It Could Happen Here Weekly 162

Summary

Behind the Bastards - "It Could Happen Here Weekly 162" Summary

Release Date: December 28, 2024

Introduction

In Episode 162 of "It Could Happen Here," host James Stout engages in deep conversations covering diverse and impactful topics. From military missions in Lebanon to the decline of music festivals and the pervasive issue of stalkerware, this episode delves into the complexities of power, control, and societal changes.

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1. Inside UNIFIL: Experiences and Challenges in Lebanon

Guest: Kevin McDonald, former Senior Officer in the Irish Defence Forces with Special Forces experience.

Discussion Points:

• Deployment to Lebanon: Kevin McDonald explains how the Irish Defence Forces have been integral to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) since 1978. He highlights the voluntary nature of deployments, though some personnel are mandatorily selected based on skill sets (04:31).

• Simone Boyce’s Testimonies: Simone Boyce shares her personal experiences, deploying as a private soldier in 1984 and later as an unarmed military observer during the 2006 war. She recounts the harrowing events of July 2006 when UNIFIL posts were targeted, resulting in the loss of 48 Irish troops (05:30).

  • Notable Quote:
    Simone Boyce (06:06): "Lebanon was always well regarded by the Irish Defence Forces because it exposed troops to new cultures and danger, providing invaluable leadership experience."

• Interactions with Other Nations: The episode explores the multinational nature of UNIFIL, detailing interactions with forces from Fiji, Finland, France, Norway, Senegal, Canada, and India (08:02).

• Tripartite Agreement and Hezbollah: Kevin discusses the complexities of the tripartite agreement between Lebanon, Israel, and UNIFIL. He emphasizes UNIFIL's role as a peacekeeping mission with limited offensive capabilities, often constrained by Hezbollah's entrenched presence and the sectarian divisions within Lebanon (09:50).

  • Notable Quote:
    Kevin McDonald (09:50): "When both parties complain about you, it indicates that UNIFIL is at least doing something significant."

• Strategic Limitations: The conversation delves into UNIFIL’s rules of engagement, their reliance on support from nations like the UK, US, and France, and the challenges posed by uneven equipment and the evolving tactics of Hezbollah (35:22).

Insights & Conclusions:

The discussion underscores the precarious balance UNIFIL maintains in Lebanon, navigating geopolitical tensions, sectarianism, and limited resources. The personal accounts reveal the emotional and physical toll on peacekeepers, highlighting the mission's inherent dangers and the broader geopolitical implications.

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2. The Decline of Music Festivals: Causes and Consequences

Discussion Points:

• Historical Context: The hosts trace the evolution of music festivals from ancient Greece’s Python Games to the modern era, emphasizing their role in cultural and societal shifts (16:00).

• Rising Costs and Corporate Takeover: A significant factor in the decline is the skyrocketing ticket prices, which have increased by 55% since 2014, outpacing inflation (134:12). Corporate ownership, such as Live Nation and Ticketmaster, has marginalized smaller venues and niche festivals, making it financially unsustainable for diverse acts (144:58).

  • Notable Quote:
    James Stout (135:00): "In 2014, general admission prices for major music festivals increased by 55%, making them unaffordable for many and shifting control to corporate entities."

• Impact of COVID-19: The pandemic led to widespread cancellations, financial strain, and a loss of momentum for music festivals. Even after lifting restrictions, pent-up demand struggled against changed consumer behaviors and economic challenges (152:29).

• Changing Demographics and Interests: The next generation, particularly Gen Z, exhibits anxiety, lower spending on events, and a preference for digital engagement over in-person gatherings. This shift has reduced the traditional audience base for festivals (145:22).

• Climate Change: Extreme weather events, such as excessive heat and flooding, have made outdoor festivals more challenging to organize and attend, further contributing to their decline (175:56).

• Algorithmic Influence: The rise of streaming platforms and algorithm-driven music discovery has narrowed musical diversity, making festivals less appealing as a means of discovering new artists (152:13).

Insights & Conclusions:

The decline of music festivals is attributed to a convergence of economic pressures, corporate consolidation, the aftermath of the pandemic, generational shifts, and environmental challenges. These factors have collectively eroded the traditional festival experience, making them less viable and appealing in the current socio-economic landscape.

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3. Combating Stalkerware: Protecting Privacy and Preventing Abuse

Guests: Garrison Davis, cybersecurity expert specializing in stalkerware.

Discussion Points:

• Understanding Stalkerware: Stalkerware encompasses software marketed as parental control tools but is frequently exploited for spying on partners. These apps track locations, intercept messages, and monitor activities, often without the user's consent (155:08).

  • Notable Quote:
    Garrison Davis (155:08): "Stalkerware should not just be seen as parental control but as a tool for abuse, allowing abusers to control and monitor their victims."

• Legal Implications: Many regions have stringent laws against unauthorized surveillance. However, the loopholes allowing the use of required software for children's protection complicate enforcement (155:40).

• Detection and Prevention: Garrison advises disabling app notifications, using tools to detect installed stalkerware, and consulting professionals if abuse is suspected. Awareness and proactive measures are crucial in combating stalkerware (159:24).

  • Notable Quote:
    Garrison Davis (162:16): "Awareness is the first step in combating stalkerware. Educate yourself and others about the signs and tools available to detect unauthorized monitoring."

• Industry Accountability: The pervasive use of affiliate marketing by stalkerware companies finances and perpetuates the industry. Garrison emphasizes the need for grassroots efforts to report and disrupt these operations, advocating for legislative changes to restrict their advertising and functionality (176:46).

Insights & Conclusions:

Stalkerware represents a significant threat to personal privacy and is a tool for domestic abuse. Combating it requires a multifaceted approach involving awareness, legal action, technological solutions, and societal support. The conversation highlights the urgent need to address stalkerware through both individual vigilance and systemic change.

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Conclusion

Episode 162 of "It Could Happen Here" provides a comprehensive exploration of pressing issues ranging from international peacekeeping missions to the societal implications of declining music festivals and the hidden dangers of stalkerware. Through insightful interviews and discussions, the episode underscores the intricate interplay between power, control, and societal transformation, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of how such dynamics could unfold in various contexts.

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Notable Quotes:

• Simone Boyce (06:06): "Lebanon was always well regarded by the Irish Defence Forces because it exposed troops to new cultures and danger, providing invaluable leadership experience."

• Kevin McDonald (09:50): "When both parties complain about you, it indicates that UNIFIL is at least doing something significant."

• Simone Boyce (07:19): "We have lost 48 troops killed in Lebanon."

• Garrison Davis (155:08): "Stalkerware should not just be seen as parental control but as a tool for abuse, allowing abusers to control and monitor their victims."

• Garrison Davis (162:16): "Awareness is the first step in combating stalkerware. Educate yourself and others about the signs and tools available to detect unauthorized monitoring."

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Note: This summary excludes all advertisement segments and focuses solely on the primary content discussions to provide a clear and comprehensive overview of the episode’s key points and insights.

Transcript

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[Mia Wong]

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that Joe 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 going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

[Kevin McDonald]

Hi everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's me, James, and I'm joined Today by Kevin McDonald who previously served as a senior officer in the Irish Defence Forces with Special Forces experience and has significant experience working all over the world after that with the United nations and other organizations. And Kevin, welcome to the show.

[Simone Boyce]

I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, hopefully I've done a good job introducing you. I'm always terrible at that.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

What we thought we'd talk about today, Kevin, is you've significant experience in Lebanon with unifil. And I think obviously when we've spoken about this before, we've spoken about it from a, sort of looking at it from above strategic level, but what we've not spoken about is what it looks like on the ground. So hopefully you can give us some insight into that, especially having been there both as like an enlisted soldier and as an officer. I think.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

Can you explain? At first, I think there's been a lot of confusion or misinformation about like how did these Irish, if we, if we look at the Irish soldiers, that's, that's the one you've obviously the most experience with. How do they end up deployed to Lebanon? Is it a voluntary thing? Do they sort of say, put their hand up and say I want to do this or is it your units going, so, so you're going.

[Simone Boyce]

Okay. Well just I suppose as, as a brief reminder to, to your, your listeners. UNIFIL is the United nations interim force in Lebanon and it's been interim since 1978 when it started. First, the Irish were one of the first countries to sign up to, to deploy a battalion there. And we had a battalion in Lebanon from 1978 until 2000. And in 2000, the Israelis withdrew from what they called a security zone, about like a 10 kilometer buffer zone in, in southern Lebanon. So when they did that and retreated to the frontier between the two countries, Ireland departed Its battalion, it left a few staff officers there, but. But it didn't supply a battalion anymore. It was concentrating on the missions in Syria and other places. And then after the 2006 war, they were asked to come back with a battalion and we've been there ever since with an infantry battalion. In relation to your question about is it a volunteer mission? It. It is for most people. However, there have been people who will be what's known as mandatory selected if they have certain skill sets, whether it be a doctor, whether it be whatever it happens to be. If, you know, if the army can't get sufficient volunteers, then they will mandatory select. But generally speaking, certainly in the early years, it was actually quite difficult to get to become a volunteer for Lebanon because so many people wanted to go there because there is, you know, there's a bit of financial incentive to do that as well. I deployed there as a private soldier in 1984. I wasn't even 12 months in the army at that stage.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, wow.

[Simone Boyce]

And within two months I was made an acting corporal. So then I went back as an officer in 1993 where we had a seven day war, Operation Accountability.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

I was back in 1996 as an officer for another seven day war, Operation Grapes of Wrath. And I ended up there with my family as an unarmed military observer in 2006 for the. A full 34 days of, of carnage.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So, yeah, Lebanon was always well regarded by the Irish Defense Forces because it, it did a couple of things. It exposed troops to not just new cultures and new areas, but it, it exposed them to danger as well.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And it also gave a chance for young NCOs and young officers to, to physically lead their troops in a challenging environment, which you don't always get. You know, when you're at home in Ireland or with the UK or whatever, you don't always get that type of leadership experience.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Plus you're exposed to other cultures, whether it be the Nordic countries or, you know, you're exposed to different ways of operating. And yeah, all in all, it's been, it's been a positive experience. But I would point out that since we started there, we've lost 48 troops killed in Lebanon.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, that's because not an insignificant amount, especially considering like the Irish Defense Forces are much smaller than when people are more familiar with the U.S. military. Right. Which is more than a million people. You know, 48 is a significant amount. You talked about how it exposes you to other cultures and obviously one of them is like the Lebanese people, but it's a very international deployment. Right. It's not. You're not just sort of sitting there on your Irish base with. With Irish Defence Forces. People are not interacting with other militaries. So can you explain, like, some of the other countries that have this long history there?

[Simone Boyce]

When I went there in 1984, there was a battalion from Fiji, Finland, France, Ghana, ourselves, the Netherlands, Norway, and Senegal.

[Kevin McDonald]

Wow.

[Simone Boyce]

With a strength at the time of about 6,000. When I was there as an unarmed military observer with unso, which is a different mission, the strength had dropped to 2000 in 2006 with just two battalions, a Canadian battalion and an Indian battalion. And now, essentially, since after the war in 2006, they started building up, there's probably about 10,000 troops there at the moment. There isn't a huge interaction at the battalion level between different nations. In other words, a battalion will have its own area of responsibility. It's responsible for patrolling in that area.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Now, with the likes of onso, that you're much more exposed to other armies, other nationalities, because essentially every time you go patrolling, you can't. Like, two Irish officers couldn't patrol together because if they see an infringement, whether it's a firing clause, whether it's one side sending drones into Lebanon or the other side sending Katusha rockets into Israel, they're all violations. Yeah, but to record it as a violation, you can't have two people from the same country. So, okay. You're much more exposed, as I said, to foreign nationalities.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah. And there's certainly a lot of national. I know the Indonesians are there now, and the contingent from India. When people talk about UNIFIL now a lot, you'll see one of two accusations. Right. You'll see that they're either, like, there as allies of Hezbollah in Lebanon, which not the case, or you'll see that they're there as observers for the IDF or spies for the idf. And, like, obviously, the fact that they're being accused of both probably suggests that they are neither, because it would be fairly obvious if they were. But can you explain the tripartite agreement? It seems to me like that might make it difficult to do the things that UNIFIL is supposed to be doing. Is that fair?

[Simone Boyce]

No, I think it's. I think it's a fair assessment. And if. If you're. If both sides are complaining about you, as you say, it probably does indicate that you're. You're at least doing something. Right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So unifil, it's a. It's a peacekeeping mission. And they're there with the agreement of both parties. So in other words, the Lebanese government and the Israeli government have agreed that UNIFIL be established in Lebanon. Yeah, that's the first thing to point out. The second thing, which is kind of contentious now, especially with the extent of Hezbollah's tunnels is being exposed, is that there's a lot of generally misinformed chatter about what UNIFIL can and cannot do. So after the 2006 war, Resolution 1701 was enforced or was brought in to develop more thoroughly the mandate for what UNIFIL can and cannot do, and one of the stated paragraphs is that UNIFIL will assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of, between the Blue Line and the Litany river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL deployed in this area. And this is one of the failings. But it should be pointed out that it's the responsibility of the LAF of the Lebanese Armed Forces to instigate it. Supported by unifil, not UNIFIL going in looking for arms and weapons supported by the laugh. It's the other way around. And one of the difficulties that you're always going to have is that Lebanon is a divided society.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

It's an extremely rich and significant society and I lived there quite a lot and have great respect for the people and. And their traditions. However, the sectarianism is. Is kind of baked into how the government works and that kind of works its way down. So the. The president has to be a Marianite Christian, speak with the house, has to be Shia and the prime minister has to be Sunni.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And that division was based on the last time there was a census in Lebanon, which was 1932. And since then the dynamics have changed. So Hezbollah is not just a military organization, it's a political organization and it's a welfare organization.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't get that.

[Simone Boyce]

And it's Shia and the majority of the people in the south are Shia. And, you know, a lot of them get their schooling and their medication from Hezbollah. So as I say, it's not just a military organization. And there's various estimates, but you could be looking at. But we said prior to the present conflict maybe 70,000 Hezbollah in South of Beirut, shall we say?

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And some of them are full time, some of them are part time, some of them are just sympathizers, helpers, friends. You know, it's difficult. And another factor that has proven Extremely difficult is. So when, when UNIFIL patrol with the laugh, there is certain restrictions that even the LAUGH have in terms of entering certain areas. And what Hezbollah have done is that they have designated certain nature reserves. And generally speaking, the LAUGH won't go in there. And if the LAUGH won't go in, UNIFIL can't go in.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Simone Boyce]

So the LAUGH were kind of know they have a balancing act to do in terms of retaining the trust of the people in the south and also not causing a sectarian divide within their own ranks.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, of course.

[Simone Boyce]

And also they have another problem in terms of equipment. They're sort of relying on other countries, the uk, the us, France, to supply them with equipment. But like say for they have no tanks.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

They have a few helicopters. They're very much like, there's no way they will take on Hezbollah. No way.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right, yeah. Or the idf.

[Simone Boyce]

And uniform itself is lightly armed. You know, it's not going around in tanks, anything. Armored cars. Yes. The only time, the last time UNIFIL had tanks in Lebanon was just after the war when the French deployed with the Leclerc tanks.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Simone Boyce]

Which did not please the locals because the Leclerc tanks driving up and down the roads was nearly doing as much damage as the Merkava tanks during the war. And plus Lebanon isn't a very tank friendly area to be operating in, shall we say?

[Kevin McDonald]

Right, yeah. Was that where the IDF came in in their Merkava tanks and the French like physically blocked them with their own tanks? I can't remember when that was.

[Simone Boyce]

I'm not aware of that. But it will happen because I know certainly back in the 90s that may.

[Kevin McDonald]

Have been when it was when Israel.

[Simone Boyce]

Was operating the security zone. We, the Irish and our colleagues from Finland and Norway had numerous standoffs with Israelis trying to enter certain villages. And yeah, but yeah, I, I saw the day before yesterday the two, I think two bulldozers in the Merkava or I said, yeah, two D9s broke down a UN watchtower and a UN fence at the UNIFIL headquarters in Nakura, which is UK from the, from the frontier with. With Israel.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yes.

[Simone Boyce]

I should point out as well for your listeners that Israel and Lebanon have been at a state of war since 1948.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yes.

[Simone Boyce]

They've never had a sea clear or a peace agreement.

[Kevin McDonald]

And the tripartite agreement is the only place where they actually meet.

[Robert Evans]

Right, yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So there is a UNIFIL post a meeting normally. Right. At the frontier where you can cross between one country and the other. And I keep using the word frontier, because it's not a border. It hasn't been officially demarcated.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Simone Boyce]

The blue line, which I mentioned earlier on, simply verifies that the IDF have withdrawn into Israel, but it's not the border.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Simone Boyce]

However, going back to your point about the tripartite agreement, and that's where the senior Israeli officials, senior Lebanese officials under the chairmanship of unifil, meet, and they discuss items of concern that maybe UNIFIL can help iron out between the two of them.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Simone Boyce]

And in 2022, they managed to organize a maritime boundary.

[Kevin McDonald]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Between Lebanon and Israel, which was kind of fascinating because on the western side of Lebanon and the northwestern coast of Israel, there's huge gas fields.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So the two countries, actually, they've agreed their maritime boundary under the auspices of uniform. They still haven't agreed their land, but it's the first time that a peacekeeping mission has arranged, encouraged, developed, and led successfully discussions about a maritime boundary. So the UNIFIL does have some successes.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah. No, I think it would be wrong to overlook those. We'll take a quick break for adverts and we'll come back. We're back. And Kevin, you'd mentioned that you were in Lebanon in 2006. I think you said you were an unarmed observer at that time, is that right?

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah, that's right, Jim. So one of the oldest missions in the world is unsup, the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization. And that essentially was established, I suppose, after the 48 war. And it had officers and observers in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. You know, they were quite effective in certain ways. Like, certainly the eventual peace agreement between Egypt and Israel was very much helped along by the presence of Onslow in Cairo and Sham El Sheikh. The peace agreement between Jordan and Israel, again, was very much assisted by onsil. So they have a kind of a fairly good track record. And what they bring to the table is that, first of all, they're unarmed military observers.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Which. Which takes some of the sting out of heaven. You know, a heavily armed guy with a helmet and sunglasses walk around, you know.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And.

[Simone Boyce]

And some. Some armies, as you know, can tend to be more intimidating than others in. In how they. How they carry themselves. Yeah. So I went there. I went to the region in 2005, and I was working on the occupied Golden Heights, living in the. In Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee with my wife and two kids, who then were 4 and 5. And in February 06, I was transferred to Lebanon, and we were living in the city of Tyre. The kids were going to a local English speaking Arab school. And Lebanon was absolutely thriving. It was happening. We had the kids in Beirut, we had them in Amman, John and Wadi Rum. And my normal routine, we had four observation posts along the frontier with, with, with Israel.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Staffed by five guys who spent a week, seven days up there. Then you come down for four or five and then go back up again. And each team had its specific area to operate with and we say a specific battalion that we would interact with. And, and also quite importantly, we had liaison assistants who were locals, like translators, but, but they're a lot more important than that.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And based on the sectarian nature of the area, you know, you'd always have a Christian, you'd always have a Shia, but you could have the Druze. If you were further up to the north, you could have Sunni. And each team had four or five of these because we used to send two patrols out each day. So we had huge interaction with the lokas and armory, with the mayors and the mukhtars. And we were very much a force multiplier for UNIFIL because we could get information from people. You know, we used to stop and have lunch in some of the little restaurants and we were always talking to people and you know, it was the window down, waving out, having a chat, learning a bit of Arabic. Whereas UNIFIL by, by its nature goes around in armor cars.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Simone Boyce]

And yeah, even if you stop and you get out and you take off the sunglasses, people will just react differently to two guys with a local that they know in the car.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

As opposed to someone in full battle rattle getting out.

[Simone Boyce]

We definitely were. But the war kicked off on the 12th of July 2006 and I was, I had done on patrol to pick up our Christian liaison assistant in her village and literally we were heading off on patrol. And over the radio, all stations go to the nearest UN position immediately. The nearest UN position to us at the time was an Indian platoon position on top of a hill. From my past experience, I had reckoned that there was a bit of stuff going on either in, in share the farms, which is a disputed area in the southeastern part of of Lebanon up in the mountains. So I said to the guy that was with me, I said, look, this could be over in a couple of hours. Let's go straight back to our patrol base. And you know, we knew we had a food and facility and we also knew we had a good bunker in the place.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So we headed back at a, at a fair rate or not. Shall we say? And normally when, when we would have two patrols out, there'd be one guy left in, in the patrol base and he'd be responsible for radio checks and all that kind of stuff. But what we do is when we were about, maybe a kilometer away, we would inform our headquarters in, in, in Nakura that we're closing down at our final destination, which would give this guy time to come out and unlock the gate to let us in.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And just as I transmitted that, he comes up on the ear and said don't come in, don't come in, we're getting hit up. So we, at that stage we were at the gate and about maybe 2km away there was a huge IDF position and they were just banging with fine fives and GPMGs. Not directly at us, but kind of in the general area.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, Explain those weapon systems for people who aren't familiar. Like what's a GPMG for someone who's not.

