. I don't know anything. Podcaster version I'm Googling Prongghorn anelope Yeah You see him And these are just out there Yeah, they just like they live on the landscape. They actually were massively numerous like before the various extinction events. So it's like L like a reindeer that lives in Colorado A reindeer reindeer are only reindeer in North America when they're in captivity. caribou when they when they are wild, patr a caribou. We don't really have a lot of like Wild animals out here Really seeee that this is well yeah, because The east cooast is much more urbanized, right? L L every now and again, a baby bear will wander into town and it's like big Okay, yeah, I like it when a bear. Bear' another animal I have massive respect for I love how they don't give a shit I respect any animal that eats from the trash Yeah, the pronchords are actually massive like I think anntelo Capridi is the genus and then there were different species. There were tons Like we had we at one point had tiny like ween ad dogs. sized antelope. Oh like like a dictick. Yeah, yeah, like a dictick, but that's a cool guy. But fast H So one of the thing about pronghorns is they can jump. L I've seen them jump. Yeah, it looks like a jumping guy. Well, they don't like to jump a fence, is the thing Oh, so then now you have like a A problem. The buffalo is stuck, but so is the antelope. Yeah Because their speed was always their like defense mechanism, right They're super there. I think cheetahs are the only land animal that's faster And they don't live in the same environment. No. I knew that then. Iiff different continents. ye. Yeah. there is not a North American cheetah. I mean, at this point, you could I think that might have been a long there is I think there might have been at one point like a like a prehistoric shooter Look at T they had like ground sls and things. Yeah, when you're building the buffalo fence, you have to allow the prong corns to go under if you're trying to build an ecological fence Oh I guess because they could like bend over in a way the buffuffalo can't. Yeah, exactly. There's just more buuffalo is too big Yeah, there's a lot of chunk to a buffalo in the way it can't get under there, right So The other reason people don't like Buffalo is because of Brucelosis. Do you know Brucelosis is to a buffalo disease It's a disease that Buffalo can have, maybe you know from the Warren Evon song. Okay This is funny, I'm talking to Molly about really American shit and neither's a British person. I don't know any of what you're saying Okay, Lureren Ivon, a very good famous musician guy sading dead. He has a song about buuffalo disease? He has a song which in talks about brucelosis. It says the catle all have brucellosis What a great journey we're going on. That's the service I provide as the podcast idiot because I know nothing Yeah you have a very deep very deep well of knowledge. It just doesn't extend to warrantee you much. No listener left behind. L there's no one sitting here listening wishing that something had been explained more because I'm making you explain what antelope are. And what a Warrens Evon is? Yeah, we could go off and town Jy Higgs. I don't know if this song is about the fact that Sweet homeome, Alabama is a deeply, deeply hateful song But it does that does get mentioned quite a lot. But yeah, the Brucelosis. Once you're touching a buffalo you have worse problems than whatever this is Oh, well, not great Yeah, it depends, it depends who you are, right? Like What Breucelosis does is generally it infects heifers. so like young lady cows, it will cause them to abought their first calf. s Yeah, it's sad. Also like because of the way it's controlled, your heood te get killed out If you have preity. It like it would be contagious to people's like pad Yes, and that would be very bad So okay, when you say people don't B buuffalo because they're worried about Buceulosis,'re not worried that they will get Bruceulosis. They're worried that it will aect their cattle Yes, I do believe people can get brucelosis. I'm not as familiar with that. Apparently, I'm looking here. Apparently if you do get it, there's a twenty percent chance that your testicles are going to swell up real bad So Oh wow Know that. I guess that's why they don't want it. But that would also be bad, right? Like big ball brucelosis would be painful like that. But okay, so we're talking about The cattle industry. I'm on board. I'm on board. Yeah, it's the cattle that they're concerned about. They can take or leave the testicular swelling like they're tough. Why are they touching the buffalo in the first place? They're not. okay. Yeah, they're not. o. yeah. it it's a buffalo coming out and causing the cattle to get bucosis,s right? Here's the deal. Elk also can get Bruce Los. I know about ellk. we have those. Okay. yeah, you. So an elk alsoso travels widely, right? And Elk, it's not generallyly animal that is kept behind high fences. sometometimes There probably are high fence like game farms where people paay to go and hunt elk. I think we have some in Virginia Yeah, that's that's kind of gross in my opinion I don't like that Ek Also carry brrucelosis right? So if we're concerned about brucelosis, We also need to be concerned about elk, but it really doesn't get brought up in the elk discussion. It gets brought up in the buuffalo discussion. So These are the reasons that some of the reasons that people don't like Buffalo, right? Right? Be they they carry a cow disease and they don't like to stay inside the park They don't have stay inside the park We've talked for a long time money Tking of things that might cause your testicles to swell Here is some products and services Or maybe it'll help Yeah,be maybe you'll have bought your first calf, Wh knows? It's R that Iice Weve So Let's talk about The area where this is happening, right? This is happening in kind of northern central Montana around Livingston Lots of the land in this area has actually dropped below the population density that Turner considered to be evidence of the closure of the frontier when he was developing that thesis, right I'm not a big fan of the concept of a frontier. If that's another podcast, I'll make one day, but I don't like it But there's like no people there. Yeah. it's yeah, there are there are very few people there in part because Castle farming is hard in part because it's harder in globalized economy in part because of climate change There's this theory of the Buffalo Commons written by two people called Popa. And they considered like This specific area to be a tragedy of the Commons where there's this Beautiful claims ecosystem has been destroyed And they put forward the idea that the presence of Buffalo on the landscape could return it to a sort of short grass prairie This isn't a direct link to the American Prairie Reserve. This is kindind of what they're trying to do They're not putting Buffalo on the landscape because they arere a Bffalo organization Right.' so they're trying to restore the grassland Yes, that's the idea. Because we don't have a prairie national park, right When colonization was moving west as the Department of Homeland Security likes to highlight with its use of that image. Lberty was floating across the planaines there. sorry, let's just putting an image in my head. Remember when the Trump administration was getting very aggressive towards Somali people, I guess it still is. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see the AI version of that where it was a Somali woman like crossing the pls? No No. o. It was pretty funny. It was one of the You're doing a pose like like like the mermaid on the front of the ship Yeah, exactly. yeah. ye, it was like this is a Somali Promised land. like they were like, I guess parodying American rhetoric towards indigenous people and being like to like Somali people can't do manifest destiny. I thought we loved them. Yeah. ye, it was very funny It was kind of amusing to see that American rhetoric reflected back Somali people have incredible posting abilities that that CHS was not ready for So what the What the API is trying to do is yet use the buuffalo here as like a landscape engineer. L an animal that will help Turn this area to I guess natural state is problematic but like to its pre industrial state. Yeah. ye When we think about like, why isn't there a Pes of the National Park, we have to consider the role that capitalism plays, right? Becauseuse no one would go visit that. Yeah. Well, I think they would. The planes would beautiful in their way. Right. But I guess you're thinking like, is the role of the national Park to preserve this landscape, this ecosystem, or is it to create a place where people could go and buy things? Yeah Exactly right. And increasingly, it's the latter Yeah And I think there is a bias towards preserving. Yeahah, there's like a scenic vista bias This is an area where people could ran cattle And so like that happened instead You know, and then we got to a point where like no one was going to give up private land to make a massive p Well, they didn't want to at any of the other times either. So the government least to make you. Yeah, I think the government could force you back in the day. I mean, I just can't imagine a new national park ever coming into existence. We just don't have that kind of political will anymore. Yeah, I mean, we might get like the Donald Trump's birthface National Park or like something similar, you know, like. I would never get Yellowstone again Yeah, we wouldn't. And like part of that is because They violently removed the indigenous people from those places in order to. I don't want to romanticize that. Like I live near Shenandoah Valley National Park where people were forced out in a pretty brutal way. That's a big part of the history here. So I don't want to romanticize the creation of the national park. I just mean like The government is not going to spend a lot of money on something that's just for everyone to enjoy ever again. Yeah. Yeah. and they're they're not going to say like To an extent we are removing this piece of land from the rapacious capitalism that has destroyed the rest of our natural spaces. So if somebody's going eat this grass, it's going to be hamburgers. Yeah Yeah We want it to turn into the cheapest meat possible Also, like I should point out that like Land back and national parks are very, very, very different thingses Id like to kind of illustrate this with the idea like during the Nz Purse War, as in Nz Purse are like fighting their way towards the Canadian border They are having gunfights in Yellowstone National Park as tourists are coming to Yellowstone the mountains and see the gises and stuff. You know That's America. That's. it's perfectly America, right? Like Well look, look, we're preserving this for you as we violently remove the indigenous people And just like coming to spend your tourism dollars, never mind that there's a war going on there. Yeah, J like just kind of letting that go past Whatever the time period equivalent of a visor in a fanny pack was, that was cooking. Yeahah, for sure. probablyrobably a cigar and I don't know, like this trousers to stop past your knee So You'll hear people saying a lot of shit about the API, the American Pay Reserve, right? And so I did what I should do as a responsible journalist and I pulled down nine ninet s. That's my favorite thing to do. Where's the money going? Yeah, well, where's the money coming from? Yeah, with the money coming from it You'll hear a lot of like anti APR stuff. Some of it's from the cattle industry, If you go through that part of Montana, you'll see signs that say like save the cowboys, stop the American Prairie Reserve. I think we have a different understanding of what a cowboy is, me and the sign maker. Yeah, very well It is inherently tied, I guess to cattle. And that the idea being that these bison are place in cattle. It's not in direct contract with cattle. In fact, the APR has ten times more cattle on its land than it does by it Most ranchers, the APR has deed or private land that they graze on leasing right to adjacent public land what the APR is spending its money on Among other things, among like some staing costs office costs, paying consultants, paying fundraisers A to pay consultants. Oh yeah. They're dropping some coin on consultants is they buy ranches The way land ownership works in this area is kind of like a checkerboard And you got public land and private land. So they're trying to make like pathways for the bison by buying contiguous plots Yeah, they're not all contiguous, but their goal is to have a large contiguous area in which right And you just have to buy them when they come up Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I think the argument is there. They're pushing up land prices, right? But in real, like this area is depopulating rapidly It might push up land prices a little bit, but it's not like there's massive bidding wars going on here for each of these ranches. Right because are there new like people seeking new cow ranching opportunities who are trying to move in who are being prevented from doing that? Would it be people trying to like either I guess if yeah expand their ranch or if a family' subdividing its ranch or if you didn't inherit your family ranch, I guess and want to buy some land Generally how it works here is you buy a certain part of land, it'll be like sixty, forty, seventy, thirty, something like that. So youll buy land and that will give you the privilege have like first dibbs on grazing on the public land that is adjacent to your land So most of these ranches are checkerboarded, right? It's not like a big contiguous plot So not being able to graze the bison on the public land kind of fucks that up in these plots for the American Praie peopleople read And like I should say that like I have some sympathy for people raning in this area. L my family or farmers. it's got toa be really fucking hard right now when fuel prices are insanely high. B trying to farm on these, especially the way that American people farm have massive expanses, right? You have to be be in a vehicle a lot Well I was reallyad about the Brucellosis stuff, and it made me think of foot and mouth disease, which happened in the UK when I was a child I remember how traumatic that was for people having their whole hers killed seeververal people who were like within our extended family social circle killed themselves horrible when they lost all their tatle. Yeah. like it's really fucked up. likeike at least in that part of the world, like you might have it might have been your great grandfather who started breeding these ctle, right? Like it's an intergenerational project that that joins life through your family. So I do understand these people are like deeply tied to this land also, not in the same way as indigenous people. exly I can see that people like, you know, don't want it to change. I understand that And like consolidation in agriculture, climate change The way our food ecosystem works, that is an issue we should address if we want to take care of the land. What the government is doing is not how help we address that Sometimes you'll see people saying that the APR is entirely a tax avoidance system for the Mars family The chocolate people? Yeah, yeah. Big chocolate. You familiar. The Mars family are richous fuck. I didn't know they were involved in the bicyon industry. Well, they have donated. I couldn't find an exact figure, right? L with the change of nonprofit, like the reporting laws, It's a lot harder now than it used to be So they don't own or operate it, they've just made large donations. They've made large donations. There's a unit called Mars Vista within the APR. which has some private housing on it, but like I think people are fundamentally misunderstanding how the super wealthy. L these people are worth more than a hundred billion dollars. I would highly encourage anyone who thinks that an NGO which is going through like Tens of millions a year, maybe. By twenty fifteen, so in the first fourteen years of this projects existence, they donated twenty million That's not touching the edges. I'm sure they have a complicated tax shelter system set up for themselves that doesn doesn't involve bison. involves bank accounts in countries you haven't heard of. Yes, exactly. L like the Panama Papers had zero bison in it for a reason, right? Like you're just being very it's very sweet if you think that like the way that they're avoiding paying federal taxes is buying landb to put Buffalo on. Like all these families have their own whole foundations that are just about moving money around in opaque ways Yeah if you're trying tovoiday tax, you don' donate to a real charity that's actually doing something complicated with physical animals and land. You have a foundation that just grants for something obscure Yeah, like it's just not. It's just not it. Like it's just it's not it that's not how taxes work. That's not how rich people work So talk about Bcelosis's going to move past Buceulosis I I had have diversion on chronic wasting disease and elk feeding, but maybe we'll make that a whole other podcast So we also talked about this this checkerboarding of public land, right? Lots of these ratching operations that they're buying rely heavily on public land grazing So in twenty twenty two, they applied in twenty nineteen BLM allowed them to graze bison on seven plots in Phillips County, right? So that's saying that you can Put your bison on this public land, which is adjacent to the private land, which you own And that's standard practice, Ebody's doing that. It depends on the particular plot, right? So they had to apply to the Bureau of Land Management. Butually it's like pretty common for people to be grazing to get these permits to graze on the public land. There have been bison on public land for forty years. There remain bison on public land across the West to include Some tribes graze bison on public land as well as on tribal land. But like the cattle farmers are doing this as well. Yeah, the cattle farmers are all doing this. Yeah yeah yeah.ute.' what I'm saying likeike if you buy this plot of land it's like kind of on that you would also be grazing on the public land adjacent to it. Yeah, it's entirely understood. like or not even adjacent to, but sometimes like interpersed with. Yeah. Like So if you look at like sometimes you'll see like a deeded and a leased acreage when you're looking at like a land. like if you were if you were interested in buying a ranch, Molly, So like so when they bought this land, it would be reasonable for them to assume that they would be able to use the parcels adjacent and interspersed within it. Yes, ye,. Yes. And they would have known that that would have required in some cases, asking the BLM, right, whichich is what they did. And in twenty twenty two, the BLM said, go ahead, put your beson on this on these particular seven plots, right So they were amended to include Bison. They got environmental impact study done You know, they did all the things. I was doing an environmental impact study of the presence of a native animal on its native range. What would happen if a buffalo lived here? Yeah. We asked ten government scientists. Yeah we spent ousands of dollars finding out what happens if Buffalo lives in Buffalo home Turned out it didn't do massive ecological damage. so BLM said, let the Buffalo back is interesting about this rule change is the justification the BLM is using. And that is the thing that people should be worried about. In my opinion That should be the headline. The headline should be so the BLM is trying to regulate these leases that have their roots in the nineteen thirty four Taylor Grazy Nck. I'm noding knownowingly Yeah, yeah, the Taylor Grazing act a big deal when it comes to like public land in the West and farming, right It is trying to regulate these leases to quote unquote productive purposes It doesn't say productive purpososees anywhere I can find in the Taylor Grazing net It does use a term, I guess, domestic livestock. Bison could be a livestock. Well they are a livestock. I've eaten them. Yeah, these bison are vaccinated, they are fenced, they are tagged. They'll be handled. I'm guessing the way that API does it is like a kind of non invasive handling, like trying to keep them acclimated to human contact, per se, but like it's hard to ask. It's a livestuff. A bison to human contact. Yeah. You can get like Beefilo, right, which is like like a hybridized bison They sell bison at my whole Foods. That's livestock The APR is not raising them to kill them to sell them for meat couldould if they wanted to Beuse not I don't think the government is ever going to go to a cattle rancher and say you have to kill X number of these or they're no longer livestock. Yeah, Well that is a question, right? Like what if we choose if you gave me a million dollars today, I would immediately cease making podcasts. I would buy a large plot of land, and I would have an ungodly number of rare and endangered domestic livestock species, right? I'd have Jacob Sheep I'd have polyseric sheep and four horns, you know Satan looking sheep. I'd be all about it. And they would remain legally livestock even if you had no intention of eating them. Well, that is the question, right? The productive purposes definition be extremely broad What if you're doing practices like restorative ranching? What if the Bureau of Land Management was concerned with the land being properly managed? At a point, I guess Via. The BLM was, right? Because