Everything's Computer: Trump Bought A Tesla, Hallow App Celebrity Endorsements, Meta A.I. Slop + Carlos Eduardo Espina Speaks To Covering Immigration

Summary

American Fever Dream: Episode Summary

Release Date: March 18, 2025

Hosts: V. Spehar (Vspier) and Sami Sage

---

Introduction and Hallow App Controversy

Timestamp: 02:11 - 05:22

The episode kicks off with Vspier and Sammy Sage delving into the recent surge of advertisements for the Hallow App, a prayer and relaxation platform endorsed by a controversial lineup of celebrities. Vspier highlights the app's affiliations, stating:

“Hollow is funded by Republican super donor Peter Thiel and none other than vice president and couch connoisseur J.D. Vance...” (03:06)

Sammy Sage criticizes the app's pricing structure, mocking the annual fees:

“...the premium version of Holo is $69.99 annually... this is a pay to pray price.” (03:48)

The hosts examine the motivations behind these endorsements, questioning the sincerity of celebrities like Gwen Stefani, Mark Wahlberg, and Mel Gibson:

“Here, they're paying for celebrity endorsements, which raises questions about their true intentions.” (04:02)

They also discuss the app's connections to political figures and the implications of Peter Thiel's involvement, suggesting a blend of religion and political maneuvering:

“You are essentially giving your data to him... He owns Palantir, which does work for the CIA and government agencies.” (06:24)

Catholicism and Political Influences

Timestamp: 05:26 - 13:44

Vspier transitions into a broader critique of Catholic influences in politics, highlighting figures like Steve Bannon and Cardinal Burke:

“Steve Bannon is a big Catholic, and he has a connection to the app as well.” (07:03)

The discussion touches upon the misuse of religious platforms for political ends and the problematic behaviors of certain Catholic leaders:

“Cardinal Burke... deeply hates women... allow little girls to serve as altar servers was like... part of ruining the history and tradition of the church.” (12:33)

Sammy Sage emphasizes the coalescence of organized religion with political nationalism, drawing parallels to historical events:

“In the 60s, they were worried about John F. Kennedy being president because they were afraid of him being Catholic...” (12:33)

Meta and the Exposé of "Careless People"

Timestamp: 14:39 - 52:31

The hosts pivot to discuss Mark Zuckerberg's Meta and the revelations from Sarah Wynn Williams' book, "Careless People." They explore internal Facebook policies, ethical lapses, and Zuckerberg's personal obsessions:

“She was there for the situation with Myanmar... they sucked up to authoritarian regimes like China's and casually misled the public.” (25:21)

Key incidents include Zuckerberg's attempts to engage with global leaders, resulting in cultural insensitivity and operational failures:

“Mark wanted to be positioned near and similarly to these world leaders... he wanted a little meet cute, a little hallmark moment with Xi Jinping.” (39:16)

The discussion highlights the incestuous nature of Facebook's leadership, where personal relationships influence corporate decisions:

“Facebook's leadership includes a web of people all entangled as bridesmaids, best friends, neighbors, and exes.” (32:24)

Vspier shares personal anecdotes about workplace dynamics, reflecting on similar experiences in her career:

“When you work for a team that... have dated each other, no matter how much work I put in, come 11 o'clock midnight, whatever it was, I went home and they went home together.” (33:35)

Guest Segment: Carlos Eduardo Espina on Immigration Reporting

Timestamp: 57:23 - 69:03

The episode features a guest appearance by Carlos Eduardo Espina, a prominent Spanish-language news communicator. Carlos addresses the rampant misinformation surrounding immigration policies, particularly actions taken during the Trump administration.

He shares his experiences verifying information and the challenges faced when traditional media outlets overlook or accept government narratives without scrutiny:

“Many people believe it. Oh, the government's saying it's true... The New York Times ended up running a story about how the people... weren't actually the dangerous, violent murderers that the Trump administration was saying.” (58:05)

Carlos emphasizes the importance of community education and critical thinking in combating misinformation:

“We should be questioning the narratives that the Trump administration is putting out... knowing your rights and all that... there's no regard for your rights.” (62:46)

He discusses the impact of ICE raids on the Latino and Hispanic community, highlighting the emotional and social toll:

“We've seen Puerto Ricans... it's getting out of control... many solid core to the guardrail, but yesterday they just started blatantly ignoring the courts.” (64:01)

Carlos encourages listeners to engage more intelligently in the electoral process to curb the abuse of power:

“Educate ourselves as a community... be a little bit more intelligent with our vote... hoping that all of this kind of awakens our community.” (65:29)

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Timestamp: 69:27 - End

The episode wraps up with the hosts expressing support for Carlos and reiterating the challenges faced in the current political climate. They emphasize the need for vigilance and informed participation in democratic processes to foster change.

---

Notable Quotes:

• “Hollow is funded by Republican super donor Peter Thiel and none other than vice president and couch connoisseur J.D. Vance.” - Vspier (03:06)
• “This is a pay to pray price.” - Sammy Sage (03:48)
• “Steve Bannon is a big Catholic, and he has a connection to the app as well.” - Vspier (07:03)
• “She was there for the situation with Myanmar... they sucked up to authoritarian regimes like China’s.” - Sammy Sage (25:21)
• “We should be questioning the narratives that the Trump administration is putting out.” - Carlos Eduardo Espina (58:05)
• “Educate ourselves as a community... be a little bit more intelligent with our vote.” - Carlos Eduardo Espina (65:29)

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Key Takeaways:

1. Hallow App's Controversial Endorsements: The app's association with polarizing figures raises questions about its intentions and the blending of religion with political agendas.

2. Catholicism's Political Entanglement: The misuse of religious platforms and leaders to influence political narratives undermines the integrity of both religion and governance.

3. Meta's Internal Struggles: "Careless People" exposes ethical breaches within Facebook, highlighting the dangers of unchecked power and personal relationships influencing corporate policies.

4. Immigration Reporting and Misinformation: Carlos Eduardo Espina underscores the critical role of independent journalism in uncovering truths obscured by governmental misinformation, especially concerning immigration policies.

5. Call to Action: The episode urges listeners to critically assess information, engage actively in the democratic process, and support transparent and ethical leadership.

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This summary provides a comprehensive overview of the "Everything's Computer" episode of American Fever Dream, encapsulating the main discussions, insights, and critical viewpoints presented by Vspier, Sammy Sage, and guest Carlos Eduardo Espina.

Transcript

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[Vspier]

Shopify.com batches rise and shine, Fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm vspier.

[Sammy Sage]

And I'm Sammy Sage.

[Vspier]

And this is American Fever Dream, presented by Batches News, where we explore the.

[Sammy Sage]

Absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Yes, Fever dreamy it is. As as ever, it's a fever dreamy.

[Vspier]

Time of year, too. We didn't celebrate it, but it was just Purim, which is my favorite Jewish holiday because it's like Jewish Halloween kind of. It's super fun. I love it.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, it's a good time. It's mostly, you know, at this point celebrated by, you know, young children and.

[Vspier]

The Orthodox and also college boys. I saw a lot of.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, it's. It's honestly the most, for sure, by miles, the most fun Jewish holiday.

[Vspier]

So I thought, because I'm in my Catholic era right now, maybe this is why I was getting so many ads for this particular app. But it turns out no, all of you are getting ads for the Holo App with Gwen Stefani.

[Sammy Sage]

I saw an article about it or someone, someone posted about it. Maybe it was Kate Kennedy who posted about it, being like, what is this? And I wrote to her, it's Peter Thiel.

[Vspier]

It is. Well, let me tell you about it.

[Sammy Sage]

So that's all I knew.

[Vspier]

Here's the thing. When you once a Catholic, always a curious, right? Because those gilded churches and the stained glass and the songs, they'll you back. And I was like, why? Why is this happening to me? So Gwen Stefani did an ad recently for the Hollow app, which is also running campaigns with Mark Wahlberg, the QAnon peddler Jim Cavazzelle, anti Semite and convicted abuser Mel Gibson, and alleged rapist Russell Brand. They all star in Hollow app, little social media commercials. And Hollow is kind of like a headspace or a calm relaxation app for people who like to chill to stories of fire and brimstone. You can do a prayer.