[Simone Boyce]

Oh, okay, sorry. So if everybody's familiar with say an AK47 or an M16 which would be known as small arms, in other words, the caliber is 5.56 or 7.62.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Then you have medium machine guns which are generally belt fed and they're 7.62.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And then you have heavy machine guns again belt fed and they're 12.7 or 50 caliber.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So we, we were getting a fair bit, but it took us maybe an hour of, of listening to various news channels both in Lebanon and, and in Israel to realize that Hezbollah had carried out a cross border attack, hit up an IDF convoy, kidnapped two who were seriously injured and subsequently died and killed, initially four and then against their own orders. And Israeli Mercava went into Lebanon to have a kind of commanding view over where they thought the Hezbollah were bringing these guys. Hezbollah were, knew that that's what they do. And yeah, big anti tank mine and kill four guys inside the Merkava. So Israel had lost eight and two kidnapped in the space of, yeah, maybe, maybe an hour. So the reaction was, was, was fast and furious. And yeah, it, it took us nearly six days to get our liaison assistant back, back to her village.

[Kevin McDonald]

Oh wow.

[Simone Boyce]

It took the UN nearly two and a half weeks to evacuate the families because at that stage once, once it was a family mission.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And where I was I could see the jets dropping bombs into fear and my wife could look up on the skyline knowing where I was and see the same thing happening. Oh, I was sort of used to being under fire, but it's a different Thing to. To see your family on. Under fire as well.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And eventually, when they chartered a sort of a cruise liner from Cyprus to come over and extend offshore and send in its lifeboats to bring the families out. So when this was being planned, UNSOL had tried to organize that an armored convoy would bring those on moles that were deployed on the four posts down to tier to say goodbye. But where I was, we were getting hammered with artillery fire and tank fire, so I was the only one with family that couldn't get out. So when my wife and two kids that were five and seven at that stage were getting into the lifeboat to bring them out to the ship, I rang her and I said, look, I'll. I'll see you when I see you. Jesus.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Which is not a great way to end a family mission, let me tell you.

[Kevin McDonald]

No.

[Simone Boyce]

And then in the space of the next three days, we had a strength of 52 officers. And in about three days we lost over 10%. We had one Italian captain shot in the back. He's now in a wheelchair.

[Kevin McDonald]

Jesus.

[Simone Boyce]

We had another Australian captain seriously injured when the convoy she was in was, I suppose targeted is probably the way to explain it. But she, she was thrown up against the inside of the armored car and essentially her back was broken. She was evacuated with my wife and kids. And then I think it was the day later or two days later, the Israelis dropped the jdam, which is a bunker bust and missile.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Into the post just up for me, killing four very good friends of mine. So, yeah, 2006 was a bit rough.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. If you're comfortable. Could we talk about that last one a little bit? Because I think it's one of the ones that, like, there's no mistaking that UN position. Right.

[Simone Boyce]

It's not.

[Kevin McDonald]

You don't. And you don't accidentally just go dropping JDAMs left, right and center all over the place.

[Simone Boyce]

Like, the first thing I should say is that 21 years previously, that observation post was completely destroyed, but there was no one in it at the time.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So when it was rebuilt, it had the best bunker in Lebanon. So that they dug down first and had like a lot of the. The bunkers currently in Lebanon are overgrown bunkers, but this, this was dug in down into the. Into the rock, essentially. Yeah. And it had. Its roof was about a meter and a half of reinforced steel and concrete with the two story concrete building on top of it. So without doubt, it was the best bunker in Lebanon.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So that on the. This happened on the 25th of July and on that particular day, we'd already lost the patrol base in Maroon Harass when. When Roberto was shot. And they had to. I have to say, in fairness, but on the liaison branch, that kind of liaises between IDF and unifil.

[Kevin McDonald]

Okay.

[Simone Boyce]

And UNIFIL couldn't launch one of its helicopters to do a medevac. So the decision was made that the guys would get into an armored Land Cruiser and follow Israeli tank tracks back into Israel.

[Kevin McDonald]

But they couldn't deconflict the airspace to launch it or what was stopping them launching the helicopter to evacuate.

[Simone Boyce]

There was too much kinetic activity at that. It wouldn't have been able to land it like it was. It was a battle on go.

[Kevin McDonald]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So they essentially followed Israeli tank tracks that had come into Lebanon. They follow those tank tracks back into Israel where they were met by an Israeli patrol and Roberto was flown to Rambam Hospital. But yeah, going back to, going back to KM on the 25th of July, as we were all taking a fair bit of incoming, where I was at, wasn't targeting. It was more sort of harassment fire.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Like the, the house next door took three direct tank rounds and it was five meters away.

[Kevin McDonald]

Jesus.

[Simone Boyce]

From our port and our post was tiny. Yeah. But in, in, the guys in Kiam were taking a good bit of artillery, but there was a lot of airstrikes coming in close. And again for your listeners, the. The UN has a designation, what it calls a firing close. So we'll say a firing close from an M16 is, I don't know, something like 50 meters or something like that. Firing close from an artillery shell is 500 meters, and a firing close from an aerial bomb is a kilometer. So if it lands within a kilometer, it's officially designated as a firing close and it's recorded. And it, you know, both sides get, you know, it's. It's an official account of. Of what's happening. So the guys were getting, you know, a good few firings close from area bombs, and there was three distinct waves of attack in the general area. So naturally, force COMMANDER UNIFIL CHIEF OF STAFF on so UN headquarters in New York were screaming at the Israelis, you know, stop targeting this position.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Was there Hezbollah in the area? Of course there was. Kiam is. Is a Hezbollah stronghold. But eventually that, that evening the decision was made that, that the patrol base was going to be evacuated. But because of the level of kinetic activity that evening, it was going to be done at first light the next morning. And since the war had started, we had all been on a 24, 7, 20 minute radio. So every 20 minutes you had to respond to a radio check.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So the last transmission from the post was from Canadian friend of mine, ex Special Forces, really, really cool. And I could hear it in his voice. He was requested a log in time for a firing. Close, it's dangerous close. It's danger close. Get them to stop. And that was the last transmission. So when they missed the next radio check, he presumed another shot had come in and blown all the aerials off the of the building. Yeah. So myself and a, an Aussie friend of mine requested permission to take our armored Land Cruiser and try and drive up and see what was happening. That was refused by unifil. So they sent a patrol from the Indian battalion, which was kind of, in fairness, it was nearer. So we switched on to their radio frequency to hear what they were saying. And so they approached the base. They had to, obviously had to break down the gate and said the base is taking a direct hit by an aerial bomb. And at that stage we were still thinking maybe they're trapped under the rubble or something like that. And then one of them transmitted. We have found the body of a Chinese officer. So we knew the four guys were killed. And the Indians found three bodies that night and brought them to the mortuary in Marajayun, which is a large Christian town. So the next morning there was, I think, five of us tasked to go up and identify the bodies.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So first guy was Chinese, was over pressure killed him. So that, that was an easy one to identify. The next guy had no arms, no legs, and we had Jesus. And where, where his head should have been was the chain of a dog tag. And I went down into his. His body. Paris.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And.

[Simone Boyce]

And the other guy. Yeah. So, yeah, it was a difficult, difficult procedure. And then we had to try and arrange to get the bodies transferred into Israel to our UN colleagues from Jerusalem so they could go to Rambam Hospital and have, you know, proper identification and all that sort of stuff.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

Eventually be returned to their families, I suppose.

[Simone Boyce]

And that was a difficult procedure because where the IDF said they could meet us, there was a minefield in front of us. And where we said we could meet them, they thought it was too exposed. So eventually we went into an all a small, tiny Indian platoon position. And about 100 meters away there was a gate that the Israelis used to use to come in and out when the security zone was there. But the area between the UN position and the gate hadn't been mine swept in six years. But we had no Choice. We couldn't bring the guys back to the mortuary because had resorted to using refrigerated trucks to store bodies because the mortuary was full.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So there was, there was an IDF company there under. I think it was a full Brigadier. And there's a war going on, naturally.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. All the time.

[Simone Boyce]

Gunships and Katushes passing each other over our heads. So when we had the, the three lads transferred over to our colleagues from Jerusalem, I stood in front of the IDF brigadier and I lined up all the UN troops and he says, we're not going to have a minute silence in memory of our friends who were murdered in the cause of peace and. No, having a, having a minute silence in the middle of a battle is an odd experience. In fairness to this guy, he stood to attention. And because I lived in Tiberius, I had a small bit of Hebrew and I went over afterwards and thanked him for his respect.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And we didn't find the fourth body until after the ceasefire.

[Kevin McDonald]

Jesus.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, that's rough. I'm sorry for that. That's terrible to think about.

[Simone Boyce]

So the obvious question is. I know what the one you want to ask why.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

I should have said it at the start. Anything I say here, it's, it's my personal opinion. So it, it can't be construed as being the views of the Irish Defence Forces.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yes, of course.

[Simone Boyce]

Are certainly not the views of the United Nations. They're my personal views.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So, you know, people should just take it that it's, it's Kevin McDonald describing what happened to him and what his personal views on it are.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So why did they do it? Well, I think there's a couple of things. Hubris is one. I, I think at, at that stage they were, they were like a schoolyard bully who would. Got bet and wanted to lash out at anything and everything. A second probably more tactical reason is, is that the village of Kiam is on a, a ridge. We say at the end of the ridge closest to Israel because it's only about four miles away is where this, this op was and that's the reason it was there. And between Kiam and we say the frontier with Israel is the Hula Valley, which is the biggest maneuver space if you want to maneuver armor and stuff into Lebanon with plenty of space, that's where you do it. In fact decided is an old Vichy French airfield from the Second World War. So it's low space. And I think they, they didn't want eyes on the ground seeing what they were doing. And like One of the things for military observers is you observe and you report. That's your task.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So was there Hezbollah in the area around the, around the op? Yes, there was. But as you probably know, if you want to attack troops in the open, you use airburst artillery shells, which the Israelis did in 1996 when they fired 15 of them into a UN battalion headquarters, killing 106 Lebanese men, women, cel shelter in the UN headquarters. Yeah, but you don't fire a bunker bust and missile into a UN post to attack Hezbollah. The subtle difference.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, there's a huge difference. Yeah. I suppose what people will ask is like it's, I think it's important to explain this from the point of view of someone on the ground is obviously UN troops are not there to fight, they're there to keep peace. But they are an armed presence. And so they'll wonder how or why the UN can or can't defend itself, the UNIFIL troops specifically in these positions. So like, can you explain how your rules of engagement and how that works for. From the sort of on the ground perspective?

[Simone Boyce]

Okay, well, the rules of engagement, we say for a peacekeeping mission, like we pack on so to one side because they're unarmed. But for a peacekeeping mission.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So peacekeeping is generally based on three principles. Consent, impartiality and the use of force in self defense of the mandate. So naturally, like the guys there at the moment aren't going to try and take on three or four Merkava tanks. First of all, they don't have the capability to do it.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, that's an interesting. Do they not have, if you can't answer this, that's fine. Do they have for instance, Javelins, things like that? Do they have those weapon systems available?

[Simone Boyce]

I'm not sure what to have currently. Certainly we didn't have and it wasn't ever going to be an issue because that's kind of not our job. The sole responsibility to protect the people of Lebanon is the Lebanese government. UNIFIL is there to assist. It's not there to say, okay, you step back, we stand up and protect you. That's not what UNIFIL or any peacekeeping mission done. The only peacekeeping mission that eventually had an offensive capability built into its mandate was the mission that's now closing down in, in the drc, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And it's minus go.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And they specifically changed the mandate to include an offensive capability to go after the M23 rebels in the Kivus in sort of the northeast. And when they did it you know, attack helicopter, special forces. The last. Yeah, it was quite effective. But which kind of brings me to another point because I just last year I completed a master's in Peace and Conflict Studies. And mandates was the evolution of mandates was what I sort of looked at. And having robust mandates is all well and good, but the TCC is the troop contributing. Countries have to have the ability, the capability, the training and the will to carry out the robust nature of the mandate. So, you know, we have a saying in Ireland, paper never refuses ink. You can put whatever you want into a mandate, but you have to be able to effectively implement the mandate.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And I think often that's, that's the reason that maybe people are kind of broad in how mandates are written. But that's, that's, that's for someone way further up the food chain than me.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. So for those like the people on the ground then and now, there's not a great deal they can do. Right. They can attempt to ask the IDF to stop, which they did, which has historically not worked. And they can take shelter in their bunkers, which they did, which is only helpful if they're not going to use bunker busting missiles to, to, to destroy that bunker. So like, it must be terrible. It's one thing to be engaged in combat with someone, especially if you're a soldier. Right. It's another thing. And I found myself in this situation last year to be effectively like, unable to respond. I'm thinking here of the Turkish drone bombing and fighter jets and bombers in Syria where I was. But it's a horrible thing to be in that situation. And is it for those peacekeepers, it must be a really difficult sort of place to be.

[Simone Boyce]

Well, it is, yeah. And of course, you know, they're all conscious of the fact that their families back in Ireland are fully aware of what's going on. And yeah, shortly after the invasion, the IDF decided that they told uniform they wanted them out, essentially, and not just the Irish, but other nationalities that were not going, you know, so the idf, everywhere they go in Lebanon, the first vehicle is a D9 bulldozer, because that, that is more robust than a Merkava. And it can also very quickly throw up earth and ramparts to sort of, you know, protect from direct fire.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

@ the IDF troops. So they decided that they would literally conjoin an IDF position to the Irish position, hoping that they could intimidate the Irish into leaving. And the position's name was 6:52, very close to the frontier. Ironically, when the Israelis withdrew in 2000. They recognized that this particular area was what we in the military would call key terrain because that area overlooked a vulnerable part of northern Israel, villages like Ave and a few others. So the IDF requested UNIFIL to put a position there which would say stop Hezbollah put in a position there.

[Robert Evans]

Right. Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And then suddenly they're up close and personal trying to intimidate the Irish and other nationalities as well.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So it, it's one of the things. And I think one of the reasons that they didn't want UNIFIL and there's about 20 small of these small positions mainly close to the frontier. I think one of the reasons that the. And again, this is a personal point of view. I think one of the reasons that they didn't want UNIFIL in any of these positions was A, to turn it into a free fire zone, but B, one, one of the, the things that UNIFIL is supposed to do is to monitor and report, monitor and observe. Of course, if you're not there, you can't do it. That's actually one of the things that unifil, even though they're hunkered in their bases with very little mobility, they can still monitor and observe what's happening in the general area.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Now we'll say in the case of this position, 6:52, if, if the IDF's ultimate gain or goal was to take a major Hezbollah stronghold which is called Binchebile, that's a good bit further north than this position. So that the focus of attention would move on from, from we say our guys and go a wee bit further north.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. So that's sort of where they find themselves now. Right. Is these, can you explain, like you've got these positions along the frontier and then you've got the headquarters that you just mentioned two days ago have been, I don't know, infringed by a bulldozer. Attacked. Depends how you want to say it.

[Simone Boyce]

Well, it makes a change from having a tank run fired into an op, which they did.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

A few days previously.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

And they've done consistently. Right. For, for a month or so now is, is firing directly into these observing positions. Are these positions that are now, are they left isolated as the idea. Because the IDF will advance past and around them and in addition to.

[Simone Boyce]

Of firing directly at them, they're somewhat isolated now. All these positions would be well stocked with water and emergency rations and stuff like that. And as I mentioned before, UNIFIL do have a liaison branch which I'm sure are talking to the IDF on a On an hourly basis.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And they will coordinate the movements of UNIFIL with it, supply their positions or. I think last week they had a, a convoy went into, into the city of Tyre, which is probably 12k from, from the headquarters to distribute aid, especially medical aid, because TIR is getting fairly whacked like all of the south, I suppose.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So there is engagement to make sure that these posts aren't like completely isolated, that there is a means of, of doing resupply.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. Israel stopped one of those at some point, didn't it? Like, was it a resupply movement to.

[Simone Boyce]

Stop things that are on a regular basis?

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

As I said, there is interaction. Like nothing happens in a vacuum. Like we'll say, yeah, the, the Irish battalion headquarters would not send a convoy to 6:52 without it being communicated to the Israelis and saying we're going to go on three vehicles, that or 700 hours, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, and get the confirmation back that, yeah, that's okay because you know, the dimension, the fog of war, that that's not. When they're fairly real, as you can imagine yourself, it's a fairly real thing that happens. You know, sometimes, you know.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Instructions don't get passed down or sometimes instructions are ignored for whatever reason. So it's a bit of a delicate, delicate balancing act. But from what I understand, it's working well.

[Kevin McDonald]

That's good. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's working well in terms of like, what's happening in Lebanon is, is bad and it'd be better if it wasn't. But it's not at the same tier as it has been in Gaza.

[Simone Boyce]

No. You're looking at maybe three and a half thousand compared to 43 and a half thousand killed.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. And so many of those being civilians. Right. People who absolutely no business targeting and like that genocidal violence that we've seen in Gaza hasn't come to Lebanon. And in part, I think we can attribute that to there being observers there. Is that fair to say?

[Simone Boyce]

I, I think it's a fair point. Of course there's, there's no real, the UN footprint in Gaza. My understanding is it's extremely, extremely light.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And as you know, the, let's say banished UNRA.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Whereas I mean, uniform is 10,000 troops in, in southern Lebanon.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

So there's very much more. Maybe there's a. More consciousness, but they're still flattening the place. But it's in, in terms of civilian casualties, as we said, it's not going on as long as Gaza either. But on the, we'll say, the combat front, they're not exactly having things their own way either. They've been trying to take the village of Kamp for the last, I think, two weeks. And my understanding is they haven't, they've destroyed it.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Simone Boyce]

But they haven't taken it. And it was like in, in, in 2006, they claimed that the town of Binchebile was the Hezbollah capital of the south, which wasn't a way. It was, but the turn eventually. Grasp me. But they never controlled it. They were still getting attacked, you know, days after they had seized it.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. They've never really established like control or monopoly and non violence in the area and yet they've not done that this time. And I think, I suppose the last thing I wanted to ask about is like, we've just talked about like why this mission is important and we've spoken about for like you had your family there when they were being bombed and like this investment in being there in Lebanon, being alongside the Lebanese people, in your case, with your own family, like, it's, it's one that Ireland's had for a long time. Ireland has historically amongst European nations been much better on the rights of Palestine and Palestinian people than, than most European nations. How is this peacekeeping mission perceived in Ireland? Like, are people proud that they're there?

[Simone Boyce]

Oh, yeah. Oh, hugely proud. And, and you know, the Irish have always been extremely proud of what our defense forces have achieved, despite us being a very small defense forces. Like, I think at the moment, between the, the navy, the army and the air corps were probably looking at in total, 9,000. In total.

[Kevin McDonald]

Wow. Yeah, very small.

[Simone Boyce]

And. And then we're overseas in a lot of places as well. So like, deduct that from the 9,000, you're probably down to eight.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

But we, we do tend to punch above our weight internationally. We obviously have no colonial baggage which affects some other countries.

[Mia Wong]

Yes.

[Simone Boyce]

And I think generally speaking we're seen as, I'm not sure if honest broker is the right word, but certainly not as threatening and not coming with an agenda.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right, yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Whereas other countries might have a certain agenda for whatever political reasons at home. And it's certainly in Ireland's case, as I said, we were there from 78 until 2000 and now from 2006 to present day. And a lot of it has been in the same general area. So people would know. Irish soldiers, some Lebanese talk with an Irish accent.

[Kevin McDonald]

I've heard that. Yeah. It's mad.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah, it's true. And depending on what part of Ireland the troops were from. You could even go further down. Like, some of them talk with a very broad Dublin accent. Some of them would talk with a very broad Cork accent because of that interaction. And I know one of the first big projects the Irish did, certainly from the early 80s, was to build an orphanage in a provincial capital called Tip Name. And they've been doing that, like, even when we've no troops there, guys were still sending money and toys and everything that's been demolished last week, unfortunately.

[Kevin McDonald]

Jesus, an orphanage. It's like storybook evil stuff, isn't it? Like.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah, well, you know, it's just. Yeah, there's a lot of evil stuff going on in the Middle east at the moment, unfortunately.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've personally seen hospitals bombed and all that kind of stuff myself. And it's. It sometimes doesn't even make the news. I mean, that orphanage evidently didn't really make my news diet. Kevin, thank you very much for sharing some of your experiences over there. And I'd love to have you on again to talk about the things you've. The work you've done in Africa down the line after, after Levin, and you've written a book, right, about your, your experiences peacekeeping and, and other things. Where can people find that?

[Simone Boyce]

Okay, so this, this initially started off as a lockdown project during the COVID lockdown in the Central African Republic, and, and initially it was just from my wife and, and family. But as it starts writing, you kind of start remembering and it, it's not just your typical military guy tells about how brave he was. I've a separate career in mountaineering and a separate career in archaeology as well. So it is a kind of a, a much more different mishmash of, of. Of stuff going on. So the, the book is called A Life Less Ordinary and it can be purchased [e-mail] great. M A Y O B O O.

[Kevin McDonald]

K S yeah, I like that balance. I've always thought that, like, I'll go somewhere and I'll write about the worst things I saw there and the worst days I had there, and that'll be my story. But I've always wanted to write about. The mountains of Kurdistan are beautiful and I really loved being there. And there are other places that people think of them as wars, not countries. And I think it would. I'd love to write about mountaineering, backpacking in these places where often it's really sad that you don't get to share that part.