there was a rule This is actually kind of funny. It was called the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule and the BLM rescinded that last week Previously, that was one of the considerations for managing land. for managing public land. And I guess like We should just briefly say that there is no such thing as government land, right It's all native life. and The land which is currently managed by the government, is paid for by me and Molly and everyone else. Doug Bergham doesn't own it It is there for future generations, right? Like It's like what is What are they going to do with it if they kick the buffalo off of it be my guess c The Cathal only leases. So there's going to lease it to someone else Yeah, but like I guess some portions of public land in that part of Montana are entirely landlocked by private land. Like one of the things that APR did that made people like it there is that the APR bought a ranch and then opened up a gated road. which allowed people to access fifty thousand acres of public land that had previously been completely islanded, right? L' so like R plan is to do they have to sell these ranches now. So the government just is saying you can't use this publicly land anymore in such a way that might negate your ability to use your privately owned land because we don't think bison are livestock Yeah, becausecause Bison are aw woke brutally like This conservation and landscape health for rule withcension is worrying Very amusingly, the BLM has forgotten to take down the website that explains the value of the rule So at the time of recording, the PLM's website still says, quote, The rule recognizes conservation as an essential component of public lands management on equal footing with other multiple uses of these habitats. Americans rely on public lands to deliver food, energy, clean air and water, wildlife habitat, and places to recreate The BLM knows the importance of balancing our use of natural resources with protecting public lands and waters for future generations The rule will safeguard these lands and waters to protect our way of life. St still a bit cringe They've now rescinded that rule. So I guess our way of life is now under threat don't understand how this is justifiable at all, but I guess that's not really the point. For a lot of people, right like it sort of flies under the radar because it's not you know, like a big Washington thing. I can see how like in our major population centers it can be easily to be like He def fuck ca is where the cows and buuffalo go But I think even aside from an ecological argument, which I think is very important, right that the restoration of these grasslands This is the government saying, no, we're going to take this public resource away from someone who is rightfully using it and paying to use it. and we're going to sell that right instead to a capitalist concern over a bullshit fake reason Yeah, not that the APR is not, I suppose it's not really a capitalist concern,' like a nonprofit, there has to be some sort of big cattle lobbying at play here. I think there are elements of the cattle industry which have been opposed to bison, especially due to that like departure of bison from the park is really somethingomet that for years has been like a point of tension in Yellowstone It's worth noting like who yeah, who is for this and who is against it, I guess. It is Cattle ranches who are opposed to the grazing of bison out here. And who specifically is getting those seven specific plots Yeah, well, I think the reason they rescinded those is because they were the seven most recently approved. Okay. Be there are other plots. like I think there are tribes in California, for instance, who have applied for buuffalo grazing on public land. And I should point out that like a tribal cultural herd, a food sovereignty herd is a very different thing to the APR. I hope that APR wouldt not exactly know that tribal interest But I guess as far as the government is concerned, It's the same, the answers just know. They don't know yet. We don't know yet,? We don't know if those tribal leases have been approved. What we do know is that like this production standard is a thiror of threat to them Coalition of large tribes actually wrote a letter opposing this decision. I'll quote from it here It is offensive and unacceptable that the federal government would still seek to keep Buffalo off of these lands. Chairman of the Cheen River Sioux tribe, Riman Lab Beau wrote. adding that the BLM lands are all formmer Buffalo lands He calls the decision a painful reprise for the genocide the federal government attempted to commit against us and our relative Buffalo They also called it affirmative action for cattle whichich is kind of funny. Wow true. Yeah, but yeah it is true. Like like it is like saying He're doing cow to EI. Yeah, yeah, this is one our one ungulate is fine and the other one isn't I want people to be concerned about this because It could be deeply damaging to the attempts of tribes to cover their buffalo population It could be deeply damaging to our public lands I guess I want to talk briefly about the Buffalo genocide because I think it's something that people have like a grasp of, but not like a Maybe in depth understanding What I want to brief say is the government played a massive role in wiping out most of a buuffalo. like We ended up with fewer than a thousand head of buffalo timimes when a tree falling down, a lightning strike, a bad flood could have significantly liered. altered the future of the species because there were so few Capitalism also played a role though. The idea that the buuffalo hunters were just following orders from the government relies in part books written by former Buffalo hunters. try to absolve themselves I would suggest that we also look at the incentive provided to kill the animals and to not make use of their remains after people did that, right because like As much as the government did, like the capitalism that the government was ringing with it killed the. the majority of the wild buffalo in this country. and that is what's happening again, right? We look at public lands management today The last year was of Chucko Canyon Chucka Canyon was the site of the biggest building in what is now the United States until the eighteen eighties. Oh wow Can civilization built these massive great houses there. Really, really beautiful, amazing place. One of the less visited eunuchs in the National Park system Gorgeous, amazing. I saw some out there too. This is all news to me. You gotta go to Chaka, can you? We have We have to find something we can record that gets me down to the southwest. Yeah, I bet there are some bigots. You know, there are because they use they appropriate the Zuni sacred suun symbol in some of their Nazi shit Be have we not fucking done enough Apparently not, right? Because there is There is a campaign to have drilling to like delist areas of Chaka Canyon I also spent time last year in Gich in Homeland with which people There, what's happening is the Trump administration is trying to grant drilling permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.. The Gitchan people, I should say, prefer to use the term Arctic refuge, so I'm going to try and use that going forward. They don't like annoir sacrony So What that will do, right is on the on the plane there drilling is the place where the caribou migrate the porcupying caribou herd makes the longest land mammal migration in the world. So we're just speedrunning the devastation of every cool big animal we have. Yeah, like we're gonna do drilling in the place where the caribou carve, right? And if they don't go there to carve, then it's over Yeah, and there were so few of these animals left, right that can cross political boundaries, that can travel their great distances unimpeded by capitalism Lgely that's because of which in Territory is not a reservation. It's like they own it So they can go off public land ontoich inland. Without the caribou, like the Gitchian culture cannot be the same as it is, right? The caribou is sacred to them, like their culture and the existence of the cararibou, I guess are tied together And like The scene could be said for bison, right? that it's part of the reason that we don't have bison on the planes anymore because indigenous people on the bison went hand in hand In the genocide of the indndigenous peoples, there was also genocide of the buuffalo, I guess, and those two things weren't separate or distinct And I think like there's this idea in the American liberal psyche that like Byson being on the land constitutes a return. And like that's not it, right? Like privately owned bison being on the APR is not land backag I mean, it would restore the grassland to some degree, but that doesn't have the same cultural impact as returning the land to its natural stewards Yeah, exactly and allowing indigenous people to manage the land for future generations in the way that they did for millennia before this massive extinction event, the European colonization. I hope nobody thinks a privately owned buffalo flock is the same as landback. Yeah, I hope not. I really hope not. Did you see like when the fork Pck tribes were like killing some of their buuffalo to feed people during the last shutdown? I do remember that? yeah. Yeah, there was kind of a strange reaction being like, o, how sad that they have to kill their buffalo. But that's what the buffalo are for. Yes, it's why they the buffalo are there so so the culture can exist. and it's not like a sacred cow situation. Yeah. ye that is is sacred to them, but not in that way. Yeah, like it is sacred to them and it is sustaining to them, right? And like That's my understanding at least. and having spend a little bit of time with people who have that relationship to other animals. Like when I think about which infs in their caribou, like they will fight as hard as they can We serve caribou herd. but doesn't that's not like a different thing from them. They also hunt the caribou and eat it. Yeah, part of the natural relationship with them is sometimes eating them Yeah. And like they did in that way, the culture is sustained by the ongoing presence of the animal, right I guess I guess we just, I don't know, that the Western mind We can only hunt something to extinction. We can't contemplate Yeah wanting to coexist with it. A symbiotic coexistence where we eat them sometimes, but we don't want them all to be dead Yeah, right. We're not just going to be like, okay, this that was from while it lasted. Ono the next one. Yeah, let's do the next species now So Lick People should be worried about this. This is not the end of bison on public lands. It's not the end of bison on tribal lands This productivity standard should really concern people BLM is the biggest public lands management agency. Sometimes it gets jokedly called the Bureau of Lvestock and Mining which is pretty much the way it's going, right? Right. So is there a legal definition being used here like something from a statute or something from a contract? Like what is this What is productive use? so productive use is a standard that they have derived from the term domestic livestock in the Taylor Grazing Act. And then how is domestic livestock legally defined? any Domesticated animals They are claiming that it is domestic livestock if it is productive. But this is circular, right? So productive use means livestock and livestock have to be productive. But what is productive, It's livestock. but livestock is productive for. Well there has to be like a cash exchange. I guess, like they're saying that there has to be raised for sale But then like how exactly are we measuring that? Does it have to be profitable? Does it have to be extracting the maximum like output out of that given area of land? Do you have to be exporting something? L do you have to have a government conf? Like what is the Threshold here for what's Yeah, APR has given bisononat to food banks before. So apparently that doesn't meet the standard. Right. So like without without a hard and fast like clear written standard This is the government just deciding who does or doesn't get to do business with them And who does and doesn't have access There are issues, big issues with gzing capital on public land ecological, social, climate change, animal welfare, there are issues, many of them the idea that if you wanted to, let's sayve you wanted to raise fewer cattle and do like what they call regenerative ranching to something more sustainable couldn't Be it's not as productive. It's bonkers, right? On public land, like on Right. So now you lose your government contract because you tried you try something try something new, tryry something sustainable You tried to be too nice to the land that supposedly belongs to everyone So in or in order to use this land that is supposed to be for, know, public preservation, you have to be as exploitative and destructive as possible. Yeah. greatreat. Thank you, Doug Bergam. Yeah, cool. Are we gonna extend this to like I'm not as familiar with mining, but you can stick to claim on public land, right lots. Most mining claims aretounted of estate on public land And you can you can exploit that claim Is it now going to be the case that like you have to exploit that clay. I like if we don't have this standard of maintaining The land in that isad' gone now The only standard is it has to be as productive as possible Then how is that land management This is the Bureau of Land exploitation? Yeah, the BLM is just, and I know the BLM has done this for many c andiv this isn't new for the BLM. But having officially rescinded their rule on conserving the land. Yeah, then this could be really bad, right? L massive chunks of the West are managed by the BLM And like the idea that they're only going to allow it the most productive uses or force the most productive uses, This is one of the many ways the Trump administration is tacking public lands that people should talk about more And again, without adequately defining it, I just feel like this is another vector for just handing out government resources to donors Allies. Yeah And like without any change in statute Right. like this is the the law that Bergham is reinterpreting here You've got the nineteen thirty four Taillor Grazing Act and then there's a nineteen seventy six law And the statutory language is that the BLM should manage the land from multiple use and sustained yield That is broad. We are not going to get this Congress to pass a better one. No. And if anybody does try to take this to court, the Supreme Court will just say, no, you have to strip mine the field. Yeah, ye like your only choice. You have to frack. evenven whether you' fas there or not, you have to say I'm fracking you're like obliged to do feed loogs even though you can't likeike It's just like a really concerning area that I think approached kind of almost tokenistically in some of the press. like L this bad for everyone, right? If the government is saying you can only ranch this way on public land, that's also bad for ranchers all over the West. Right don't think that L It's the way that we restore our land to its custodians and to like its natural state its big private parks. Like APR is like a private national park, right? Like you can walk through lots of it, you can hunt on it like public land some places. You can camp on it. They have disperersse camping That's nice don't believe in the benevolence of the rich because like, look how we fucking got here ight, But that half measure was the best thing we had at this moment And now it's illegal. Yeah, now it's and like I'm glad that these rich people are putting Buffalo on the landscape because we need more of them. Like if we're ever going to have trruly wild herds We need that genetic diversity, right? They've been through horrible genetic bottlenecks in getting up to this half a million number. Right. It's not like we can just try again later, let the number drop back down. We'll try again in a hundred years. L at some point We've missed the boat. Yeah, and as the climate continues to change for we have to think about how land management food procurement plays a role in our future and like This is the opposite of doing that And I think people ought to be concerned about that. There's not much you can do about it. Like these people who weren't elected big ruling on things that are not statutory It is something that I think people ought to add to their many concerns with the Trump administration, I guess. Be more worried. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want you to be more worried. I want you to go outside, like see a buffalo. It would be nice They would at least know that I don't know, the future existence of the world as we know it is being attacked from all sides, even from directions I wasn't aware of Yeah there are attack veors that I just had not considered Yeah, this is a new and exciting way that they're making T it worse So yeah, I hope you enjoyed a littles version about Buffalo Next week, I want to talk about bears. I'm on a tear The bears I'm excited to learn about because I've seen a bear and I know they live in the United States unlike They do. Parrots longongborns I guess I was thinking of like Ringbock, maybe They kind of have crank ones. They both they look like that Mm. First um I don't know what I I've been to a zoo And they of o antelope type animals there. So I just, I don't know, everything at the Zoo must be from far away No the prongghorn is like it's There is there's a cool zoo. I'm not a big zoo guy. Youve gott to make sure it's one of those ones It was a credited Yeah. Yeah, there's one in Palm Springs where you can see I've seen bigorn I've been fortunate enough to see bighorn sheep in their natural habitat But for most people, the best chance of getting to look at a bigh horn sheep is to go to that one in Palm Springs When you see a prong horn just pronging You know, like like do they like Yeah, they bounce around. Theyve got those giant tendons, right? they a buffalo can go thirty five miles an hour and they're faster than a buffalo. So like I don't wantanna see a buffalo go thirty five miles an hour. I don't want to see that. Oh, they can be Yeah. It's like seeing a minian like doing muscle car shit, you know, like they can jump They have this incredible buuffalo can like jump over stuff. they're actually very nimble despite looking, you know like like a cinder block. They're so cute, though I want to touch one's so bad. but I don't Brucelosis. fies against it. Yeah. Bristolosis is going to be a long term issue. It's yeah, it's the trampling they'll be a short term issue for you. take that Yeah, donon't touch Buffalo. Don't touch them send Mali pictures of your prg horn encounters. Yeah. if you have seen a wild animal in the United States, let me see it I don't know we had those Yeah, getting Molly's replies with your raccoons in your trash. Raccoons I know about. I've seen a. Yeah. yeah. Skunks. It was in I was in South Korea many years ago at theme park that had a zoo in it. I don't know, it wass a while ago Perfect. In the zoo area, there was this huge display. Everyone was crowded around this very cool zoo animal Cs Oh really they don have them. Yeah they play such a cultural role in the American cultural hegemony. I don't want to see a raccoon, but I guess yeah, if you can't see one, that's an intriguing get. so ye. I remember I like my initial engagement with raccoons was through the The movie Pocahontas, which is a whole other shit So when I first saw a raccoon, I wanted to visit it, right? Because you know they have biscuits. Yeah, you thought it was gonna to be like a chatty Yeah, I think I'm a little ag. Yeah, it was very aggressive be unnecessarily aggressive not friend. Yeah, I was approaching it a spirit of kindness. I think like generally I also have been victimized by a skunk for several years now, so I think maybe I just That's not a friend. No It's fine. What those ladies on TikTok that have pet onins will tell you, that is not a friend Apparently they're very nice if they like can be encouraged not to I don' know, I don't think don't please don'ture a gun and bring it home with you. L that skunk wants to live on its own. But yeah, this one skunk will find me Every time I'm going through it like I'll be coming out at night thinking about you Oh my head. It's like a fucking exocet missile. I see him coming from like two hundred yards away. It's a fucking guy again. Yeah, he's pissed at me. I'm pissed by him. He turns around, he squares up. Did you get God? No, no, he'll show his ass to me and then'll I'll just kind of give him a wide berth and think, oh, that was unusual. Seeing it's going to be that. And then two weeks later there he is again Yeah, he's waiting for you. He does not want you to come back. Yeah, no, he doesn't. He's also trying to like exercise control over the public land in an aggressive way. I say he's doing land management and you're not part of it. Yeah he's returning it to its natural state by keeping European people off the land, which I guess is honestly validable. respectable. He's heard horrories from his great grandparents. Yeah, I can respect that now know I think of it in that way. Yeah, I've got some good pictures of the back end of him Well after he kept doing it, I thought I may as well photograph and document this tendency. so I have them. I'm gonna use some kind of greetings card or something but I haven't yet. Perfect for the family Christmas card, I think. Yeah I just keep people on their toes. We've rambled enough. Okay Please send us your wildlife pictures. We would love to see them. And next week, bears. Yes, yeah. My, before we go, do you want to plug your podcast about people who probably don't engage with animals very much? Oh yeah, you can listen to my show, Weird Little Guys. I don't think there's been an animal on the show in a while I guess eventually I will get around to those guys that occupied that BLM land, but yeah, yeah, that's But it's that kind of shell Yeah. I bet they love wolves. I bet I bet they like think a lot about wolves, even though they don't see them Oh yeah yeah, yeah. there was a guy who had his username on a Nazi forum was the Device of Wolf which is incorrect German for the white wolf That funy they do love woles Yeah, yeah, I could again guess. thank you very much, Molly Thank you, James This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes. If the filter in the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting cleaned. That's why you need Cascade Platinum pllus. powered by two times the cleaning power of dawn, Cascade, Platinum pllus, doesn't just remove a hundred percent of grease and residue from dishes It cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. Just scrape, load, and done Find Cascade Platinum pllus at your local retailer. Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. Cascade would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of this year's deserving honorees. Don't miss the Elton John Imact Awards podcast available on june first on the I Heart radio app Everywhere, podcasts are heard. It's America's two hundred and fiftieth, but you deserve some presents too. Simon malls, mills, and premium outlets have can't miss sales july third to fifth. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon dot com d Grab the f, head to a Simon Center, and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at Simonplus dot comot Rewards program terms apply. See Simonplus dot com for details. The Second World War is the largest event in human history twenty part documentary series with Tom Higs. No part of the globe was untouched, No life unchanged experience the ultimate account of World War II. Every single person had a story These are the stories that make us who we are Tom Hanks, new episode Monday at eight, partart of History Honors two hundred fifty O on the History channel. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beach Bum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations. with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. Rcharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beach Bum isn't just tanning. It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you Welcome to Aad Aapid here a podcast where I try to explain economics to you and Molly I'm your host, Bia Wong, and thank you, Molly for agreeing to do this, especially on extremely short notice. appreciate. I am so excited to struggle to learn So Okay, there's good news and bad news ce is that the central thing that this episode is about nominally There's a concept called monopsony and it's actually really easy. No see, you said that, you said that in the work chat earlier. You said monopsony and I was like, oh man, she's so tired. That's not even a word Well, okay, this actually gets into the thing because this is a word that was made up specifically for this concept. Unfortunately, I do also have to do the bad news, which is that To actually understand the history of this, we do have to explain stuff that's legitimately very complicated So I'm locked in. Yay, but okay, okay, Mopsy The hook of this this is part of the reason why you get paid like shit is because of mopsony I first was interested in Witing about this specifically for this show because Weirdly NPR's planet money Discovered the concept of monopsony And did a couple of pretty interesting pieces on the history of the concept And the place that they go with it is they start talking about one of my favorite economists Joan Robinson, who is reallyally good and we're gonna to spend most of this episode talking about her. One of the stories that they tell, this is a very famous story in les of economists that I'm around, I guess is about Her sitting down with like a British classicist and inventing the term monopsony So okay, is what is monopsy? It's one something Mano, you know what a monopoly is? Monopoly is when one seller Right. So okay, it's like, yeah, you have I don't know, you have like Google, which is a monopoly on like search engines, right? And, you know, monopoly necessarily, and what we'll be getting into this more in a second. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that there's literally only one. Right. But you know, like the US, like every market you are dealing with in the United States is some kind of monopoly. where you know, sometimes there's like a big three or sometimes there's like two or sometimes there's maybe five. O sometimes it's quite literal. L we only have one power company in Virginia. Yeah You know, and sometimes monopolies are deliberately set up by the state Right Wh where sometimes, you know, the state a state would just be like, yeah, fuck it, there's only one power company here. Oh, no, it's a private company It's a private company. Yeah, right? yeah. sometimes private companies will be handed monopolies like this. Right. Utility companies are a thing where it does kind of make sense because having two companies setting up rival electrical grids is like a nightmare. But well, that's why the state should do it, man Yeah. Well it's like it's like, yeah this is the issue though, right? And this is why Monopoly in theory is like a thing that economists are not supposed to like because Monopoly screws up the sort of like perfect competition between all of these one million different anies that's supposed to like make your life good because they're all forced to sell everything at like the lowest possible price because they have to out compete everyone else and it's like all of this stuff But then if you have if you have one Monopoly, they can charge you whatever the fuck price they want because there's only one of them and your alternatives are you eat shit or like Amazon choking out. what was it was one nine hundred diapers, right? It was a diaper company that offered like affordable mail order diapers and they undercut them really hard like concentrated period of time. so they went out of business And then they jacked the prices on diapers. Yep, yeep. This is basically just what the modern tech economy is is that some company will come in with like one hundred billion dollars worth of tech money exam, there were a bunch of rideshare wars in India over this where like all these rideshare companies were basically giving people for like really, really low cost rides. I mean, they're obviously sol screwing the drivers, but like, oh yeah, naturally. Yeah. Yeah. And so they were just trying to like edge everyone else out of the market so that they could take control of it and raise the prices and stuff eventually. I guess it's like you know the capitalism enthusiast likes to imagine that the economy is like You know, Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest, right? We evolve and compete and the best man wins. But actually it's more like intentionally introducing mongooses to the islands of Hawaii Yeah that's yeah. This is an evolution. You just introduce a giant weasel that ate all the bird eggs. Yeah, right. And it's like, you know, if you look at how capitalism spreads historically,s it's not even like capitalism doesn't outp prodduce other economic systems, usually what it does is like, you know, there's there's this line in the commommunist manifesto that I think Marx was extremely wrong about he's talking about like like trade is the canon that will bring down Chinese walls and he's talking about like free trade would like destroy China's trade barriers. It's like, well, no, like China's trade barriers were brought down by the opium wars. like the British Navy like sailed in and like besieged the capitol. like you know When people talk about monopolies They're talking about selling goods, right What Jillan Robinson realizes Ver quickly is that, hold on, this is also true for employers. right? If you are trying to find a fucking job Right? U Under sort of like the models of perfect competition, that like neoclassical economics, the economics that like you learned in school They just normally assume that, oh yeah, you can just switch jobs really easily. So obviously companies have to pay you. Right. But in most towns, there's one major employer who kind of sets the bar. Yeah. L here it's UVA. Yeah, like it's Walgreens or like Walmart And like, if you've ever had to find a job, like, you understand how this works? I actually haven't But I understand in theory R listener, you've had to find a job. you're speaking to, you're speaking to the only person who's never applied for a job We've literally never applied for a job It's a complicated situation. Yeah, I've never like goodood for you. I love this for you. This rules For everyone else. Yeah, like it's really obvious that You know, there exists conditions where you have monopolies but for like hiring people So John Robinson like at this meeting with this classes has coins the term monopsony. to be like, okay, there's one seller Okay, I'm usually against aeogism, but I understand the need for this word. I'm on board. Yeah. I'm on board with Joanne It's a good word. She she's really cool. Yeah. I should probably probably mentioned the caveat here, which is She does do the like classic nineteen fifties Communist thing of like going to China And then getting led around on like state sponsored tours and then coming back and assuming you understand what's happening in Communist China. and That didn't go great. but You know, the rest of her work is really good And this is kind of where planet money does A really interesting history skip. where In their version of the story, They go. Oh yeah, and then everyone just kind of ignored it until recently it got picked back up by these economists who were like, wow, we did peer reviewed research and we found out that like It turns out that yeah, actually there isn't perfect competition in the labor market and that yeah, labor markets are controlled by these monopolies. I guess you have to do studies to prove things. You can't just vibe it out. but I would say just the general vibe like I going to you I do that. Molly, Molly, okay, I have such bad news for you which is we are going to meet the person in this story whose idea it was to be like, hey, we should like figure out how the economy works using data. That was a new concept for them. Yeah. T Yeah. was invented by a guy who we're going to get to the story of the invention And it was in like nineteen eighty seven. This is a s It was like the thirties, nineteen thirties when we invented this. It was in two thousand four. they brought math into it. Oh God. one of my absolute favorite stories of all time is like, you know, in like the nineties, there was like the craze over chaos theory whichich I think the only artifact of that is like the chaos theory guy in Jurassic Park What of my fastest wings and all these things happen. chaos theoryies is like it's like a genuinely very interesting math concept The thing about chaos theory is that it only applies to things that are third order equations. A thing I definitely know what that is. Yeah, we could go off in a tangent on this, but I I'm just gonna to tell the econ joke No we don't need to. we don't need to. Everyone economics immedily was like, oh my god, this is hop topic. But the problem is it doesn't apply to the economics stuff people were doing in the nineties because they don't use third order equations. They only use second order ones because they're dumb asses This is like onene of the trends of the show is that the people who do mainstreet economics are extremely dumb. and I've always had that feeling, but because I don't understand the economy, it's hard for me to be sure Yeah, well, it's because it's ideologically motivated, right You know, the reason that you study economics in high school. who studies economics in high school? I didn't. No there are like economics classes in high school. Right Like that. right? Sorry. When I say studies, like, yeah, like you had to take an e comm in grade school. Yeah. the reason there are economics classes in high schools is not to teach people economics. It'sc it was specifically designed as an anti communist thing to like teach kids how capitalism really works through like Again, a model where they don't teach you that monopolies exist And you know, obviously, like some of this has been incorporated into more modern stuff. like the concept of monopsony, like kind of has entered into The lexicon of like the economics you get taught as like a little tiny baby child which not actually economics. It's literally propaganda. That's what it was designed to be. I mean, how fun to get to pretend to be a scientist when you don't do real math And really you're just a propagandist Oh it's so fun, It's so fun. Whatne of the other things like if you're ever like in university settings And you want to just like listen to someone complain about shit for a while, go talk to the math people about the shit people get Nobel Prizes for in economics where it's like, this is like shit that like a child who studies mathematics could do. The math doesn't even have a Nobel Prize, right? If you want to get like a fields medal. There's not. That's so sad for the math guys. Math doesn't have one. Yeah. And the other thing is ecsoable prices is fake, too. This is this is another thing that's important. It's not It's not one of the prizes that was set down by by Nobel, which I like the Nobel Pzice. They created their own. And the dynamite guy knew what he was doing. Yeah, but it's like like literally like the central bank of Sweden made their own and called it a Nobel and it's not a real one. It's a fake one. Wait, so you're saying that if we are confident enough in our assertion. Oh yeah, we could just make a noobel. We could tell people that we are noobel laureates in podcasting. Yeah, I mean ass a huge thing, you also have to have an extraordinarily large amount of money do to do propaganda for this because the reason this works is that the Nobel Prize in economics is also a propaganda effort, right And one of the ways you can tell there's a propaganda effort is that they didn't give one to Joanne Robinson, who was one of the most influential economists who has ever lived. Justice for Joanne? Genuinely, like it's outrageous. This's like one of the few things even the people who hate her are like, yeah, no, she should have gotten one because she's one of the people who invents the idea that competition isn't Like she invents imperfect competition where there's like monopolies and shit say this is all like There's stuff that's like foundational to like everyone's to some extent understanding of economics. Most of her ideas are completely ignored and same like monopsonity is like a thing that you put in textbooks, but then when you're trying to like You know, you're an economist at like, Not even like did. fucking hereritage Initute or hereritage Foundation or whatever. You're at like just like a random economic stink tank, right? Like you don't Nopsy into account when you're like, hey, we can't raise the minimum wage because if we raise the minimum wage, then everyone's going to get fired And it turns out to're like, no, that's not true. And the reason it's not true is because if you assume that neoclassical economics is real is that Companies aren't hiring people at like the lowest possible wage. like that they could do without someone going to somewhere else. They're hiring them even lower than that because they can suppress the wages because where the fuck else do you go to work? Right. Right P like people like human behavior is not subject to the rules of mathematics in that straightforward kind of way, either No, it's very dumb. And like like because this goes back to something that's important to all of this, which is that like Economics as a field is not it's not a science. It doesn't come from science comes from moral philosophy. The economy guys, they're always saying stuff They're just like confidently asserting something and showing me a graph. that' just like just not reflect my lived reality at all. But they're very confident about the graph. No. and that's thing because it's originally philosophy. It's like, no, the economy's going great. It's like not not in my house. No, it's like, it's fucking bullshit That's a reflection of the fact that economics discipline works backwards from the way that a science works, which is economics starts out with assumptions about how humans work, right? It starts out with the assumption that like everyone's like ir rrationally calculating actor who's like seeking to maximize their own utility. And I've never met that person. Yeah, it's philosophical. Oh actually know, I love maximizing utility.. Don't get me started on maximizing my economic utility. It's literally utilitarianism. Right? It's not something that's derived from from empirical data it starts with an assumption about how things work and then projects that assumption onto the world I don't want tona melodramatic I'm haaving a breakthrough here and my understanding of what economics is I thought they were just being dumb before. Suddenly see it completely differently. Yeah. It's ideologically motivated reons. They have a philosophy. They' attempting to mathematically define, like project their philosophy onto the world. And it doesn't work very well because it's philosophy. It's not Right? They're trying to prove a conclusion rather than map reality. Yeah, they're going backwards. Yeah. And this is something that we're gonna get into in a second. But first what we're gonna get into are the products and services that support this podcast. Wow, speaking of the economy We are back One of the things that's actually interesting about the story of Joeanne Robinson is that There's a reason why Almost no one I mean, I don't know, people listening to this podcast have a higher likelihood of knowing who Joan Robinson is than like Almost any other group of people on Earth, but like there's a reason why she's not extremely well known by normal people. I'm gonna be so honest with you, Mia, the only economists I know are the ones that Jabier Millet named his clone dogs after That makes sense. Well, like people like you've he of you like you've heard of like Adam Smith, right? That's true. That's not one of the cloneed dog. John Robinson is an economist who is important enough that like you should know who she is Yeah, but he would not have named one of the clone dogs after her. I think they I think they're all boys. No, absolutely not. He probably like he would chainsaw her. It's bad. The reason that you don't know who she is and the reason that monopsomy kind of like in the claoset of mainstion economics is as people started digging it out recently is because John Robinson is part P. A tradition of heterodox economics, which is it's, you know, the economics that's not the mainstream ones All of those people got systematically purged from every academic institution over the span of about thirty years By the neoclassical economist because the government doesn't want you to know their ideas. I mean, like, well like like genuinely, what happened was it was like it was it was a bunch of these people like hired by capitalists in order to do propaganda for them. And they went through and systematically took over and purged all of the country's economics departments. If what she's saying is the entire framework of your worldview just like functionally doesn't work. Yeah. yeah,' that's not a good vibe for them. Let's talk about kind of tradition that John Robinson operates in. because this is actually a story that Really, really tangentially the planet money people Kind of allude to and then never talk about again even though it's Fascinating John Robinson is I guess you could call her one of the sort of first people in what you would call the post Kynesian tradition. Absolutely. I'm always saying that. Do you know who Kynes is? An economist Was his name Maynard? Yeah, John Maynard Kenes. his name o. his like like, if you remember one thing about Kynes Like if you need to just be like, you have a flash card, you need to be like someone says cananes He's the I guess like the howg term is like counter cycical spending, but he's he's the guy who's like When economy, bad government should spend money in order to make economy not bad again That's like the most basic part of Czenanism. And that's all I need. Yeah, but like the thing about Kynes is that like he wants like a nicer version of capitalism, but he is like a capitalist And so there's a sort of milu around him that John Robinson is kind of part of. There's a lot of elements of it and people who Kains like take stuff from who are extremely obscure now because Kaines did a version of it that like took the radicalism out. I promised earlier you were going to get to the guy who like invented the concept of actually doing scientific studies from macroeconomics. re That makes me so mad that the answer to that question isn't The first guy who put math in Wh decided that we should do math in economics? Oh, the first guy that did it, the first economists, right? The guy even been in economics, right? Economists