[Sammy Sage]

That's quite a large market actually.

[Vspier]

It's pretty big. You could do a prayer. Or they can read the Bible to you. Different people read the Bible to you. It is funded by Republican super donor Peter Thiel and none other than vice president and couch connoisseur J.D. vance. J.D. vance also put money into this. Now the premium version that hides, if you will, for what's called the premium version. The premium version of Holo is $69.99 annually, which I think is on purpose.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, what about so stupid.

[Vspier]

Or it's $119.99 for the friends and family pack. And as Chrishell from selling Sunset and the traders calls it, this is a pay to pray price.

[Sammy Sage]

What do you think the number 1199 means?

[Vspier]

I don't know. But making the. Making it $69 on a Catholic app is just like so stupid. You did that on purpose, you little freaks. But they have money.

[Sammy Sage]

Let me just say, like Parker Posey said in the White Lotus last night, look at the Catholics. Sexual deviance and organized religion can coexist.

[Vspier]

It's true. They're getting money, though. It was the number one app for a while and they had a Super bowl ad, which is in addition to the he gets us ads, which is run by a different Catholic nut job, David Green, who owns Hobby Lobby. Something about Hobby Lobby, you might not know if you shop there, is that David Green believes that devils live in barcodes, which is why there is no scanner at Hobby Lobby and they have to type in the price of everything.

[Sammy Sage]

There's no barcodes.

[Vspier]

He just, he decided that the devil is in the barcodes. This is the man who also funded the Museum of the Bible in D.C. he's very. This is like Chick Fil. A hobby lobby world. Okay. But that's a different form of Catholic than the ones we're talking about. That's the. He gets us Catholic. We are talking about the Hollow app. Catholics. So hollow got a bunch of celebrity endorsements. Gwen Stefani. Yes. Which people were shocked by, but I am not, because Gwen has always kind of like. She always, like, is taking on somebody else's personality. Right. Like, she's not, like, inherently her own. So it makes sense to me that she would, like, be easily persuaded by the Catholics.

[Sammy Sage]

I get it. I mean, did she grow up Catholic? That's kind of important.

[Vspier]

I think she grew up Christian, but she's Catholic now, so.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, that's interesting. So is J.D. vance.

[Vspier]

Yes. Well, they all converted. This is the thing. There was like, a conversion. And let me get to that. So also making ads here is Madison Pruitt from the Bachelor, who levied her infamy as an openly virginal girl of God into being a TikTok evangelist. The one who says, yeah, sex is great, but have you ever had a conversation with God in a TikTok that was, like, very iconic? Mario Lopez. Mario Lopez from Saved by the bell. A.C. slater converted to Catholicism, and of course, Chris Pratt.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, yes. Married to Katherine Schwarzenegger.

[Vspier]

Yeah. No one's excited about that.

[Sammy Sage]

But let me just say one thing about these ads. It deeply upsets me that there's a He gets us ad that uses a really good cover of the song Personal Jesus. And I actually was like, oh, I really like this. This is a great song. And I. I regrettably realized it was part of that. But, you know, look, I'm like, they can't get me. It's just, you know.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

I'm like, you have the Jewish shield.

[Vspier]

Of light that keeps you.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, exactly. Throughout the generations.

[Vspier]

I am at risk. I'm an at risk.

[Sammy Sage]

You had me reading the Torah earlier on the show.

[Vspier]

I know. I'm telling you. And, like, it's alluring. I get it. But, Peter, the problem with the Hollow app is not if you download it, because I'm sure a lot of people here do. And, like, that's great. Do whatever you need to do to find peace or whatever. But no, that. Because Peter Thiel is the co. Founder of this, you are essentially giving your data to him. Right. And he owns Palantir, which does work for the CIA and government agencies. They were also involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They.

[Sammy Sage]

They also come back to later.

[Vspier]

We will. And Peter Thiel also funds the Tradwife lifestyle magazine. Evie, we've talked about here before. He has a period tracker called 28, which I know you're going to be like, oh, there's 28 days in cycle, not in mine. And 28 is a known Nazi dog whistle. So, I mean, it also.

[Sammy Sage]

It does make sense to be.

[Vspier]

It does. And now he has a prayer app.

[Sammy Sage]

And he also wants to build techno feudalist little cities.

[Vspier]

Yes.

[Sammy Sage]

So beware.

[Vspier]

Beware of him and beware especially because as I got deeper into this, eventually it all, like, comes back around to Trump. So a lot of these celebrities had, like, a mental be and converted to Catholicism in, like, 2018. 2019. So right before the pandemic, but then got deep into conspiracy theory during.

[Sammy Sage]

Why.

[Vspier]

I don't know why. Then. I think it was like, coming off the end of Trump's first term, Christian nationalism was kind of becoming a thing.

[Sammy Sage]

Possess them via bar, probably.

[Vspier]

I think it's because the Christians finally let the Catholics be involved. They. They usually don't.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, yeah.

[Vspier]

People were bucking the Pope. The Pope was, like, being super lib back then. And I think that it was just getting weird. He. Well, this one was, but he was, like, getting super Libby. It was coming off of, like, you know, it was like coming off of gay marriage being legalized and, like, it was a nephew.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, I guess Gwen Stefani. Okay, you know what?

[Vspier]

But the problem is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon is a big Catholic, and he has a connection to the app as well. When Trump lost in 2020, Steve Bannon transformed his war room podcast into a Stop the Steel machine. Catholic groups normally focused on abortion or religious liberty joined lawsuits to block Biden's certification. This is where you get Nick Fuentes and the Gripers movement that did the Million Maga march. Shouting Christ is King. A Texas bishop addressed the carnivalesque, like, December 2020 Jericho March. And then, remember, on January 6th, a Nebraska Catholic priest exorcised the Capitol.

[Sammy Sage]

So is that the problem?

[Vspier]

Yeah, we were having. We were doing exorcisms at the Capitol.

[Sammy Sage]

Maybe that's why everything is so cursed. There's actual demons.

[Vspier]

I'm just spooked. As a person who was raised Catholic and actually had, like, a pretty decent Catholic experience, it wasn't bad. And I like the music and I like the priest's outfits, I think are so, like, they're kind of cunty and I love them, but. And like, the stained glass and the history. So my name is Vitus, Okay? It's a saint's name. Like, it's a real thing. Okay. Like, I'm very at risk. I'm an at risk Catholic youth. But I don't like that these are the people being involved in it. Because when I think of Catholic, I think of, like, the badass nuns that did protests and, like, the ways that, like, there's a whole, like, history of nuns that is super fucking dope that we don't talk about enough. And I want them to get the.

[Sammy Sage]

Credit on Traps and the Sound of Music.

[Vspier]

Yes. And also Sister act, okay? Like, these were the good Catholic things, okay. And now I'm like, oh, God, Steve Bannon, way to ruin it.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, let me just say one thing to watch is the conflict between Steve Bannon, who does seem to have that, like, religious awareness of the soul, at least more than Elon Musk. And that's why they. They conflict, because Steve Bannon is not into this techno feudal thing. Like, he thinks that that's dangerous to humanity. So he has that slight ideological difference. But, you know, for. For all intents and purposes, not a great situation in either of their ideal worlds. But also, I think what this really points to is. And you think about how some of these. How many celebrities stumble upon being religious. And we had actually spoken about this in the Marianne Williamson episode, in case anyone was too busy protesting that. You'll hear this. You'll hear a sneak peek of what we discussed there, which was that my theory on all this is that what organized religion does, and it's built through patriarchal structures. Like, you don't look at. There's no religion where, like, women are in charge. And. And they basically, in my view, kind of use, in some cases, exploit the natural human tendency to connect with a higher power, whether you want to call it God, whether you want to call it, no matter what you want to call it Jesus. The idea that there's, like, a high, like, the idea that there's something greater than just what we can see with our five senses and what the. These organized religions basically end up doing. And the way that, you know, these leaders who were forming these organized religions, the way that they created control over the population, was basically trying to tell, like, telling people, like, you have to do these things and you have to obey these people in order to access your connection with God or this spiritual being or whatever it is. So it makes sense that in a time when people are trying to consolidate power, that they are using religion and that they are like, culturally injecting or injecting religious religiosity into culture so that they can bring more people over to their ideological side.