[Simone Boyce]

We are right about this in the book. I mean, like, I've lived a few times in Lebanon and I've lived and worked in Jerusalem a few times and it's a fascinating region.

[Kevin McDonald]

Oh, yeah.

[Simone Boyce]

And the people on both countries. I have some really good friends in Israel and some really good friends in Lebanon and I've been treated extremely well by people in both countries. Certainly, if you've an interest in archaeology.

[Kevin McDonald]

It'S a place to be.

[Simone Boyce]

Where else could you not want to be? You know, like the Phoenicians in Tyre. And no matter where you go in Tyr, you can pick up Roman pottery or you can see all these amazing sites, whether it's from the Phoenicians, from the Romans, from the Crusaders, it's just, it's all there in front of you.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah. Cradle of civilization there. Well, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, Kevin. Thanks so much.

[Simone Boyce]

Okay, cheers.

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[Kevin McDonald]

About 20 years ago, maybe 30, a circus visited Marjoro, the largest island on the Madjuro Atoll in the capital city of the Marshall Islands. They came to Maduro as almost everything that isn't breadfruit, pandanus or fish does on a boat. After performing, they couldn't find a boat to take them to the next destination. And so the residents of this tiny island, which at Times is no wider than the single road which travels its whole length, decided that they'd have to share the food that they themselves had imported at great cost. And they set about gathering apples, bananas, and anything else that they thought an elephant might like to eat while it waited for a way off an island that barely has enough room for its own people, let alone the largest land animal on Earth. The people of the Marshall Islands, for whom hospitality is as natural as the tides of the sea, greet each other the same way they do strangers, by saying yokwe. The word has several meanings, but I'll let David Kabua explain them. He's the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, so he seems like he'd be a good source.

[Simone Boyce]

I would say the word yokoi.

[Robert Evans]

Yahweh is our creating word.

[Simone Boyce]

Yahweh has a lot of several meanings.

[Robert Evans]

And you can say when you meet someone, first time you say ya koi when you greet someone.

[Simone Boyce]

And when you also say goodbye, instead of say goodbye, you will say yague. So you can use that. Also, like during the weekend, there was a tournament, fishing tournament. And if you were fishing and you.

[Robert Evans]

Caught up, you have a big fish.

[Simone Boyce]

On the line, and you really. You're about to land the fish, but the line snapped.

[Robert Evans]

So what you say oh, y, not.

[Simone Boyce]

Hello to the fish, but you just.

[Mia Wong]

Say Y because you lost the big catch.

[Simone Boyce]

So it can be used sideways, like when you lose someone or someone passed away, you miss that person, ya o.

[Robert Evans]

And so he was here, but no longer here. So you can say yakai.

[Simone Boyce]

So it has several meanings, but the.

[Robert Evans]

Deeper meaning of yakoi is you are beautiful, like the rainbow. IYA means rainbow and kwei is you.

[Simone Boyce]

So we combine the two words. You are rainbow. You are beautiful as a rainbow.

[Kevin McDonald]

On the map, the Marshall Islands look like the little dots that appear in my photos of the beach at Majuro. But unlike those little specks of dust that managed to sneak their way onto my camera sensor, Marshall Islands belong here. Here is a pretty vague turn. The 29 coral atolls and five islands that allow 54,000 marshalles to live on 182 square kilometers of land span an oceanic territory of 200,000 kilometers. It's like you took a small American town and scattered it across an area one and a half times the size of Alaska. Even though the RMI is 98% water, every inch of land is precious to the Marshallese, whose matrilineal society ensures that land passes from mother to daughter and ties families to the remote islands that make up the low lying atolls of the Republic. It was on one of the bigger chunks of land that I recorded the music you heard a minute ago. Marjorie is an atoll that's a coral ring that encircles the lagoon. And its biggest island is about 30 miles long, but often less than 100 yards wide. There's one road that runs the length of it and sometimes also spans the width of it. It's also home to about half the RMI's population. The highest point on the atoll lies just 3 meters above sea level. If you want to get higher than that, then your only options are houses or palm trees. From the top of the fifth floor of the Napa auto parts store, which also houses the UNDP and the Marshlands Olympic Committee, you can see the whole island. For Marshallese people, these tiny pieces of paradise that barely poke their heads out from the top of the ocean are everything. Their land and their ties to it define them. Without their place, they can't be themselves. Even though many thousands of Marshallese live in the diaspora of the United States, they still import handicrafts made from little shells on the outer islands and coconut husks. Many of them come back to the islands to retire. But slowly the ocean is taking those islands back. Rising sea levels and more extreme tidal surges have placed this tiny Pacific nation on the front lines of climate change. There isn't an exact estimate as to how long the Marshall Islands have, or what they can do to halt the creeping advance of the ocean. They've always existed on just a few square kilometers of land among millions of square kilometers of ocean, and they depend on that ocean for everything. But now it's threatening to take everything away from them. One day, they fear their islands will become uninhabitable as salt water invades the water table and their trees die. Or storms bring more and more frequent floods that sweep away their homes and their possessions. They don't want to leave, but they can't stand alone against climate change either. But the Marshallese are resilient people. They've weathered many storms to get to where they are now. The tiny museum in Majuro hosts artifacts of several crises that would seem apocalyptic. A nuclear bomb, the Second World War. But in the end, these did little to crush the incredible kindness of the tenacity of the Marshallese. The islands that make up the RMI have been inhabited by indigenous people for thousands of years. They've been variously ruled by the Spanish, German, Japanese and United States governments before becoming an independent republic, before they were named by A British sailor. The islands had their own name. I'll let Jeff, a Marshallese renaissance man who was at once our driver, the head of the World Health Organization's EMT program on the islands, a registered nurse and the custodian of an incredible collection of Marshallese music, explain what they were called before that.

[Simone Boyce]

Before we used to call lollaplap lolli.

[Kevin McDonald]

Like L O L.

[Robert Evans]

That's before it.

[Simone Boyce]

Turn out turns into Marshall, because this.

[Robert Evans]

Word Martian came from this guy that.

[Simone Boyce]

Found these islands.

[Kevin McDonald]

Undeniably, the Marshall Islands are not a bad place to find yourself on a summer afternoon. And in the time I spent there, I took several trips to the smaller islands around Maduro Atoll. They look like the Platonic ideal of a tropical island, complete with coconut palms, vibrant coral reefs, white sand and turquoise water. I love freediving. And dropping down onto a wrecked aircraft and dozens of brightly colored species of fish in almost infinite visibility without even needing to put on a wetsuit or a weight belt, might be the closest I'll ever get to flying. But I wasn't just here for a dip in the ocean. I'm actually here to tell you a story of incredible resilience. Much of America, both on the left and on the right, spends much of its time and money preparing for its own imagined version of a crisis. For some, that's the unimaginable destruction of nuclear war. For others, it's the encroaching of the ocean onto the land and the resulting loss of places to live and grow food. And for others, it's a collapse of basic services like power and clean water that we take for granted. These are all storms that the tiny island nation has already weathered, and it hasn't done so in the atomized and individualistic way that so many American preppers fantasize about online. It's done so as an incredibly strong, optimistic and welcoming community, there's a lot we can learn from the people of the Marshall Islands and their story. And so this week, I'll be doing my best to share the stories that they shared with me. If you're familiar with the islands, it's likely because of the history of one of the other atolls in the group, Bikini Atoll. The name is a German bastardisation of a Marshallese word, pikini, pic meaning plain surface and ni, meaning coconut tree. It's a flat base where coconuts grow, but you likely don't know the island for its coconuts, and those aren't safe to eat anymore. Anyway, if you've heard of Bikini Atoll, it's because of what the United States did there after the Second World War. On 18 July 1947, the Marshall Islands were placed in a strategic Trust territory by the United Nations. This territory was administered by the United States, which was supposed to administer the islands in the best interest of their inhabitants and and of international peace and security. But a year before the trust territory was created, the US began nuclear testing in the lagoon at Bikini Atoll, a site that would over the next 15 years become the most heavily bombed place on Earth, with some islands entirely removed from the map and much of their population left dead sick without the land that defines them and their ability to thrive on these tiny islands amidst the endless ocean. As far as possible, I want to let the Marshallese survivors of the nuclear tests and their families tell their own stories. They call what happened on Bikini in and Watak Atoll the nuclear legacy of their country. Talking about the nuclear legacy is a difficult topic for the Marshallese, especially at a time when none of them have been paid the compensation they were allotted. And the US was negotiating a new agreement with the Marshallese government. It was very far from settled and the numbers the US were offering were very far from sufficient. I was very fortunate to join a few other journalists on the tiny island of Bokanboten, a short boat ride away from Maitura and home to perhaps the most beautiful coral reef I've ever seen. We had lunch, walked around the island and then had a talk on the nuclear legacy from descendants of some of the survivors. I'll let them introduce themselves.

[Robert Evans]

My name is Chaka Be Quidion.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm from the Marshall Island.

[Robert Evans]

I am a student at CMI College.

[Garrison Davis]

Of the Marshall island and I am.

[Robert Evans]

Currently the President for the CMI Nuclear Club which we mostly work under. National Nuclear Commission with our director, Mary Silk, and now our Commissioner, Ariana Tibani. Once again, my name is Ariana Tibuen. I work as a Commissioner and Nuclear justice envoy for the RMI National Nuclear Commission. Once again, thank you very much for having us this afternoon. Welcome to the Marshall Island. My name is Evelyn Ralpho. I'm the Director for Education and Public Awareness. Once again, welcome. Enjoy the rest of your days here. My name is Sincerely. I work with the National Nuclear Commission.

[Kevin McDonald]

As an admin and physical officer.

[Robert Evans]

I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to come, but since the past said we all go. So that's the what? Support the past. Go work on the safe boat. Welcome to the Marshall Islands. She's from meat. She's from meat.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

The three of us are all descendants of nuclear survivors. They were exposed to fallout. Her mother was exposed to fallout. Her mother, Grace's mother was also exposed to the radioactive fallout, as well as my great grandfather. I think that's what really drives us to share this with you.

[Kevin McDonald]

Almost everyone in the RMI has a family member directly impacted by the testing and the decades of mistreatment that came after it. Although we know the name Bikini Atoll, the entire Republic was impacted by nuclear fallout, including Maduro itself, thanks to the ill advised decision to drop bombs on a day when the populated atolls were downwind of the test site. In fact, right next to our hotel and sharing the same parking lot, there's the US Department of Energy office. I asked Jeff what that was doing there. Yeah, I saw there's a DOE office, like health office. The street here, the one in the.

[Simone Boyce]

Next to the hotel, that's the office.

[Robert Evans]

Where they do the radiation testing. And there's the one near the AMI Air Marshall.

[Simone Boyce]

That's the clinic for those survivors. Now the survivors, there's few of them.

[Robert Evans]

Left, like maybe less than 50.

[Kevin McDonald]

Wow. The RMI saw fighting in the Second World War. It's memorialized and murals across Majuro. In late 1943 and early 1944, the USA bombed and then fought the Imperial Japanese military who had been occupying the island since 1914. U.S. soldiers and Marines, along with Marshallese Scouts, landed on Marjorie, Kwajalein and Eniwetok on Higgins boats that were virtually identical to the boat we took across the lagoon to Bokumboten. The fighting was fierce and the scale of the destruction was immense. Overall, The Americans lost 611 men and suffered 2,341 wounded. 261 were missing. Meanwhile, the Japanese lost over 11,000 men and had 358 captured. Today, the Bikini Atoll lagoon still holds the ghostly remains of the ships and planes that fought that battle alongside the Nagato, the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the ship from whose bridge Admiral Yamamoto launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was the shadow of this war that was evoked in 1946 when 167 of Bikini Atoll's inhabitants were forcibly relocated by the United States. They initially accepted this settlement for the good of mankind and to end all wars, in the words of the U.S. commandant at the time. Assisted by U.S. navy Seabees, they disassembled their church and moved to different atolls. Nine of the 11 family heads from Bikini elected to be transported 125 miles to Rongarikato, an island with about one quarter of the land mass of Bikini Atoll. Many believed the island to be haunted. And by the time the navy left them with a few weeks of water and food, they had every reason to be afraid. I'll let Ariana explain what that removal process was like.

[Robert Evans]

They had asked the people if they were willing to give up their homelands for the good of mankind and to end all wars. And because our people are people of faith in Christianity, and they were very afraid. They did not want to leave, but because of the amount of, of power that the military showed up with with their big ships compared to our small canoes and the amount of troops that were on that island on that morning, it was very hard for them to, you know, fight against what was being, you know, asked of them. And if you have time to look through documentaries of the nuclear legacy, you will see a certain part where the commander, Commodore, his name was Ben Wyatt, he was sitting down and asking the chief at that time, can we use this island for the good of mankind? And in response, the people all respond in unison, which means okay. And from their testimonies, they had to take that shot over 40 times to make sure that they all said M1 at the same time to get the best shot they could for maybe for reports to the UN but it was a very frustrating time for them.

[Kevin McDonald]

Following their removal, the testing began. The idea was to test nuclear bombs on ships. So the US bought 95 ships fully loaded with weapons and fuel. At this time, this would have ranked the navy of Bikini Atoll just outside the top five biggest fleets in the world. But those boats didn't stay afloat for long. Now, you might think that given the testing was on ships, the atoll's navy would be some kind of mid century Mary Celeste. But you'd be wrong. 3350 experimental rats, goats and pigs died in the service of this strange nuclear experiment. Some of them after being subjected to the great indignity of being covered in sunscreen, which, bizarrely, scientists thought might be useful in alleviating the impact of radiation. It's rather staggering that this research was being done three years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on whole cities full of human beings. But as you've maybe already picked up in this story, the possibility of unintended but entirely predictable human suffering does not seem to have been top of the priority list. The first test at the island somehow misfired. The gathered press were disappointed, and many of them went home. But the second, codenamed Baker, didn't. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, the longest serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission called the Baker test the world's first nuclear disaster. It drove a 2,000 foot wide pillar of water into the air. It sunk the USS Arkansas and released massive amounts of radiation across the islands of the atoll, which at the time, the residents had been expecting to return to. Just five days after the first bomb went off, Louis Vuillard, a French mechanical engineer who was working as manager of his mother's lingerie shop in Paris, introduced a new swimsuit design named the Bikini, after the atoll. It was one Wright equipped, the atom bomb of fashion. The people of the atoll, however, gained little from the outfit or the testing. In January of 1948, just two years after their removal, Dr. Leonard Mason visited the Bikinians on Rongerik and was appalled to find the people there had almost starved to death. We were dying, but they didn't listen to us, one of them said to him. Mason, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, asked that food and water be bought immediately. The US built houses for Bikini Atoll residents on Ujalang Atoll, but it decided to use these for the residents of Eniwathakato, where it was also about to begin conducting nuclear experiments. Instead, the Bikini Islanders were placed in tents alongside a Runway before they eventually chose Kili Island, a land of less than one square kilometer, as their next home. Also evacuated were Enewatak, Rongelap and Watho Islanders. They too thought this was a temporary arrangement and that they could go home in a short period of time. They too found out later that this was not the case. Over the course of their exile, they've been moved several more times, starved half to death, cheated of their compensation and stripped of their ancestral homeland. For the next 12 years, the United States would drop increasingly large bombs, culminating in 1954 with the Bravo shot of Operation Castle, also known as Castle Bravo, the biggest nuclear device that we know of the US ever deploying.

[Robert Evans]

Within those 12 years, there were 67 known devices that were tested here. There could have been more, but all we know of is 67. One of them was the Castle Bravo shot that yielded 15 megatons, which when scientists calculated the equivalent of the Bravo shot would have required testing the Hiroshima bomb one and a half times every single day for 12 years.

[Kevin McDonald]

That 15 megaton Bravo shot yielded more than 2.5 times the estimated six megaton explosion when it was detonated on an artificial island in the Bikini Atoll. The device's mushroom cloud reached a height of 47,000ft, which is 1400 meters and a diameter of 7 miles, or 11 kilometers in about 1 minute. Eventually, it reached a height of 40 kilometers and a diameter of 100 kilometers. This took less than 10 minutes, traveled more than 100 meters per second, and covered 7,000 kilometers of the Pacific Ocean and everything in it with nuclear fallout. On the eve of the Bravo shot, weather reports indicated that the quote conditions were getting less favorable. But nonetheless, the decision to go ahead with the first test was taken by Dr. Alvin C. Graves, Joint Task Force. Seven ships located 30 miles east of Bikini in what was thought to be an upwind position began detecting high levels of radiation just two hours after the test. Very soon after, they began traveling south at full speed to avoid the fallout. But directly downwind of the blast and unable to travel were Rongelap and Alingina tolls. Ariana explained the impact of the fallout there, which residents were not warned about. American service people there were warned to stay inside, not eat or drink anything. But no such warning was given to the local residents.

[Robert Evans]

Some said it looked like the sky was changing colors from red to yellow to orange. It was just a very, very bright, bright morning. And then they started hearing like thunderous roars a couple minutes later. And it was just like roars after roars. And it was a very frightening time because this was just not something, you know, does not happen every day. And then around 10am the fallout had started to arrive. And these are accounts from Rongelop Atoll.

[Kevin McDonald]

Which is the closest to Bikini.

[Robert Evans]

The fallout had started to arrive, arrive and they were not sure what was going on. There was men out fishing. There was also stories from these witnesses that prior to this test, the military had gone to Rongruck and they had movie nights and they would show the community movies where it's snowing tomorrow.

[Kevin McDonald]

We'll hear more about the consequences of the Bravo shot for the people who, despite never having any quarrel with the usa, with the recipient of the largest nuclear bomb it's ever detonated.

[Garrison Davis]

Holy man holiness.

[Robert Evans]

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[Simone Boyce]

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[Robert Evans]

Show off your team pride this holiday.

[Simone Boyce]

Season with styles fit for the whole family.

[Robert Evans]

To shop now, go to NFLShop.com the.

[James Stout]

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[Robert Evans]

They sneak your snacks.

[James Stout]

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[Robert Evans]

Chew on something they shouldn't.

[James Stout]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Mia Wong]

Four men experienced domestic abuse in their lifetime. And nearly half of survivors delay leaving because they can't bring their pets with them.

[Robert Evans]

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[Mia Wong]

They believe pets and people are better.

[Robert Evans]

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[Mia Wong]

Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas. Robert Evans here. And we had been planning to make a new come episode to give you all a white Christmas this year. But you know what I did wind up wanting to do right during the holidays when we didn't have to work is spend hours researching some other weird cum conspiracies on the Internet. So we're just going to play the old cum episode for you as a rerun. I know that's not the most effortful version of our job that I could have done this year, but also it's been a real shitty year for everybody. So let's just listen to an old cum episode and pretend we gave you a new cum episode. Merry Christmas, everybody.

[Robert Evans]

Foreign.

[Mia Wong]

Beloved. Welcome to it could happen here. We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word life. It's a thing that only happens with the addition of a couple of ingredients. And one of those ingredients is the subject of our episode today.

[Garrison Davis]

Come.

[Mia Wong]

Oh yeah. You guys like that? Everybody really happy with that.

[Kevin McDonald]

I love that. Yeah. I'm feeling not at all like I want to kind of shower.

[James Stout]

You can hear the moment where we're all simultaneously questioning every single decision we've ever made in our entire lives.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Now we're all bonded together. So how's everybody doing today? We've got Mia Wong, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and I should let people know I wasn't joking about the come thing. So those of you who are too online will know this. Those of you who are not online enough. This is one of the online things that you will want to know because it's very funny. And the gist of it is that like four days ago, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson got sent a link to a Twitter account that is that purports to be spreading like hidden news about the evils of the Chinese communist regime. And they put out a video that was a segment from a British milking fetish pornography video. Now if you're not aware, the milking, as far as I can tell, I believe they're kind of descended from the long lineage of like rubber fetishists. Right. And there's like a lot of medical fetish stuff. It tied into it. But the idea is that men are entirely wrapped up on hospital gurneys and giant pumps suck the semen out of them.

[Kevin McDonald]

So yeah, it's like a cow milker. The machine is very similar to what you would use to milk.

[Mia Wong]

This Twitter account put this up claiming that it was the Chinese government stealing the semen of young men. And Jordan Peterson shared it, saying it was an unbelievable act of evil. And then everyone had the best day of their lives and an hour or two later he deleted it.

[James Stout]

Now I have been continuing cowardly coward. Cowards are deleting it.

[Kevin McDonald]

So strange, so strange that he left the world of peer reviewed academia.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, it's wild that he's no longer a professor. It's very funny. We're continuing to give him shit for it online, but it set us off down an interesting road. And because some other stuff fell through, we're going to talk about the wide world of weird right wing cum conspiracies. Most of them at least are going to be right wing. There's a surprising number of semen based conspiracies. Everybody did research on their own special thing. I wanted to start by talking about this Jordan Peterson cum video and giving kind of some of the, some of the background on it. So I believe it's last July the Chinese Human Sperm bank of Shanghai announced that it was hosting a competition for college students to find out whose semen was, was the best in terms of like, you know, a number of motile sperm per milliliter I think is the way that they judge it. And basically the idea was that they were trying to find like people with sperm concentration greater than 60 million per milliliter. And if they visited a sperm bank a set number of times in six month period, they could receive a prize that was equivalent to about $1,200 right now the reason this is happening is that China for the first time, as a result of a number of different policies, had negative population growth very recently. And this is the thing that can cause a problem for a country for a variety of reasons. So the government is trying to shore up birth rates and there are a lot of couples in China that have had issues conceiving. And so there's a huge amount of demand for Sperm in the country right now. So this is not a weird story. It is actually a thing that happens all around the world regularly. But right around the time that this happened, a little bit after that it came out that a, a Japanese company started selling what is called in the articles. I found an automatic sperm extractor to Chinese sperm banks. Now this is. I'm going to send y'all the link.