do a bunch of math. It's just not math Thats But like we should Studying. The currently existing reality. Yeah, the world first. R trying to force reality into this chart that I made That's awesome Yeah. And so the guy who was like, Hey, what if we observed reality? hisis name is Michael Kolecki. Good for him ob Michael. He rocks. Yeah. he has a long and convoluted history of stuff Yeah I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't endorse everything he did. I don't know anything about him. Honestly, he kind of rocks. He's So Kucki like foundationally is a Marxist, right It's not true that he's from this school, but he's the guy from which One of the major schools of Marxist economics is born, which is called the Monopoly Capitol School who are kind of the Marxist version of the people who were like, oh my God, hold on. Monopoly has gotten so out of hand, we have to change how our economics work Robinson kind of discovers Kolecki a little bit later in her career. It's sort of like a forties thing where she's originally writing about imperfect competition and like monopsony in like the thirties Colecki is one of the people who is responsible for a bunch of these ideas around like him and Robinson. responsible for a bunch of these ideas around like Okay, yeah, actually it turns out that everything we've been talking about like the world is composed of monopolies and monopsonies and everything exists at best in the state of interber competition And This this beak comes kindind of its own school and like You know, it branches out in a bunch of different ways through the work of some other people who start to look at like How is price set And this is something that we've talked about on this show before So so like, okay, if you've ever seen the graph that like all of the econ people use where it's like priceices supply and demand, right? What is it Well, okay, so at a certain point, and we've talked about this on this show before, our friends at Strange Matters The magazine Strange Manners have written about this a lot If you like ask a person, it's funny. I actually did this by accident with a friendinge who runs like a very, very small business. Well, it's not that small, but like run runs like a very, very small business. and I asked her like She was talking about like, okay, how do we figure out how to like price something And I talked to her about it. And she goes, yeah, it's cost plus markup The thing about price, right? is price is not set by a graph. like prices are set by a person in an office Who figures out what the price is going to be. rightight And the way that they do that is cost plus markup. It's like how expensive was the item for us to obtain And then what's the like Dital price. that we need to sell it for in order to both make profit and pay everyone. This is really obvious to like anyone who's done a job that like, what yall know, shit, of course, it's a costless markup. In economics, this is considered an extremely radical idea but I guess, you know, in this in the supply and demand model, it's just like Whatever people are willing to pay, you just keep increasing the price until demand drops off and then you back off a little Yeah. in economics, that's called like companies being like priced takers. The theory and like normal economics quote unquote is that companies, they don't set prices, they take the price from like what people are willing to pay And that's ' not true. They's just constantly standing there tweaking the dial. Yeah, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, like just just on an objective level, what's happening is is, you know, this is what's called like administrative prices, right And this is this is like the basic like one of the basic revelations of like post Kynian economics is that Price is set by a person who sets it by cos plus markup And like there' there's a precog who floats in a pool of goo and just intuitits the prices. Yeah, they like see the data. It's like, no, no, no, no. It's literally just a person. They set the price, it's cost plus markup There's some like psychology stuff there about like what kinds of prices A consumer's loyalty to like a store Right? Because if you like raise the price at a store too much, people will stop shopping at the store 's that's like the way this stuff actually Ws. and this is one of the big post Keynesian innovations. It's like Hi, we were' try to figure out how price works. So we went and we asked a bunch of people how it works. A remarkable choice. Yeah, right God But this is an issue for neeoclassical economics because the whole like supply and demand setetting price is like the basis of their whole thing And it's the basis of all of their politics Now At this point, we need to talk about the thing That's legitimately complicated But before we get into that, we're going to talk about something that's not complicated, which is how to use these products and services. Wow We're actually doing the economy right now. We are We are back Okay, so we're going to stop doing the economy. And the reason we're going to stop doing the economy is that, you know, when I talked about there being an ideological purge, right People of Strange Matters wrote about this economist named Frederick Lee, who was an IWW member and who was one of the sort of I don't know, Like the guy trying to pull the five thousand different strands of heterodox economics together And he writes a really, really detailed in depth Analysis of Each individual school, how did the neoclassical people come in and purge everyone and then maintain control of it. and ne One of the ways you can tell that this isn't about who is correct, it is about who has power is Something called the Cambridge Capital Croversy, which I'm gonna assume Ollie, you haven't heard of this? No, I was just really sort of marveling and turning that phrase over in my mind. It's not about who is correct, It's about who has power. Yeah. I'm gonna store that one away. That's a good turn of phrase. It's a good way of understanding this and it's a good way of understanding the central thing of like, hey, why did everyone kind of ignnorean opopsony for eightighty years And it turns out that answer is that being right doesn't do anything in economics That's heartbreaking. Yeah, it's bleak. and some of these people are people who have institutional power. So one of the things that Joean Robinson is most famous for doing is her and her collaborator Piero Sarafa, who's Another whole story who's an extremely wild guy. Sraf is the other person who a bunch of this like heterodox economics is based off of There's a large extent to which Heterox economics means that like you think Saraapfra was right instead of the Chicago school people And like the neeoclassical people or Mars or you're sort of like fusing the two of them. He and Joan Robinson are writing out of Cambridge, the onene in England And then there's also a whole bunch of neoclassical economists are at Cambridge, the one in Massachusetts They really can't be doing that Yeah. Well, we gott to rename at least one of them they fight it out That's why it's called the Cambridge Capital Controversy. They go to war. Be yeah Okay, the thing that they're fighting about is extremely convoluted At some point Bolly, I'm going to drag you on here and we're going to do the actual full version of it The short version of it is really funny and The short version of it is that this is a fight about okay, so you have like two different kinds of what are called capital goods. So you have like I don't know. I think the capapitalist powerower one. It's like tools that make ice cream and tools that make airplane. Hm And the question is, how do you figure out how much Th those tools are worth together are you selling ice cream on the airplanes You know, they where you're selling them doesn't have to be really I think is there synergy at play here like Well like this is actually one of the legitimately the idea that you could use The same equipment to do multiple things is like a really serious problem for an enormous number of economic schools Like it's like real bad. It's like kind of it's kind of even bad for like the mathematics behind like classical Marxist political economy. It it's really bad for like the classical people. It's not great. So my new airline where everyone gets a free ice cream is really throwing a wrench into this. Yeah, well as long as as long as the same machines You can either be making ice cream or you can be making airplane and you can't tell which one. What are they teaching at economy school? What is even happening So they're arguing about ice cream machines What's also what they're what they're arguing about right is If you are doing like normal neoclassical economics Can you point factories and go, how much is this worth? R And this is a real problem because it turns out The way that neoclassical economists do this is circular. So okay, you're trying to figure out how much money a factory is worth. I'm going to quote here from the book Capitalist P, which has a very good explanation of what's happening here The money value of any capital good, that is, the amount investors are willing to pay for it is the present value of its expected future profits computed by discounting this profit by the prevailing rate of interest. so value equals expected profit divided by rate of interest. So basically what they're saying here, is that like, okay, you're trying to figure out how much money is the factory worth. the amount of money that the factory is worth depends on how much money you make from using the factory to make plain or make ice cream.. That's like basically what that's saying. And then there's a discounting rate because you're making that money in the future. All of these principles is it's a perfect blend of stuff that's like completely fucking obvious like statements of observed reality Yeah. and then Also stuff that somebody just made up based on a feeling that they had And you can never tell which one you're doing You know what I mean? allic what the factory iss worth is based on how much money it can make, obbviously. But here's the problem. This is one of those, you know, even th the Calvin Hasme, where it's like you can divide everything into two categories, this one surprisingly seems like his observed reality is actually bullshit. because the problem is all right So okay, so in order to find out the value of the factory, you need to know profits are going to be? Well, I thought the value of things I thought the price of things was set by supply and demands. The value of the factory is whatever someone's willing to pay for it Right, but here's the issue though. Like that's like sort of true. I'm just making a joke that like prices and values appear to be disconnected. Legitimately, that is drilling into the problem with what's happening here, which is that Okay, but how do you know how much money the factory is going to be worth? So we're saying like the factory has an inherent value versus the factory has a price. Yeah. So are the prices not reflect an inherent value So this is also kind of the core of this issue, right? whichich is like that money isn't even real. Well, yeah, but it's like, okay, if you want to compare how much two different types of machinery are worth, you need to compare them in terms of money. because they're making two different things. you have to be able to compare them. But the problem is the moment you start doing that You then have to go, okay, how much is it worth and how much is it worth In theory is like it's like marginal utility, right in order to know how much the machine is worth You have to know how much money it can make, but in order to know how much money it can make, you need to know how much the machine is worth The issue here, right is that You're trying to find one price for how much the factory is worth can't find that one price without knowing how much money profit you're getting from using the factory to make the thing You could have multiple different levels of profit from that same factory. The problem is how do you determine, you know, you could make ten dollars from the factory, but the factory could also make twenty dollars How do you figure out which one of those because that's what determes the value of the factory is how much money it makes Okay, you turn around to the neoclassical theory of how you figure out what Profit is That theorem requires you to know the marginal utility of the factory So it requires you to know how much profit you're going to get from using the tool Right? You have to know how much the tool is worth in order to figure out how much a profit is, But then you have to figure in order to figure out. So this is why they just make stuff up because otherwise they get trapped in the infinite loop. Yeah It's worse than that because The value of the factory. depends on how much money you're going to make from the ice cream But how much money do you make from the ice cream depends. on like how expensive it is to have the ice cream machine. Right. So they're both set by each other Right. If you only have one of them, you can't calculate the other one They're both like action Y And in order to figure out what one of them is worth, you already have to know the other one. Right? You need a constant at some point Yeah, and legitimately and this is a shit show because It means that you actually can't figure out how much the capital goods are worth in order to move on to stage two of the process where we figure out the profit because you already need to have answer to the question you are asking. And so like this is an issue bad enough that The IMF publishes these or I think it's If've used the word bank publishes these like giant tables of like the value of capital stocks R in a country Well, they'll go through they're try to produce economic data about like a country and they're like, okay, like how much are the factories worth And the people who are trained to produce these books There's multiple different values that these factories could have depending on how much money they make And they literally just chose to choose one of them At random, they're like fuck it pick one. This is not making me more confident about the economy No. But but this is a shit show because because This is what this fight is about. It's about like the whole Cambridge Capital controversy is like Joan Robinson going, hold on, or in order to like figure out your equation for how price works, you need to know something that you can only figure out by knowing the price already. But that's why you just feel the price in your heart Well, yeah, this causes this causes like a decade of like fighting about this All of the like famous neoclassical com actually h, can you list the Javier's dogs U yeah, Okaykay. so Milton for Milton Friedman, Murray for Murray Rothbard And two dogs, one Robert, one Lucas for Robert Lucas Junr. Wow, he actually I think he actually dodged all of them I think I think he meant by by by not naming someone Paul Samuels said. I think he actually dodged it He considers these dogs to be Conan's offspring. So these are all clones of his dog, Conan. He considers the dogs to be C' offspring and thus his own grandsons because he believes the dog is his son She's fucking Christ. Anyway. Yeah, but that's the only reason I know who any of those people are Oh my god Wait, hold on, hold on.ry I'm not looking out which robbert is this named after? Robert Lucas junior from the University of Chicago. Oh, he dodged it. It was mostly the other robert, Robert Slowell Slow. Goddamn it. I think I think he actually dodged having any of his dogs be named after the people who got their ass kicked in this. I think he managed to do it Paul Samelstin is like, after Bilton Friedman And maybe Hyk, he's like probably the third most influential neoclassical economist. And he's like one of the people at the American Cambridge who are like arguing with like ne Classical people. and they lose They just straight up lose this fight becausecause they're wrong And the consequence of them being wrong is every single thing they've ever written is wrong Because if you can't calculate how much a factory is worth Literally nothing you've ever written functions. That's so funny. they can't do it. Did any of them kill themselves? like You would think, but they they were just like, oh well, we'll just guess. Because I bet like a lot of people were like at the end of their careers, right? You're like sixty seventy years old. You're like professor Emeritus of macroeconomics at Cambridge or whatever the fuck And you find out that everything you've ever written was no longer like all we all agreed that everything you ever said was wrong How do you deal with because the thing they just kept writing as if as if they didn't list. Okay. this is why I was saying it doesn't matter Be can who can say who wins or loses because it's all fake. Yeah. And so and so like liter literally what they did is that this stuff Fight never like broke out of like academic economist circles So no one today has any idea any of this shit happened. But no, because it doesn't mean anything. Yeah well, I mean it does in the sense that like mean you can demonstrably prove that like These people can't tell you how much our factory is worth. I've read the Wall Street Journal. I know there's no such thing as an economist Yeah, partart of what's happening here is like the reason we all intuitively do that is because these people win. Right. So this entire academic field just kind of shrugged and said, it doesn't matter if what we're saying doesn't mean anything? Yeah. there were like a couple of people who tried to like actually work with it and everyone eventually just stopped paying attention Lgitimately, the answer for like modern economics is just to pretend that it never happened and then go like, oh, well, these people never produced anything of note accademically, and it's like Well, On the one hand, that's like not true because the stuff that they did write is really good. alsoso Their descendants, yeah, didn't get academic positions because you purged them all. And this is one of these things where like part of the reason that the new classical people took over in the first place, was because they thought that they were right about this argument of like what causes sey's economic collapse had like supposedly disproved Kynesianism then in this time period, they got just obliterated. like They have taken an L the size of which Genuinely, I don't know if anyone in an academic field has ever taken a bigger L than these people did in this fight. They got just like beaten into pulp and it just didn't matter. It' like Naomi Wolf finding out live on air that her entire book was based on a misunderstanding of a term. Yeah.s it's like that shit Like except this is this is like every economist. Ecept this except in this case they went on to continue to produce work based on that premise. Yeah. You know, but but this is the part of the story that like isn't in the accounts you know, when planlet money has to explain like Why the work of Joean Robinson, like isn't something that mainstream economists pay attention to. Oh full circle. okay. Yeah. that's where we were going. Yes. it's because like John Robinson had the temerity to A be a woman, B be a leftist and C not be one of these like neoclassical freaks and D But John Robinson is one of the major people in this fight. I should have had more faith that we were coming back around. I thought we I thought we were lost. I was confused. No, I get it now. So when they're writing about like it's so crazy that nobody uses this term anymore. Yeah. The underlying truth there is that they are This is why Cossing over the fact that the reason this term isn't better known is because the entire field of economics is based on suppressing challenging truths Yeah There's one other aspect too, which is The economics is an example of how this works on like a small scale, right? This happens on a macro scale with just about everything that you consume, which is two models for sort of suppressing how information spreads and how like, you know, how social moveroupps develop where one you just suppress them or two you co op them. And you do what's called recuperation. And you know, it is interesting like the concept monopsony will appear sometimes like like in like textbooks. They'll just be like, oh yeah, this is another thing that can exists and like monopolies can also exist. Let's go back to spending all of our time dealing with like a bunch of stuff that's incredibly fake. and they will strategically like misuse the concept of monopsony in order to deal with it like as a critique. they recuperate like the word But then they won't use any of the political conclusions of it. That's clever of them. That's clever of them. so that you don't go looking for more about the term because you have it and it's defanged and you don't need to worry about it. Yeah. And the thing is the political consequences of it This is the thing I talked about at the beginning, which is like, yeah, I' an obstunately as a concept is why you get paid one of the reasons you get paid like shit. Stoan Robins's conlusion is, yeah, capitism is an inherently exploitive economic system. Yeah, that's the logical conclusion there. Yeah, but that's not allowed No. And so, you know, like Robinson's legacy is that part of her work is co opted and recuperated in a way where they teach tiniest part of it that can't be used to challenge the system partart of it where