Loading summary
Transcript641 lines
- [00:00]
Robert Evans
Happy New Year from Minky Couture.
- [00:02]
Jay Shetty
Cozy up this winter with the ultimate.
- [00:04]
Danny Trejo
In comfort and style, our original Minky Blankets.
- [00:07]
James
Whether you're relaxing at home, enjoying a movie night, or simply staying warm on those chilly nights, Minky Couture has you covered.
- [00:13]
Jay Shetty
Literally. Choose from our wide selection of luxurious.
- [00:16]
James
Designs, colors and sizes perfect for everyone in the family. Celebrate the season in warmth and comfort. Visit minky couture.com or stop by your.
- [00:25]
Danny Trejo
Nearest Minky Couture store today.
- [00:27]
James
Minky Couture Blanketing the world in warmth.
- [00:29]
Jon Stewart
And love Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondents and contributors, and with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trehov and step into the flames of Fright, an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore Latin America. Listen to nocturnum on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.
- [01:38]
Jay Shetty
Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest interview is with Mel Robbins.
- [01:44]
Mel Robbins
Work has been seen as the number one cause of stress. How can the let them theory help?
- [01:50]
Andrina
As you notice the stress come up.
- [01:51]
James
Jay, you're simply going to say let them. You have no idea right now how.
- [01:56]
Andrina
Much time and energy is being wasted because of other people's behavior.
- [02:00]
James
It's like by a thousand cuts.
- [02:02]
Jay Shetty
Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:11]
Robert Evans
Media hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
- [02:36]
Jay Shetty
Hi everyone, welcome Bit can have it here. It's me, James today with a terrible cold as you can probably tell. But still very important to listen today because I'm talking to Andreena, an organizer from K Town 4 all up in LA and we're going to talk about the fires in LA and the mutual aid response and what you can do to help. So welcome to the show, Andrina.
- [02:53]
James
Thank you for having me, James.
- [02:55]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, thanks for being here. I know you guys are really busy right now, so to begin with, like in case this has missed people and there's a lot of, there's a lot of news happening right now. Can you explain what's been going on in LA with respect to the fires for the last two or three days?
- [03:09]
James
So about three or four days ago we got a warning that we were going to be experiencing high winds up to 50 miles per hour, which is nuts. And they were going to be coming from the desert. So this is just like a barrage of hot wind. So we were preparing to have to replace tents and tarps because, you know, man made structures that people are surviving with can't survive that kind of wind. But when we hear that wind here in Southern California, we immediately think fire, sadly, because any little, you know, a cigarette but an electrical spark, you know, like when, when it's this dry, is enough to cause devastation, which is exactly what's happened. There are about seven fires right now spread around the perimeter of Los Angeles that have been started and then spread massively by these giant winds everywhere. So the embers are being picked up. Thankfully the wind has settled down, but the wind itself has prevented, you know, the big water tankers from flying, which has led to the massive devastation that you saw in the Palisades and other areas. You know, the entire water fleet being grounded for a while just meant that it was burning with no control, relying on the ground firefighters. So what we've seen is just mass devastation. Thousands of homes lost. I think there is a death tally, thankfully very low in about 10ish. I think I've heard from this morning with, with confirmation. But yeah, that's, that's what we're facing right now.
- [04:37]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's pretty devastating. Like whole neighborhoods are gone.
- [04:41]
Mel Robbins
Right.
- [04:41]
Jay Shetty
I think I thought like 2000 structures have already been burned and like as you said, if people aren't in the United States or unfamiliar with how fire is fought, like out here in the western United. It's a lot of air dropping fire retardant and air dropping water which without that it's very hard to get enough water to where it needs to be. And I believe at one point they actually ran out of water in water towers right up in Palisades.
- [05:07]
James
Yeah, the fire hydrants ran dry in some areas, which is terrifying. To think of. And we were warned. I'm in the Koreatown neighborhood. We were warned about low water pressure. And I do know that some areas in Los Angeles, particularly in that region, are being warned to boil water and that their water is unsafe to drink right now.
- [05:27]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, I'd seen that too. There was a water boil warning for. Yeah, lots of places. So as a result of these fires and all the destruction they've caused, I think I saw, was it 150,000 odd people have been displaced now? Is that right? Is that a good number?