[Kevin McDonald]

I was hoping you would.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, oh, yes, Good friends, thanks. Oh yes, we're all going to see this. So the machine's price listing on Alibaba, where it sells for about five to six thousand dollars, describes it as a device that quote, merges modern digital technology, automatic control technology and simulation technologies with semen collection and premature ejaculation desensitization training function. So it has a number of purposes including to help guys stop coming too early, which, hey, no shame. It's funny that built a machine for it.

[Kevin McDonald]

It's extremely funny and that you can buy on AliExpress. It's like, I personally am not attaching anything I bought on Alibaba to sensitive parts of my body.

[James Stout]

$6,000.

[Mia Wong]

It's not cheap. Now the primary, these are not being used for people who are coming too quickly.

[James Stout]

This is like the worst ever R2D2. This.

[Mia Wong]

It is weird.

[Kevin McDonald]

What's the orientation? Does it stand on the ground and you just approach it?

[James Stout]

You have to stand up.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, you. But what if you're a short king?

[Mia Wong]

I'm sure they have options. It has like the rough shape of like a handheld massage device, but it's kind of like formed like almost an art deco robot vagina. And basically from what I've read, kind of the reasoning is that like, hey, we need people to donate sperm. Some people feel weird about just masturbating in a clinic and we hope this is a more pleasant experience for them. So again, we're laughing because, like, look, a machine designed to capture semen is kind of a funny thing. That's okay. No shame on anybody for that. But the fact that you have both the government trying to encourage people to donate sperm and this weird machine kind of created fertile ground for a bunch of right wing weirdos to start making.

[James Stout]

Fertile ground.

[Mia Wong]

Sorry, ungrounded. I know, Fertile ground To make the completely ungrounded claim that like the government was trying to steal people's semen. Right. And that is the basis of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's fun little freak out on the Internet. And I, I will say you should try to find the videos of the automatic sperm extractor. This, this Amazing Japanese machine. Because it is fascinating.

[Kevin McDonald]

I think we should share some of these on the Cool Zone account.

[James Stout]

Do they have to like, like, like change like. I assume they have to like.

[Mia Wong]

Yes, they change every time.

[James Stout]

Yeah, you can't clean that.

[Kevin McDonald]

If you watch the video, there's like a, there's a rubber part that like comes out like, like a sea urchin.

[Mia Wong]

The thing that the penis goes in is also the capture device. So it is removed with this, the sperm donation when you take it out. So again, this is, you know, funny because come. But there's nothing sinister here. It's just in the same way that literally everything is. People have like spun it up into a nonsense thing. But because of this beautiful, beautiful story, which I hope we've all gotten to enjoy, I got to do a lot of work on the.

[James Stout]

Some of you.

[Mia Wong]

If you live, if you've worked in agriculture, you're not going to be surprised that stealing come. Is a massive industry. Like it is a. There is a lot of money to be made in stealing semen. There's enough money to be made in stealing semen that there are two different official terms that I have found for semen theft. The first is sperm jacking.

[James Stout]

How could it get better? How could it get better than Garrison?

[Mia Wong]

It gets better because the second, the second is spergling.

[Robert Evans]

Oh my gosh.

[James Stout]

These are like professionals who like come up with these terms. Huh.

[Mia Wong]

These are.

[Kevin McDonald]

That is a marketing genius.

[Mia Wong]

There actually is. I did find in my research there is one actual Chinese based sperm conspiracy. It's just not a very sinister one. There's this Chinese businessman, Jesse Xiao Bai Zhu, who stole. There's this. I think it was a Canadian company, it was a US Company who had. So this is for like bull semen. And one of the things that you want for bull semen is you don't want. If you're inseminating cows, you want all of the babies to be female generally. Right? Because bulls are not very. With. Outside of certain specific. If you're like trying to make more breeders or whatever. If you're in industrial agriculture, you don't want any of the boys, right? You just want to keep making those sweet, sweet lady cows that are, you know, more useful to you in a financial sense. So there's a US company that developed a method of before insemination looking through the sperm and like sorting out the sperm that will make female cows. And that is apparently hard to do. I mean it sounds like it would be hard to do. Right? And this, this, this Chinese businessman was like reverse engineering there. It's kind of. Actually, it's basically the same story as Jurassic Park. And anyway, this guy has gotten sued for a bunch of money.

[Kevin McDonald]

He got chased down by a herd velociraptor castle.

[James Stout]

I hope it works out just as well as Jurassic Park.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, it's very funny. I will say there's a couple of really wild lines from the CBC story I found. I'm just going to read one to you. Zoo's activities could best be described as Machiavellian. At various points he outlined a plan to make xy. That's the American company quote, feel all the time. The sword of Damocles is on their heads. And bragged. The law is strong, but the outlaws are ten times stronger.

[James Stout]

Okay, okay.

[Kevin McDonald]

This guy is based. Look.

[Mia Wong]

Jesse Jabe zou, my hero. The sperm bandit. Incredible sperm jacker. One of the best burnt killers in the business.

[Kevin McDonald]

This man lives on an island with his cow raptors.

[Mia Wong]

What a hero. There was also a case of a Japanese man who illegally took Wagyu cattle sperm to China to try to give them sperm. And like the Chinese government immediately caught him and was like, no, this is actually incredibly dangerous. Like you're not allowed to just take animal breeding material into the country without. Because, you know, there's a wide variety of reasons that that could be end horribly. So he got in a shitload of trouble. Yeah. Anyway, that's my, that's my sperm stories, everybody.

[James Stout]

Thank you for sharing.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for spergling my knowledge. Garrison, we're back and James is here to talk to us about the kind of sperm jacking that you do when you don't jack. I'm talking about jacking your own sperm by keeping it inside of you. Semen retention.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, it's it.

[Mia Wong]

How was that, James?

[Kevin McDonald]

Beautiful.

[James Stout]

Is that unscripted? Did you just like do that?

[Mia Wong]

Didn't even write that, Garrison.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, it's on the back of his hand. He had a brainwave at 2 in the morning and I got that down.

[Mia Wong]

Those are the kind of things you can do when you've been podcasting as long as I know.

[Kevin McDonald]

Robert's been in a cum space for several years.

[Mia Wong]

I've been in those soggy trenches for a long time.

[Kevin McDonald]

All right, we are after all, at work, so let me continue. So I'm going to talk about what happens when you keep your calm inside you. Okay? Yeah. This is a thing that Garrison is doing.

[James Stout]

What are we doing today?

[Mia Wong]

This is critical journalism.

[Kevin McDonald]

We are making content. We're doing okay. Talking of content. Let's talk about the content of some Reddit posters. So what's called the semen retention movement, and this will shock many of you, began on Reddit.com oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like so many ones.

[Mia Wong]

I feel like, because no one's getting.

[James Stout]

Laid with their own Reddit.

[Mia Wong]

I feel like if you'd typed that into your phone, it would have finished the sentence the same way.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

Auto direct. What is auto directed you to Reddit?

[Kevin McDonald]

Oh, believe me, we're gonna go there, Garrison, because when you Google spam retention, you do indeed find some stuff on Reddit. So I'll bet now they've spun off from Reddit. Right? They now have their own organization, which is NoFap.com and NoFap.com is a community centered sexual health platform. I'm allowing them to define themselves here, I guess. Designed to help people overcome porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior, which is not necessarily. Like, this isn't. Not all semen retention, as we're going to learn, is based in helping people overcome addiction to pornography. But so far as that is a thing that people actually have. I know someone was accusing Robert of being addicted to porn on his timeline this weekend.

[Mia Wong]

That would be because I keep ratioing Jordan Peterson with the pornography video that he mistakenly posted.

[Kevin McDonald]

That's correct. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I just want him to respond so I can ask him. Jordan, tell me in your own words what you thought was happening in that video.

[Kevin McDonald]

I really hope he thinks it's like milking. Like they have art RFID collars and they get fed based on their production level. That would be great.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. What did you. You're a medical doctor. Did you think that cum actually worked that way, that you could just stick a sucker on somebody anyway?

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, just get it out. Okay. So after this movement began on Reddit.com, it quickly pivoted to kind of offering all kinds of weird physical and mental health benefits. And that's where it was adopted by friends of the podcast the Proud Boys. Luckily, we do have a bit of insight into why, into the exact nature of the NoFAP fascism that the Proud Boys practice, thanks to Kyle Chaney, who's a Politico reporter who was reporting on the trial of one of the Proud Boys accused of sedition on January 6th, called Zach Rell. And at that trial, for reasons that I'm not exactly clear on, the Proud Boy, I guess it's like their handbook, like the kind of Proud Boy Bible was introduced and into the record. Somebody it's in there. Yep. It's in the court record, buddy, because one of the lawyers decided that it was pertinent to the case. So a proud boy may not ejaculate alone more than once in every 30 days. That means he must abstain from pornography during that time. And if he needs to ejaculate. This is really weird. It must be within one yard of a woman.

[Mia Wong]

Fascinatingly specific.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah, right. And I like that they've gone with imperial measurement with her consent. So that's nice. The woman may not be a prostitute. So that's the proud boys nature then. No, fap fascism. But I think the way of understanding why some people practice this, perhaps best, is to. Is to go onto Reddit.com so I found a post by Reddit user U. Monk191817. Seems like a nice guy and there are 480 upvotes on this. But what I did was I went to semen retention and I looked at, you know, sorted by popular posts, found this one from a bunch of numbers. And so this guy has 9 years of experience with semen retention. So I'm just going to read. I'm presuming, oh boy, what a life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Him and some monks off the coast of fucking Lindsfar.

[James Stout]

Cannot be healthy.

[Kevin McDonald]

No, I don't think it is. There is. And we'll get to this evidence that you shouldn't do this. So in his nine years of experience, he has experienced the following things. Semen, when retained in our bodies, has healing, rejuvenating effects. Loss of semen has the opposite effects. This may not be scientifically proven, but it's proven by experience. That's a red flag.

[Mia Wong]

That's interesting.

[Kevin McDonald]

Getting Reddit medical advice while attempting any task that demands high physical, mental or intellectual ability. If we are semen retention powered, we would actually enjoy the task which would otherwise seem dull. This is called sexual energy transmutation in layman's terms.

[James Stout]

Oh no, wait, that's the layman's term.

[Robert Evans]

What are the.

[James Stout]

What's the non layman term?

[Kevin McDonald]

It's got even more. I have no idea. Spermazoic fucking fission. So for peak performance, it's always necessary to be powered by semen. It would be best to use semen only for regenerate but purposes, since nature originally intended it for regeneration and not use it for sexual purposes apart from to create a child if not serving that purpose. Master whatever teach techniques are useful in not letting the seed out while having sex. At the end of the day, don't let your seed out like a worthless thing. There's more. So just contain yourself.

[James Stout]

Okay, Great. Great.

[Kevin McDonald]

Which is exactly the reason why core religions are based on celibacy. Because opposite of regeneration is degeneration, which will cause a man to fall into a lower state controlled by his lower nature rather than when he's subduing it. We should let semen retention be part of our lives, not something that is done for superpowers. For superpowers are, in my experience, the sudden ecstasy that we feel once we transition from the degenerated to the regenerated state. And that will stabilize after some time, similar to how a flight maintains stable altitude after takeoff.

[James Stout]

Very similar, actually. Yeah, that's basically the same thing.

[Kevin McDonald]

That's what you can hear when the engines are spinning up. It's just a dude trying really hard not to nut and it makes that noise.

[James Stout]

So excited for the next Marvel film where the superhero gains his power from.

[Mia Wong]

Paul Rudd. Has to not come so he can get tiny.

[Kevin McDonald]

No, Fat man. So, yeah, he didn't. I should add that this person confesses to having lapsed at some point in the nine years.

[James Stout]

Poser.

[Mia Wong]

Poser.

[James Stout]

Poser.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, it's stolen.

[Mia Wong]

That's like when I learned Lance Armstrong was on steroids. It's just disappointing.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, no one would have seen it coming. See what I did there? Okay, so this person then urges other posters on the semen retention subreddit to not use streaks to outperform others or look better about ourselves or bring others down. The battle with lust is a lifelong fight. And the more we get better at finding victories. Yeah. Yeah, buddy. The more we become better at fighting victories over internal battles, the better we become as high valued men. Hell yeah, brother.

[Mia Wong]

I've often wished that, you know, if the pandemic hadn't been a thing and I could force you all to work in a central location, I could have like a wall of murals where I put under each of your faces a quote from an episode that you've participated in. And James, that would be your quote. The battle against lust is a lifelong story. Struggle.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, that I'll get some T shirts knocked up and we can do a.

[James Stout]

Fundraiser when we eventually get the cools on mini offices, we have a portrait hanging on the wall of each of us with one quote underneath. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

Like on a plaque with a. Yeah.

[James Stout]

Yes.

[Kevin McDonald]

When we get the co.

[Mia Wong]

When we. When we. When we take over the meta offices three weeks from now.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. There is a marketing company that has been emailing me for about six months telling me how cheap it is to buy a billboard by the side of a road and send a message to a loved one. So maybe.

[James Stout]

Great.

[Mia Wong]

Maybe I'll go with Billboard Industries doing bangarang.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there will be until I put my positive messages about controlling lust and holding semen inside our bodies.

[James Stout]

True.

[Kevin McDonald]

And return men to their former glory. So a lot of the Reddit posts rely on a couple of different studies. Right. One of these studies measured participants. A lot of what they're doing is they're claiming to increase testosterone. Right, Right. At the bat. Testosterone does have, as Lance Armstrong can tell you, some performance enhancing benefits.

[Mia Wong]

Sure.

[Kevin McDonald]

So, yeah, increases your muscle growth, your recovery from exercise, all that stuff. One of the studies measured participants testosterone levels at baseline before masturbation and then in 10 minute intervals after masturbation. Right. And then they were asked to abstain for three weeks and they came back and they did the process again. Testosterone was higher in the baseline measurement at the end of the three weeks of abstinence. Right. But the sample size was pretty small. And there's some theorizing that the boost was actually caused by the anticipated masturbation that they were about to do at the second.

[Mia Wong]

They were so ready to come.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah. These guys were active.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

Just ready to pop after three weeks. The second study looked at a 45% increase after a few days, seven days of abstinence. But even a study showed this was a temporary peak that returned to normal even with continuing abstinence. So there's just these two studies, they're pretty. They happened a long time ago. We'll post them all in the show notes if you guys want to read more about NoFAP science. But we should just point out that there is in fact a multitude of evidence that this is a bad idea, that having sex is actually good for you. Having sex while trying not to ejaculate is probably not good for you, probably not good for your relationship, either one would surmise There are.

[Mia Wong]

Unless you're into that. Whatever.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If that's your thing, you do you. There was a study that investigated the motivation for semen retention among semen retainers. And a lot of it, it seemed like people who felt that, like either sex or masturbation was unhealthy or wrong or sinful. And there is evidence to show that feeling guilty about yourself or living with stress and self loathing like that is bad for you. Right. And that will reduce your testosterone level. There's also some evidence to suggest that not ejaculating can give you prostate issues, which is.

[Mia Wong]

Yes. Yeah, there's, there's. And this is like, pretty debatable, like most things that people talk about within regards to coming and health. Like, you can find some studies, like the studies on testosterone. Some of them are kind of sketchy. Anyway.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, don't think.

[Mia Wong]

Come or come. Either way, you know, it's whatever. But if you do have a chance to. One of those Alibaba robots, I recommend it.

[Kevin McDonald]

Don't pass that up.

[James Stout]

Let's talk about cum demons.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah.

[James Stout]

Wait, okay. Okay. Hard pivot here.

[Robert Evans]

From.

[James Stout]

So we. We are not going as far afield from the no fat people as, as, as. As you would think. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

But.

[James Stout]

All right, now the year is 2020. Everyone on Earth has collectively gone insane.

[Mia Wong]

This is.

[Robert Evans]

This is.

[James Stout]

This is the summer. This is the summer of 2020. So this is the part of 2020 where fun stuff is happening. This is like late July.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, Garrison. That's when we met.

[James Stout]

So we were getting just incredibly poisoned.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yep.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, we sure were. That'll be fun in like 20 years.

[James Stout]

Well, well, well. While life or death struggle for the sort of the life or death struggle for the fate of the United States and whether or not people are going to be continuously murdered by the cops is being waged in Donald Trump and Donald J. Trump. Donald J. Trump.

[Robert Evans]

Wow.

[James Stout]

Donald Trump Jr. That one. That's.

[Robert Evans]

That's.

[James Stout]

That's the Trump. The little Trump here.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

Trumpet.

[James Stout]

We're, you know, looking for. Looking, looking for their.

[Robert Evans]

Their.

[James Stout]

Their cure to COVID 19 on Twitter.

[Robert Evans]

And.

[James Stout]

Okay, so as. As we probably all remember.

[Mia Wong]

Right, right.

[James Stout]

The thing that they found was hydroxy. Okay. So one of the first ones that they found before. Before Ivermectin. This is. This is before.

[Mia Wong]

So much shit.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. Was it inside of them all along? Mir.

[James Stout]

No, this is.

[Robert Evans]

This is.

[James Stout]

This is hydroxychloroquine. A thing that was probably. I hope they weren't full of hydrochlorine.

[Kevin McDonald]

I thought it was semen.

[James Stout]

No, no, we'll get to that. There's a. The road is long, but it ends with cum demons. But we first must walk the road. So the road here is Donald. Donald Trump Jr posts a tweet saying, like, saying this is necessary watching about this video from this doctor named Dr. Stella Emmanuel. Now, okay, so who. Who is this person? She. She is part of a. Oh, okay. I say part of. She runs this thing called Firepower Ministries, which.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, no.

[James Stout]

So, you know, things are going great. She's also.

[Mia Wong]

I know, broadly. Yeah. Okay, cool.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

She's also part of America's frontline doctors who are this group.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

These dipshits.

[Kevin McDonald]

Oh, my God.

[James Stout]

Okay, so this is. This is very, very, very much in the same vein as architecture 911 truth. They found a bunch of people who technically have medical degrees or like nurses who were like, no, no, vaccines are bad. And hydroxychloroquine contractor chloroquine is Covid correct? That one. Yeah. It's.

[Garrison Davis]

It's.

[James Stout]

It's been, it's. It's been a long day. I. I've slept for eight hours, but in like several distinct parts of the day that were not continuous. It's been. Things are going. Things are going healthy.

[Kevin McDonald]

Better if you'd taken some horse medicine first, quite possibly.

[James Stout]

I mean, it's not like it could have gone worse.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, get some cat.

[Robert Evans]

All right, all right. So.

[James Stout]

So this, this person's from the very sketchy doctors who are trying to sell like a bunch of random shit to cure Covid. And. Okay, so who actually is this person? She is from Cameroon. And Dr. Stella Emanue was caught up in the unbelievably sort of like, I mean, right, like, yes, objectively right wing also very, very weird wave of Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity that's been sweeping across that part of Africa as part of sort of, you know, sort of like a very, sort of long range coordinated effort by. By right wing Christian missionaries. So, okay, so for. For people who don't know your Christianity very well, the Pentecostals and the charismatic Christians are like, firmly in the very, very weird camp of Christians. Like, these are, these are the people who do faith healing. One of the very common sort of Pentecostal things is this belief that like, like you just. You talk to God like God's in your head and you just have conversations with him. Now, unfortunately for like, all of us, and this is, you know, a thing that is a not insignificant contributing factor to why the last, I don't know, 10 years have been so batshit. Is that like this originally was kind of an isolated Pentecostal thing and like, the broader evangelicals were like, no, no, no. God only talks to me. Like your pastor. Like, he's probably not like, you're not like having a conversation in your head with God. But that's changed. That's changed. Yeah, this, this shit has. This shit has fucking taken over everywhere. It's really bad. And these people believe a lot of very, very weird stuff. So what do I mean? Okay, so, like, you know, she she has like, some of the sort of standard, like, really, really hard line, like David Icke shit. Like, she believes that the world's being run by aliens and, like, reptiles and, like, the vaccine has, like, alien DNA in it to, like, take over your DNA. You know, this is like sort of Facebook moments. Alex Jones.

[Simone Boyce]

Shit.

[James Stout]

Yeah, right. Okay.

[Mia Wong]

But.

[James Stout]

Okay, I'm gonna read this quote from Will Sumner. This is a quote from one of her sermons. They, which is demons, are responsible for serious gynecological problems. Emmanuel said, we call them all kinds of names, entromes, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts. But most of them are evil deposits from spirit husband. Emmanuel said of the medical issues.

[Robert Evans]

They.