[Vspier]

It's so crazy that, you know, in the 60s, they were worried about John F. Kennedy being president because they were afraid of him being Catholic and that he would, like, defer to the Vatican. And now we have like, Steve Bannon being one of Trump's closest advisors, Mel Gibson being a longtime friend and advisor of Trump.

[Sammy Sage]

Trump's own former spiritual adviser, Robert Morris, a megachurch pastor from Texas, was indicted for child sex crimes literally last week.

[Vspier]

So it's not great, it's not good. And then there's, you know, and we are like, the Pope is like hanging on by a thread right now. But they're looking at new popes and the most popular, if you want to call them that. American Pope is Cardinal. American Pope, American priest is Cardinal Burke, who is deeply Christophastist and deeply hates women. He said that allowing little girls to serve as like altar servers was like, part of ruining the history and tradition of the church and that it should only be altar boys and there should be no role at all for women in the church other than as like silent nuns. And I'm like, go watch Conclave and shut up, brother. Anyway, that's our little Catholic diversion for this time between St Patrick's Day and Easter.

[Brian Reed]

Am I a propagandist? A truth teller, an influencer? There's probably no more contested profession in the world today than mine. Journalism. I'm Brian Reed, and on my show Question Everything, we dive headfirst into the conflicts we're all facing over truth and who gets to tell it. Listen now to Question Everything, part of the NPR podcast network.

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[Vspier]

Welcome back, friends. Speaking of things you should say about prayer before doing Donald Trump bought a new car and perhaps thoughts and prayers to him before he or anyone he knows or loves gives it a drive. Can you talk about this Tesla purchase?

[Sammy Sage]

Well, first we have to talk about the fever dream that was the Happy Honda Days event on the White House. Lawn. Did you happen to catch that?

[Vspier]

Yes. It was truly insane. Like, he's not even good at selling the car though, either. He didn't really know anything about it. He had his little cheat sheet of notes there.

[Sammy Sage]

Like, I mean, that was just, just, just. That was a fever dream. I mean, he's basically. This was an attempt to drive up Tesla sales, which are down 6% in the US from last February, down 75% in Europe, can't imagine why. And then 65% in Australia. So far this year, the only place bucking the trend, because I want to be a fair and balanced reporter, is in the UK where they're actually up 20% since last February. But the stock price is also. Stock price has also fallen by half since its peak right after the. And you know, did you see his event on the White House?

[Vspier]

I did. And for being a guy who's like, I hate E vehicles, we're bringing back fossil fuel. We want American made ba ba ba trucks. All of a sudden now you're trying to get your people to buy Teslas. One, they're too expensive. They're not going to. Nobody's spending 80, 90, $100,000 on an E vehicle that's voting for Trump. Okay? They already have the F350 lifted trucks that are wrapped. They can't afford another vehicle.

[Sammy Sage]

I also thought he hates them. But then he was like, so amazed. Everything's a computer. What?

[Vspier]

It's a computer. Everything's computer. I love Tesla. I love Essler.

[Sammy Sage]

So he bought the model S, Plaid edition model.

[Vspier]

I don't know.

[Sammy Sage]

I don't know how to talk about cars. The red one, it's a high performance electric vehicle. Now here's the thing. This man does not drive.

[Vspier]

No, I've never seen him drive. Ever.

[Sammy Sage]

No. Not even like for in the 80s.

[Vspier]

He had a limo driver. Yeah. I don't think he's ever driven.

[Sammy Sage]

Right. Everything I've seen of him, he has had someone drive. Does he even have a driver's license?

[Vspier]

I really don't know. I don't know. I've never seen him drive ever, ever, ever. He lives in Manhattan. He didn't drive.

[Sammy Sage]

Right. But like, he had other houses.

[Brian Reed]

He drove.

[Vspier]

Yeah. He had drivers and stuff.

[Sammy Sage]

Right. That's what I'm thinking. Like, he didn't bother. And along that line, along in that vein, I was also reflecting on his obsession with the word groceries and why he was like talking about how great that was during the campaign, which I found odd. And I realized he's probably maybe never gone Grocery shopping. But also, I doubt he's ever eaten in a setting where the food was not served to him, like unwrapped and prepared. Like, has he ever made himself a snack?

[Vspier]

Oh, has he ever, like, grabbed an apple out the fridge?

[Sammy Sage]

That's what I'm saying. Like, like grabbed a couple peanut butter on it.

[Vspier]

He's never had girl dinner. He never has.

[Sammy Sage]

Never.

[Vspier]

Never.

[Sammy Sage]

Literally never.

[Vspier]

Asshole.

[Sammy Sage]

And catch up every night.

[Vspier]

Yeah, he's probably never like thrown a bag of popcorn in the microwave or like put together some chicken nuggets for his kids or something. No.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, no chance.

[Vspier]

Certainly not kids.

[Sammy Sage]

But yeah. No.

[Vspier]

The other thing about a sandwich. No.

[Sammy Sage]

How many sandwiches have you made for me? None.

[Vspier]

I also.

[Sammy Sage]

Okay, so I feel like people are reporting that he bought the car, but they're not. So he paid $90,000, but they're not necessarily reporting, with the exception of Wired, that it has 37 recall notices against it for a whole host of things. Like, I don't know if, if you combine them all, like, you might have the whole car. There's. Including, there were issues with the seatbelt warning system malfunctioning, issues with the. Everything's computer circuit board airbag problems, faulty door handles, warped brake discs, and unexpected speed and lane changes. I also put in reporting in the morning announcements yesterday about how Attorney General Pam Bondi is coming to defend the defense of Tesla dealerships and vehicles that have suffered the consequences of Americans anger towards Elon Musk. But they do have one defender, and it is Kim Kardashian. Have you seen her photo shoot with the cybertruck?

[Vspier]

Do you think she's getting paid or.

[Sammy Sage]

Just paid in Tesla robots?

[Vspier]

You know, I don't know. But one thing I do know about the Kardashians is they don't decide anything willy nilly, and they do decide to do bad stuff, even sometimes if it'll benefit them. Right. So I can't imagine what the value is for her to do this, you know, other than Trump pardons the people that she wants and makes her feel special, but I don't know why she would do this. And also, can Kim Kardashian sell a car? The last thing I watched her try to sell that wasn't one of her own products was like a Carl's Jr. Cheeseburger. And I don't know that that helped them either. This felt like that. I was like, you know what? I know you don't do drive a Tesla or eat cheeseburgers.

[Sammy Sage]

I think that you think they're much more discerning about things than they are. They will take the money at any time.

[Vspier]

But I wonder if she got money, this is like a decidedly stupid thing to do.

[Sammy Sage]

I believe I would get she got money and I don't think she thinks it's a stupid thing to do. I think she thinks, oh, this is where the culture is so I can finally unmask my true ideologies.

[Brian Reed]

Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report.

[Vspier]

Welcome back, friends. I hope during the break you said three Hail Marys to forgive yourself of all your sins. I know I did, Sammy. Sammy's already one of the chosen ones. She doesn't have to repent.

[Sammy Sage]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Vspier]

Oh my God, girl. We have another thing to talk about that is just another fever dream disaster. Once again, frequent guest of the show Mark not Wahlberg, but Zuckerberg will be talking about next. Speaking of trying to keep things a secret, Cloistered. He'd like this next thing to be.

[Sammy Sage]

Cloistered away, but he really Streisand affected himself. To be honest. I spent the weekend reading a book I could not put down.

[Vspier]

Was it Rage Prayers? Because that's what I was reading to.

[Sammy Sage]

Know what that is.

[Vspier]

Rage Prayers.