she Deals a kind of intellectual death blow to an entire field of economics in like the history of academia I donon't know if anyone has ever been so decisively defeated intellectually. And yeah, they just sort of brushed it off and moved on Yeah, which I feel like that is so dammning, right You're just, I mean, you've just admitted that everything you've ever said is based on nothing. if you can just disregard this. Yeah. I can't find the exact quote But Samuelson has this line about how like They need to just treat it as an article of faith that this can be done. And they just kept going. A. So you can't tell me this is a science if you're like, it's just based on you just have to have faith. You just have to believe. Yeah. I mean, the economy is always put on tinkerbell rules, right? Like you have to believe or it won't work to clap for her Yeah, in order for the entire system that these people are paid to propagate becausecause this entire school of economics is created by a bunch of right wing billionaires to get them together in order to push against like communism and like the Keynesian idea they should pay taxes This is something also, I guess I kind of want to conclude about this. It's like, There are a lot of times where you see like a newspaper columnist and they're saying the most unhinged thing you've ever seen Or like, you know, I'm going to take I' take a very incendiary example and you look at like Ezra Kleine. And Era Klein is like being like, oh, you have to like take the ideas of like some random fucking Nazi seriously And so I don't. No, you don't. But the re but the reason he's saying this It does It's not even about what he believes. Oh, these people believe nothing. Yeah, this is what they're being paid to say because Klein's job. is is to act as a way to sell like fascist tech oligarchy to liiberals Like And it iss the same thing with like, you get these newspaper columnists who will like say like the most unhinged shit you've ever seen. and Yeah, they're saying that because it's their job to produce this, right? Like they're not acting as individual people. They're acting as cutouts and projections of P who they've been hired by. And those people have a monopsony on opinions Yeah Well every every opinion writer is saying the dumbest that you've ever heard because of monopoy It's because yeah, I mean, but like literally it's because they can they can choose who the fuck to hire. right. Like that's the actual reason And you know, and like journalism is one of these things where it's like these newspapers have an incredible amount of power because there's like seven fucking newspapers left. And if you want to do journalism You're fucked. You either like fall in line and accept them paying you like absolute dogshit. Bd You go unemployed, or you're like one of the very few people who is able to like make a living doing this independently, but like or you're us. We found a way. Yeah. O like a rich and successful podcaster picks you out and goes, Hey, we're going to pay you to do this. right? Like No, but I think I think about that all the time that really this is such a unicorn job because almost every job in media You do, have to, you have to suck it up and eat the shit and you have to say the dumbest thing anyone's ever heard because that's how you keep your job. And that's not our reality, and I'm so grateful for that Yeah I think I think that's a good place to end. I guess. I don't know. We're we're going to end on a hopeful note which is we got Well, okay. we're going to end on the cynical note, which is like The only way to have an even sort of good job in this economy where employment is controlled by employers is to get incredibly l luck. L be the most lucky person in the entire world. Yeah. So I don't know, if you want to live in a world where you don't have to win the lottery in order to have like a pretty well pay in order to I am so close to hitting the median salary of a white dude in the US. I'm so close. I can see it. I can taste it. If you want that, I love my union podcast johotto, you gotta win the lotter Or you gott to build a world where that's not how any of the shit works whichich is what Julon Robinson would have wanted Sorry Joanne This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes. If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade pllatinum plus, powered by two times the cleaning power of dawn, Cascade Platinum pllus, doesn't just remove one hundred percent of grease and residue from dishes It cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. Just scrape, load, and done Find Cascade Platinum pllus at your local retailer Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Imact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. Cascade would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of this year's deserving honorees. Don't miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the I Heart radio app Everywhere podcasts are heard. It's America's two hundred and fiftieth, but you deserve some presence too. Simon malls, mills, and premium outlets have can't miss sales july third to fifth. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon dot com d Grab the fam, head to a Simon center and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at Simonplus dot comot Rewards program terms apppply, see Simonpllusot com for details. The Second World War is the largest event in human history twenty part documentary series with Tom Higgs. No part of the globe was untouched, No life unchanged experience the ultimate account of World War II. Every single person had a story. These are the stories that make us who we are. Thanks, new episode Monday eight part of History Honors two hundred fifty only on the History channel. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations. with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. Rcharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning, it's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you Nostalgia is a relatively new feeling for me I'm in my mid twenties and for the first time, I'm seeing stuff from when I was a kid in style We are fully in the throes of two thousands nostalgia I'm talking emo, Iie slee, Denim, Y two K standard definition digital video and one of my favorites, the bubbly Fruiger Arow design style That partially inspired Apple's new liquid glass But now that our cultural nostalgia cycle has cuut up to when I was a kid I'm starting to realize what kinds of things I'm nostalgic about One of the biggest is two thousand eight's Lego Batman The Vide gamame. This game is great. No dialogue, Dany Elfna music, simple classic designs. This game is what introduced me to the Gothic art Deco world of Gotham City. and the dark carnival of Batman characters. Growing up around the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada. This game was my window into the B city with its cathedrals and skyscrapers likely planted the desire to one day move to New York City After a twelve year hiatus The fourth game in the LeGo Batman series comes out today Lego Batman, Legacy of the Dark Kight a new installment that blends stories from across the Batman films, shows, and comics featuring classic Lego puzzle gameplay with the movement and combat of the Rock steady Arkham games I actually got to play a demo version of this new Lego Batman game last October when I attended New York Comicon The largest pop culture convention on the east Coast and the most attended in North America N York Comicon is Four D fan Fest for everything, superheroes, comics, sci fi, fantasy Held once a year at the Javidits Convention Center in Manhattan This is It couldould happenpp hereere. I'm Garrison Davis Part of my intention in attending New York Comicon was to gauge how the big media companies and pop culture in general was reacting to the movement against wokeness, which was a large force throughout twenty twenty five. One of the first panels I attended was the tenth anniversary panel for the TV show Mr. Robot. with creators Sam S Mill and stars Rimi Mallek and Christian Slater. Most of the panel was spent reminiscing on The choice production, which is probably what most fans want out of a panel Mr. Robot is a relatively political show to his credit Ismel discussed the show's origins as an anti capitalist and anti corporate hacker story inspired by the two thousand eight recession and the Arab Spring. And what I took away from that is that there the world felt in crisis, how naive was I Back then that that was what crisis was like. Uh and and that These young people in not just Egypt but in the entire Middle East was using technology to organize and start a revolution and that really inspired a lot of what of what the story of Mr. Robot and specifically the character of Elliot Esmell went on to call the show's imagined dystopia quote unquote, Pleasantvill compared to our current political situation Honestly, I feel like the show we did nearly as fucked up as What it would be like today. I mean Pleasantville now. I mean At a panel for the Tina Romero Qeer zombie movie, Queens of the Dead Transactor Jack Haven referenced then recent and somewhat misleading reporting that the FBI was declaring trans people as terrorists In another panel, a trans comic artist also mentioned that trans people were being designated as a violent extremists This artist also discussed queer censorship in comics She you drawn a cover for the DC Cics series character called Red Hood This cover was never released becausecause the comic series was canceled by DC afterfter the writer, also a transwoman two posts joking about the death of Charlie Kirk Meanwhile, one of the Cisky artists for the hit series Absolute Batman Drew Art of Absolute Batman, snapping the neck of an ice agent literally at New York Comicon And this artist continues to draw covers for the series. Speaking of thatatman I also attended an industry panel on Batman animation. hosted by directors, character designers, and showrunners. James Tucker, creator of Batman The Brave in the Bold and a producer for the show Batman Kes Crusader mentioned having to ignore the anti woke backlash some recent shows received for depicting certain characters as black or gender swpped Nerd culture has been dealing with this stuff for a while Gamer Gate was a contributing factor to the rise of the all right And since then, pop culture, fandom has been one of the main battlegrounds in which the culture war is waged. at New York Comicon While hints of the domestic political climate did slip through in brief moments during panels, The prevailing mode of the convention was falling back on comic fantasy as an escape inwards reallyally an escape out. parents are fighting and rather than leaving the house or trying to intervene crawl into your closet and hide with your stuffed animals, video games and comic books Soothing yourself with the comfortable familiar While walking around the convention floor, I felt like I was a ghost trapped in twenty nineteen particular form of nerdy superhero fandom culture was stuck in stasis. living in the Undead Husk of the MCU The main thing differentiating New York Cicon from pure pre pandemic Avengers Endgame era time capsule was how much it felt like an anime convention I attended my fair share of Comic Cons in the twentyens But the volume of anime stuff at New York Comicon really surprised me New York Commicon itself has had a troubled history with anime. Shortly after New York Imicon was created in two thousand six The same company behind the convention also started an anime con called New York Anime Festival But as New York Comic Con rose in popularity It started to eat away at New York Eemy Festival. The two conventions merged in twenty ten But that meant that superheroes in anime had to compete for time and space at the convention And around twenty ten, superheroes were winning that battle quote anime News network The New York Anmy Festival was quote slowly and quite literally, shoved into the basement at the Javit Center over the years by New York Comic Con mananagement until it ceased to exist altogether Unquote C twenty twelve. The New York anime Festival component. was phased out altogether At the time, anime and manga were not doing so well in the United States having just to suffered a market crash due to a combination of factors related to the Great Recession pivot from DVD to digital. The bankruptcy of the Borders bookstore down of the US. distributor Bandai Entertainment and manga publisher Tokyo Pop foollowed by the twenty eleven Tokahhoo earthquake disrupted manga and anime production It wasn't at all surprising that Western media and the then ascendant superhero genre dominated the New York Comic Con show floor But now, oh how the tables have turned. In twenty twenty five, the exhibition boots for major Western pop culture companies were outnumbered and dwarfed in size by Japanese animation, manga, and video game booths this humiliation wasn't isolated to the show floor Even before entering the exhibition space Huge banners hung in front of the main entrance For anime like My Hero Academia, Digimon, Gundam, and the new manga love bullet. Banner adads for Crunchy Roll's new manga reading platform covered the glass walls of the Javidz Convention center The only banner that rivaled the anime ones in size was for the Anne Rice Gay vampire showh on AMC Once you got to the show floor any with the biggest single presence was Japanese entertainment company Bandai Namco This was by a large margin The Bandai NAMCco presence was significantly bigger than the Marvel and DC boots combined mostost but not all of the Japanese and South Korean companies were concentrated in the middle of the exhibition floor next to the main entrance on the north side Toy animation Dragon Ball and onene piece fame had their boosts right at the show flloor entrance. And it was bigger than the Nickelodeon avatar and paramount Star Trek booths combined The adult swim and HBO Max booosts were even smaller Combined, they took up significantly less floor space and were less busy and the exhibition booth for the Japanese animation company behind Chainsaw Man, Juizu Kaisen and thetack or Titan finale Studio Mapa Had a boooth at New York Comicon for the very first time Anime and manga distributor Crunchy Roll had a larger presence on the show flloor than the combined presence of publishing Giant Scholastic and Penguin Random House The crunchy roll boooth was also bigger than the one for DC Cics Mga publisher Viz Media has maintained a large presence on the show floor for the past decade VisMedia is the largest physical publisher of graphic novels in the United States twenty five percent of the market share. and is owned by the same company that publishes Shonen Jump, which is the largest physical comic publisher in the world The biggest global publisher of comics in general is the South Korean digital comic platform Webtune who also had a comparatively large exhibition booth. as did Japanese video game companies Konami and CapCom The video game Ninja Guiden four had a boost to itself and collectible card game company, Bushy Rde hadab booth rivaling that of card game Titan Wizards of the Cast. even the sort of third party merch slop that you find at these types of conventions was selling more and more anime stuff than I'd seen in previous years Looking back at the New York Comic Con twenty eighteen show flloor map Bandai Mco had a much smaller booth. the same size as Dark Horse comics This was less than one quarter of the size of Bandai's show flloor presence in twenty twenty five. Besides Bandai, the other animor manga related booths in twenty eighteen We're for Dragon Ball, Square Enix, and VizMedia Looking back at the other large boosts from twenty eighteen feels like a snapshot from a bygone age comomedy Central, Roooster Teeth, Shi Ra, Funko pop, and the sci fi TV channel Love these Only Funkco still had a booth in twenty twenty five and a much smaller one at that as the company has suffered a massive drop in sales what was once a pop culture giant is now in severe financial distress It could happen here. We'll return after these messages We now returned. It could happen here. oututside of the Comic Con environment I have seen anecdotal evidence of anime's growing popularity. Besides random Instagram reels or TikTok videos, The most common thing I see people watching while riding the subway is anime When I was in Berlin last October, covering a convention On my way back to the Airbnb came across a group of About fifty people was playing Chainsaw Man because that night the Chainsaw Man movie released in German theaters Most of the costumes worn at a weekend Halloween party at the Mood Ring Nightclub in Brooklyn from anime Also fun fact, mayayorll candidate Zar Mam Danni made an appearance at this party aad of the upcoming election US Olympic figure, skater and gold medalist Alyisssa L about anime during interviews at the Olympics and was seen carrying around a chainsaw man pllushy. It your top five anime. Okay, I'm not gonna rank these like in their exact places but Ju Jutsu Kaz and Chainsaw manan for sure a new chapter dropped today actually. So todayay's big day big day. You're agar reader. Yes,. Okay.e.. Atack Titan Yeah Was Aaron justified? Yeah. It's o. Madokca Magica. And I think I could be forgetting some, but any right. I appreciate you But does this perceived rise in popularity actually reflect in sales Well, in September, the demon sllayer movie Infinity Castle won the US box office with a seventy million dollars opening weekend Eventually, earning almost eight hundred million dollars worldwide becoming the seventh highest grossing film of twenty twenty five and the highest grossing international film in the United States sururpassing the twenty five year record held by Croching Tiger Hidden Dragon In October, the Chainsaw Man movie opened number one at the U. S. box office beating the Bruce Springsteeen biopc starring Jeremy Allen White which no one really saw The Chainsaw M movie growrossed almost two hundred million dollars worldwide. For the past eight years, Netflix has been heavily investing in anime. Last summer, Netflix claimed that anime is watched by half its global users in twenty twenty five. Netflix users watched almost nine billion hours of anime. ten and a half percent increase from twenty twenty four In fact, the rate of viewership growth for anime on Netflix is ten times that of all other content on the platform In January of twenty twenty six, Netflix announced a new deal with Anime Studio Mapa to exclusively stream a slate of original mopa shows Polygon and Vox media pulled over four thousand people in twenty twenty four forty two percent of Gen Z participants in the U.S said that they watched anime every week. But it's not just anime. Mga exploded in international popularity over the pandemic and continues to outsell American comics domestically Mga sales have quadrupled in the US since twenty twenty Reaching a yearly market value of about one point three billion dollars By twenty twenty three of the forty four point seven million graphic novels sold by American bookstore chains and online sellers twenty one point eight million We' manga That's almost fifty percent of sales Coming in second place was comics for Kids, which made up about thirty eight percent of sales approximately seventeen million copies In twenty twenty three, just the year we have the most complete data on Seven out of the ten top selling comic book authors We're Japanese This is in the United States Of the seven hundred and fifty top selling comic books in the US Almost four hundred were manga Here's a clip of a PBS newews piece from twenty twenty four. Over the last few years, Japanese animation and comic books have seen an explosion of popularity in the United States. We couldn't fill the stores fast enough. Barnes and Noble, senior director of Books, Sannon Devito The readers in the space are so voracious. It's a good thing that the series are so long and so beautifully drawn Because not only do they look for ten other series to read once they finish one, they go back and reread. Mga sales in the US quadrupled from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty two with a peak of twenty eight point four million copies sold It is now the fourth largest fiction category overall in the United States behind romance, thrillers, and fantasy It's one of our top ten subjects any day during the pandemic, it was in our top five pretty consistently Meanwhile, shelf space for superhero graphic novels has been reduced at Barnes and Noyble the past few years. sometometimes to a single shelf to make way for an expanding collection of manga Mager sales are also rising in the superhero holy of holies market comic book stores. where manga was up thirty three percent in twenty twenty five The main driver of sales for US. comic publisher Dark Horse Cics is through licensing manga like Berserk. What might be causing this Pop cultureures has become one of the main battlegrounds of the culture war Maybe anime and manga serve as A safe refuge from the divisive all consuming politics of the United States A few months ago, we got behind the scenes news about the endoor press tour. creator Tony Gilroy admitted in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter Disney requested Gilroy and the cast refrain from using the words fascism and genocide in early promotion of the show to avoid the political outrage when James Gunn described Superman as a quote unquote immigrant Right wing news pundents