[James Stout]

Are responsible for miscarriages, impotence, men that can't get it up. So, all right, immediately we have, like, we have. There are several kinds of cum demons here that, that we're dealing with. So there are, like, there, there's. There's.

[Garrison Davis]

There's.

[James Stout]

So, okay, so a lot of this is drawn from what is a very, like a genuinely unbelievably dubious piece of theology. So when I was researching this, right, I saw. I saw. I saw someone.

[Robert Evans]

There was.

[James Stout]

There was like, a religious scholar who was writing this. He was like, oh, I immediately recognize the theology of this. This is from. This is from Genesis 6. So, okay. So I was like, okay, what the fuck are they talking about? So I went back and I read gen. Okay, So I went back and I read the Genesis, and I'm going to read the two. This is. This is from Genesis, chapter six, verses one and two. And I am just going to read these two sentences and I am going to see if you two can produce cum demons from this. Okay?

[Kevin McDonald]

Happy to do so.

[Mia Wong]

I mean, I could produce cum demons from almost anything. That is the power of.

[Kevin McDonald]

With the right machinery.

[Mia Wong]

You know what? I think we know exactly what the right machinery is.

[James Stout]

Look, we know that we could produce cum demons mechanically. Our challenge here is to produce them theologically. Okay, I'll try. I will use all of all of my knowledge.

[Mia Wong]

We must find a way to evacuate the vast deferens of the soul.

[James Stout]

Okay, so I'm using the King James translation, because that's the translation that all these psychos use. And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them. That the sons of God saw the daughters of man, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose. Okay, so I. I do know. I do know what, what they are doing. So the sons of God, those would be what like fallen angels that have been procreating with women?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, the nendolim.

[James Stout]

Yeah. So this ties into like the Book of Enoch stuff which was made a little bit like after Genesis, but it kind of, it like retconned a lot of like the creation story. So I can see where they're, they're pulling come demons from. But it is, it is a bit of a stretch.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, they're kind of, you could say come demons in the way that like God seed. Yeah, you could see it. Yeah, it's, that's, it is a stretch now.

[James Stout]

Okay, my, my, my, my analysis of this. I think, I think they're pulling this out of their ass and I think they're pulling this out of their ass. It's also about cum demons. So yeah, they're priceless. I have. It is well known for people who follow me on Twitter that I have an immense and powerful disrespect for theology. But what part of the Sons of God, what part of that gets you to demons and not like again, isn't the whole point of Christianity that we are all God's children? Like is this not a thing that they tell you in every single fucking c. How do you read that and not think they're talking about people and immediately jump to come demon? Like here's what's going on. I can explain this because this is the King's James version. So this was made in a post Book of Enoch world around the, around the alleged birth of Jesus. The Book of Enoch got very popular and this, this introduced the idea of a fallen angel. The fallen, fallen angel isn't really in the Bible at all. It's only, only, it's only in like non biblical Abrahamic texts. So this, this idea then kind of got planted into a lot of like Catholic mythology as well. So when they're, they're caused, they have a distinction between like the, like the sons of, like the sons of God versus what was the, what was the thing they used to refer, to refer to the daughters. The sons of. The daughters of men. Exactly. So the daughters are human where the, the, the sons are like came from God. So that is some type of fallen angel that has been cast down to earth. They are doing a specific thing, but it's a result of a whole bunch of mistranslations and a whole bunch of various Christian and Gnostic texts that have been misinterpreted for thousands of years by the Catholic Church and It creates a really weird theology that is indistinguishable from like Castlevania. So yeah, I blame Martin Luther. This is Martin Luther's fault. Like, here's the thing, here's the thing.

[Kevin McDonald]

May I want to keep it in high Latin so the Poles can't understand.

[James Stout]

This is what Martin Luther. I'm specifically because. Okay, so this was already happened. The Catholic Church was already doing this, right. But Martin Luther had a chance to fix this shit and he was like, do you know what I'm gonna do instead of that? I am going to. I am going to turn against the peasant revolt and I'm going to do a. I'm going to bring about a level of anti Semitism that is going to allow me to outflank the Inquisition on the. Right. She could have been fixing this. No anti Semitism.

[Robert Evans]

Woo.

[James Stout]

I gotta keep my patron lords in power.

[Mia Wong]

He was, he was German. Like there's only so much you can ask.

[James Stout]

That's true.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Well, I'm. I'm happy that we can all go to sleep at night worrying about the sons of God implanting semen.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, there's also the only thing I ever did.

[James Stout]

So. Okay, so that, that, that's, that's calm. Demon type. Type one, Right? That is. Okay, so those are, those are the demons that like they, they have, they have sex with women and they produce nephilim from. Or sometimes also you fought by nephilim. There's, there's a lot of sort of conflicting sort of theological. All that stuff comes from the book of Enoch. All that stuff is non canon to the modern Bible, but it's where, it's where it comes from.

[Mia Wong]

Fucking Council of Nicaea.

[James Stout]

Okay, but there's also, there's also a second. There's also the second kind of cum demon, right? Which is. These are, these are. Well, okay, so succubi and incubi are based. Here we go. I knew it. I was counting down. I was counting down.

[Kevin McDonald]

You had faith.

[James Stout]

Yeah, the other kind of demon. So you have your incubi, right, who are another type of sex demon. And the incubi fuck men so they can steal their semen. And there's different sort of reasons of this. There's another thing that she talks about, which is that there are witches who have like astral spirit sex with men in their sleep. And if you're like having a sex dream, it's because you're having astral spirit sex.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, no, no.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I mean like I'm like Bill Murray. I've experienced that. Oh, we know. That was Bill Murray. Sorry, I. My mistake. I get our lives mixed up often.

[Kevin McDonald]

Oh, wait. Understandable.

[James Stout]

Yes. Okay. Okay. The cloud. The fog is clearing. I've had. I've had sex with too many sex demons. It's. It's a real issue.

[Kevin McDonald]

Okay, so. So.

[James Stout]

All right, so we have the sex demons who are like, trying to impregnate you. We have the sex demons who are trying to steal your cum. We also have the. So we have the actual projecting. Projecting witches. Right, and the actual projecting witches are trying to steal people's cum as part of an Illuminati plot to create like, an even more powerful witch. And the even more powerful witch is going to use gay marriage and children's toys to like, destroy the fabric of Western civilization and thus bring about sort of general new world order, et cetera. I have heard of this. Honestly, witch meeting. Yeah, I'm supporting.

[Mia Wong]

That is not as far from the Backstory to Warhammer 40,000 as it should be.

[James Stout]

That's very sadly true.

[Kevin McDonald]

I didn't want Warhammer 40,000 to come into our come episode, if I'm honest.

[Mia Wong]

Uh huh. No, it's. I mean, look, there's a lot of people who are interested in both semen retention and Warhammer 40,000.

[James Stout]

That's a tight Vendahekram.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, they all play Ultramarines. That was a.

[James Stout]

That's.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Pretty good Warhammer 40,000 joke for those of you who play.

[James Stout]

I also learned a couple days ago that one of the many crimes of the Emperor 40k was passing off in a Miri Bacara quote is his own.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, yeah, that is.

[Robert Evans]

That was.

[Mia Wong]

That was a good bit. That was a really good bit. It's little pieces like that that let you know that Dan Abnett's pretty based.

[Simone Boyce]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

That was my favorite part of the book.

[James Stout]

So funny.

[Kevin McDonald]

That's like. That's literally canon.

[James Stout]

I do have like three pages written on tanning. So. Yeah, that's the end of the stage. Demons go off. Well. Okay, I. The one thing I will add on is that one of the more funny modern versions of these, if you go on the Benadryl subreddit, the recreational Benadryl subreddit, you can find people.

[Kevin McDonald]

Oh yeah, that is.

[James Stout]

Who try to take enough Benadryl to have sex with the hat man, which is another. Another form of trying to summon shadow people to steal your semen.

[Mia Wong]

Maybe I haven't been. You have to. You have to explain your terms for people here.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, I'm not.

[Mia Wong]

The hat man is A tall thin man wearing a hat who appears when you take hallucinogenic doses of Benadryl because you can't afford better drugs because you're 17.

[James Stout]

Yes, we're younger and there's some people, some people find the hat man extremely attractive or some of like the female shadow people variants and they try to, they. I have, I have read multiple reports of people explaining their sexual experiences with shadow people. Anyways, the President of the United States and his son were promoting this. So this is great.

[Kevin McDonald]

This website, by the way. Absolute adventures on here. I'm just reading about how to use Christ's blood as a weapon.

[James Stout]

Amazing.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, that's good.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah, no problems here. Yeah.

[James Stout]

Do you know who won't steal your semen? Everybody.

[Mia Wong]

We can't promise that.

[James Stout]

I, I can, I can promise any advertiser on this show I've personally approved to make sure they will not come into your bedroom and steal your semen.

[Mia Wong]

Wow.

[Kevin McDonald]

How do you do? How's the approval process work?

[James Stout]

Instead of interest I cannot divulge privately.

[Mia Wong]

They sent Garrison $40.

[James Stout]

We are, we are going to close off by. By talking about sperm and testosterone. 2. Two of our favorite topics for this episode. For some reason, about. About a year ago, a trailer on Fox News dropped for a new batch of Tucker Carlson originals titled the end of Men. It opens with the text that reads in the car, current year, the cycle continues.

[Simone Boyce]

Once a society collapses, then you're in hard times. Well, hard iron sharpens iron, as they say. And those hard times inevitably produce men who are tough, men who are resourceful, men who are strong enough to survive. And then they go on to re establishment, establish order. And so the cycle begins again.

[James Stout]

Now there's a few funny things about this video. From the ripped shirtless dudes milking cows to wrestling each other and shooting bottles of canola oil. They're just at the gun range. They're just shooting like 10 bottles of canola oil for some reason.

[Kevin McDonald]

Maybe they're the Mussolini's. Like, they're into the Mussolini stuff. He was a big fan of Canelo Roll.

[James Stout]

By far the most bizarre.

[Mia Wong]

I mean, I suspect they're shooting the cannolo because it's like a seed oil thing. They think that like seed oils, it's a weird right wing thing. Seed oils are like sucking out your testosterone.

[James Stout]

Anyway, it's something very silly, but by far the most bizarre thing in this trailer is a shot of a naked man with outstretched arms like Jesus on the Karasa style, standing in front of a lake at dusk with A white machine shining a glowing red light on his dick.

[Robert Evans]

What?

[James Stout]

And. And again, at the climax of the music from 2001 A Space Odyssey, there's this. There's this man facing balls first in front of this large red light at the end of this trailer.

[Mia Wong]

I. There should never have been any cause on our podcast or on Fox News for anyone to say the line after the end of the climax of the music from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

[James Stout]

Oh, that's the thing we're objecting to from this episode. That's the line.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, because it shouldn't have climaxed. It lost its power in that moment.

[James Stout]

Considering both, like the.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no.

[James Stout]

One sec, James.

[Mia Wong]

That was a very good joke.

[Kevin McDonald]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for. Thank you for seeing me, buddy. Yeah.

[James Stout]

So considering both, like, the text at the beginning and then some of the narration that we just heard in the trailer, they're kind of doing this weird, like, Kali Yuga thing. Right? That is. That is a bit of. A bit of what's going on here. Because Kali Yuga again.

[Mia Wong]

You can listen to our episodes on Savitri Devi for a little more information about this. But it's like this weird right wing, like, quasi apocalyptic concept that evolved during an intermix between some of the early Nazis and some of the people who are currently behind the present leader of India. It's. It's way too esoteric weird to get into, but it's one of the things that, like, the real.

[James Stout]

Yeah, the real fucked up. We're not going to get into it too much, but I think the previous.

[Mia Wong]

News settling that it wound up adjacent to a Tucker Carlson episode because it's some like, weird, esoteric Nazi wizard shit.

[James Stout]

Yes. And that previous November, Joe Rogan posted a Kali Yuga meme which went viral. It's. It's about how hard times create strong men which create good times, which lead to weak men, which create hard times. It's a fucking silly. His. His. His. The. The accompanying text on the Instagram post that. That Rogan did said civilizations move in predictable cycles. We are in the Kali Yuga, the age of conflict. All of the chaos we're seeing right now is predicted in Hinduism thousands of years ago. So Rogan was probably just like parroting something that he heard from one of his many fashy or agey friends. Which, considering Rogan's social circle, that could very well just be the same person.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yes.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. One of his fucking sparring buddies is either friends with the Nazi or just stumbled upon a fucking. The wrong podcast. And then told him that when they were smoking weed. And you know, yeah, that's. I mean, that's honestly to. It's problematic because of his platform. But that's how I learned everything about esoterica that I learned when I was in my 20s was some. I was smoking weed with some sketchy.

[James Stout]

Dude who was going places he shouldn't.

[Mia Wong]

Have been on the Internet.

[James Stout]

So a few months after Rogan posted this meme, we have Tucker Carlson making this whole miniseries surrounding this hard times create strong men kind of trend. It's taking cues from the online manosphere, and Tucker posited that weak, unmanly men are leading to the collapse of civilization and a hardening of men is necessary to save it. According to. According to Tucker, one of the. One of the threats to manhood is a quote unquote, total collapse in testosterone levels amongst men in recent years. And the solution goes beyond just your typical, like, anti soy crusading that Tucker has done in the past. Now Tucker has turned to the cutting edge science of bromiopathic medicine as advocates.

[Kevin McDonald]

That's an even better one.

[James Stout]

As advocated for by a quote unquote fitness professional named Andrew McGovern, who touts that infrared light and testicle tanning is this deus ex machina for plummeting T levels in men.

[Mia Wong]

So obviously half the viewers right now are like, What?

[Garrison Davis]

That's testicle 10.

[Mia Wong]

That's crazy. But my view is, okay, testosterone levels crash and nobody says anything about it. That's crazy. So why is it crazy to seek solutions?

[Simone Boyce]

It's not crazy to seek solutions.

[Garrison Davis]

And I think I was recently exposed.

[Kevin McDonald]

To a term called bromiopathy.

[Garrison Davis]

And I think there's a lot of.

[Kevin McDonald]

People out there right now that don't.

[Simone Boyce]

Trust, trust the mainstream information.

[James Stout]

This TV special is. Is constantly referred to as a documentary. So surely you would expect Tucker to try and like, interview scientists or like anyone with expertise on this topic. Not Tucker. Of course not. Actually, no. Not. Not the case.

[Kevin McDonald]

Tucker to talk to anyone serious.

[James Stout]

Andrew McGovern, our. Our bromiopathic hero, works as a personal trainer at Lifetime Fitness in Columbus, Ohio. Oh, my God. And he hasn't even been a train very long. About a decade ago.

[Mia Wong]

Even a good one.

[James Stout]

About a decade ago, he was the manager of an Abercrombie and Fitch store in Miami.

[Kevin McDonald]

Oh, perfect.

[Mia Wong]

Yes. Okay, now that's where I get all of my descriptions from, is a guy who works at the Abercrombie and Fish store.

[James Stout]

Wait, but in Miami.

[Mia Wong]

Hey, if you want to get trim, that's where you get trim.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

That is.

[Kevin McDonald]

That type of dude is emerging here.

[James Stout]

As of 2017, he was the director of operations for Petland. Retail stores.

[Mia Wong]

Keep getting funnier, but this.

[Kevin McDonald]

Guy'S resume is highly amusing.

[James Stout]

But Tucker, being a competent journalist, did not just interview one person. However, Kid Rock was brought on to be the sole voice of reason.

[Mia Wong]

You know, Garrison, you laugh, but Kid Rock is the other person I've gotten prescription drugs from.

[Kevin McDonald]

So, real bastion, in the platonic cave of men stands Kid Rock and a guy from Abercrombie and Fitch. And we must only be their shadows.

[James Stout]

Dude, stop testicle tanning.

[Robert Evans]

Come on.

[Mia Wong]

I mean, yeah, I haven't heard anything. Open your mind, Bobby.

[James Stout]

I'm starting a punk rock band and.

[Mia Wong]

It'S called testicle tanning. That's the end of it. I mean, don't you think at this point, when so many of the therapies, the paths they've told us to take, have turned out to be dead ends that have really hurt people, why wouldn't open minded people seek new solutions?

[James Stout]

I. I don't know what the hell is going on in this world. I'm not even sure if I understood that question. But some days I just want to stop this planet and let me off. Like Kid Rock was not. Did. Did not buy into testicle tanning the same way Tucker seemed to.

[Kevin McDonald]

Howard.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, God, is Kid Rock gonna be the voice of reason?

[James Stout]

That's what I said. I said he was brought on to be the sole voice of reason.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, but we thought you were joking. Because it's Kid Rock.

[Mia Wong]

I thought you were joking.

[James Stout]

I didn't believe you.

[Kevin McDonald]

No, he's the only person that doesn't bias Kid Rock. Stands with science.

[Mia Wong]

It is indeed. Sweet home Alabama all summer long.

[James Stout]

Tucker was not the first person to advocate for testicular tanning as the solution to an allegedly problematic dip in testosterone levels dating back to 2015. You can find articles online, such as, quote, former MLB player Gabe Kapler says men who want to get stronger should tan their testicles from complex. And quote, I put a giant red light on my balls to triple my testosterone levels from Men's Health 2017.

[Kevin McDonald]

Is that written by Ben Greenfield by any chance? Because he normally pops up with these things.

[James Stout]

Which one?

[Kevin McDonald]

The Men's Health one.

[James Stout]

It's a guy who injected his dick.

[Kevin McDonald]

To make it bigger.

[James Stout]

I have it in my show notes here. This was written by someone named Ben Greenfield. Oh, look at that.

[Kevin McDonald]

Fucking jackpot. Oh, this bellend has won games.

[Mia Wong]

So proud of you today, buddy.

[James Stout]

I'm so happy we have you on our team.

[Mia Wong]

Dibs. Are you taking, Are you taking performance enhancing drugs for this podcast?

[Kevin McDonald]

Sadly, Robert, I'm not.

[James Stout]

This is so funny.

[Kevin McDonald]

We have stepped into a goldmine of contact with Ben Greenfield, the guy who injected his own dick with stem cells to make it bigger.

[James Stout]

That's so funny. Oh man.

[Kevin McDonald]

I urge you, I compel you, if you have any free time in your day, just Google Ben Greenfield penis. Their be several articles at supposedly reputable outlets that will just fucking make you unwell.

[James Stout]

Well, that's, that is great to hear, but despite not being the first person to talk about testicular tanning, Tucker was certainly the most impactful. After the airing of the End of Men, testicular tanning showed a 7,000 increase in relative search interest on Google and a 30, 35,000 increase increase in tweets on the topic. Now surely some of these things are stuff like making fun of it, right?

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, tweets, I'm sure, is a lot.

[James Stout]

Yeah, but a lot of it is also. A lot of. It's also people who are just talking about it genuinely. To quote a study published in jmir, a dermatology publication, quote, the promotion of testicular tanning generated significant public interest in an evidence lacking and potentially dangerous health trend. Dermatologists and other healthcare professionals should be aware of these new viral health trends to best counsel patients and combat health misinformation. So like, in terms of actual data, a 2017 meta analysis of studies on sperm counts found that in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, men's sperm counts have declined by about 50% between 1973 and 2011. Now, these results, adults have not been enough to really cause broad concern unless you're like a right wing influencer for men, because there doesn't really seem to be an equal drop in testosterone levels.

[Mia Wong]

Compared to previous problems mankind has had. On the whole, not enough semen per cum shot. It's not one of them yet.

[James Stout]

Yes, and, and like, compared to previous decades, there is this maybe like a 20% decrease in total testosterone levels amongst adolescent and young adult males, but that's highly fluctual and it's impacted heavily by diet. It's. It's suspected that pollution, environmental degradation are also suspected of being contributing factors, with plastics like phthalate being known to interfere with the production of hormones like testosterone. But this, this area of research is still heavily contested. But still that has not stopped fitness youtubers and conservative influencers from tying this to like the soy boy feminization of men and drumming up panic to grow Their social media followings, sell their supplements and advertise affiliate products. The creme de la creme of red lights for testicular tanning is the Joov light. JoovV is a light therapy panel company which, which sells these LEDs. They're like this. They're like this upscale wellness brand. The smallest model they have costs over $1,000, with the full body ones going for around 10 grand.

[Kevin McDonald]

This is when you know it's a grift. If someone is telling you that they need to sell you sunlight, they are having a fucking laugh.

[James Stout]

Our friend Ben Greenfield advocates, quote, advocates that you spend the big bucks on Joo lest you, quote, fry your balls to a crisp with a cheap knockoff.

[Mia Wong]

You wouldn't want to do that, would you?

[Kevin McDonald]

This is unwise.

[James Stout]

Yeah, it seems like it's maybe a bad idea.

[Mia Wong]

I can teach you how to cook your balls safely without spending any money at all. Get a pair of AA batteries, take them right out of your remote control. You stick the active end in a bottle of water and then you put your hand on your testicles and you're. It'll. It'll complete the circuit and power your testicles up with electricity, which you can then ejaculate instead of cum.

[James Stout]

They'll probably give you superpowers too.

[Mia Wong]

Almost certainly Garrison.

[James Stout]

Legally, this is not a recommendation to do this. If you do this, that shit's not on us. You did that of your own volition.

[Kevin McDonald]

Please do not connect batteries to your dick.