[Sammy Sage]

It was not the Bible. It's this new book that just came out called Careless People, written by a former employee of Facebook named Sarah Wynn Williams. She was employed at Facebook for seven years around 2010 through 2017 and worked on their global policy team. So that became a highly relevant department during the time she was there. And her book essentially gives all these really deep insights into how the company developed during that time, which very much shaped where Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are now. And you mentioned Cloistered. If you haven't heard of this book, that was by design because the author and the publisher kept it under wraps because they correctly anticipated that Meadow would be quite unhappy with with this book and make efforts to block it, which they actually have. They sued and an arbitrator agree to block the publisher and the author from promoting the book.

[Vspier]

Wow.

[Sammy Sage]

Technically. But it seems that they're still publishing it. They're still putting it out there. And if anything. It actually just made it more popular because the book was number one on Amazon on Sunday night. And that is well deserved because I literally just. I couldn't put it down.

[Vspier]

Well, I did not read the book because, you know, Catholics don't read. We are read too. I'm not sure if you were. So tell me, Sammy, what was it about? Just give us the sermon.

[Sammy Sage]

Okay, I'm gonna give you a top line summary that comes from the intro because I think it really explains it and it's in her words. She says, I was there for seven years and if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say that it started as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret. I was one of the people advising Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg as they were inventing how the company would deal with governments around the world. By the end, I watched hopelessly as they sucked up to authoritarian regimes like China's and casually misled the public. I was on a private jet with Mark the day he finally understood that Facebook probably did put Donald Trump in the White House and came to his own dark conclusions from there. But most days, working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter for Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of 14 year olds who had been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them.

[Vspier]

Yeah, that tracks. This is the thing. I hate when people think that just because somebody has money, they're smart or they, or they're like somehow all knowing or good. Like a lot of times they failed up. A lot of times they just got a big investment and it shook out and it was fun. And that's where we're at. It's. I think this is, this makes sense to me.

[Sammy Sage]

I wouldn't necessarily say that he failed up, but I would say that he was someone who got extremely lucky in the way that he got lightning in a bottle, wrestled the company away from his partners and the idea. And then basically, I think because these VCs, largely from this PayPal mafia 90s tech generation, it seems like they kind of knew what they were doing because they had done it before and they carried him along to billionairesville because they knew that he had something and that they make it huge.

[Vspier]

You know what I think they might have liked about him, now that we're seeing it more and more, is they like the idea of a dropout. The fact that he got into Harvard, but then he dropped out because this idea of, like, education is shit, nobody needs to go to college is very popular right now from people who did go to college or went to college and dropped out because they got some sort of early investment. And I'm gonna bet that this, at the time, furthered that narrative that, like, Curtis Yarvin, like, tech bro bullshit. That, like, education and academia is, like, worthless. Look at this guy. He was a dropout and he so great. But he got in. We need you to know he's smart. He got in Harvard, but he didn't need it. He got there and realized he was too good.

[Sammy Sage]

Right. Yeah. I mean, I think there's complexity to it because, you know, Bill Gates was a dropout. There's. There's this.

[Vspier]

There is this idea of this genius dropout.

[Sammy Sage]

Right, right. Exactly. When there's a lot of luck and.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

Other things involved in this. But the. Let me just say what. As a specific anecdote that I think was kind of emblematic of the journey she went on. So the author, Sarah, described how the company had changed in the years cultural from when she started and when she left. And she says that when she started, people were, like, super close, and it was idealistic, and ultimately it just became about growth at all costs and laws and morals and human lives kind of be damned. And she describes a situation like during her last year there where an employee had a seizure in the middle of the open floor plan at the Meta office or the Facebook office at the time, and everyone just ignored her. And her own manager, like, didn't say her name. Like, she was just like, oh, she's just a contractor. And it just became, for me, that was like, a really salient anecdote that was very emblematic of the carelessness and how people just do not give a fuck at all, it seems. So. Yeah, it's just wild.

[Vspier]

I hate meta a little bit more every single day, but.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, get ready for everything I'm about to tell you.

[Vspier]

So I logged into my Facebook this morning because I hadn't in so long, and I had to make sure that we were, like, syndicating under the desk. Desk over there. And I'll tell you, it gives me. It was a jump scare. Maybe. I. I don't know, maybe it was a bad idea.

[Sammy Sage]

There's a lot of AI slop over there.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

But let me just give you the background because I'm gonna break down a lot of information. So the author.

[Vspier]

I will never read this book, so thank you for this.

[Sammy Sage]

Look here I Am reading to you. The author, Sarah Wynn Williams, she was a former diplomat from New Zealand and you know, she was born there. And she was an early user of Facebook when it was first ascendant. And she immediately recognized it as game changing tool and ultimately a tool for political communication that could be used either for really good things or really bad things. And she ended up working there because she was such a huge evangelist for the company that. And saw so much potential that she like basically stalked them to get this job. You know, she really tried to get a job, I mean, as lots of people do when they really want to work somewhere. So she eventually saw that the company had hired a vice president of global public policy. And then she continued pitching herself repeatedly over the course of the year to that person before they even seemed to recognize that they were this engine for political communication. And they basically were like, why would Facebook ever need a diplomat? And what happened was her, the author's sister was like, went missing for several hours during an earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. And she was able to eventually like figure out where she was because of Facebook and people were able to keep in touch. And that's what she pitched to the company. Like that was like her last Hail Mary. Speaking of like tried to try to get a job. And it she pitched her own job to them, eventually they hire her and let her start. And her job is to handle basically any meetings with foreign heads of state, which at the time were. Not many cared about that yet, but it was on the way. And at the time their priority was growth and it still is obviously, but. But they didn't have enough users that they had not like run out. Like once they got to a billion users, they had to start getting into like some sketchy places. Like they didn't start to care about global policy more broadly or about courting foreign leaders until they basically ran out of users that they could get in countries where Facebook had an easy time entering. After about a billion users, they basically ran out of users that they could add onto the platform without tapping into more complicated markets like China, India, India, places with big populations that were more tricky either because they don't have Internet Internet access there. It's incompatible. The tech is incompatible. People don't have smartphones. The costs are prohibitive for users.

[Vspier]

The culture of those areas was one of state censorship. So to give people a digital town square who are not used to communicating directly with each other, in fact finding and truth telling, it obviously as we know it caused craziness. It like broke societies in some Places.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah. And basically she was there for the situation with Myanmar. And she breaks down exactly how and why that was able to happen. And what happened in Myanmar was really basically a result of Mark wanting to a push into places because they had a pretty big market. I believe it was either 40 million or 60 million people live there. And he was saying in those days, like, he wants to find a way to connect everyone in the globe and even remote places without Internet access. And he was pushing this really idealistic version. But like you said, when there's places where the society is not stable, the government's not stable, like, that can result in really big problems. And especially when that's the only Internet. Like Facebook was the Internet.

[Vspier]

That was their Google, their Internet, everything. Right?

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah. So her job became much more important as, you know, as they're growing and getting into foreign countries that become more. A little sticky, but also even. Right. Kind of in the beginning of when she started, Facebook already had issues with some foreign countries. So like Germany had big issues with data, their data privacy policies and their content moderation policies. And they were like, never buying the bullshit about connecting people and all that stuff. But overall, she started out in a way that she needed to convince them that they needed her. And she eventually becomes extremely important because she's working directly with Mark and Cheryl and a guy named Joel Kaplan who is currently the president of global affairs at Meta. Very powerful guy. And he's really a very interesting and critical figure in the book. So Joel Kaplan, he became the author's boss at Facebook. He was also Cheryl's ex boyfriend at Harvard.

[Vspier]

No conflict? No conflict. That's fine.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, it's interesting you say that because something I didn't necessarily realize about the leadership at Facebook was that it was very incestuous. Really? Yeah. There was a good passage that I thought explained it. By now I've realized that Facebook's leadership includes a web of people all entangled as bridesmaids, best friends, neighbors, and exes. Their fealty is seemingly to each other ahead of any ideology or anything else. Their past presents and futures are all deeply intertwined in a way that mine are not. They hire each other for jobs with big salaries, responsible for each other's promotions and bonuses. A tiny, enmeshed group of people increasingly responsible for shaping the attention of billions. Their preferences turned into policy.