manufactured a backlash with a Fox newews graphic reading super woke And Jesse Waters is saying, you know what it says on his cape? MS thirteen. Former Superman actor, Dean Kane also complained about Superman becoming too woke. A month before, he joined IC as a part of a publicity stunt. American culture war issues do affect the way our entertainment industry operates prorojects get green lit, casting and even corporate mergers the Trump aligned Ellison family paramount in twenty twenty five and now seek to acquire Warner Brothers. All that considered It would seem that anime and manga may not get nearly as caught up in our American culture war debate and be relatively safe from both woke and anti woke influence. This idea demonstrates the limits of woke as an understanding of politics Because of course, Japanese media is in fact very political Gndam, Godzilla attack on Titan films like Love and Pop, Jin Rao, or Kyoshi Kurosawa's new movie Cloud A lot of Japanese media wrestles with their extremely punitive judicial system and the country's relationship with nationalism and the military Not to mention the growing popularity of media that plays with gender and sexuality like Yaahwi and booyyss love or the common presence of gender nonc conforming characters In works like Juitsu Kaisen and chainsaw manan And yet there aren't as many angry YouTube videos decrying woke chainsaw man for having a beautiful non binary twink. America is just largely insulated from Japanese political issues Last February, Japan's Conservative Party swept a parliamentary snap election, gaining over two thirds control of the lower House the largest majority since World War II Both Chuds and Woke alike can enjoy anime because it feels outside American politics It is true that Japanese creators aren't trying to navigate around a potentially hostile American audience which means they can do certain things that American companies might find too risky The vitriolic reactions to the last Jedi defefinitely affected Disney's plans for Star Wars soon prioritized comparatively safe and sanitized Mandalorian TV show hasas a movie version coming out this week Most of the non end door Star Wars shows are primarily trying to capitalize on nostalgia whether for the original trilogy, the prequels, or even the Clone Wars TV show from the two thousands. Andor was championed and protected by Lucas film president, Kathleen Kennedy But now she's transitioning out of that role in an exit interview with deeadline. Cathine Kennedy alluded that Going forward, Lucasfilm may not pursue risky projects that break the mold You have to be bold and you have to be willing to take risks with people and ideas Otherwise, you are just doing the same thing Right now, we're in an era where companies are so risk averse. and I get it. I hear all the conversations. They've got Wall Street to please, and I get it, but I also believe that That's what contributes to things disappearing ultimately Unquote. reliance on nostalgia and this extreme risk aversion has landed us in a pop cultural recession. And Japan is ready, willing and able to fill the gap This is not simply a matter of thing Japan But rather, this points to real differences in the production and distribution process. A lot of manga is read in Japan As popular as it's getting here, we are nowhere close to how much manga is read in Japan despite their smaller population Japan still is the primary producer and consumer of manga with a market value of almost four point five billion dollars a year Maga that sells really well often gets adapted into an anime. And when that anime airs in the US The show then helps drive sales of the original manga The top selling manga in the US usually follow whatever is the most successful currently airing anime adaptation In recent years, that's been Chainsaw Man, Sy Family, deemon Slayer, Berserk, and Jiu Jitsu Kaizen This model doesn't really exist in the US We don't have regularly airing twenty two episode seasons of comic book shows anymore especially any that appeal to a wide age range The closest comparison is what Amazon Prime has done with mini series like The Boys and Invincible Even the juggernaut that was the MCU did not meaningfully boost sales of the original Marvel comics could happen here will return after these messages. St We now return to It could happen here In an interview last January Jim Lee, Chief Creative offfficer and president of DC Comics talked about why manga is beating Western comics The stories told in Japanese manga and anime are incredibly powerful I often find myself wondering What is missing in Western comics? and why aren't they able to achieve the same flavor I think manga has an advantage over American comics, which are mostly about superheroes That's where the majority of sales and readers are concentrated In Japan, it's closer to literature And anyone can read it, and it's not just hero stories There's a much wider range of genres Like stories about cooking and soccer You can draw stories from that So I'm very happy that manga has been so successful because it gives me a goal to aim for. The manga market is bigger than our industry. So the question becomes Can we learn from this Unquote Jibil is right, but This is only getting at one part of the equation It's not just that manga has a wide range of genres but also a constantly growing collection of original characters and new series withithin familiar genres like Shonen Bys action comics Japan is actually generating new culture Not just recycling the same four IPs over and over again Something like Chainsaw Man has its fair share of Japanese and American inspirations. Imortantly, it's not a simple spin off of one of those franchises but an evolution of the genre Most manga series have a defined beginning and end, usually written by a single author as opposed to the perpetual continuity of most Western comics where opening up an issue feels like jumping into the middle of a story that's been going on for years passed on from one author to another This certainly has its own appeal It can be challenging for new readers People first get into manga or anime and finish a series. There's then this massive backlog of different series all with unique characters The collected manga volume is also much cheaper than a DC or Marvel trade paperback T dollars compared to twenty dollars partart of DC Comics's strategy of trying to learn from manga has included the creation of a new line of paperbacks called DC Compact Cics Regular Western comics are significantly taller and wider than manga, printed on glossy full coloreor paper about seven by eleven inches Whereas manga has cheaper paper, usually in black and white, in a more compact package, usually five by seven and a half inches. DC Compact Cics offers quote unquote new reader friendly stories in a manga sized package at a cheaper price point This is only copying the form factor of manga In twenty twenty three Three of the top five selling DC comics titles old classics from the late eighties, Watchmen, Sandman, and Batman Ye one These are the type of comics that DC Combact comics is reprinting It's all of these old comics retrofitted into manga size for ten bucks And this is helping DC with sales, but it's still a self cannibalizing process. These things can't run forever on a nostalgia alone And if they keep trying to, they're going to lose to whoever can make new stuff en masse, which right now is Japan and South Korea, with China right around the corner E when DC is promoting new stories They're still relying on the same handful of characters And this has forced them to do a series of confusing continuity resets to attract new readers. Though this often has the backfire effect of alienating existing readers and making the whole ordeal seem too complicated to bother investing time and money into Japan does have their own version of IP recycling, like Pokemon, Dragon Ball, and Gundam But in a long running series like Gundam, newew installments are often completely separate from one another remixing key concepts in a new canon or premise Gundam Wing introduced Gundam to most Americans when it aired on Tunami, and that show is entirely distinct from the original Gundam series from nineteen seventy nine Continuity separation is continued with new installments like Iron Blooded Orphans and Witch from Mercury Shing similar is attempted in the Marvel Ultimate Universe or DC's elseworlds, or more comparably in something like the critically acclaimed Absolute Batman or absolute Martian Man Hunter series Historically, these concepts get roped into multi versse slop and crossover events that feed into the same nostalgia loops and franchise self cannibalization The risk aversion among U. S. media companies only restricts what types of stories can be told alsoso who is telling them Even the new darling of DC Cics, Absolute Batman The groundbreaking series that's redefining the character. is written by a guy who has been writing Batman since Obama's first term t the New York Comicon Batman Animation panel recognized to animators and directors that I've known of since I was a little kid because I watched the bonus features on all of my Batman DVDs The big announcement at that panel was that they were adapting Batman Nightfall, a comic book run from the nineties into a multi part animated film series I also attended panels for Gundam and the Chainsaw Man movie The Japanese directors on the panels were considerably younger The Chainl Man movie director is in his thirties Likewise, Gundam, Iiron bllooded orphan was written and directed by people in their thirties And we used to let young people make cool superhero stuff Batman the Eimated series was made by kids in the nineties problerom is Kids now in their mid sixties are still the only people allowed to make Batman stuff The manga industry has pipelines for young writers and artists to submit their work and get published because publishers are always looking for new stories and the huge popularity of digital comics in Japan and South Korea also provides easier opportunities for young creators to get their comics in front of a lot of eyes Keeping this balance of new stories and old IP working out pretty well for Japanese capital On a global scale, they are much better at producing cheap, widely available branded merchandise Pokemon and Hello Kitty are the top two highest grossing media franchises in the entire world Most of that is merchandising revenue Out of the top ten highest grossing media franchises Five are Japanese. The others are Winnie the Poo, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Disney Princesses, and the MCU American audiences suddenly deciding that Goku rules and Batman drools doesn't cause this state of affairs Rather the opposite. production and economic conditions determine which characters or franchises are seen as cool and culturally relevant As the anime and manga industry has seen rapid growth the past few years been discussions within the industry about whether anime should continue to cater to a Japanese audience or try to appeal to the growing international market In December, the Japanese Prime Mister met with entertainment industry figures to discuss how Japan's media market could expand overseas. to enhance their diplomatic power Neon Genesis Eangelian creator, Hideiy Yakano has argued that Anime should not adapt to a growing overseas audience The audience should adapt to uniquely Japanese aspects of anime. The government of Japan has recently announced that they are boosting state investment in the creation of Japanese media like manga, anime and music and strengthening its global distribution networks While speaking on a government panel of experts, Hideyakano pointed to labor shortages negatively affecting production studios But some of the new government efforts may actually do more harm than good for the international market, like AI driven translation tools and assistance in combating online manga piracy. Capital goes through periods of growth and recession While retracting, capital pushes living labor out and increasingly relies on dead labor DC compomact comics, reprinting the past over and over again This is the part of the cycle that Western companies have been stuck in the past few years But the rise of anime itself grew out of the Great Recession It was the collapse of the DVD market and the rise of internet piracy that laid the groundwork for early streaming platforms like Crunchy Roll which would play a significant part in pushing Anime manga into the mainstream ome the twenty twentyies According to the Japan Times overseas sales of Japanese content reached thirty seven point six billion dollars in twenty twenty three sururpassing Japan's semiconductor exports And if you look at the revenue for Pokemon and Hello Kitty compared to Star Wars, the MCU and Batman It makes sense that Japan wants to keep growing their international market This commodity warfare is not a matter of east versus west battle between old and new capital capital in Europe and America had early global dominance Europe have fel lost But then came Japan. and now South Korea is growing and is gearing up to steal Japan's lunch money Last September, Disney announced a new partnership with the South Korean company, Webtunon create a new digital comic platform using the Marvel and Star Wars catalog Marvel and DC aren't going to overcome the dominance of Japanese media by just reprinting old comics as webtunons or manga sized packages That doesn't fix the core issue, which is caused by Western companies not investing in new labor. They are increasingly relying on the dead labor of their ubiquitous iconography Even my beloved Lego Batman is an instance of this The game is primarily pulling from plots of old Batman movies Combat ripped from the Arkham games In the marketing for the game, the different Batman skins literally have a nostalgia meter Moves like DC Compact comics is an attempt to manage the crisis while still not taking risks and investing in living labor They don't want to invest because Superhero comics aren't growing which just further compounds the problem Meanwhile, anime manga are rapidly growing in the United States Which is why Japanese companies are buying almost half the show floor at New York Comicon Whereas ten years ago, they were in a tiny corner of the basement This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. So why do they call it a dishwasher? Well, don't worry, it's not a trick question or anything. It's just because it washes dishes. If the filter and the dishwasher itself are dirty, those dishes aren't actually getting clean. That's why you need Cascade Platinum pllus. powered by two times the cleaning power of dawn, Cascade Patinum pllus doesn't just remove one hundred percent of grease and residue from dishes It cleans your dishwasher and filter too. So you get clean dishes and a dishwasher that keeps washing. J scrape, load, and done Find Cascade Platinum pllus at your local retailer. Cascade is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. Cascade would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of this year's deserving honorees. Don't miss the Elton John Imact Awards podcast available on june first on the I Heart radio app Everywhere podcasts are heard. It's America's two hundred and fiftieth, but you deserve some presents too. Simon malls, mills, and premium outlets have can't miss sales july third to fifth. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points, in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon dot com d Grab the fan, head to a Simon center and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at simimonplus dot comot Rewards program terms apppply. seeee Simonplus dot com for details The Second World War was the largest event in human history. part documentary series with Tom Higs. No part of the globe was untouched, No life unchanged experience the ultimate account of World War I. Every single person had a story These are the stories that make us who we are Tom Hanks, new episode Monday at eightight part of History Honors two hundred fifty. O on the history channel. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations. with red light therapy and infrared sauna. with more on the way, recharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning. It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you I am wearing my women want me fish fear me hat This is it could happen here executive Dorder ourur weekend bcast cover what's happening in the White House, the crubbling world and what it means for you. I'm veryarav I'm joined by Probert Evans Mong James Stout and James' hat and James's hat. What'd it say, Garrison Oh, they hurt. I think I think the audience hur. Gott to leave that one in, O. Yeah. Women fear him, fish want him. somethinghing along those lines. Yeah Fish want me It's a whole thing with fish. Fish fear women Women what fish, something like that? I don't know. Del Toro made a movie about this. Yes, he did. Yes he did Garrison What happened? Did nothing happen this week? I guess we can all go home. It seems like a like like an uneventful Newswek, right? Yeah. Nothing happened with the IRS or anything shootings overseas. all good Cuba fine. Nothing happening in Bolivia. Nothing happening. little Bolivia. Ro, Castro Well, that does it for it's not happening here. Thank you for listening.' see you next week. Yes.. It's not happening here a podcast brought to you by Marijuana. Yeah and sleeping pills.hall we start with some little things and then move on to some big things the little things are un importantport, but coovering them in less detail now and maybe more detail later. Yeah Former interterior Secretary and now Representative Ryan Ziny is once again attempting to delist brown bears from the Endangered Species Act. It's those brown bears. they fucking hs about it it does They're trying to do the same thing with grizzlies too. They're a little further behind, but there's a push going right now to like grizzly numbers have recovered a lot. They're starting to do bad stuff. We got to start hunting them. Yeah. So ground bears and griz bears are the same species. They're just round bears would be the term I would use to describe all of the ous herubalis, I guess in North America. Yeah, like kodiac brown bear and grizzly bear But yes, you're right. The justification that Zini has given is that populations are getting higher and he's specifically cited a tragedy in which a hiker lost their life in Glacier National Park and another attack on two tourists in Yellowstone. Yeah. The Endangered Species Act has nothing to do with how dangerous an animal is, nor its population size really play a role in these It's not that these bears attacked these people because they were hungry because the other bears had out comppeted them for food. Now, one person walked up on a sow with cub so that group ye came across a sow with cubs and the other one I think the bear was probably foraging for berries and a person surprised it in some thick timber. A lot of people thought that they would de listter grizzies, but they didn't straight away in January and they say if I haven't I've wrote a whole two thousand words on this when yous left. if you want to learn more about bears, lot of bear content. We will also bring you a bear episode in the coming weeks in which I talk to Molly about bears because it seems like you like me talking to Molly about animals Talking of animals, Trump administration has reapproved an exciting way to kill them The M forty four cyanide trp been reapproved. God. Single issue cyanide b. That's been my one issue for Garison, you know this. I'm all about and it's not just this. I'm just in general supportive of anything that increases regular Americans daily access to cyanide, you know That's why I'm also against clean air regulations. Continue you, James I will. I've bumped into a few of these like maybe you have two it's not a coote y get. a coote get's a different thing, but What this is is it's like a spring loaded trap, It's a little thing poking out the ground, normally covered in cloth and baited It's triggered when something bites and pulls it. so it's designed to then squirt the cyanide up into the mouth of it's normally canines, right? It's not much else. Yeah bites and pulls them. These things have killed dozens of pets and livestock. It's a pretty fucked up kind of trap.ike it's really bad. Yeah, it's pretty bad. The old ones they used to use like a thirty eight special blank that would really fire the cyanite up. A Jesus crap. That was a massive fuckkingm. Yeah That was a coyote getter. See, I just wanna put those in my normal thirty eight and just conceal carry a cyanid. Everyone dies. Get really close. Get really close. what They attack you from like upwind, you know? then it's just you Yeah, why don't you open your mouth and get really close to me, you know? Yeah I guess like people will maybe be familiar with these from an incident where a fourteen year old boy was injured and his dog was killed This was back in the twenty teens. In that case, the M forty four was not on the family's property, but it was less than one hundred yards from their house Wow And they've discontinued using them in Idaho after that, but the BLM as a whole discontinued their use only in late twenty three, early twenty four administration hates every living creature. so it's not really surprising that these are back. Obviously the issue here is livestock, right? Like theyre protecting livestock. from Canids, ye, there are better ways of