[James Stout]

To quote that JMIR study evaluating the public's interest into secular tanning, quote, the interest in this topic may be partially explained by the immense attention and advertising men's sexual health and hormone replacement or hormone enhancing therapies receive in the U.S. although subsequent media coverage largely disfavored testicular tanning due to lacking evidence and potential dangers, other health influencers came to defend and encourage the practice of testicular tanning, specifically by using UV light as an example. As an example, here is a clip from fitness YouTuber Elliot Hulsey's strength camp with 1.7 million followers.

[Robert Evans]

Blast your balls with sunshine to increase testosterone. Now, you can drop your draws and let your balls get kissed by the sun, or you can try one of these light panels to roast my nuts and be more manly. A 1939 study suggests that UV light exposure to your testicles increases testosterone by 200%. If you want to join me in.

[James Stout]

This experiment, you could find one of.

[Robert Evans]

These bad [e-mail] then just go to personallabs.com get your blood tested, get your testosterone, then after 8 to 12 weeks, check it again and find out if the nut rusting really works.

[James Stout]

So this whole idea goes back to this one 1939 study. 1939?

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, lots of good science in 1939.

[James Stout]

And if there's one thing I trust, it's science from 1939.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yep. Got any comments on race in this study?

[James Stout]

So this study was published in the journal Endocrinology, and it found that frequent UV irritation to the genitals increased urinary androsterone, a metabolite of testosterone. It increased these levels by nearly 200%, quote, unquote. Now you'll be shocked to learn that there may be problems with this study. Guess how many test subjects were included in this. In this study? I'm gonna be generous and say eight. So Mia says eight. James and Greenfield?

[Kevin McDonald]

Just one.

[James Stout]

One? You say one. Robert, how many, how many do you think are in the study?

[Mia Wong]

Geez, I think like seven was sacred to the Nazis. So I'm gonna say that five.

[James Stout]

A grand total of five people are in the study.

[Robert Evans]

What?

[James Stout]

I gave them too much credit.

[Mia Wong]

They had to pick the sacred discordian number. Bullshit.

[James Stout]

Three of them are 54 years old and have manic depressive psychosis. The other two are 28.

[Mia Wong]

Honestly, not a bad. A fairly representative sample for Tucker's audience.

[Kevin McDonald]

I was about to say the same thing. This is actually. Who watches his show.

[James Stout]

The other two are 12, 28 and 45 and have, quote, psychopathia with depressive features, which is a very old timey term everyone on Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. But I think what actually happened is I think they did this study at an asylum and just found people with depressive psychosis to do the study on. It's just these five. These five random people. No individual graph results were produced. It only showed the quote, unquote, typical reaction. And there wasn't even a control group for the study.

[Mia Wong]

What was good science?

[Kevin McDonald]

Why bother?

[James Stout]

Not to mention there's many problems with like, measuring testosterone in the first place because it changes broadly day to day and by age. And it's very kind of unreliable to quote the JMIR study again, quote. Beyond this questionable study, research has shown that exposure to UV radiation may increase sex steroid hormone levels. However, these studies either do not include human participants or do not specifically evaluate UV radiation exposure to the genitals. There is not a single other study since then that has done anything resembling like peer reviewed science.

[Mia Wong]

You know what, why everybody go to gofundme help Cool Zone determine whether or not testicle tanning works and we'll get that control group.

[James Stout]

Wait, okay, so my other question about this. Aren't. Aren't all these people getting fucking ball cancer? We are. It's just been like a year. We are about to get to that because, yes, you may think that shining UV lights on your balls might have some long term problems.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah, it's great that Lon Sandstone has come back to the episode again.

[James Stout]

So Vice interviewed Seth Cohen, a urologist and the director of the Sexual Dysfunction program at nyu. Like Langdon Health, quote, I'm not aware of any science or data or any journal publications proving that red light therapy improves male testosterone. And quote, we change recommendations on medical therapies based on double blind placebo controlled randomized trials, large studies with thousands of patients. That's where you'll find if there's any really statistical significance between red light therapy and a placebo. Could these men who underwent red light therapy and came out and felt stronger and more manly, could they. Could that have been a placebo effect? Of course it could. Unquote. So. And as Mia mentioned, we have not really even gotten into the potential dangers yet. Close. Direct heat to your testicles actually damages sperm count. On top of the risk of giving yourself ball cancer by blasting concentrated UV light on your genitals for 20 minutes a day every day of the week. Which is what is recommended.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[James Stout]

To quote that study one last time. Quote, research shows that excessive exposure to UV radiation may lead to higher rates of genital tumor formation and decreased sperm counts as spermotogenesis is temperature dependent. Thus, given the current obsession with optimizing male hormone levels, the high cost of red light therapy and misleading information, labeling of testicular tanning by prominent influencers, there may be an increase in men exposing themselves to UV radiation and developing associated complications, unquote.

[Mia Wong]

Great. Heroic.

[James Stout]

So, guys, almost done here. But man, it's pretty, it's pretty funny that all of the worst people you know are going to get ball cancer.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah. Don't stop them.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I. You know, there was a period of time in my life when I said where I would never wish cancer on anybody. But if you are deliberately exposing your testicles for the sun to the sun in the hope of getting superpowers because of Nazi science. It's okay. It's. It's okay. Like, I'm not going to mourn that.

[James Stout]

To be fair, that I T39 study was from the United States, so it.

[Kevin McDonald]

Couldn'T possibly still be Nazis.

[Mia Wong]

I'm talking about the other Nazi science.

[James Stout]

Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. And I think, I think a part of this whole narrative of like the total collapse of men's testosterone levels as, as Tucker puts it, man, I fucking wish. Yeah, my life so much easier. But I think this is more about men in power feeling that their position of assumed superiority is being threatened. Really. All of our quack science and conspiracy theory stories today all revolve around this like subliminal dog whistle. It's no mistake that Tucker titled his program the End of Men. In all of the stories we're covering today, it is the fear of emasculation that is the hook used to drum up fear and anger about how liberal feminism is eroding manhood. It targets some of young men's sexual insecurities while promoting this like anti woke return to the old ways of rugged masculinity.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I might add, because I, I think you're missing one aspect of it. I think you're identifying what he's signaling to his listeners and what they get out of it. But I also think that what he and the other folks who are kind of in positions of power and influence in the right get out of this because they're not, they don't believe this. They're not actually motivated by that.

[James Stout]

No.

[Mia Wong]

What, what this is and what, because we, we do not know specifically why like testosterone rates may be lower, why sperm counts are definitely lower, but it likely has to do with a massive variety of industrial pollutants in the environment and with the fact that industrial agriculture and the processed nature of a lot of our foods is having a negative impact on all these things. Things like it's, it's consequences of capitalism. Right. And because the consequences are getting increasingly hard to ignore, the thing that people like that need to do is find either a cure for them or another way to blame or another thing to blame them on. Right. And so if the aspect, the things that are horribly unhealthy about the society that we have built is causing men to suffer consequences in their bodies, the thing to do on the right is to blame that on the liberals emasculating men. And the solution is whatever kind of shit we can sell you, right? Like that's what's going on here. That's the motivation. And it happens outside of like man too. Like that's all the right has anymore. Like their, their economic theories have been proven disastrously wrong. They have no actual ability to govern in a meaningful way other than by causing harm to people. So it's entirely about taking the consequences of the world that they advocate and blaming them on someone else and selling you snake oil to deal with it.

[James Stout]

Yeah, exactly. And so that is. That is most of the of the testicular tanning fun that I got into.

[Kevin McDonald]

We haven't even covered all the things that Ben Greenfield did to his dick in 2017.

[Mia Wong]

We'll get back on this subject, but it is time for us to end. This is already over an hour, so I want to leave you all, all of you, all of you beautiful. First, I want to thank all of our beautiful correspondents for their research and I want to leave all of you with this simple piece of advice. If you feel like your testicles aren't getting enough solar radiation, simply purchase a glass cutter and an old microwave. Cut a circular hole in the microwave, bag it while it's on. You'll be okay. That is our legally binding health advice. That's the end of the episode.

[Robert Evans]

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[Simone Boyce]

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[James Stout]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Mia Wong]

Many abuse survivors had to choose between.

[Robert Evans]

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[Mia Wong]

Leaving because they can't bring their pets with them.

[Robert Evans]

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[Mia Wong]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Mia Wong]

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[Mia Wong]

Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, the podcast that's happening here in your ear. And and one of the things that we love talking about here is a critical ingredient towards creeping authoritarianism, towards growing corporate control and surveillance over all of our lives, which is of course, technology that makes it even easier to monitor you than it already is. And we're not talking primarily about like, the government monitoring you because they can, you know, do stuff like just pull your phone data from a, you know, which cell towers it's pinged. We're talking about the kind of stuff that allows basically whoever can get an app on your phone to track and stalk you. And yeah, I'm going to first introduce Mia Wong. Mia, welcome to the show that you also host.

[James Stout]

Yes, I am here.

[Mia Wong]

So what are we talking about today and who are we talking with?

[James Stout]

Yeah, so we are talking about stalkerware, which is the sort of broad name for the category of software that Robert's been talking about. And we are talking about someone who hacked one.

[Mia Wong]

Well, a stalkerware stalker.

[James Stout]

Yeah, the person who hacked one of the stalkerware companies. Maya, Arson, crime. You, the famed hacker of the no Fly List. Yeah. Returning guest. Always happy to have you on.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, Always happy to be on.

[James Stout]

Yeah. So I think, I think, I don't know, I think there's a real tendency among, and I see this among leftists a lot for kind of good reasons and kind of not good reasons to really only focus on state and like large corporate actors in terms of surveillance. And that's a mistake.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, totally.

[James Stout]

Yeah. And so I guess the place where I want to start before we get into the specific company that you did is it still called Owned.

[Garrison Davis]

I kind of. It's fine to call it owned or pawned or whatever. I still do that. Sometimes people get confused. But.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

But before we get into that, I want to ask you a bit because you've done a lot of sort of, I guess you could call it research, both actual research wise and then in terms of poking around their servers.

[Garrison Davis]

Research and journalism and whatever you want to call it.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, Haxing.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

So I wanted to just start off by asking if you can give sort of like a brief summary of what stalkerware is.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. So stalkerware as a category encompasses a number of different types of apps. Most of them on the service advertise themselves as parental control software, which is already bad enough, just to be clear that it's advertised for spying on your children's phone, like seeing their location in real time, seeing their messages that they receive, any photo they take. Ostensibly this is to, like, prevent bullying and help with them when they get depressed because they don't trust you and talk to you for whatever reason. But obviously a lot of these are then furthermore, because that's like that. Sure. That's a like target audience. That's a demographic you can advertise to. But then there's this even bigger potential target demographic of people who are insecure in their relationship. Mostly men, not only men, but who are then sold this idea that they can use software like this for stalking their partner, for finding out if they are cheating on you, things like that. Which is obviously an even bigger problem. Which, once again, not to discount the problems that spying on your children is already, like, bad enough. But yeah, this leads to this whole big industry of these apps being used by partners against each other, like, also just by people, like, against anyone in the, in their surroundings that they suspect might be doing something shady, might be like talking behind their backs. It often kind of turns into, like, it obviously turns into this obsessive thing, especially if you solve this idea that this, this app can magically solve, like, interpersonal issues, like with anything that sells you. This magic idea of being able to solve any problem that these people start kind of spying on everyone in their, like, circles. To some of them, like, not everyone, most like, a lot of people only spy on, like, their partner or like their child or whatever, but it often, like spirals out of control into this, like controlling everyone and their surroundings, knowing what everyone is up to, where they are and spending like hundreds of dollars a month on doing so. And yeah, that's pretty fucked up if you ask me.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Kevin McDonald]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

One of the things that's interesting too, it's also, in a lot of cases, illegal. This is going to vary from country to country and state to state. But in the US there are states like California, which gets pointed out in the very good TechCrunch investigation on truth Spy, where there are really strict laws that journalists, like, have to abide by as to when you can record someone that these apps absolutely break. Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

It's specifically a thing that also most of these apps will have like a disclaimer at the bottom that is like, this might be illegal in your jurisdiction and please ask for consent before doing this. And then they have lots of tutorials on how to install this in someone's device without their consent. But it's always like a. We do not take any. Like, we. It's not our fault if you break the law, basically, which obviously, like, it's. So far, not a lot of this has been challenged in court, but I don't think this would hold up too long. Like, I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think. Just saying we make a product to do crimes with. If you do crimes with it, it's not. I mean, it works for the gun industry.

[Mia Wong]

So yeah, the difference is that like with the gun industry, it's a product where there is a legal and an illegal, like clear way to do it.

[Garrison Davis]

The thing with StalkerWire as well is that like a lot of them will also explicitly say the only real use of this we allow you to use it for is to surveil your child, which unfortunately is legal in most jurisdictions because children are property of their parents. In quotes, because I do not agree with that.

[Mia Wong]

But yeah, it's one of those things where people using it, like someone installing an app on their exes or their, their partner's phone or whatever without consent could very easily would lose any court case. Whether or not the company would get in trouble. I think is going to rely a lot on the, the stuff, the videos they're posting about, like how to, how to get these apps on people's phones without them knowing. But like they do have that out with like. No, it's just for surveilling children, which.

[Garrison Davis]

Is great for anyone else. You need consent or whatever. But I think it is important. Yeah. To point this out very early for anyone who's listening to this because they think they might have stalkerware on their phones or because they know they have stalkaware on their phones. You can use this. In a domestic abuse case. This will immediate. This is explicit proof that abuse is happening no matter anything else. Because like that's, that's the thing generally with domestic abuse cases, it's really hard to prove abuse is happening. Stalkerware and any other type of spying device, like also physical GPS device trackers and stuff that is immediate proof that there's controlling behavior going on, that you are being spied on. This cannot only be used and is explicit admissible evidence. This is also usually makes cases worse. Not for you. It just, yeah, it like can potentially add charges and make it more serious and it can help making cops give a shit about like abuse, which. Yeah, I hate that they need to say that. But yeah, it's like it makes it more serious because yeah, there's like spyware and whatever.

[Mia Wong]

It's easy evidence. First off, like you can prove they're spying on you. And second, if you are in one of the states where that violates the law, then you can immediately say this person is breaking the law. Like we don't have to debate whether or not they, they've, they've crossed a line.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And even if it doesn't directly break the law to spy on someone on a partner, like it. Depending on the, on the, on the region, it can be kind of a hazy like thing especially if it's a device you might co own if it's like a state where. Where you were with like co possession or whatever in the US I I do not know u. S law very much around this but yeah there's like laws like that but usually still the fact that you're being spied on can be used as proof for other abuse things you might be alleging because it's like hard proof that something is happening. And also usually these companies will somewhat have to respond to Sapoina so they will have to give out like who the account owner is behind the spying on your phone for some of them there's also tools that help you find out who is spying on you or there is like someone with forensic background can help.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah and I think people one thing we should note is that if you're kind of curious has my device been infected by some of these tools? The one that we've been talking about most truthspy if you go to that.

[Garrison Davis]

TechCrunch article or to my article it also has a link. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Or to. Yeah to your article on your website there's a tool you can use where you. It'll tell you how to get your imsi I think it's imii yeah which you just dial a thing on your phone and it gives you that number. It's basically how you identify specific phones and you plug that in, it will let you know if your device has.

[Garrison Davis]

Been compromised now like December last year up until there is the data and if you. Yeah it can pretty much tell you if you've been spying on using this specific tool until then for other stuff. There's also guides usually on TechCrunch and otherwise also on StopStalkerware.org, which is the US Coalition Against Stalkerware. And also just generally I think a lot of more local anti stalking, anti abuse orgs are not as informed yet as they should be. But there's still a good point also to reach out to or like.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah. One of my questions about truthspy that I'm hoping you can answer is I know that you can like text messages get transferred via it, your call records, all that kind of stuff and who you were calling. Does that include messages for like encrypted apps like Signal or is that not accessible through this?

[Garrison Davis]

It depends. Like for some of these it will get signal messages, WhatsApp messages and everything generally by reading the notification content because from notifications you know what messages have been received. Sometimes it will only then have the received messages and not the sent messages. Often these also include like a keylogger component that maps messages then sent back as well. It depends a lot what these apps collect, but for most of them also the collection for other texting apps is usually kind of broken. None of these apps are really well maintained. They're mostly just quick cash grabs, harder to maintain. Features usually don't really work.

[Mia Wong]

And it. It seems like based on that, one thing people can do outside of checking to see if their device has been compromised is do stuff like turn off notifications for apps like Signal. Right. Like. And that's, that's actually just generally good advice. Notifications are a compromise of the security that Signal offers. Don't have them enabled, you know.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Or at the very least disable them on the lock screen on Android. Yeah, I don't know how if that. I think that's also possible on iOS, but I think iOS doesn't show message content on the lock screen anyways. I'm not sure anymore. But yeah, it's just also small things like that and also like one of the like key tells that someone probably tampered with your phone, especially for Android is is if Google Play Protect is disabled and you do not remember disabling it for something else. It was almost definitely disabled because someone installed something on your phone. Just try re enabling it and it will probably tell you something. The thing also to keep in mind, if you find stalkerware on your phone, please get professional help. Do not just delete it. Do not necessarily confront whoever you think might be your abuser about it, unless you're very sure that that's the situation you can handle. Because like yeah, that is one of those things that like bringing it up or just deleting it can very quickly lead to like complicating the situation a lot.

[James Stout]

You know what else complicates the situation? These ads. And we are back.

[Mia Wong]

So when it comes to the actual fight against this stuff, obviously what you're doing is a big part of it. Getting inside these companies and finding out like what they're doing and their capabilities is huge. For in terms of what regular people or people who are interested in becoming activists about this can do, what does the struggle to actually fight this stuff look like? How do we put a bullet in this industry's head?

[Garrison Davis]

I think one of the biggest things and also why I do the work I do with hacking and with encouraging others to send me data, be that insiders from these companies sending it either to me or TechCrunch specifically currently, because me and TechCrunch are the only people really doing journalism on this regularly. The important thing with journalism and all of this is awareness. It's very important to create awareness about this. That's also why I do the media work with, like, being on this podcast and things like that. I think the most important thing is to make people aware. Like, talk about this in your feminist circles or whatever. Things like that. Yeah, especially bring it up just also in like, general info, things about abuse or how to detect abuse. I think the most important thing to do against stalker where is demystify it. Because most people don't even know that this is a thing, that this is like, that there's just commercially available spyware anyone can install on your phone. It's also important to not, like, give in to some sort of paranoia as with any of these things. It's just important to generate awareness, talk about it, spread these articles, and let friends know that this is a potential thing. And then. Yeah, the hard thing with this is that obviously it should probably help if there was some sort of legislation against some of this. It's gonna be very hard to get any proper legislation that ends this industry, because in most Western countries, which are the only countries which unfortunately would have enough power to like, actually get these apps shut down, because that's the world we live in. But the problem there is usually that, like, this notion that children are owned by their parents is too strong to really make a full case against these apps. And at the very best what I can, like, the very best I'm kind of hoping for from. From legislators, it's just a ban on advertising these apps on use against other adults, which would be big already. But that doesn't really solve the issue because there's still gonna be enough people who know of their use for use against adults, and there's gonna be enough people on, like, Reddit threads talking about, hey, well, yeah, you're not sure if your girlfriend is cheating on you, you can just use this app. You know, that's also how most of this marketing for this works. It's just. Yeah, at the end of the day, this is like a patriarchal issue. So, yeah, I think that's also why, like, I am so focused on, like, the hacking and the, like, blowing these companies up and showing, like, who's behind them. It's because at the end of the day, the most effective thing we have against these companies is, like, the grassroots movement of making them too scared to run in this business, making it not profitable enough. Because as I said most of this is like quick cash grabs from web design studios and outsourcing companies that are just making a quick buck from this because otherwise they don't get paid enough. That's the sad thing really, is how much of this industry is in all of these countries Western companies outsource their IT to, because there's lots of IT companies there and they are entirely reliant on Western companies giving them very underpaid tasks. You have this problem that you now have a bunch of employees and not enough money to always pay them. And what do you do? You find some weird niche of a tech product you can quickly build. And this is one of those easy niches. It's always the scummy stuff. And yeah, that's also why so many of these companies are based out of Vietnam, out of Iran and whatever. It's just companies that already have it hard enough to do business globally where the IT industry is like falling apart because there's not enough local customers. And anything that's international, you're just the cheap workforce. Right. So yeah, it's once again also like a class problem. Most people working in this industry know that they're working in a, like scummy industry.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, of course. But like, yeah, you gotta get paid. And that's.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. And that's like why I think making it more scary to operate in this industry is like, yes, the way to go. Because like with just like these like four hacks that have happened against these companies over the last like half a year or so, two of them. Three of them. Three of them have shut down completely. Others seem to be slowly moving towards just building other software primarily. Yeah, it's just like. Yeah, it's like with any other shady industry, the best we can do is just to not make it profitable to run the software. Because at the very best, anything else we look at is just pushing them more into the shadows, which is not going to solve the issue at all.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, I think a lot about strategic thinking, which I do believe is kind of often in part because of how rightfully negative most people on the left think about the military. There's a tendency to ignore some of the theory around how to actually win a conflict and all of it. All strategy really, when you're talking about defeating an opponent, revolves around denying and taking operational area from them. Right, yeah. And that's what you're talking about when you talk about, well, we need to stop this. You. One of the first things we can do as part of fighting this is to stop them from Being able to advertise certain places. Right. It's making sure that they're not able to operate without being seen. It's basically cutting down their area, their space to maneuver their ability to profit, which cuts down their money, their access to people, their ability to actually operate. Right. That's what we're looking at in terms of how do you kill this stuff. It's not one single really. I use the. The comparison of like a bullet, but it's never going to be one bullet. These things are too durable. There's too many countries at play to do that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. That's also why I put so much emphasis on doing media work about this, on getting more people to talk about this and getting more awareness of this out there to the point where I'm willing to work with more conservative newspapers on this because everyone needs to know about this. At the end of the day, this is how we stop people from falling victims to this. Most people who are a victim of stalkerware apps have never heard of stalkerware apps apps before. And I think that's like one of the biggest ways to tackle this. And on the other hand, we also have, I think, another big leverage point with how many of these are getting hacked because none of these apps are very secure. That's another thing, is this can also be leveraged against like the abusers in this scenario. I think just pointing out to them that all of these haps get hacked all the time and that this is how they get found out, that this is how their data of them as abusers ends up landing on the Internet. I think that's also like a very important angle at the end of the day is just to make it clear, like, yeah, no, not even you are like secure from this having consequences for your life, like, beyond like direct interpersonal or legal consequences. This can and in the past has result in your email address being on a list of people who do abuse to people online. You don't want to be on such a list. I think that's also important just to like, point out there isn't one stalker app that's not eventually gonna get hacked. There is a big war against these apps. They're all like, there's so many different hacking groups that keep sending me data from these. Like, I'm already working on another article that already, once again affects like, the data of like, I think like 80,000 more like abusers. And it's just the abuser data this time, but I'm still gonna report on it. Like, it's. This is not Gonna stop. It's even also not gonna stop when I stop reporting on this myself. There's been work before me done on this also. The first time I got involved in finding stalkerware was back in 2020. People have been hacking these apps forever and will keep hacking them. Just look at the Wikipedia page for stalkerware. There's an ever growing list of these apps that have been hacked. And I think at this point the official count being kept by one of the people at TechCrunch is at like 13 apps, a few of which have been hacked two or three times.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

These are not secure apps for anyone.