[Vspier]

Oh, I have to tell you, as a person who worked at a startup. Ah, that tracks. Right? That, that, that does feel like so real. Especially when you get hired at a high level or you have like a Special job. And then you're trying to work with people who are like college buddies or that. Or that dated each other. In particular, in my experience with people had dated each other, you always feel on the outside, because when you clo. The problem I had with that, that I'm sure she had too, is like, no matter how late you stay at the office, you never stay late enough to go home with them. And so when you work for a team that, like, either lives together like they all were, or used to date or was currently dating, no matter how much work I put in, come 11 o'clock midnight, whatever it was, I went home and they went home together. And then we'd come in the next morning and was like, everything we worked on was gone. Because over the night they were with each other and they would, like, influence each other's decisions based on preference, not on stats.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, that's exactly the position she was in.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

And she was dealing with some of the most consequential world issues that there are. So let's talk about Joel Kaplan for a second. Are you familiar with the Brooks Brothers Riot?

[Vspier]

Vaguely. It's like ringing a bell, but I'm not, like, getting it. It's not coming back to me.

[Sammy Sage]

So in the 2000 election, in case this was before any listeners time, there was this demonstration of hundreds of people, including Republican staffers, hence the nickname, because they were dressed fancy. They stor to a meeting of election canvassers in Miami Dade county where votes for the Bush Gore election were being recounted with the goal of shutting down the recount. So, like, early January 6th inspiration. And they were actually successful in getting the recount shut down early. There's actually an HBO movie about it called Recount. And Joel, too went to Harvard. That's where he dated Sheryl Sandberg. And interestingly, he actually was sitting two rows behind Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

[Vspier]

Oh, no.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah. The author describes him as being, over time, extremely creepy to her, making comments about her body, her husband sending her inappropriate texts after she had a very traumatic birth where she ended up in a coma. He asked her where she was bleeding from. And she also claims that he grinded with her on the dance floor during a company party and that many people saw made her.

[Vspier]

She's much older than Mark and them though significantly older than, like, the young people who would have been working there. Yeah, yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

And I mean, he made her work on maternity leave and she basically, this was kind of the thing that got her fired in the end was that she wanted to, like, Move off his team. She had voiced a complaint about the sexual harassment. They opened up an investigation, didn't actually get all her evidence, cleared him, and essentially she gets fired for performance. But she had also been putting up, like, complaints and, you know, being resistant, so.

[Vspier]

Well, yeah, if he hangs with Kavanaugh or is at least, you know, on that side of Harvard, I'd imagine that he's not a great guy. We know that. I know that he's like, a very conservative voice and kind of gross in that way. So.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, I mean, he's also the person who got the company into political advertising because he didn't want the policy team to be a cost center of the business, so he used it to sell political ads. And then that, over time, led Mark to realize that the way to grow power and to prevent politicians from regulating them in any country is to make them reliant on Facebook to both communicate with their audiences and to win elections. So the more they cozy up, the better.

[Vspier]

Yeah, and homeboy used to work for.

[Sammy Sage]

George Bush, so, like, hence the Brooks Brothers riot.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

And I think the real point of the book is that having guys like Joel Kaplan and Mark Zuckerberg, who are seemingly quite amoral, making these decisions, and it's really problematic. That's really, like, the story. It's, like, really bad to have such careless people working on such a consequential platform. So she tells, like, a bunch of anecdotes with how Facebook interface with various countries. And, like, all I can say is that they just seemed like the worst stereotypes of ignorant Americans ever. Like, Joel Kaplan didn't know Taiwan was an island. Something that you might think that a Harvard grad working in Facebook's global policy with a focus on China might know. Yeah, they also, just like she said, they basically refused to enforce laws in foreign countries unless the governments would take very specific and strict measures to regulate them, which then they would complain about and try to use leverage to undo. And the common thread is that they just continually pissed off other people, you know, other leaders, due to their extreme insensitivity. The other thing that I find quite concerning and symptomatic of their flippancy towards everything is that they were very much okay with letting their own employees get arrested in foreign countries. So I'll give an example. Mark Zuckerberg wanted to travel to South Korea, but there was an arrest warrant out for him and Sheryl Sandberg there.

[Vspier]

Really?

[Sammy Sage]

Because. Yeah, because. And the reason is sort of stupid. The gaming authority there had written to the company requiring them to submit the games on their platform to be raided by the government. And the South Koreans basically said that they ignored the letter and thus the arrest warrants. And so they wanted to test out to see if South Korea would actually act on something if they got. If they went there. So they sent a lower level employee to test out if they would get arrested when they traveled there. And then once they didn't get arrested, they realized the coast was clear so they could send Mark on his little tour.

[Vspier]

This is stupid.

[Sammy Sage]

They basically perceive an employee arrest as the cost of doing business.

[Vspier]

Did anybody, like, did this happen a lot?

[Sammy Sage]

Like, so there was an. There was an employee that was sent to jail in Brazil as a result of the company's actions. Mark then puts up a whole Facebook post about how amazing this employee is that he would sacrifice for the company's mission. He calls it a heartwarming story, this employee being in jail. Then a while later, Mark and this employee, who is now the company's vice president of Latin America. Okay, they're together in Peru at. At, like, a conference, and they're. And the. That guy obviously wants to meet Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg snubs him because he's too busy chasing Xi Jinping around. Mark Zuckerberg tried to arrange to have his, like, green room staging area next to Xi Jinping so that he could have a run in with him.

[Vspier]

Oh, my God.

[Sammy Sage]

Because he was just. Just the one session with him.

[Vspier]

He wants a little meet cute, a little hallmark moment with Xi Jinping.

[Sammy Sage]

Exactly. And what Xi Jinping did was he had his guards build a wall of people so that Mark Zuckerberg he could walk in without Mark Zuckerberg getting to him.

[Vspier]

Oh, my God. That's crazy. I would. Okay, number one, has Mark Zuckerberg never seen the Claire Danes movie Broken down Palace? You don't send Americans to get arrested in other countries and think it's going to turn out okay.

[Sammy Sage]

No, I think he doesn't care if it turns out okay.

[Vspier]

He doesn't care. Okay. That movie scared me so bad. I didn't get a passport till I was like, 25. And the obsession with Xi Jinping and creating a wall around him is truly wild. Like the great wall of China security, literally.

[Sammy Sage]

He was really desperate to get a photo with Xi Jinping at one point. He did post a photo of him and Xi Jinping, but he violated. In another example of their cultural insensitivity, he violated the norms by posting a photo where it's. It was him from face on and Xi from the Behind. And that's like a big no, no.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

But he did it anyway to top that. At a state dinner at the White House, he once asked Xi Jinping in Mandarin if Xi would do him the honor of naming his unborn child for him. What? The most embarrassing part is that Xi Jinping declined.

[Vspier]

That's crazy. Number one. Number two, I know that Mark Zuckerberg is married to Priscilla Chan. Does he just. Does he have like a. Is this like a fetish thing for him? Like, what is his obsession?

[Sammy Sage]

My understanding with China is it's about growth. For Facebook, it's actually, you know, I can talk about that now. He is dying to get into China because of the growth potential. There's a whole three year longer project called Project Aldrin that. That was what they named their approach again to China. They would. And this is. The author basically said her line was that even though she was working on pretty much every foreign country in their department was growing so that people were taking different regions. She refused to work on China. She's like, I won't get mixed up in that.

[Vspier]

No.