doing that We shouldn't be fucking putting cynaide in a public land. It's not It's sorry, this one gets to me kind of annoyed. Yeah. just the general belief that anything that might interfere with a livestock animal justifies like widespread genocide of crucial species is reallyally bad. Yeah. and also dominant in a lot of the American West. Yes. And like coyotes, some of the smartest creatures we have, They've resisted all attempts to control their population They continue to thrive. believe in all fifty states. I think there are maybe not forty nine. I don't think they're any in Hawaii. Yeah, incredible animals. C America by Dan Flores, good book aboutout them In the Channel Islands, Channel Islands National Park, a fire has already hit over fourteen thousand acres. It is on Santaita It's threatening a grove of very rare toory pines. Tory pines really they they we have some here in San Diego and some up there The initial reporting suggested that the Mariner himself had fired distress flares and those flares had ignited the fire What the Coast Guard is now saying is he's done like a fifty two foot boat by himself people mad about me saying boat not whatever I don't care. The boat had run aground and it was rocking I'm guessing that rocking either shorted something or or cut a fuel line. cause the vessel itself to ignite and then the vessel igniting caused a fire on the island and he then fired flares standing within a previously burned area. so the fire had burned past him, we fired flares Wh why he wasn't able to signal with his radio or if he was able to signal with his radio and then the radio got burned or other means of communication, right like a personal locator beacon EPEB, I don't know. All I know is what's been reported so far, but nonetheless, this is really tragic for one of the very few areas in California, which has been less ravaged by capital Moving along to immigration, I have seen evidence that USCIS income is plummeting And this is because they're processing fewer applications, right? they're moving much, much, much, more slowly with actually processing the applications to give people the right to have visas or to permanent residence citizenship The agency is normally funded by fees And it seems that it will soon be not be funded by fees anymore. So despite all these doge cuts and efficiency cuts see aggency is going to end up costing taxpayers more money Today United States Marines boarded the motor tanker Celestial, which they quote suspected was en route to Iran from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan are facing new arrival restrictions due to the outbreak of Ebola in the region. With USAID funding slash, like the US would have normally led a response to something like this or at least helped fund it now won't This means that the outbreak will be bigger and more people will die. Pcent has said that the United States will temporarily allow, quote, the most vulnerable nations to access Russian oil, selectively and temporarily lifting sanctions Also, Ukraine has beun using unguided rockets on first person view drones and this is retty serious development for like remote control warfare. They're using them to suppress Russian air defences, but they released videos of that for the first time this week And fininally for me, it appears that a large batch of new immigration judges will be starting work Imigration judges, it's worth noting are not judges in the sense that we understand the word for other judges in the legal system. They're more like bureaucrats. Like Robert gues Robert's more real of the judge. They're certainly not reverend judges. Their ranks have been purged by the Trump administration, right since since early twenty twenty five. I know lots of them have retired or quit or been fired I can imagine that this new cohort might be more favorable to the Trump administration's immigration goals. So there's been in the past few days a massive intensification of month long protest in Bolivia that has escalated into a general strike. It's also turned into one of the traditional Bolivian protest tactics, which is a series of roadblocks blocking access to the capital These are largely the result of two kind of different kind of related fights. The first one was an attempt of agricultural reform that would have done a whole bunch of sort of I guess you'd call it like nineteen ninety four style Mexican constitution, like neoliberalization of like collectively held indigenous land And then now the protests have been gettingain steam over dire economic situation, and neoliberal reforms passed by the right wing president after The MAS effectively imploded during twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five, leading to the first right wing president in Bolivia since the early two thousands and also the reemergence of Carlos Mesa, a guy I literally never thought I would hear about again, but apparently is back somehow after getting ousted by like basasically effectively this exact same style of mass roadblog protests in two thousand five. He's now also back for some reason Yeah, these protests are probably going to continue to escalate. We've reached the miners throwing dynamite phase of Olivian protest which tends to preceded Government's collapsing, we will see how This story progresses for our First main story We'll discuss the shooting at an Islamic center in San Diego James doing to start us off Yeah, so the shooting happened on Monday the eighteenth of May. Three people were killed. We'll go over a little bit about them in a second here. It happened at the Islamic Center of San Diego, which is the largest mosque in San Diego County People might be familiar with the Islamic Center of San Diego because of other stories about surveillance on the mosque over the years In this case, the two shooters were Kane Clark, seventeen and Caleb Vasquz, eighteen Shortly after the shooting took place, police searched Kaine Clarark's house. It took them a long time to get a warrant. Normally they can use an e warrant for these things to get one very quickly, but it for some reason took several hours Officers were actually at Clarark's house when the shooting began. This was because his mother had called police to report her son was missing in her car, in camouflage and had stolen her weapons. She called them two hours before the shooting began Despite that, they were able to make it to the Islamic Center of San Diego kill three people then move further down the street and fire at a landscaper who seems to have been largely uninjured or not injured in a serious way. Then they proceeded further down the street before Ending their lives, I think one of them shot the other and then shot themselves I think it's worth noting that like Zadiaaka has driven itself into debt spending massive amounts of money specifically on cops and specifically on surveillance and neither of them did anything The San Diego Police Department received a call two hours before the shooting. to quote, Police Chief Scott Wall. ot, She believed her son was suicidal and she began to share information that several of her weapons were missing. Her vehicle was missing in addition to her son, Wool said She also said her sermon was with a companion, they were dressed in camo that's not consistent with what we would typically see from someone who is suicidal They tried to use their automated license plate readers, commonly referred to as flock cameras The flock actually to just provide the hardware in Saniiego. Their only lead was a single hit in Fashion Valley, which is several miles away from where the shooting took place. Al further from Clark's house than The site of the shooting was but Vasquez comes from Chulav Vista, which is much further south. There is no way that I can see to get from Fashion Valley to ICSD passing automated license breate readers take surface streets and avoid them. I've ridden most of that route. This was the way I used to commute on my bicycle when I was teaching In the end, that didn't make a difference. They weren't able to get there and prevent the shooting Not a single officer discharged their firearm. Last month, the San Diego officer did discharge his firearm at a lady with a ballpoint pen missing several times in a busy street. Let's talk about the three people who were killed here Yeah Yeah. Well, yeah, because they undeniably saved Yeah any of those kids from getting killed. Yeah, in a way that like is genuinely laudable and heroic. Yeah So Amin Abdullah was a security guard at the mosque. I saw it reported he had eight children He seems to have significantly delayed the shooter by exchanging fire with both of the shooters and initiating the Moske's lockdown protocol. Yes. So he used his radio to initiate the lockdown protocol. The shooters live stream the shooting. and I've reviewed some elements of that. And you can see they basically get into the entrance of the mosque and then get huled up there. Yeah Because they moved past him and he engaged them cororrect. Yeah. because they were attempting to get past him to the kids and he engaged them, drew them back. and yeah, I mean, all of this would have been so much worse if he hadn't done what he did, which cost him his life Yes, exactly. L yeah, he engaged them. he continued to draw their fire like until obviously he passed away O two victims Mansor Kaziha, known as Abuaziz who worked at the mosque for decades since they broke ground. He was managing the store, like the little gift shops snack shop. and Nadair Al Wad, his wife teaches at the school and he lives right next door. He actually was at home when the shooting began and he ran toward the mosque when he heard the shooting. And it seems that both of them were in the parking lot, directing people away from the mosque and again, drawing the attention of the shooter, right that unfortunately resulted in both losing their lives The shooters as I said, then fled in white BMW, shot at a landscaper and then took their own lives. It appears that they met online. Vasquez lives in Chila Vista, a good distance away from where the shooting took place There was a press conference shortly afterwards where the mayor was heckled Gloria is a pretty unpopular mayor. for a number of reasons,' making San Diego very unleovable for poor people. He's consistently attacked our unhoused population. I guess notably in this case, because of the presence of a pro Palestinian artist, he boycotted our pride much what iss worth Glory himself is gay. City has had a really bad record of hate crimes And I think in San Diego, Because of this long history of hate crime bigree and anti bllackness and anti Semitism and Islamophobia and the deep roots they have here, people assumed that these two young people would have come from East County, which is I think sometimes it's this myth, right? They're like like all bigotry exists kind of east of the fifteen and it's fine after that That is very much not the case. And these two people do not come from that scene. They do not come from that world There are groups that are white supremacist in East County without a doubt manyany of them and individuals who I mean, Metzka was not living that far away, right This is not that Chairman Where Clark lived is one of the most diverse neighborhoods I have taught in high schools in Clareermmont. I taught in the community college there Tons of my students over the years have been people who attended this masque or they have children who go to the school and the preschool there So yeah, this is like very Close to home for me, I guess. We should discuss a little of the shooters' kind of accelerationist worldview, I guess. Yeah imagery and associated manifesto that leak line after the shooting I mean, just the shortest thing we can say before getting into it is that this is a Christchurch inspired attack. Yes, motivated by anti like anti Islamic Islamophobia, right? obbviously, but also these shooters were very motivated by anti Semitic beliefs, by inell beliefs and by general fandom of mass shootings, you know Yeah, the first inclination we had that this was linked to any Nazi accelerationism was some pictures. released of the shooters vehicle where a gas can had an SS sticker on it Eventually, pictures came out of their weapons which had slogans like race war and hate speech written. literally the words, like hate speech go down on the weapon. Yeah Yeah, as well as wearing Nazi imagery on tactical clothing Garrison have more to say. And we'll look at more about these shooters, but first, here's some ads. And we're back To start off, I pretty much agree with extremism researcher Jared Holt, who's one of the best in the business Qote, These kids could not have been any clearer that they cooked their skulls on a neo Nazi accelerationist slop.. Their manifestos are as sloppy as they are extremist But they do make clear they sought to be copycats, unquote That's an entirely entirely correct analysis of what happened. It's one of the laziest manifestos in some ways. It's very patterned off of the Christ Church Shooters manifesto, which was, you know say what you will about it a fairly original work. like there's one of the more notable segments of this is a chunk where And they're talking about their beliefs. they talk about the Freemasons And whichever one of them was writing that portion is like, I don't actually know anything about them, but I know that they're bad basically. like I haven't had time to get into this part of the ideology, which is like it's very it's very sloppy. It's very online, it's very much a product of terraggram, you know, like in Yes like the sloppiness is part of the humor I kind of expect for these guys. Yeah. large parts of it were just like parentheses unfinished. Yep. Yeah ye. And I think that's part of a bit, you know? So the manifestor was titled Sons of Terrant, named after the Christ Church shhooter about Half of it was written by each of the shooters It states that Ternt was their biggest inspiration The manifest shows a deep referential knowledge of Nazi exlarationism But in a very like regurgitated sense, right? Almost as if you asked Chat DPT to make a neoonutic Cceleracious manifesto. I'm not saying they actually did that, but that's the sort of like vibe that it has. Yeah It's very generic. Yeah, it's slap. There's really nothing like new at all in there. It's mostly just referential. And it has that chat GPT vibe in part because They're just copying these other manifestos that were written by guys who were somewhat more original. Yet in them And they came by it, I think, primarily, not even from initially scanning the original documents, but from seeing chopped up pieces of them in these conversations that they're having in these like groups that they're in. And so it just kind of inculcates the slop mindset. L this is kind of it's not just the manifesto that' slop The way these people were radicalized probably was also slop. Yeah. Yeah, there's this big element of like G Z irony throughout stuff like this. And you can see that on the shooters' TikTok and their steam page, which has a whole bunch of Anime Nazi edits, littleittle TikTok dances with accelerationist imagery and like anime art The way that these two shooters identified with Nazi exceerationism and mass killers is very close to the way a lot of people just identify with pop culture fandom The columbine aspect is also pretty crucial here and one of the shooters writes about that in the manifesto. on their steam, they had an anime Columnbine edit. Yeah tryrying to understand a shooting like this as just primarily ideologically driven has its limits, right? That's certainly an aspect of it. That's very clear. Yeah. Iological imagery is front and center. But there's also this copycat aspect and like the saint lineage of these shooters trying to make themselves infamous by associating themselves with these other massk killers. And the in group signaling is what the fashion of ideology is resting on. Yes. The in group signaling is key because when you just say they're trying to like their popcasts are trying to copy these other killers, Th that makes people think of someone who is kind of purely narcissistically focused on the outside on how people see them as a result of their act But at least equally important is this group of folks that they socialize with in these telegram chats and other communities that they think are cool and that they like. and they' trying that's why the manifesto was the way it is. That's why the Christchurch Manifesto was the way it was. They're trying to signal to their differing communities of people online. It's like part of a fantas It's like the way that we think of pop culture. That's what this is for a small number of young people online Yeah, and it's like it go it's not just even Nazi stuff. Like I've seen a lot of people making a big deal about the fact that one of the shooters had profile image of a character, Ashley Graves from the incest video game. Yeah, a video game called The Coffin of Andy and Lay, which is like a really fucked up incest video game. and she's like she's like specifically like a really bad evil person. and it's Like the comments I've seen are basically like, yeah, I'm not surprised that he would idolize someomeone who would do this would like idolize a character like that. It's a bit. Yeah. it's like that But that's Th are these are all things that are like popular in these weird chunks of the R. Like it's, it's an enompassing thing. It's not just These people are Nazis or these people want to be famous. And if you're just looking at that, then you're gonna to be confused by this like very sloppy seeming manifesto, unless you understand it's there to make their friends laugh, you know? Yeah, I mean like and as ideological as this is, it's just as mimetic. Yeah, even if the overt Nazi stuff is very strong in this case as much as people will focus on the Nazi stuff in a lot of the reporting, we can't overlook this sort of like fandom and like column bine aspect. know Crucially there's two shooters here. That's very, very column bin esque and that's something they acknowledge in the manifesto They did live stream the shooting in a discord call So there were people aware that this shooting was happening since before the shooting started, People to hop on to this call screwized. They said in their manifesto that they were going to wait until they had a good number of people on the call before starting so they could ensure someone recorded it, which indeed someone did Just as a side note here, I've seen a lot of people talk about this as as like a quote unquote seven and six four shooting. All right. seven hundred six four refers to a specific group of or a specific online community does child like sexploitation. They try to extract and blackmail children into providing how it' sex be material and sometimes convincing children to also do acts of violence There is not an explicit seven hundred and sixty four connection that I am aware of at this point. Somet ofimes these communities do overlap to intersect, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is something seven hundred and sixty four related that comes out about one of these shooters eventually. Sure. But this I think that framing, that understanding is slightly mistaken. and I think people jump to that very often There was obviously the sort of like, group element of this shooting. They're streaming it in a discord call. But I think seven hundred six four does actually refer to a specific group. It's not just neonazsi exceerationist shooters in general I've seen some people question why a mosque was chosen as the target if a lot of the manifesto is anti Semitic. That's kind of like the crux of their ideology did the Islamic cer likely because they wanted to specifically copy Terant, right? That's even down to the clothes that they're wearing. The military fatigquues that they're wearing are very similar to what Ternt wore. the manifesto is even around the same length of as Terant's manifesto. Yeah. And I think a vital part of this and when you're looking at this sort of, what seems like things that are incongruent between what they're writing and what they're doing This is sort of the most advanced stage of the reduction of politics to aesthetics and it's reached a point where like The aesthetic itself is like the medically alive. Yes in a way that's you know, in a way that operates independently of like what the people who made the ideology were trying to do. And now the aesthetic itself is getting people to just do the things. And so they're doing it for Theesetic, which is what the politics has been turned into. one hundred percent And you know, even like the selection of video games they have on their steam profile is designed with this in mind. The incest game one example Yeah Parts of Iiron four is also included on the stream program. God of corset fucking is. Yeah hereere's the thing. here's the thing. Yeah The shooter unlocksed no achievements. Yeah. So they weren't even playing. It's about being cool to your buds. They weren't even playing the game, but but he wanted to include the game on the profile because it references or has been a part of other No Nazi accelerationists in the past. Yeah. Similarly, a lot of like the enemy visual novels included on the profile seem to be unplayed. Yeah. It doesn't happen enough. This gets looked at because of how horrifying the actions are as something separate fundamentally from like all the other shit that like, Dumb shit young people do to be cool? and it really shouldn't entirely. Or