[Mia Wong]

No, no, no, of course not.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And they. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that like an app dedicated to violating people's privacy for money would also basically violate the privacy of the people using it. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And also they don't care. Like, like I said, of course not. It's a cash grab. It's nothing else. There's a few apps that are like a little more than a cash grab, but it's usually just because they're made. Like they're still a cash grab, but they're like more well made. But it's because they're a cash grab from a company that has better developers or more money to do the initial investment. The thing is also, most of these companies don't have a lot of initial investment. And I think the important thing to consider as well here is one big area of this that I have not yet started tackling, but I do want to look into more sometime. Is a big reason this industry is so big. And most of these apps have a lot of users, despite there being so many of them, is the affiliate marketing industry. Once again, our very beloved friend. Yeah. All of these apps are parts of various affiliate marketing networks. Some of them started by stalkerware companies, some of them just other like things to advertise. All the shady things like all those phone number locator apps or whatever, that's also part of those same affiliate marketing networks. And there's lots of money flowing here. And there's lots of money flowing to very big tech YouTube channels. And I might soon have some proof for some of that. But that's how these are advertised. It's everyone who advertises stalkerware to you who has a big platform is doing that because they're getting money, not for any other reason.

[James Stout]

We need to do more ads. We will be back shortly. And we are back.

[Mia Wong]

Well, that's all I had. Mia, what do you got?

[James Stout]

Yeah, I guess there's the. There's another thing I wanted to ask a little bit about, which Zach Whitaker, who's been one of the journalists at TechCrunch doing a lot of the research, one of the things that he brings up that I think is another, I don't know, it's kind of a playing with fire angle on them. But one of the issues that these companies seem to have is payment platforms, because a lot of payment platforms look at this and go, wait, hold on. Yeah, so we've talked about that a little bit.

[Garrison Davis]

That's an angle we've also been fighting on a lot. Like me and Tsang, we work on most of these stories together. Like, it's kind of funny, we both got each other into the stalker thing back in 2020, as I mentioned, that was the first time I stumbled into a stalkerware app with a security issue. I reached out to some random journalist at TechCrunch about it, and now he is the only one talking about this forever. Because I reached out to him that one time and he got sucked into this horrible, horrible world of spying. But yeah, one of the things we focus on a lot is reporting these companies to their payment providers, to their server hosters, to the point where sometimes for weeks, Zack will just wait for them to switch to a new provider after we got them taken out from PayPal and then from their other PayPal account where they're just using the checkout experience from one of their completely unrelated software projects, which they will later claim is not related at all. And they are different companies and whatever. But then like eventually they get taken down from that as well. And usually we can get them taken down from most like western hosters, like, especially US hosters will immediately take them down. You do not want to risk being the company hosting spyware on U.S. grounds. Yeah, yeah, you just like, same with EU hosters. Like the few companies that we've seen that were on Hetzner, they immediately react because it's like, yeah, no, like under EU law, you don't want to risk that. And also just because you don't want to host that, there's no reason for you to host shit like that. It will have image consequences. And that's an important thing that is maybe also something you can do as more like a grassroots thing. It's also like, if you find one of these apps and if you see, oh, they're using like PayPal or whatever, just reach out. I think PayPal is even harder to reach as like just an average layperson, don't expect them to reply. They Might still take action. You will have have to manually check. PayPal doesn't really reply to things ever. But yeah, same as with like hosting company. If you see they're hosted on like a European or American hosting company, just, just reach out, be like, hey, there's someone running stock spyware on your thing. Also use the word spyware, not stalker, where they will not know what that is. And it is spyware. So.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And that can usually get them taken down and often they don't have proper backups and will have a few months of data missing and it's like, yeah, that's how you slowly grind them to a halt. Yeah. And also, once again, if you have tips about any of these companies, be it having found a vulnerability or insider info especially. I'm always very happy about insider info. You can reach out to either me or Zach Whitaker. We're both very happy to talk about this.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

That's something that's been used really effectively by right wingers to target sex workers. It's been a huge thing. There's been a bunch of campaigns to get platform companies and.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, so it's interesting that for once we can use the very restrictive and conservative rules of payment providers for our good.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

But yeah, basically any of the big payment providers will not respect something like this. Some of the small regional odd ones probably won't really give a shit. They have no reason to. It's like revenue for them. But yeah, it's generally worth trying and I'm always glad, like, if someone just reaches out to these companies and we don't have to do that ourselves. I think me and Sak and a few other people like actively working on this are doing more than enough work currently. But yeah, just if you find one of these things, don't go digging too deep. It's a depressing world. But if you stumble upon one of these somewhere or whatever, just report them. It's gonna disrupt their operations and if it happens often enough, they might just give up.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And I mean, like in cases like the Truth Spy, they are willing to do extreme amounts of fraud to get to money easily. Because they started with mostly just in the market, they could get with their Vietnamese payment providers. Right. Eventually they realized, well, the US is like this really big market. Right. But for really easy, like US stuff, we need like a PayPal thing. Right. So they made like over 12 fake American identities with fake passports and fake addresses and sign up to PayPal a whole bunch of times and had various employees at the company move money around. Yeah. That's obviously not a thing the US government will like if you do that. Generally speaking, they moved like millions like that. So. Yeah, which is pretty crazy. Like that the money, the amount of money that's moving in this industry is crazy. Like, yeah, actually like most of these apps will be half broken, which no one ever complains about because it's shady. You don't expect if you go online and you search for something shady like anything, be it piracy or whatever, you don't expect it to be the best experience ever. You know, you're getting some weird service and it's probably going to be half broken. But yeah, like most of these talk aware apps start at like $40 a month and more and then sometimes for more features you pay like up to 60 or 70 or so and then all of these have like tens of thousands of users, sometimes hundreds of thousands of users. Yeah, you can do the math yourself. It's crazy. This is a really big industry which makes it so crazy to me that it's like not a thing that's talked about more especially in feminist spaces and things like that because this is such a big angle of modern tech enabled abuse that I really think should be more of a topic, especially on the left. This is bad.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, no, this is critically bad. I agree entirely.

[Garrison Davis]

And also the whole thing with all of this data being so easily accessible, your data can end up getting sold on some dark web forum. You're both ask the abuser and ask the target. Right. And the government can find these. I have no, this is not me making a statement of that's a thing that's happening. But there's nothing preventing the government from hacking these companies and getting shit. I sometimes whenever I get these data sets and it's always hard to work with data sets that include nonsensically collected data of people. Right?

[Mia Wong]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

But I do always do some due diligence checks mostly trying to find if the government is using a specific app. Sometimes, yes, there is always the odd correction facility officer who has signed up for one or two of these apps or education people and whatever. But then I also sometimes search through the text messages for just some code words and the amount of people mo moving drugs who have stalkerware on their phones. It's, you know.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, and it's one of those things where there are laws. Like technically, if my understanding of the laws around this are correct, it is illegal for an organization like the FBI to utilize these apps. But.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, but we have an organizing called.

[Mia Wong]

The NSA who, and it is on paper were Illegal for them to do this with a third party app. But one thing that often gets done, particularly by the FBI, but, but you know, not just by them, is it's not illegal for law enforcement agencies to contract with private agencies. And if those agencies, you don't, you just don't check in on what they're doing, you know what they're using.

[Garrison Davis]

But like, yeah, or like if an inform or like if an informant like sends you this data, like you're not going to say no, right?

[Mia Wong]

Exactly, exactly.

[Garrison Davis]

And also you don't really need to disclose that because it's information you got from an informant. You do not need to disclose that informant in court ever.

[Mia Wong]

So yeah, it's, it's very, There are, there are ways around, you know, the laws that we put up. Not that we shouldn't continue to extend those laws, but you shouldn't, like, just because, well you're. They're not allowed to use this doesn't mean they can't get access to the info. Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And also there's always the important thing, like there's like also globally, like there's other governments that can just be using this. Like for one of the apps I.

[Mia Wong]

Got that the Indian government, the Russian government doesn't give a shit.

[Garrison Davis]

That was also like another thing where I, like, for one of the apps I got data for, there was some indication that at some point the Colombian national police did a bigger evaluation of using commercials spyware for their use. Because you're in a country with not that big of a police budget in comparison. You cannot afford all the cool Israeli tools everyone else has. So what do you do? You're just look for random apps you can find, you know.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, you find the Walmart, the Kirkland.

[Garrison Davis]

Version, the wish.com version, I guess.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alibaba spyware. Right? Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't think most of them moved forward with this because these apps fucking suck. Like, they're bad. Like, that's the other thing. Like, they don't even really do their job well. They're bad and you don't know who is behind them. You cannot even go up to someone and be like, yo, don't do this. And you also cannot go to the cops and be like, this company is scamming me. Because, yeah, I assume some people have probably done that before, but it does involve admitting to a crime. So yeah, it's like, yeah, these companies just get away with not giving a shit about their product because like, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, well, I think that's, that's all we had. Thank you, Maya, for both the work you're doing and for talking to us.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Is there anything you wanted to plug before we. We roll out here?

[Garrison Davis]

Just my. Just my blog, I think, where like I do this journalistic work and also more. There's about to be another cool investigative piece out soon which tangentially involves more tracking and whatever and also involves like Hollywood and more. It's a crazy big story. I promise that will be out like hopefully in a month or so. But yeah, my blog at Maya Crimeu. Gay crime. You as in crime? W. Yeah. And gay as in gay. Yeah, yeah. Just check out my blog. At the bottom of the blog, there's all my links to my social media. For anyone who's like listening to this and has been wondering where I am, I am back on Twitter as well.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, for now. That's for. For all of us these days. That's always like a.

[Garrison Davis]

But yeah, I am back on Twitter. I'm posting there sometimes. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

All right.

[Kevin McDonald]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

Well, thank you and thank you all for listening. We will be back tomorrow, unless this comes out on a Friday, in which case we'll be back at some other point. But soon.

[Robert Evans]