[Sammy Sage]

Because she knew that. That it was really walking a line. It's illegal in the United States that they would have to make concessions to the CCP in order to be operating there. Which is also brings up why TikTok was so problematic. But they so badly wanted to get into China that they would make compromises to assist the CCP around content moderation, suspending activist accounts, like building software for them to help them censor and giving them data access. She was also tasked with hiring the company's lead in China. And basically because they can't technically operate, but they would find other ways to operate, they would hire people. They, China was their largest, second largest market and had and provided 10% of their revenue because advertisers were buying it, buying ads out Chinese advertisers were buying ads outside China. So they were like, this is so much money at stake that they is on the table. And they're also. Because they're a public company or because they became one. Like the stock price, it's not just driven by like the absolute profits, it's driven by the stock price and people belief about how the company will do and will it be able to have this growth. Right. And they had office space there. They basically like were fully operating there. They knew they were illicitly operating and they misled Congress about it. She also describes how they prepared for their congressional hearings and essentially that the lawmakers would have to know how to word a Question. Exactly. In order to get the true answer, which is not possible because it's like a very technical.

[Vspier]

For those.

[Sammy Sage]

Remember the situation I talked about in Peru with Xi Jinping? So that was a conference in Peru, and at the time, there was a risk of Zika to anyone who wanted to get pregnant.

[Vspier]

Oh, right.

[Sammy Sage]

And Mark wanted to have a baby at this time.

[Vspier]

Right.

[Sammy Sage]

So he had the conference construct a private Zika bubble on site so that he would not have to risk being around mosquitoes. But he left the Zika bubble at one point so that he could meet Obama.

[Vspier]

Oh, my God.

[Sammy Sage]

And this meeting arguably changed the course of history, similar to how the White House Correspondents dinner did when Obama made the joke about Trump. And it was. It was ultimately through his interactions with world leaders and wanting to kind of get the shine of being as powerful as one of them that he got into politics. Like. Like I said, the author had to convince them that politics was relevant to them at all as a whole company. And he took basically no interest in politics or anything until one day he went on a trip to Indonesia. He took this big trip to Southeast Asia, to Asia. And he was doing one of these tours with the Indonesian president elect, who was very popular. And Zuckerberg just loved the thrill of the fandom. She tells this story where he wanted to set up a situation where he could be, like, gently mobbed, like a beloved world leader. And he just loved it. She said he kept going on about, like, how big the crowd was. And after that, he wanted to be positioned near and similarly to these world leaders.

[Vspier]

And this was the t. This was the making of the political celebrity. That wasn't a Kennedy, though, also, because back in 2012, even, which I imagine is around the time that this is happening, he Facebook did big parties for the dnc, huge parties for the rnc. They were, like, very involved with politics in trying to get, like, young, cool stuff going on with them.

[Sammy Sage]

Like, I don't know if that was about politics as much as share as about culture. Culture.

[Vspier]

They were, like, about culture. Right. But it was about the creation of the political celebrity. Right. Obama was really a political celebrity, and then it became, like, cool to be a politician. And now we see politicians broadly act like celebrities. They do cameo. They do, like, all kind. They write books and go on book tours, and they act like celebrities in a way that's very different. They have podcasts in a way that's very different from the way that it was before.

[Sammy Sage]

Mark Zuckerberg and Trump have way more in common than I realized.

[Vspier]

Bad poofy hair.

[Sammy Sage]

That bad style. Okay.

[Vspier]

Weird tans.

[Sammy Sage]

So Zuckerberg's favorite president, I learned, is Andrew Jackson.

[Vspier]

No. Yeah, they. They again. And I will blame musical theater. I don't know if he saw the play, but he might have. Broadway came out with a musical in the early 2000s called Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson that very much painted Andrew Jackson as this, like, cool guy who got orphaned at nine years old and, like, fucking ride or die, man. He could do whatever he wanted. He was like a rock star. They completely left out all the bad stuff about him and just made it about this, like, deeply flawed cool guy that nobody understands and, like, the ways that he improved this country because he was such a patriot and whatnot. Now, I'm going to blame the musical for why Mark Zuckerberg likes him, but.

[Sammy Sage]

I. I really hope that by the end of this era, we do not. I really.

[Vspier]

Hopeless cruelty.

[Sammy Sage]

I really hope that by the end of this era we do not end up with a play about how Hitler.

[Vspier]

Had a painting career and loved dogs and was vegetarian. Yeah, all of that shit. That's the thing. This Bloody, bloody Andrew Jackson should have never been made, but it was at the time widely accepted. They did it on the Tonys. Now you don't see it show up anymore, so go looking for it.

[Sammy Sage]

But interesting bad ideas. Well, they called it Bloody Bloody for.

[Vspier]

Bloody bloody Andrew Jackson. Yeah. But it was about how he was just like, this genius guy and he was like a rebel. It was very, like, pop punk musical.

[Sammy Sage]

Right. Which is very much fight, fight, fight.

[Vspier]

Propaganda. Propaganda from the musical theater people.

[Sammy Sage]

Yes, indeed. But, okay, so Zuckerberg was really taken by this crowd size thing, much like our friend, this demand for endless growth, this obsession with size and raw power. In 2017, Zuckerberg supposedly was running, considering running for president, and he said he wanted to travel to all the swing states because once he saw that Trump could do it. Yeah, he thought that he could too. He also, and I think this is very interesting, he dug in especially hard that Facebook did not change the 2016 election after Obama essentially dressed him down in a private interaction, the one where he escaped the Zika bubble to go meet with him and Obama told him that he wasn't taking misinformation and fake news on the platform seriously enough and that it was. Was playing a destructive role globally. He said this to him after the 2016 election, and he was supposedly really, really mad, and that, like, made him double down. And what's crazy is that all of this, so much of this book revolved around a guy who also was trying to stop the 2000 election from being counted. It's like they all come from the same. They all come from the same hovel.

[Vspier]

Yeah, yeah. A hovel. No, it's because they. They think populism is, like, cool and makes counterculture interesting. It's also why they like Andrew Jackson and that musical, which has a song, a number called Populism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But in all of this, right? And we know that there's so much more to this book. People should read it. It's called Careless People because it gets into the nitty gritty of some of the other, like, fuckery that he did.

[Sammy Sage]

Like how they make deals with foreign leaders to evade taxes, reduce their taxes. Oh, and all the details of what happened in Myanmar. Like how they. The moderate, they had no content moderation during this, during the war, and they also couldn't see the Burmese characters anywhere outside of Myanmar. It just was so careless. And yet they're hiring swaths of people to work in China.

[Vspier]

Well, what I'm. What I'm missing from this story, and I'm leaning in to ask, where is Sheryl Sandberg?

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, wow. There are so many weird things about her in it.

[Vspier]

They talk about her in it too, a lot.

[Sammy Sage]

I mean, she seems quite different from Mark. Very much the adult in the room. Very charming.

[Vspier]

She's, like 20 years older. Yeah, yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

And she's able to turn the charm on and off at will.

[Vspier]

Okay.

[Sammy Sage]

Very much so. What they do seem to have in common is a big star energy.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

There are so many anecdotes of them both wanting to use their position or their events to get pictures with certain people or promote their fan foundations or their books or whatever. But really, especially her. Ultimately, she no longer is at Facebook because of, in part, accusations that she had misused company resources for her own benefit.

[Vspier]

The lean in. The lean in shtick.

[Sammy Sage]

I mean, that is. It doesn't seem like it was really all that, that she claimed it was.

[Vspier]

I thought it was weird that she had this, like, lean in, like, listen to me thing when she was obviously, like, wildly powerful. Like, it wasn't like she was some meek leader from behind, like, silent figure person.

[Sammy Sage]

I mean, her whole thing is about how women should kind of bring their whole selves to work and they should, like, try. Was that what it was? And. And how Facebook was so good to mothers. And basically what you learn from the story is that they are. Everyone at Facebook is expected to parent invisibly.

[Vspier]

Right.

[Sammy Sage]

The way she told the Way she told the story, like, they basically were like, you have to get a nanny again. Filipina nanny.

[Vspier]

As a. Right. As a person who worked at a startup, I'm going to tell you, the executives say that shit. They say, bring your whole self. We bring our kids, we bring our dogs. And then fucking. People like me who were low on the totem pole end up babysitting, nannying, and cleaning up dog piss all day in addition to your job. Because they've brought their whole self to work. And the folks making, like, $42,000 a year are like, I guess I'm the nanny now. Because you want to do everything you can to please those higher ups, but it never ends up working out for you. I lasted about six months at this job. It did not go well.