just being suicidal, right? Or just being suic extreme mentally like, unwell at like under reggulated, socially disintegrated. I think the desperation to fit in anywhere is tied with that sort of thing too. Yeah, right? Like the fact that you would lie about the stuff you're interested with in order to put on this image that is more fitting for what you think this community wants to see from you, you know Part of the tragedy here is that these people as kids, found community in these acceleration of spaces. That became the primary way they socialized In a very similar vein as a lot of people socialize online about Star Wars or whatever anime is popular on TikTok or like those other fandom spaces that are not designed around going into a place of worship or a school and killing tons of people Yeah I guess I should just say real briefly that the FBI removed thirty firearms from Caine Clark's family home. It seems th the phms to used for whatever it's worth. it doesn't make a huge difference, I guess other than to say that like These were all compliant with California law. California has very strict gun laws. It's veryery hard in this country to people getting the means to kill lots of people Yeah. That said, it' it's entirely possible that that is why there weren't more people killed, you know, we really it's impossible to say that the gun that they were using isn't wildly different from an AR in this kind of situation, but you know, there's limitations on the amount of ammo in a mag or whatever then may have had some impact. I don't really have I don't have enough granular detail about all of that, and it's also kind of impossible to say. But yeah, these were all Caliillgal guns Yeah, you see the kid if I would not suggest watching the video. I don't think anyone needs to watch the video. It's not good for you. There' no reason to watch it or read the mananifesto. There's nothing no, notothing in there. Yeah, none if this will make your grief you know more real or just solidarity more completely you don't need you see the kid fuck up the for a while in a video, which is good. wish someone had fucking shot him when he was doing that. One of the last things I want to add, there has been an attempt by some popular right wing figures to try to turn this into another trans shooting. spepecifically Elon Musk. Yes, Elon Musk has boosted claims. complete unfounded false. just actually outright false. Absolute lies admitted by the OP. He's just lying. False assertions that either one or both of the shooters were transgender. This is seems to be primarily using a picture of one of them that has long hair as the sort of Qote unquote evidence They are not trans. neeither of them are trans. They write about hating LGBTQ people in the manifesto They're not trans. it's not trans shooting. No, they're right about hitting trans people in particular. Yeah You know, they're just like these people like Elon Musk and all the right wing people doing this, like they're just overtly doing the Julia Stryker like Dairstorm or like Jewish crime shit. Like that's just that's just is at this point. It's ye Hey, they don't think it's true anymore than like we do. They just know that you've got in this period of time right after something like this happens If you flood the zone with shit like that, some number of people will never get corrected. That's all this is. Yeah. Reality is very malleable in those first few hours. Y Yeah, I think some of them also think it's funny. Yeah. Like I think in the same way it signals that your calls to your friends in the same way that these people did that. like it's disgusting. Wow, it's all the same thing. Yeah doing a meme genocide. It's arguably genocide's always been a meme Yeah, the the whole thing has been reallyally hard on the San Diego community where we have a big fire at Eastter of Laposta as well. It's getting under control We will share a fundraiser for the families of the three people who unfortunately lost their lives It's already up a half a million dollars, which is nice to see But yeah, it I know that that mosque specifically has spent so much time on security. I know they've applied for grants, like I know they've done everything they can. they have cameras. they had armed security. like they It's really sad that this community felt that this might happen and it happened. You know, that they felt that they weren't safe. I've filed some public records questquests that will take weeks, months to come back better. If there is more reporting on this to be done We will do it, especially like this is where I live This is my community, so like I'm gonna try my best to find as much as I can h But yeah, It's a tragedy right now Before we go on an ad break, I have one more story here On Tuesday, there was a primary election in Kentucky Incumbent, liibertarian Republican Thomas Massey lost the election by ten points to APAC and Trump backed challenger Ed Calin Massey broke with Trump over the release of the Epstein files. though unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, he did not step down, but continued to serve in Congress, opposing the one big beautiful bill, the war on Iran, and aid to Israel Trump elected Garein former Navy SEAL to run against Masy. And this election became the most expensive primary in house race history. Great APAC and other pro Israel lobbying groups spent over nine million dollars to unseat mass Jesus. And overall ad spending in this primary reached over thirty three million dollars Jesus wide receiver one money. Yeah. It' it's wild. It's is this is crazy for a Kentucky house se. That's that's going to go to a Republican either way. It's It's just a Trump's ego thing. It's like a Trump Israel thing. Yeah.'s' pretty wild. Yeah Yeah, Israel too, obviously. Yeah. of course. The Psal loby funded a significant a significant part of the ad spending there crazy Another interesting factor Fs on both sides of this race used AI deep fake ads depicting the opposing candidate I wantanna briefly show some of these N not the whole ones, just just very short clips to get like the sense of what of what the deal is here incredible impending sense of dread. Yeah. I love it These Trump traitors They can't stand our president and can't help but let it show. like wo Eddie Galrine R Gty left the Republican Party after Trump won the GOP nomination in twenty sixteen. Take a look for yourself Did W Eedy change his registration back to the GOP? After Joe Biden was sworn in, Trump was in the foxhole, and Wo Eed Galrine tched his tail and ran. the Kentucky Bard Back was responsible for the comp Oh my so it's done just Donald Trump is. Participating in W two this video That is the craziest part of the ad where a deep fake Donald Trump is in the trenches with a rifle. It just looks like a photoshop. look it looks like a shitty movotoshop. Yeahs like World War one or two. It could kind of be e. I think at giving D day, right? Like you got the tank barriers, like he's got the garnd. It got the tank barriers, but that looks is that a gar? Yeah, ' he fired it twice without rununning the diddy? I don't think they know what war they supposed to be. He could going into this than they have already. hisis camo doesn't look anyway, whatever. Yeah true. Wo Ey Garin ran away as Trump was in the trenches. The foxhole garrison, the foxhole. My apologize. under fire. This is the pro Masad, right? So he's the proomasads are trying to Frame the Trump, the Trump backed candidate as woke woke Eddie Gowan. Yeah, I love it. I love right whoo abandoned Trump. Meanwhile, the anti masy ads looked like this. Messy caught in a throppple in Washington. what? My. Oh man. No what is happening against hiring new border agents. She is a. This is wor ad Conserviv I guess the upside of this is the term thrupples really g Mainstream, huh They trust people in just like small town Kentucky to know what thruffle So this name was Thomas Masy is it a quote unquote thruuffle with the squad showing him holding hands the squad is more than three showing him holding hands with with AOC can handle that right And other other deep faked interactions between AOC and Along Omar Yeah, great cool stuff Yeah, wow, the cable news generation really got to be having their minds melted by that shit Lastly, an ongoing story we followed on ED the past few months is whether Trump will endorse in the Republican Senate runoff in Texas Early reports indicated that Trump would back incumbent Senator John Cornan over MGa Hardliner and Texas AG Ken Paaxom Trump seemed irritated that his intentions were leaked And following that, Paxton started to make some moves and bid to win the president's favor. In March, Paxton promised to drop out of the race if the Republican Senate It killed the filibuster to pass the voter restriction bill dubbed the Save America Act. bill was Trump's top priority And this gambit by Paxton seemed to work. As later that month, he was seen meeting with Trump at Mar aago And then this past Tuesday, Trump endorsed Paxton via truth on truth social, quote He is a winner in all caps Ken is a strong supporter of terminating the filibuster in all caps And very importantly, the Save America Act John Cornan is a good man and I worked well with him But he was not supportive of me when times were tough Unquote This endorsement seemed to catch Senate Republicans off guard Some of whom now worry the seat may be in jeopardy Republican Majority leadeer John Thune is still backing Senator Corn Let's go on that break Yeah Tell us the lovely song or are we about to hear song? What's the song's status? We're about to hear song. A're about to hear song. Well, I'm excited about that. That must mean it's time to learn about tariffs. S. God, there's tariff news again. So let's run through a few pieces of tariff news We have now, technically speaking, started the tariff refund process. People are starting to get their money back This is going to be a catastrophe that unfolds over the course of Genuinely who knows how long My guess is I don't think this is done by next year We've also seen a series of negotiations from the Trump administration with a whole bunch of different countries, the U S. had a summit with China where Trump is X Jinping metets here to be trying to wind down the trade war. There is an attempt to reduce tariffs on goods that aren't under the sort of section three hundred one National security, tariffs, There's also been some attempts by the Chinese government to get the U. S to back off of using the national security powers for more tariffs deals on this one are still kindind of inconclusive. We're going to see more as this unfolds There is a very good quote that I think is interesting from U. S. trade rep Jamis and Greer were In Riters, well, this is reported in writers was on Fox Business News where he said, quote It's not really a situation where we go and get China to change the way they govern, the way they manage their economy. Greer told Fox Business News last week, this was about three weeks ago now That's all baked into their system, but I think There is a world where we find out where we can optimize trade between China and the US to achieve more balance This is effectively a pure back off everything they've been saying about like, all of the Chinese economy inherently having rigged trade because of government subsidies etcetera etera. It seems like they're kind of trying to wind this down, I think largely because they have With this war in Iran, they have dropped a second nuke on the economy and they want to make sure that the two bombs they've dropped on their own feet aren't going off at the same time In that vein, we've also seen the EU has finally gotten together to Ruse Ish it's a little complicated a provisional deal with the administration that the details are also still a little murky on, but the short version seems to be the US imposes a fifteen percent tariff on European goods. Wh, once again, per Reuters, the EU would quote remove import duties on U. S. industrial goods and grant preferential access to US. farm and sea produce, we still don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but those are the those are the preliminary details after These negotiations were thrown into chaos when Trump was trying to invade Greenland Yeah, we'll know more about what these deals look like in the weeks to come other piece of news we should talk about here is that on Friday, on the Friday that you're presumably listening to this on Kevin Wars is going to be sworn in as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve This has come as part of a deal where in order to get Warsh out of committee, the Justice Department dropped their investigation into former Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell It is worth noting though that Jerome Powell Jerome Powell has obbviously steppped down as as the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Howard I don't not My brain is too cooked on Federal Reserve to be able to react properly. But Ca Jn Powell is not stepping down from the Bard of Gvernors, which he's still on. I think he's still also on the open Market commommittee So Worsh has his work cut out for him We should mention so who is Kevin Wars? We've talked about this a little bit before. He is I would say more stable and more hinged than the previous candidates Trump has been talking about. He has experienced in the Federal Reserve. However, he is also very, very close A lot of the tech write particularly feel and Andresin That is absolutely a cause for alarm that these sort of tech fascists have gotten their guy as the head of the Federal Reserve However, he has effectively inherited a Grenade So How are things going to be going for him when he when he takes office in about two days as we're recording for this? Not great. The yield on the thirty year T notote is at five point four percent, which is the highest it's been since two thousand seven. For people unaware of what high Tote yield means, it means things bad for the U S economy And investors are spooked and kind of panicking. This seems to mostly be invvestors fininally starting to price in, wait, hold on, this war in Iran is not simply going to end So he is inheriting a situation that is going to be a mess because these high interest rates means that there's going to have to be sort of fed interest rates hikes in order to curve inflation. However, Trump wants exactly the opposite of that. So Warsh is immediately between a rock and a hard place, the rest of the Federal Reserve Board does not want to slash interest rates right now and Jerome Powell who hates him is still on the board and is still attempting to manage a kind of vere flank resistance to Trump's control over the Fed, so Who knows There's going to be some pretty dramatic clashes my guess fairly soon between some combination of Trump Warsh and the Wrested Federal Reserve Board we will keep you informed Nice Speaking of money and taxes Yeah giving Trump allies control of massive pools of money? And that and that Yeah of our tax money, Thankk you. On Monday, President Trump dropped his ten billion dollars lawsuit against the IRS after he negotiated with Trump administration. nice man to create a one point eight billion dollars fund to compensate victims of political quote unquote weaponization Yeah. The lawsuit Trump levied against Trump's government alleg the IRS failed to prevent a contractor from leaking his tax returns in twenty nineteen when Trump was also president Part of the settlement This is wild, right? I have to this is wild. You know, a headline. Yeah, it's very.'s Trump Trump win lawsu against government Yeah against Trump's IRS. Yeah. No, technically they didn't win the lawsuit. It was settled. And ye part of the settlement is this one point eight billion dollars fund Garrison point seven seven million Iically. Come on. Yeah C on Yeah That's right' rounding up. That's right, baby. Hate this world. Yeah. In this case, Garrison is unacceptable to round up because they had something they were going for there. They as shhamed to miss They did. They were cooking they found this fight is for people who believe they are victims of political eidization by the DOJ Acting A G Todd Blanche said, quote, It is this department's intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again W. Blanche himself will appoint a five member committee to evaluate weaponization claims submitted by the public. So this is basically a scheme to usurp Congress's power of the purse by literally weaponizing the judicial process But this story actually gets crazier. Oh yeah Another part of Trump's settlement against Trump is that the DOJ has pledged that Trump and his two eldest sons are to be forever exempt from tax audits by the IRS It is amazing, man. Qote. The United States releases, waves, acquits, and forever discharges each of the plaintiffs from and is hereby forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing any and all claims. unquote. incredible. Now, a DOJ spokesperson later told the Financial Times that this exemption only applies to existing audits. But that's not really what the document says. And that's not what Trump administration is saying outside of this one statement from a DOJ spokesperson. So Who knows? Ag Julius Caesar didn't do this shit. Like what are we doing here? Like Yeah, it it's again, the standard for a long time previously was that like the president and VP were audited like yearly Yeah because it's just like what you do like in a democracy, just because you It should be built into the system that you don't trust that the president isn't corrupt That's a bad idea.'s spepeaking of corruption, the whole idea of settling a lawsuit is yourself yourself yourself. It's Yeah, using everyone's money I would I would sue myself a lot. I'm going to be honest with Garrison. I'm going to be honest. I I' like what the Yeah I didn't know he could do that. I I just this has somehow managed to turn me into way they made Jimmy Carter give up his peanut farm l. like yes, no, that was literally what I was fking. Like Bill Clinton, not the most say not exactly analogous, but like Bill Clinton used to cross the street to use a different phone to avoid transgressing the hatch act. Yeah And now we're here absurd Yeah Yeah, I'm not a Bill Clinton fan, but yeah come on. But just just thinking about the difference in severity between how Monica Gate which is what it was literally called often at the time was treated and how the president creating a one point seven seven six billion dollars slush fund for people who tried to do an insurrection is being treated. Like it's insane. Yeah. R And that's the other thing we should mentioned. right This is going to be mostly used by people who are prosecuted for their involvement in the january sixth insurrection These funds are not being granted to like left wing activists who are being prosecuted by Trump's DOJ for political targeting. like come. Although, there might be some lawsuits around that. I mean, we'll say Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has said that Democrats are going to fight every element of the self dealing measure. Not only is this another heinously corrupt act by the most corrupt admistration in hory It's clearly a violation of the law that prohibits interference by executive branch officials and IRS audits So We'll see if any of that is successful. Good luck. I'm not against tryyan, but it's not my odds on bet, you know? Yeah.' notot to demean the effort. I'm just trying to be reasonable here. We can dream Back in twenty nineteen, when I was in film school I was interviewing a federal judge. Wow, Hblebrag, hu For some like documentary project. And she talked about this is in twenty nineteen was a Trump one. she talked about how she thinks that it's really going to be the judicial system that saves us from authoritarianism. This is this is This is the last line of defense we have Against a dictator. The Judge thinks their jobs de. like like to be fair, I knew a lot of journalists who were like the pressree press will saveile. back in reality be like the Supreme Court just like repealed the voting rightights Act and that's what I was that's what I'm getting to. Yeah. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Democrat's emergency appeal In the Virginia redistricting case leaving the decision by the State Supreme Court to block the new voter approved house map in place. the U. S. Supremeourt offered no explanation in their brief one sentence unsigned memo. that might be the shortest shadow dock yet, which is insulting because they were al like one paragraph. Yeah, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the new map violated the state Constitution. via procedural error during the referendum process I often think about the conversation I had with this with this federal judge in twenty nineteen. as all this stuff' been happening. I'm like really love to talk with her again. I should maybe try to track her down and like ask because Oh boy Yeah. L how do you conceive of yourself now like your role in this? Yeah. How do you function ideologically as a person whose job it is to do the law when the Supreme Court has said that Article one seection four of the Constitution, when it says that Congress can pass laws to regulate elections does not actually apply Congress passing a law to regulate elections. L what do you do after that? in order to make it so that black people don't get a vote? G, L, where do you put your ideologology now? It's all fake. Yeah God E extremely angry I mean, ye around that time