- [05:42]
James
I saw something large like that of just the people that have been evacuated. Right. North of me was the Sunset fire. And that was very concerningly close to the Koreatan neighborhood that is generally never concerned about fires because we're so in the concrete jungle, like we're so insulated. I think that's the closest we've come to devastation. And we were really stressed out last night just keeping an eye on the news because that's, you know, not even two miles away from the core of the densest neighborhood of Los Angeles.
- [06:13]
Jay Shetty
Right.
- [06:13]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [06:13]
Jay Shetty
I guess again, if people aren't familiar, like fires destroy property and kill people every year here. And like climate change has meant that they have become worse and worse. But in the middle of a city, you're generally not worried about fires because the resources will be spent to defend that property.
- [06:30]
Danny Trejo
Right.
- [06:30]
Jay Shetty
Like this is, this is a very unique situation to see huge parts of a city burning down.
- [06:36]
James
Yeah. Particularly the Palisades, which is historically a significantly wealthy neighborhood. You know, a den of celebrity and Hollywood elites. And seeing it devastated just kind of sends home the point that, you know, you have wealth that insulates you from the worst of what we're facing. But that only goes so far. I saw that there was a couple of wealthy people on Twitter begging for private fired fighting forces to come save their homes. Famously the same ones that are talking about tax evasion and how smart they are to do real estate. You know, maneuvering to, to not pay into the social system that helps in these times. Clearly we're were severely underfunded and severely under managed when it comes to the government stepping in during these emergencies.
- [07:26]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. And like that's something I want to address because I think in every natural disaster that I've covered, the reason it becomes a disaster, I guess, is because the state's incapable of responding in a way that protects people. And in almost every case, it's people who have to step up and look after one another. So we should talk about the response of the LA city and county governments. And then I'd love to talk about the mutual aid response after that.
- [07:54]
James
Yeah, from, from what we've seen here in K town, if you weren't immediately evacuated, there's, there's nothing. All of our outreach folks that were out talking to all of our unhoused neighbors here in the area, which are in the hundreds, first of all, didn't know what was going on. They saw the sky, they assumed there was a fire nearby, but they didn't know the swath of the devastation and that we were general threatened as well. They didn't have any supplies. And in some areas of Los Angeles, we've heard as of this morning and yesterday that sweeps have continued. So the city has continued throwing away tents from the people living on the streets. And then for the house people that have been displaced, there are shelter designations that they've set up. Pan Pacific park is one of them for Hollywood, there's one in Pasadena and the like. But it seems to be, you know, a hodgepodge of, you know, disorganization and a lot of, you know, mutual aid folks on the ground being the ones to direct people and gather the supplies. I have not heard of, you know, a very formalized system. There is no word on any kind of significant assistance for people who have lost their homes. At the moment, I don't know if the Red Cross is going to set a staging zone up or anything, but I do know that the people who are setting up, you know, places for people to go, food, water, even pet care, things like that, have been just random volunteers. You know, I'm, I'm in this chat group, Mutual Aid la, that spurred, you know, literally just on signal, the day that the fire started that has a thousand people on it, mobilizing and distributing and volunteering to move people from one area of the city to the other. You know, I have this person who needs a place to stay, like, who's got a list of places that are open. Because when you, when you have disasters this big, you need help quickly.
- [09:45]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [09:46]
James
And bureaucracy just doesn't, you know, that's not built for that.
- [09:51]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's not. And like, we've definitely seen that there was just a failure of the state to respond, like in the way that it needed to, as quickly as it needed to. And it's, it's really, it's wonderful to see people picking up slack, like. Of course it is. It's really beautiful that people show up for each other in these times. There's something about that that I obviously like, find really affirming. That's maybe why I do this for a living. But yeah, it's really beautiful to see. It doesn't mean that we should forget that, like, the state has capacity that it is using, as you said, to displace people who are unhoused. It could be using that capacity to bring masks to people, to bring food to people, to create shelter for people. It's not. It's choosing to harass people who live on the street.