[Sammy Sage]

Startup life. I would not say startup life.

[Vspier]

I'm glad I did it for the culture. But, yeah, when they say bring your whole self, they mean. And then dump it on other people.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah. And it's. I mean, I think what their thing is. They didn't mean bring your whole self at all. It was like, pretend that none of that exists and only work all the time.

[Vspier]

It was.

[Sammy Sage]

It was like. It wasn't even saying that. It was like they basically even. She basically said, like, I put everything ahead.

[Vspier]

Yeah, because they're looking for that dopamine hit. They're looking for that next thing. What's coming in on the BlackBerry? What is being tweeted about? How many users do we have today? What foreign leader am I meeting with? What cool activation do I have? Who's the new hire? Who's got fired? All of that is like a dopamine adrenaline rush for them. So they want to be in that zone the whole time. That's why they started doing, like, kitchens. This is what I learned in my chef world when we started doing kitchens for Google and everybody else. It was to keep them there longer because it was like, oh, my needs are met. My needs are met. I have a. I live in a company town. Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, absolutely. They would do their dry cleaning. Like, makes it easy for them to be there. So the story that's getting a lot of tabloid play is that Sheryl Sandberg, sort of Sandberg, commanded the author to, like, come to bed with her on their private jet while they were flying overnight. She'd said that her assistant had slept over many times, but she kept refusing. Cause she, like, had to do work overnight, which was true. And then after that, her relationship with Cheryl was never the same. Because Cheryl had, quote, unspoken rules about Obedience and closeness and people closest to her were rewarded. And there's this one anecdote that I'm just gonna read exactly what it said in the book and you tell me how you interpret this.

[Vspier]

I'm already getting like scrunchy heiny. I'm already scared.

[Sammy Sage]

So. So she bought her. So she instructed her assistant to buy lingerie for both of them. The assistant buys $13,000 worth of lingerie, 3,000 for herself and 10,000 for Cheryl. And this is the passage when Sadie, the assistant tries on one of the bras that Cheryl purchased for the first time. She emails her, this bra is incredibly beautiful and fits perfectly. So grateful. This is my breast equivalent of flying privately for the first time. Cheryl responds, happy to treat your breasts as they should be treated. Sadie confides that she never spent this much on a single item of underwear in her life, messaging Cheryl that the experience is a total Pretty Woman moment. I feel like the fanciest 26 year old in the world. Cheryl responds by asking her 26 year old assistant to come over to her house to try on the underwear and have dinner. Later, the invite becomes one to stay over. At times. Shady Sadie shares with me how stressed she is about her relationship with Cheryl. I urge her to find a new job where her life would be less enmeshed with Cheryl's. She says she shared her concerns with Elliot, their boss and another senior manager, and they've also counseled her to escape from Cheryl. Girl, what are you reading about that?

[Vspier]

Look, there are other ways to show appreciation for your assistant and this is not one. And this is where they say like, oh, men are creepy. If a man did this, you know, it'd be very obviously creepy because it's her. It's like, oh, it's a sisterhood lovely thing. No, I think it's creepy. Although I did have a boss who bought me Tom Ford sunglasses after making me cry one time. So I'm all for getting really expensive gifts from your fancy rich bosses, just not underwear that you have to try on for them. But like, buy him some Tom Ford sunglasses. Buy him some Tory Burch flip flops. Buy him like even buying them a massage I think is a little bit too much because now we're getting into intimate spa care type we're not there at the massage. I'm just saying it's a little like, okay, but. But this. To say your breasts deserve to fly private is just. I can't stand.

[Sammy Sage]

He invited her over.

[Vspier]

No, I'm too. I would die. I would absolutely. Here's the thing, there are a lot of things that I can handle in life. Being uncomfortable with, like, an older woman doing something weird. Sex at me. It's like, as a lesbian, you would think I'd have experience with this. I don't. I freeze and panic and cry every single time. I cannot. I cannot imagine being this girl. And I'm sure our listeners have stories about weird shit that happened. And like I said, she bought me Tom Ford sunglasses after making me cry.

[Sammy Sage]

This is like, the gossipy part of it.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

I mean, maybe not depending on what actually happened, but the fact is that there's quite irresponsible people running quite a.

[Vspier]

Consequential platform, people who are missing intimacy and a personal life because they've made their work their entire life. And those. Those boundaries blend too much. And now you're doing sleepovers with your assistant and treating each other like maybe best gal pals or even dating partners in a little bit of an intimacy way here. But, like, that is a direct symptom of the root cause of you not having a separation of your personal and business life. And that's bad.

[Sammy Sage]

Yes. And benefits the company.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

Anyway, let's go return to our personal lives and get off this recording.

[Vspier]

I know. I'm gonna go, like, you know, watch myself in holy water after that one. Everybody say three more Hail Marys. Up next, we have longtime pal of mine and news communicator. He does all the Spanish language news on TikTok and YouTube. He's been called the One Man Telemundo, and he's going to give us a real look at how things in reporting on immigration are going. Up next, Carlos Eduarda Espina. Okay, friends, we have a very special guest. I have had the honor of being friends with Carlos Eduardo Espina for just about a year now. We've met, I believe, the first time in, like, the Oval Office or something. Like, Carlos has been in some really incredible rooms, and he is one of the pioneers when it comes to Spanish language news communication. He's been called the One Man Telemundo by some folks who know news best. Welcome to the show, Carlos.

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

Oh, nice to be here. And thank you for having me. I'm really excited.

[Vspier]

I'm excited to have you here, too, because a lot of what we've been talking about on American Fever Dream is the fact that like. Like, our systems aren't just failing, but also we're being kept from them. And one of the biggest things that's happening right now is, like, censorship, bad information flooding the Zone, especially as it relates to immigration and what's going on in that kind of sector. I wanted to give you an opportunity to first tell people where they can find you, because I think there's a lot of folks who watch this show who probably would love to send your content to their moms and whatnot, who maybe would be more interested in hearing it straight great from you. And also, what do you think is like, the biggest danger that you're facing right now in covering immigration?

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

Yeah, so first off, you can find me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, basically any platform as Carlos Eduardo Spina. That's just my name. You look me up and I make content in Spanish about immigration, social issues, politics, and a little bit of everything. But, yeah, I think the biggest issue we're facing right now is when you have misinformation and disinformation and just outright lies coming straight from the government. I'm trying to tell everyone, you know, we should be questioning the narratives that the Trump administration is putting out. One very big example is when they started sending immigrants to Guantanamo. They came out and even Trump came out and said, you know, we're sending the worst of the worst. We're sending murderers and all these horrible people to Guantanamo. And many people believe it. Oh, the government's saying it's true. And then I made a video about the first people that got to Guantanamo and I started reading my comments and a couple people were like, hey, those are my family members there, and they haven't murdered anyone or done any of this. So I started digging into it, you know, verified the information, passed it off to some, you know, traditional media sources. The New York Times ended up running a story about how the people, you know, being sent to Guantanamo weren't actually the dangerous, violent murderers that the Trump administration was saying. It became this whole thing. And then eventually, eventually they were like, yeah, actually, you know, we've been sending some people that don't are not high risk immigrants, as they call them, but, you know, it's still okay to send them there. So then the narrative starts to break and people are like, oh, wait, maybe they're not what they were saying. And now we're seeing it again. Yesterday they sent 200 something people to El Salvador saying they're the worst of the worst, this and that. And we're already starting to get stories that it's not actually the case. So, yeah, that's what I always try to encourage. People really challenge these narratives. And, you know, we would hope that the government tells us the truth. History has shown Us that's not always the case, and especially in this moment.

[Vspier]

So that's the kind of stuff I'm super interested in. Right. Because if it wasn't for you posting it where people could identify, hey, that's my family member, like, that's not the. The news is lying, essentially the administration is lying about who these people are. We might not have caught this, maybe at all. What are some other things that you think maybe the general news watching audience isn't getting right now that you're finding in the work that you do?