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Hey, listen, we gotta really invite our Latino brothers and sisters, our Theos and Diaz, and also our Asian black people, the Pinoys and Pinais, our Ates and Cuias. You're all a part of our delegation here. All of our USO's, we love y'all. The whole diaspora of people who season a chicken and wash their legs, I love y'all. And to this whole delegation, once we add it all together, it's about 20 of us. To you, I say, y'all want something from the gas station? I got you. So today, I don't want to ruin your breakfast. I don't want to ruin your coffee. I'm just going to ruin your music. This is about the death of the music festival. It already happened here. All right, now, y'all know I. I'll be playing. I'm playing about all this. Like. Like, I'm only talking to the melanated folks. Y'all know I'm playing, right? I mean, this is. While I. While I slowly wink at Brown Folk. I'm just playing, y'all. I'm sorry, I'm messing around. It's a cold opening, you know, you guys got a great sense of humor here. All right, let's get to it. Festivals, like, am I right? You know, if you're anywhere within a 5 to 10 mile radius of my age, I mean, festivals is like. Like, these are like a rite of passage, you know? I am not only a festival goer, but a festival performer. And as an artist, it was like festivals were kind of, in a lot of ways, how I mark the years. There were people that I really only saw, like, once a year when I was at that festival. Whether it was other acts, other bands, or even a lot of times the volunteers or the people that, like, put the event together. Like, believe it or not, you kind of make friends, you know, and these, again, these are people. You're like, dang, I can't believe I was a whole year year, you know? And it was a good way to make sure as an artist that you were making new music and had something new to perform. Oh, and make sure you had some new merch. Because, you know, if you played your cards right, if you've listened to my show, I've talked a lot about like, you know, the science of festivals. And as, as a performer of like, this could either be a complete waste of time and money if you're on at like the main stage at like 12 noon when it's like a trillion degrees outside, you know, but if you can get that right as the sunset, like if you're not the headliner, if you could get that right at Sunse sunset, right where the sun just breaks the horizon line coming down that, that golden hour set. The crowd isn't shitfaced yet. You know, the. They're at the top of their molly. You feel you riding the high. It is just settled in. Whatever drugs that these people are on, they've kind of just settled in right there. They're relaxed, they're willing to sing along. Nobody's getting trampled yet. It's not like the frenzy that kind of happens at the headliner situation where like somebody might die. Shout out Astroworld. I say that not as a joke. I'm saying things can go wrong. But oh, the experience, man. Like, I don't know how old you are and obviously you can't answer me. Do you remember the last like big festival you went to? You know, back when your knees were good and it was okay for you to stand for 12 hours and there's somebody you know having sexual intercourse in the porta potty. You know, you're stepping over bar barf, right? And you just paid $30 for a bottle of water, you know, that you could stuff into your clear backpack because you weren't allowed to bring anything else in there. But man, that's probably a euphoria. Especially if it's a group or a band that you really like that you saved up all year to go see. You know, some people were like festival operas, like that's their thing. They spend their summer going to music festivals. Since 2012 up to 2014, like the music fest has been guys, we've kind of been on borrowed time. We lived through a music festival renaissance. According to NPR, since 2013, everything sold out. The four mega giants, right? So Coachello, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza in Chicago, Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas. It was like this never ending flow of amazing, amazing events. And you know what? They were kind of affordable. In the next five years you had things taken forth Like Pitchfork in Chicago. Hangout music festival on the beach in the Gulf shores, Outside lands Bali Music Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Festival, Forecastle Festival, right? And I'm even going to add in this. Before this, for hip hop stuff, dude, we had Rock the Bells. Like, we lived in a time where you could see all of your favorite artists. This in the most epic locations. You'd see people who, if you were to try to buy their tour ticket, it would cost the same amount if they were headlining the thing. But you could see all your favorite acts. Part of this was because we listened to radio, you were exposed to more things. And it was probably the fun part about a lot of times about music festivals, because you probably saw that act, your favorite band, your favorite rapper, rapper. You saw them at a hole in the wall five years ago, which was like 10 bucks to get in. And you might have snuck in or got on the list because you knew somebody that knew the dj. And now you're like, I followed this crew from when they were like, playing a hole in a wall with 10 people where there was more staff at the bar than on this. And now you're like, dude, you feel like you were a part of their evolution. Like, you saw a chance at the Subterranean. It. Now he's headlining Bonnaroo. What a feeling. You're part of the story. Well, that's probably a relic of the past. And let's talk about it. So festivals for most of the last decade have been everywhere. Like, whatever type of music you like, whatever sub genre, whatever part of the world you want to go to, there's a music festival that you can show up at now in 2024, more than half of them across the world were canceled. Canceled. I lost count on this page I'm about to read to y'all from musicfestivalwizard.com Festivals canceled so far in 2024. Okay, you ready for this shindig? 2024 Melt 2024 Sideways Festival Nasdaq Field Maneuvers Tower Z, the Quintet, Big Slapped, Electric Zoo Peach 2024 all the Music Festival Life is Beautiful Festival Country Thunder Florida Suwanee Roots Festival, EDC China Lucidity Festival in Santa Barbara. Desert Days in Lake Paris. Pine Fest in the uk Good Vibes Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Sierra Nevada World Music Festival in Boonville El Dorado Music Festival in the uk Sudden Little Thrills in Pittsburgh. Big Ridge Rock Fest in Virginia. Lollapalooza Paris Music Midtown Atlanta Lovers and Friends Fest in Las Vegas, which I was really sad about. Riverside Festival, Glasgow IN Where Glasgow Soul Bloom, Sacramento TW Classic 2024 in Belgium Kalamijas in Calamijas, Spain Caldora Music Festival in Queensland Made in America Festival Philadelphia oblivion Access Austin, Texas Meadows in the Mountains 2024 in Bulgaria Imagine Festival in Rome, Georgia Splendor on the Grass in Byron Boy, Australia Body and Soul Festival in Ireland Moonrose Festival I'm tired of. I'm There's. I'm not even done yet. I'm not even halfway through this thing festivals died in 2024 digital news reports that 60 festivals in the UK alone canceled. Ashley King wrote this article on August 23, 2024 for digital music News and in that she says the United Kingdom has lost 192 music festivals since 2019 according to the association of Independent Festivals, the AIF, which is a not for profit trade festival association that represents the interests of over 200 independent UK music festivals that range from 500 to 80,000 people. The AIF estimates that the UK lost 96 events during the COVID pandemic 36 festivals and in 2023 more than 60 to date in 2024. That brings the total number of festivals closures either due to cancellation or Postponement up to 192 since 2019. 192 festivals. Some may argue that, well damn, you shouldn't have had that many festivals. Coachella, Lalapalooza and of course the infamous Burning man with the most on brand people that go that call themselves Burners. Now I don't want to sit here and make fun of you Burners, because I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all listen to this show number one and number two, I don't know if there's anybody more free, anybody more comfortable in their own skin. Listen, this might sound like a joke, okay? I'm dead serious. It's like the white guy with dreadlocks. I mean white people with dreads are just most of the time ok, like this may sound like a joke. I'm deadly serious. They be so okay with themselves themselves and will do whatever they got to do to continue to stay present and be cool with themselves. No notes. It's the guy doing hypostatic breath work freestyling for way too long in the didgeridoo section. You know what I'm saying? Like. Like he's super okay with himself. Anyway, Burning man for the first time since 2011 did not sell out for the first time and the tickets are usually released in tier years and some go on sale in the beginning of the year and Then this part I'm getting from the Guardian. But the main starting in April, right, which typically gets snapped up in minutes. Like Burning man sells out in minutes. 73,000 people are able to attend Burning man, but this is the first time since 2011 they did not sell out. Coachella same. They saw a 15% decline in tickets. It's the biggest festival in North America. Coachella is 15% ticket decline. Festivals were a way for you to discover new music, to meet new friends. It's like camp for like your 20s, you know, you get to wear your dumb ass outfits, right? You get to stand out in the sun, you get to drink, you get to day drink. And you get to just lose your mind for a little bit. This might be the end. The endling. You may have attended your last music festival as we know it. So the question is, why? Who killed the music festival? Why is the festival not festiving? Why is it not festive? Why can't y'all sell no tickets? Do we not like music anymore? Do you like music still? I thought I still like. Do you like music still? What the hell happening, y'all? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. We're back, back, back. To understand the future as to what the hell happened, we have to ask ourselves how we even got here. Such a nerd. I am. I don't think I need to tell you what a music festival is because, I mean, I think you know what it is. It's an incredibly overpriced concert that features maybe four groups that you like. Where you are going to stand outdoors somewhere, brave the weather day, drink, and then get to lose your mind for the last like three hours and just really enjoy, you know, a moment that you'll really never forget. Depending on how nasty and ratchet you are, how outside you are, you might look up. You know what I'm saying? I don't. Look, it's none of my business. I suggest you don't. That's just me being a ohead. But either way, man, they're a great time. But please understand that festivals, music festivals go like back to get this, 582 BC. At least according to white people's history. Because, you know, silly you, nothing happened anywhere else except for Europe. There was no music festivals in Africa, Central, South America, Asia. No, no where else. You know, history started in Greece. We were too busy building pyramids, right? Anyway, I'm gonna lead out. Oh, but I'd be cracking me up. They'd be like the first music festival on record in ancient Greece during the Python Games, which is fine, it's. It's fine, it's fine. But understand, ain't no way in the world this the only one that ever happened anyway, so 582 BC, right? And like the Olympic Games, the, the Python games took place every four years and included poetry reading, a speech, right? And other musical game like competitions. People gathered to enjoy like hymns and instruments. Instrumental performances. At the Apollo. At the Apollo. I'm so blessed. Black dedicated to Apollo, which was the God of arts and music. Now fast forward to like the 17th century where you have like classical music festivals and like the type of like exclusivity, right? Where like when in the 17th century when like classical music just basically ate Europe and music festivals originally were like supposed to be a gathering where people could, like, what you think, gather and celebrate music. However, here's where it starts coming into focus. The wealth gap was widening across Europe. So festivals gradually became kind of like how they are, where they're a little bit exclusive, catering primarily to more higher educated upper class. And the shift became apparent as events became more exclusive and had increasingly restricted access. This is from ndlbeast.com they have a whole section on like the history of music festivals. One could argue like, like this, like the prototype of like the VIP section, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know where you can get the pit tickets or you could stand outside with the pores and just listen from the outside. So this trend kind of continued for centuries where like elite class, I think almost like was the beginning of the breaking of music in, in general, they would control the access to culture. I have a friend that wrote a book called Don't Be Precious. Now me and this friend differ in a lot of ways, but he's just a punk rock dude and his approach to making art is like, you can't have this like restricting access, right? Because it becomes this just like upper class art is this creation of the leisure class because one, they have the patron to pay for them to be able to sit down and contemplate the stars. Like you got all precious about it, you feel me? So some of that has to do with again the wealth gap. So when you restrict access to hearing music, it draws deeper into the divides between like the educated upper class and then the traveling folk musicians who performed for the commoners. And that's like the stuff you see on, you know, corny little movies. Then the world wars come, right? And there's like a music revival, right? So when the first World War broke out, obviously change of lifestyle Meaning everything went to like, you know, war effort. So this is a really interesting quote. It says on the same MDL beast. As society focused on wartime efforts and staying safe, the exclusivity of music festivals to the upper class disappeared in a turn of events. The working class population was now turning to music more than ever. Jazz and folk emerged as popular genres. Right. To avoid the scrutiny of the elite, groups of musicians with similar tastes would gather in dive bars and underground clubs. By the time the war had ended, jazz cemented itself as the genre of the era. So now we're talking Harlem Renaissance juke joints and the emergence of like, again, this where black people come in a lot of times, the role that jazz, just the allout anti black racism, has unintentionally because of it, created some of the most dopest things, some of the most dopest American experiences. Well, I just read up on how with HBCUs, which are historic black colleges that now white people trying to attend to, they like your school look fun. Well, because we wasn't allowed in yours anyway, so let me continue. So World War II played a pivotal role in creating the Newport Folk Festival organized by Lewis and Elaine Lorryland. A couple met during World War II and came together to revolutionize Rhode Island's music artistic community by promoting jazz. With the foundation in jazz and blues and country and pop music, they expanded to attract over 11,000 people in 1954. Then the 60s, the birth of the modern music festival. Right. Obviously Woodstock, which was the invention. Monterey International Pop Music Festival. This is the rock festival as we know it. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the who. It was the place to be a cultural experience as we know it. Again is that then you got like the Berlin Wall and the music revolution. This is where festivals become political and cultural. They become a statement. And a big one was in the 90s when they did the Berlin Wall tearing down music festival, which was an amazing thing, right? Where underground stations, power plants, World War II bunkers and abandoned buildings all started to serve as makeshift concert halls. This is why Europe became such a place place for music festivals. It became a sign of freedom and solidarity. And then the music festival took a shit. They just died in the 90s after this all can be explained in when they tried to redo Woodstock. Just a shit show with like Limp Bizkit and all this. You a shit show. There's a documentary on Netflix about the absolute disaster that that new Woodstock was, y'all. I'm talking like y'all thought Astroworld was bad. Where Them kids was raging so much and people died. You talking about understaffed? Y'all think Fyre Fest was a disaster? My. Well, nah, I don't think anything was worse than Fyre Fest so far. Good thing it didn't happen. Like, y'all remember Fire Fest? Oh, Lord. Honestly, I can't believe I made it almost 20 minutes into this and then mentioned Fyre Fest. Because it is the perfect example of what went wrong in the music festival world. Because like I said, this disaster in the 90s to 2000s, if you were able to survive, like I said earlier, like the Bonnaroos, Coachellas, Austin City Limits, if you were able to survive Lollapalooza, then you came out the other end and became the go to places, right? Telluride for folk music. You became the go to places that if you were gonna try to have a career as an artist, you have to play one of these festivals. No matter how much money you don't make at these things, you have to do it. Because this is where not only do you get the necessary co sign, you also get discovered. Like, as far as fans, like, you make new fans, you sell merch. People walk away with a T shirt. You're on this T shirt that says Bonnaroo 2021 and your name is on. So, like, even if you're way down on the bottom, grab your little screenshots, take your little Instagram photos, because now you're in the game. And the game it was, was. Which leads us to what went wrong. Because this was not only a money making endeavor, this was a money making endeavor in 2014. Are y'all ready for this? I don't think you ready for this. In the boom years, According to an analysis done by finance buzz, in 2014, general admission prices for major music festivals increased by 55%. That outpaced just inflation, period. Y'all jacked up the price. So. So listen. So if you're Ja Rule, head ass, of course I'm going to build a festival. You're looking at Burning man, you're looking at Bonnaroo, you're looking at all these things. You're like, bro, let's just get an island and make a festival. There's so much money to be made. But you know what? Capitalism, being a capital capitalism, it's gonna keep capitalizing. Let's talk about what killed the festival. Oh, you see, I just did my own fade out and fade in music. Y'all see that? No, don't ask me what note that was. So what killed the Festival? Well, a number of things. First of all, yo ass for not going. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We're not blaming the victims here. Some of these answers are pretty obvious. Like, again, you know, Astroworld, like. But astroworld is just a good picture of everything that went wrong in the concept of a music festival. So the first problem is, yeah, capitalism. Sometimes you are led to believe that what is will always be right. That's what a stable economy lulls you into believing. But anybody that knows how money works, it's booms and busts, the bubble will pop. And how a bubble pops is almost always our own fault in this sense. The housing bubble, you know, of 2008, when your mom and them lost their house. Because the reality was they shouldn't have never got that loan in the first place. These people knew good and well that you was not able to keep up with that mortgage. But we were selling too many houses. It was going too good. So the thing was, for almost a, you know, almost a decade, you couldn't make enough festivals. The industry couldn't keep up with the demand. And, yo, this the blog era. This the two Dough Boys. Yeah, Pitchfork, like, this the blog era. You know what I'm saying? When Fader was like, a thing that you would want to go suit. So, like, it all kind of worked together around this time, before all these spots got bought out. Hip Hop dx, like, all these pages got bought out. Like I said before, it was like this boom in 2014 of a trillion festivals that started happening. Now. What happened was ticket prices. That's the first one. We're making so much money, you realize, dang, if I charge a hundred, I bet you I could charge 200. If I charge 200, I bet you I could charge 400. Because if you charge 400, then I could argue I'm getting bigger acts. So in the boom years, according to this analysis by Finance Buzz, ticket prices since 2014 for most music festivals increased by 55%. Like, that's super outpacing even inflation in the same time period. This isn't like, cost of living type shit type beat, no. Oh, I'm raping, y'all. Do you know that Burning man costs $575 to go to? If you was going, you was probably gonna make some sort of, like, art installation to destroy you doing that on your own. Which meant what? Same thing happened in the 17th century. It just becomes a place for the elite because can't nobody else afford to go. You know what else happened to a Lot of festivals is corporations bought them. You know who bought Complex buzzfeed. And you know who bought it from buzzfeed? Nit Work ntwrk, it's an investment firm. You know who owns the Pitchfork festival people? Conde Nast, a media company. They bought the blog and folded it into gq. It's just a corporation. Capitalism. Capitalism broke the festivals under the banner of capitalism. Not so much the cost of the ticket and the soaring cost of living. It also cost too much to make the festival. According to John Rostam. He's the CEO of that aif, the Independent association of Festivals. He says the toilet hire. I just need to buy porta potties. In 2021 was $28,000 for the exact same amount of toilets in 2024 is $54,000. That's just the toilets. You know what happened at Astroworld? He ain't have enough security. It costs so much. You honestly cannot afford to put together a festival that will be alluring enough to consumers to justify spending that much money. So what do you get? A gang of corporate sponsors. And you know what a gang of corporate sponsors at a music festival is? Whack. It's a horrible ass experience because you're just watching a gang of commercials. Sometimes it just be labels who be putting on these artists that they trying to break. And then the artists be trash. They don't be trash because they trash. They be trash because they're not ready for this size stage. They ain't put in the work. They didn't do the, you know, Gurney, Illinois experience that I think I've told before. What is the most terrifying experience I've ever had on tour. You, you don't have them experiences. You ain't played shows when there's more people at the bar or there's more people that work there than come to see you. You're not ready for no festival stage. So this is not fun for the. So I'm not gonna buy it. You can't justify this price. If I'm gonna spend that much money, I need to really, really, really, really like this band. This need to be my favorite artist. I'm not gonna stand around 12 hours, pay this much money to really only see one act I like. That don't make no damn sense. And we'll talk about why they only like that one artist artist a little bit later. So remember this point I'm making. The second and most obvious one is Covid, which leads into the third and fourth. You had to cancel stuff. Nobody knew this was coming. Like The L's companies took, I took, I canceled a tour. Not only I canceled a tour, I released a poetry book that I couldn't tour. I mean, I personally lost tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars in touring revenue, in book sales, in merch sales, in all of it. Like, I lost so much because you just had to. And I'm still trying to get that money back. A lot of festivals just have never been able to make their money back from what they lost. So there's not enough money now. Obviously when the pandemic ended, there was a lot of pent up energy to be like, I need to go outside. But that's because me and you didn't spend two years of our high school experience, our two first years of college stuck at home. Remember, that's the time when you get the taste to go outside. When you start finding your drinking buddies, yo, yo, outside friends, your music friends. You have to remember those years, dude, did. Those years are when you're discovering all research says is like your taste in music happens in those years, right? If I were to ask you what's your favorite area of music? Most likely it's not always, but most likely it was like the music you listen to in 11th grade. It's probably your favorite era. Whatever you was listening to then is probably still your favorite era. Now obviously that's not true for everybody, but dang, if you were 17, you're discovering new music, you want to go to like the corner house of blues, right? You know this. Obviously I'm California centric. You wanted to hit the glass house, man, because you just heard about this new band, little things like that. The Dragonfly, Whiskey A Go Go, the Viper Room, all these like smaller spots that when for us out of la, these were like rites of passage. This is how you get to say, I saw them win. I knew who Will I Am was for the Black Eyed Peas. Because I saw him at the little temple which is now called the Virgil, when he did a beat battle, they were at the corner, you know what I'm saying? And it was fun. I knew Foster the people, they're in San Diego. You would just drive down like, just at the Gas Lamp, like Leon Bridges. Hell, he opened for us, you know what I'm saying? Like again, like we said in the earlier, these, these bands that you was passionate about, you was 17 with your little emo hair swooped over your eyes. This who you was crying over. You understand what I'm saying? Like hugging onto your little iPad, you know, doing that doing that MySpace picture, when you looking down, you know, it's the white people thing. Like this is when you went to go see them. If that era for you was a pandemic, you didn't acquire a taste for going out like that. You saw concerts inside of Fortnite. So what I'm saying is one of the biggest things about Gen Z is they don't go out. It's just. It's just the reality. Not only do they ain't got no money money, they ain't got no money because again, inflation and finances, the cost of living is insane. But look it, Gen Z don't drink like we used to drink. They do fewer drugs, they have less sex. Part of that is because one, they hella anxious. And I don't blame them. I'm looking at my daughter now and I'm like, I'm sorry, baby, you probably not going to buy no house ever. I don't even know when you gonna move out. I don't know what to tell you. I'm not mad. I ain't gonna push you out of this house. Cause where you gonna go? You gonna get seven roommates. I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. They do fewer drugs, they drink less, they have sex and they don't go nowhere. Because one, they anxious as hell, they nervous around being around that many people. And if they are gonna go out, if you ask them, the number one thing they say is like, I ain't got nobody to go with. I mean, I could go, I ain't got nobody to go with. Cause you ain't got no friends. You don't go nowhere, right? I be looking at my own child like. Like, why you here, cuz? Like, don't you. You won't go nowhere. She's starting to now. But listen, you gotta really, really, really, really, really want to see this person that you going to see. She bought Billie Eilish tickets in February. The concert next month. She decided if I'm gonna spend this money, this, this what I'm gonna spend it on, right? Because it's worth her money. She loves the him, she loves her. She got the album, she went to the listening party. She's like, this is who I'mma go see. They don't look and see who's playing or just pull up at a dope music spot and just be like, oh, I wonder who's playing. I'm going to discover new music. No, that don't happen. You can't put on no festival if people ain't willing to come. Which leads me to one of the other problems they did, which is the music industry itself. They shot themselves in the foot because the big dog, just like I said happened in the 1700s, are doing fine. If Live Nation and Ticketmaster own every venue, they only gonna put the artists that they won't own there. It costs too much. So they're like, oh, I don't understand what's going on with y'all festivals. I know we doing all right, because if you are an industry artist with the machine behind you, number one, you don't need a festival. You booked a Greek theater yourself. Why would I allow myself as an artist for you to pay me? Guess who turned down Coachella next year. Rihanna and Kendrick. Why would either of them play that when they know they can be the only artist and sell just as many tickets? Kendrick played Staples. I'm calling it Staples because I'm from la. I know it's just a corporation. He played Staples four nights in a row where the Lakers played. But that was after doing four nights at the Honda center in Orange County. These are eight Southern California shows. Sold them all out. Why the hell would I give that money to Coachella when I could do it myself? Live Nation already taking a huge ass cut. Ticketmaster already taking a huge ass cut. Scalper's already taking a huge ass cut cut. There's no reason for me to give my time and my ticket draw to you when they could all go to myself. You did this to yourself. Music industry by locking out all the small venues. You know what else the music industry did to itself? Streaming the algorithm that also killed the festival. You know why? Because you're fed the same music. Algorithm says, you like this, you probably gonna like that. Which means, you know, we know old people be like, music all sound the same because it does. Because the goal is to play music that feeds the algorithm. You create music that gets your streaming numbers up. This the point I was making earlier, why you like, I don't know nobody else on this thing, and I'm only really concerned about the headliner. This is the point I was making earlier. Algorithm, you create music that works on TikTok. So music music has this formula. They did the same thing with coffee shops. You know why? Coffee shops look like brutalist mid century modern, all of them Instagram. We're all looking at the same aesthetic. So therefore all coffee shops look the same. The same thing happened with music, the algorithm. So you have these entire very specific niches. But can everyone in your weird niche Are there 30 artists in your very weird niche that can bring 10,000 people out to a field? No, because there's only 40 of y'all that like this music that's online streaming, there's no human editorial. There's no DJ that's saying, yo, dude, look, look at this. No, look at this. You're stuck to doing it yourself. And hopefully you can climb out your algorithm, right, G. McDonald says a genre unfocused festival poster lineup starts to just look like a playlist that has been made and personalized for somebody else. Okay, you want to do a genre specific one? Let's just say, okay, K pop, you finna fly autumn acts from Korea. How much you gonna sell these tickets for? How many K pop acts do you get? You don't book nobody local. Do you know how much money that would cost? Or you say, I'm gonna do a K pop day. All right, so you do a three day festival. One day's K pop, one day's edm, one day's hip hop pop. Nobody's buying a three day pass. So one day might be trash. And how do you build it? What does the flyer look like? I don't know half of these people, I ain't never even heard of that. No single act can sell a festival. And if you try to do a multi different act thing, it's just going to confuse the consumer. So if you put it on the festival, your only option is to just go big. This has to do with money, money. So you are going to overspend, right? Because it's like, how are you going to get people here? They get Taylor Swift. Do you know how much money you got to offer somebody like a Taylor Swift for her to give her performance to your festival rather than just to do her own show? And the consumer says, again, is this worth my money? I'm willing to throw this money at this big act because that's who the algo, that's who I know they're not going to risk no more because music discovery is now algorithmic. You're not just going to go pull up at a spot and be like, who's this opener? They're dope. The industry did it to itself. You killed your own performance market. And because Live Nation bought up all the small venues where artists really get their chops and really create fan bases and really you get to discover and make connections with it, there's no places for them to play. All that's left left are the big industry artists. And why again would they give their ticket sales To a festival. And lastly, climate change is hot as hell. The last two burning mans poured rain and flooded. Before that it was like 129 million degrees. It's hot. It's too hot to be out there like this. This climate, y'all ain't enough water. It's hot as hell. It's hot as hell or it's flooding. It's hot or it's flooding. Ain't no more nice days outside. I ain't gonna stand outside all day. You crazy? You gonna make me pay extra for shade? It's an extra hundred dollars so I can have an umbrella. I'm good. Just hold on. We're staying home. Stay at home. Okay? Now again, let's rebuild the world. What can we do better that's in our control? So festivals might be done, but it doesn't mean we don't still love music. If you're a music lover, here are some suggestions I can give you that would keep your favorite bands in the game. The first is the easiest one for you, which of course is buying or streaming their music. If you're gonna stream. Here's the thing, dude, I'm not an old guy to say that. Like your release radar or your new Music Friday, that algorithmic playlist that's like customized just for you, it's great. My request that I think would help is this. If a song pops on and you dig it, save it number one and then two, go to the album, go to that artist's page and give them a follow and listen to the album. You heard the song, the song was dope. And if it really resonated, I'm not begging you to do something that you don't like, listen to that album. You know, the whole like artist blowing up on TikTok, that's why Universal was just like, man tried to dead all that, you know. So if an artist blows up on TikTok, you, you should really like this. I'm like, yo, like, go to that artist page, go to their music. Like, you know, instead of just like shooting a video. Like that stuff's short lived. If your artist, like, obviously you, you hope that one day that happens, but that's not sustainable. You can't tour off that. That's what happened to a lot of artists. Why Ice Spice cancel half her tour dates is because there's not songs, there's TikTok audios, you feel me? That helps the artist know when they try to go get a show that they can prove that, like, hey, listen, these are listeners. When you go to my Spotify page. When you go to any Spotify page, the first number you see is monthly listeners. But that don't mean followers. I have this weird upside down thing. Most people have more monthly listeners than followers. I'm the opposite. I have three times more followers than monthly listeners, which means these people are going to be alerted when I drop music. Music. Why I have that is because I toured so hard. I played every possible dumb, ugly venue I possibly could. Like, got it out the mud, shook hands, stayed after, Stayed at the merch table, took pictures, got email addresses, got phone numbers, came back, you know, signed everything. I would stay after the show for an extra hour until everybody got their picture and everybody got their stuff signed. Hard fought. So that way. You're right. I'm not cranking out music that feeds the algorithm. You're right. But when I drop an album, they know. So my request as the consumer is follow that artist, like, club to the album. And secondly, the most obvious one is like, dude, buy merch. Oh, my God, y'all. I'm saying, like, merch has been the difference between car insurance and. Not for me, Merch has been the difference between can my daughter stay in her, you know, dance class, her after school, like, ballet class Merch. Like, merch is how we paid for our daughter's stuff during the pandemic. Hail Merch. It. It paid our rent because all he had that. Now, as an artist, you need to have dope merch. That's. I mean, if your merch sucks, I mean, it is what it is. I can't ask you to, you know, purchase something that's trash. Artists make dope merch. You know, I. I have vinyl. Vinyl costs a lot. But you can go to my website. There's vinyl, like, that stuff. Those make a difference. And then I'd also ask, like, if you really dig an artist, this is on the artist's job, too. Like, sign up for their newsletter, find out when they're touring and just. And go to their shows. And when you get there, like, another game. I think I told this on the Hood politics podcast, too, where it's like, most of the time, as the artist, I keep the door, like, meaning the ticket sales, and then the venue keeps the bar. So their thing is like, well, they're going to make a ton of money on the bar. But that's how I get to come back is if this venue says, oh, yeah, yeah, he brought, you know, 300 people here. They respected my staff, they bought drinks. And me as an artist, my team, I I be silly on stage, but we're very, very professional. We keep I, I take my reputation very serious. We make sure that like the talent buyer, the venue, is everybody taken care of. We're not yelling at the sound man. You know, we keep a clean green room. Like those are things you could do as an artist but as a consumer. Like, like, I know the algorithm's fighting against you, but like if you really like a group, go out of your way. Even if it's on the discovery things again, the big people is easy. Beyonce's tickets are going to come find you. You ain't got to go find them. But Johnny Swim but the hot shakes, right? That's what they called go find them. Because at the end of the day, it's your presence. If you're going to stay in music, you have to get butts and seats. Is this for us to save music festivals? I don't care. They did that to themselves. I'm just trying to save live music because truly, truly, there is nothing like it. O o o o o o o.

[Mia Wong]

Hey. We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

[James Stout]

It could happen Here is a production.

[Robert Evans]

Of Cool Zone Media.

[James Stout]

For more for more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to.

[Robert Evans]

Podcasts, you can now find sources for.

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