- [10:34]
James
Yeah, and this is something we see repeatedly. You know, it hasn't rained in LA for about eight months, but when it did rain, we had historical rains. Last year in particular, we had a cold front where folks die every time, and we know folks are going to die every time it rains. Here in la, we have more people that die of hypothermia in Los Angeles than New York and San Francisco combined every year. Because hypothermia actually doesn't require it to be freezing to set in. It just requires you to. To be in around 60 degrees and be wet, which is very common on the streets here of la. We've seen people get frostbite from having their skin against cold concrete, you know, over the night while it's raining. And our electeds know this. When I first started doing this work, there was a slogan that we were chanting for a day in la, and that was the number of unhealthed people that died every day. And now we're at about six or seven. We request, you know, through the Freedom of Information act, request the coroner's report every year of how many people died. And that number is only growing. And the government knows this. They know every time we have a heat wave that there are 70,000 people sleeping on the streets, sleeping in their cars. They know that during the winter, you know, people are out there in the cold and the rain. And I, and I talk to people who aren't into the organizing space, and they asked me, like, well, aren't there, you know, insert service here that you think there should be, you know, right now during the fires, like, aren't there vans picking people up and taking them to shelter? And it's like, that would be wonderful. When there's not. There's never any vans picking people up. You know, even when they open up cooling shelters and warming shelters, the number one barrier we heard from people on the streets is how would I get there? And when I get there, they make me not bring my stuff in, so it's all going to get stolen. There's just all of These barriers that the city is just completely, you know, purposely neglecting. They could talk to any of us on how to run a successful, you know, warming or cooling shelter. They don't, you know, they have no interest in what we have to say. In fact, our city council person here in K town doesn't respond to any of our inquiries at all. She just flat out doesn't respond to us whenever we, we email her with concerns or questions. And that's kind of how we've been, you know, working just with the knowledge that we don't have this support of, of this agency. And in fact there are opposition. You know, we're the ones having to organize around them and what they're doing.
- [13:02]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's sadly not that dissimilar here. Like every time it rains, people will die. Every time we have a heat wave, though, I remember they found the remains of an unhoused person a couple of years ago and they thought the person had been burned like by fire. And it turned out they had just been exposed to massive amounts of heat. And yeah, I remember a couple of years ago, just to like give an anecdote. It was I think above 100 degrees in town. It was so hot and I was in the riverbed, like I had this big insulated backpack to give people cold water. And just like dozens of people were in a terrible distress. And yeah, there was no presence of police, fire, any, anyone to help. Right. Like we have these sometimes billion dollar police departments in these cities and, and, and people are still unsafe and, and they don't feel safe reaching out to any government agencies because these government agencies, the same ones that you say that throw away their, that destroy all the little things that they've been trying to build up to get onto, you know, like a better situation in life.
- [14:02]
James
Yeah. And I think there's this sense of like, apathy that has built, and rightfully so, from the people that live on the streets where we've, you know, relayed messages that we've heard, like, hey, 211 says they have 100 shelter beds tonight. Call and see if you can get in. And they're like, okay, you know, like, I'll give it a shot, you know, and it's very well received because we understand the amount of disappointment these people have gone through when they do the Care plus sweeps, which is in itself such an evil name when they throw all their stuff away. When they show up and they do Care plus they show up with a social worker first, which if I was a social worker, I'd be kicking and screaming about how damaging that is. That right before they throw away everything that an unhoused person owns, they send in a lone social worker worker to write their names and maybe their numbers down and tell them that the shelters are full, but they'll get back to them and then they have all of their belongings thrown away.
- [14:59]
Jay Shetty
Right.
- [14:59]
James
I can't imagine the harm that has done for just trusting services, even when they're available, you know, accessing them and then giving them your information. I have one person who rightfully so, told me they have trauma about filling out forms because they've done this 300 times. You know, they said something incredible. They've been counting about how many times they've filled the same forms out to have it lead nowhere. And I can't imagine, you know, that kind of resilience. Now with this devastation, there's going to be a lot of homeowners who are going to experience that firsthand. I'm seeing a lot of people that are homeless for the first time ever in their lives, like in their late 50s. And these are people that have owned homes, that have worked careers, that have, you know, lived their whole life as you're supposed to in the United States. And then in their elder years befall some sort of disaster or Social Security doesn't pay anymore. And they are severely shocked when I tell them what the landscape of our social safety net looks like. I've had people ask me like, where do I go to sign up for free housing? And I have to tell them, you know, the wait list for vouchers is 15 years long and it's a lottery. The list is closed because it's so full. You can apply to senior housing, but that's about a 10 year wait, you know, that I have to be the one to tell them that. And that sort of shock, I think is going to be hitting a lot of folks that have never tried to access services before.