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

You know, it's very troubling to see a lot of traditional media just kind of accept what the Trump administration is saying. I mean, yesterday, for example, when they sent 200 something people to El Salvador because supposedly they're horrible gang members and, you know, it's starting to come out similar to Guantanamo, that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. But you see all these headlines, you know, gangster sent to El Salvador, horrible criminal, and all this, and I'm like, you know, we have to really challenge the narrative. And okay, if they are, you know, horrible gangsters that have murdered people, then where's the proof? You can't just send people with no due process and then label them as this. And then everyone just accepts. Accepts it as reality. So I think that's really what we need to be doing, especially when there's just such an imbalance of power. The government, the state has all these official channels to, you know, disseminate their version, and the families who are being affected really have no other means other than social media. Try to reach out to a content creator like myself or maybe some news outlet to pick up the story. But even then there's just such an imbalance of power that I think we need to be really careful when we just blindly follow the narratives that the government is putting out in these moments. I mean, even you look early on he said, oh, we're only gonna go and arrest the worst of the worst, the criminals, the rapists. All these initial. Now you're seeing the statistics show that over 50% of those who have been arrested in ICE raid so far have no criminal record other than haven't entered the country legally. Many have been here for 10, 15, 20 years, working, paying taxes. So that's not really adding up with the whole, you know, violent criminals narrative.

[Vspier]

Yeah, and, you know, we're seeing stuff where anybody who thought this wasn't going to come to their door, it is coming to their door. There was a doctor who's a professor at Bradford Brown University, a transplant surgeon who was just deported. Coming into Logan Airport, there was another guy from Luxembourg who had gone home to visit his mother, who's been a green card holder since 2008. He was detained and actually ended up having to go to the hospital because of how dire the conditions in detainment were in Massachusetts. This isn't these worst of the worst criminals and sending them to Louisiana or Texas. This is like, Massachusetts, liberal state, and it's happening there as well. How do you think that the Latino and Hispanic community is preparing for this new wave of, like, surveillance and lack of due process and, you know, discrimination and attack right now?

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

Well, I think the first thing that's happening is a lot of people are recognizing, like you said, you're saying, that they're not protected. Unfortunately, there are, you know, many Latinos who voted for this guy or supported him even though they couldn't vote, you know, telling family members to vote for him, thinking he was only going to go for the worst of the worst. Now, we've seen cases of Latinos who voted for Trump, who are citizens and who have been picked up by ice. We've seen Puerto Ricans. I mean, it's just. It's getting out of control. And I think the first thing that we're seeing is people waking up and being like, oh, shit, maybe I messed up, and maybe I do need to prepare. And a lot of people didn't prepare thinking it would never get to them, but now that it has, you know, obviously the basics of knowing your rights and all that, but the big issue is, is what does knowing your rights do if the government is outright violating those rights? I mean, they say don't open your door, don't, you know, answer questions, but then they come in busting to your house, they're using tear gas. I mean, so I think right now we're really just trying to figure out, like, what the hell is going on. You know, we've been thinking the government traditionally follows court orders, follows the law anymore, not anymore. So I think right now it's really a lot of uncertainty. And I can't come out here and say I have the answers because, frankly, I don't. This is like new terrain, uncharted territory.

[Vspier]

I know, it's. It's wild. And we certainly couldn't have expected that the Trump administration knows or cares the difference between a Puerto Rican citizen, a Mexican immigrant, somebody who's a green card holder from Spain. Like, they don't care. They're like, this is basically like a skin color test. And we're just gonna shake you down and harass you and assume that you're a gang leader if you're not, not pure, pure, perfect, white looking to them. What are the ways that people can be, like, best supporting their local community right now and standing up against this grave, indecent indecency?

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

Well, I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I'm telling people right now there really is nothing you can do in the moment. Like, it is what it is. Like they're doing what they're doing. I think the best thing we can do is educate ourselves as a community, and next time elections come around, be a little bit, bit, you know, more intelligent with our vote to put it lightly and, you know, limit the powers that they have. But right now, with control of the House, the Senate, the executive branch, many of the courts, I. I can't tell people, hey, do this and you'll be fine. Because realistically, there's nothing you can do to be fine in these moments. And that's just the reality we have to accept. We put this guy into power. Well, I mean, not me, but collectively, as a society, we put him into power. And now we just have to take it as it is and. And, you know, write it out. And then in two years when there's midterms, you know, we're hoping that all of this kind of awakens our community, and not just our community, obviously. We're talking everyone.

[Vspier]

Yeah.

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

You know, everyone in general. And like I said, we'll be a little bit more intelligent with our vote. And then after maybe Democrats are able to recover the House and potentially the Senate, then we can see, okay, what can be done. But right now, there really is. I think that's the scary thing. Many solid core to the guardrail, but yesterday they just started blatantly ignoring the courts. So what do we do now? I don't think there is much we can do.

[Vspier]

I know, using military planes and whatnot, too. Like, it's not even like the commercial airlines can try to stop it. It's a scary thought, but I'm glad that you're being honest and saying it is. Sometimes we just, like, are in the shit, and. And that's where we are. And so what can we do? Next comes later.

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

Yeah, and I get a lot of criticism. You know, some people are like, oh, your content is, like, so negative. Like, you know, give us some optimism. I can't. Like, I can't lie to you. I can't tell you everything's going to be Fine, when it. When it's not going to be fine. And like we said, many of us thought, oh, knowing your rights and all this is going to protect you. We've now seen two months in, there is no regard for your rights. There is no regard for, you know, established precedent. There is no regard for anything, really. It's. People don't seem to realize Trump put a quota. He said, Ice, I need you to arrest 1500 people a day. And that's what it's going to be and doesn't matter to them. You know, if you're a U.S. citizen, if you're this or you're that, you're. People are getting caught up. Many people who thought it would never affect them, but it is affecting them now, and that's the reality we're living, and we have to adapt to it and then prepare better for the future.

[Vspier]

What made you want to get into the news business, Carlos? What were you doing?

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

Before I graduated college or University in 2020, I went to Vassar College in New York, graduated in 2020, and I was going to work in a nonprofit organization, but that fell through because of the pandemic. So while I was figuring out what to do, I started teaching citizenship classes on. On TikTok and Facebook. And at that point, I was, like, the only person making content in Spanish for Latinos here in the United States. And so when I ran out, you know, of the citizenship questions, people were like, well, we want more content. And I just started sharing, you know, the news that was going on at that point. It was the end of Trump's first term and going into the 2020 elections, and I never presented myself as a journalist or even a news reporter. I just say, hey, I'm more of, like a political commentator. This is the news, and I think this is good. I think this is bad, or I think this is a bit more complicated than it seems. And I guess people just liked, you know, the way I. I view the world, the way I express myself, and it just kind of went from there. And really, everything that I share, stuff that I read and I. I care about deeply, and I think, hey, you know, maybe other people, people care about it, too. And clearly it seems that they do.

[Vspier]

Yeah, they sure do. Well, Carlos, thank you for taking the time to come and chat with us. You're welcome back anytime. And folks can find him at Carlos Eduardo Espina on all channels. I follow your content. I speak not great Spanish, but I follow your content anyway, because I just will do literally anything to boost you. You're like, the best in the world. And folks are lucky to have you, and we're lucky to have you here today. So thank you for sharing with us.

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

We're friends in the Pew Research center poll.

[Vspier]

Yes, we are. I. I always get excited. I look for, like, a couple people's names. Right. When they talk about news communicators online, I'm like, okay, where's Carlos? Where's Harry? Where's Brian? Right. So to see.

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

But, no, keep up the good work. We'll be in touch. And.

[Vspier]

Awesome.

[Carlos Eduardo Espina]

We have a long road ahead of us, so.

[Vspier]

I know. All right. Thanks, Carlos. Until next time. I'm Vspier.

[Sammy Sage]

And I'm Sammy Sage.

[Vspier]

And this is American Fever Dream.

[Sammy Sage]

Betches.