- [16:27]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, definitely. Let's take a little break here for some advertisements and then we'll come back. All right, we're back. So, yeah, I think anyone who's familiar with the situation facing unhoused people in Southern California will understand that there is not a safety net. And that's about to become more profoundly obvious than ever for thousands of people. Let's talk about the way that people are helping to take care of one another, because I think that's, that's what always happens in these situations. So let's talk about the mutual aid effort. Maybe you could, you could like talk about some of the groups, talk about some of the things you've been doing. And then I want to get on to how people can help if they're in town and how people can help if they are a long way away.
- [17:19]
James
Yeah, In LA we have a very robust network of mutual aid groups that have been built by force, honestly, via this government. I think a lot of them have started up to step in. Just there's no denying all over LA that there's this crisis because you walk outside of your house and there are people sleeping on your street, you know, there's people digging through your garbage. So we've seen this blossoming of mutual aid groups all over the city. And in times of crisis we'll spark up a signal group that grows from zero to thousands of people overnight that are willing to jump in and get their hands dirty, to coalesce and find resources. Here's where we're buying masks. This door is out. Don't go to this one, go to that one who's reimbursing people for gas, et cetera, et cetera. And it's normal people, you know, I have a full time job, my friends here in K Town for all. Some are teachers, some are in the movie industry, you know, some are random lawyers, you know, that will take their time out to, to do this work. And I think that it's beautiful in the sense that we get people the help they need and it's never enough, which is crushing. Here in K Town we give supplies to about 400 or so unhoused people a week minimum. And that is hygiene supplies, tents, blankets. We connect them to any services that they might ask us to connect them to, driving them to the hospital, et cetera. And this has been going on for the last five years. And K Town for all specifically started as a counter protest because there was an attempt to build a shelter here in Koreatown and some homeowners organized against it. They marched down Wilshire and shut it down. And our founders found each other because they were the only five people holding up we want shelter signs and just started doing distribution themselves. And I think that's one thing that I would really suggest to folks is it's not as intimidating as it seems to start one of these projects. It's literally you and a couple friends who decide that you're gonna do something and you acknowledge that you can't do everything and, and that you'll never be able to meet the need. Because what we need is a government who cares about people. But in the meanwhile we're Gonna do the best we can. And the lives of the, you know, now 400 or so people that we see every week are a little better because we decide to do that.
- [19:57]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, I think that's really important to say that. Like, it can seem really overwhelming. This is an email I get almost every week. Like, how do I start a mutual aid group? But, like, if you can make a sandwich, then you can. You can start a mutual aid group. Like, just go and feed people who are hungry. If someone's cold, give them a blanket. Like, it. It doesn't have to be like, you don't have to read 17 books, you know, and be like, starting a 501C3 and stuff. You just need to do things. And I think especially, like, we're going into a new administration. We're gonna see the state being more hostile to people who are already marginalized. And, like, the best advice I have for people is to get off the Internet and to get into the streets and just do something. It doesn't matter. As you say, you won't be able to do everything. Not right away. Maybe one day we will. But, like, doing something is a lot better than doing nothing. And I guarantee there's also much better for you and your met. Like, I feel so much better when I'm able to help people. I wouldn't be able to do the job I do at the border if I wasn't also able to help people. It. It helps me feel like I'm not part of the problem, I guess, or like we're doing something about it, at least. What are people doing right now to help people who are impacted by the fires? Like, what. What are the needs that are arising and how are. How are people meeting them?
- [21:12]
James
Yeah, well, K Town for all focuses here in the K Town neighborhood. And what we've particularly focused on is mass distribution. People are sitting in. It's literally raining ash in some areas and are sitting in the soot. So there's that there's basic tent and tarp gathering meals. So many emergency services shut down during disasters that, you know, makes sense. But a lot of food kitchens that people would get meals from are not open right now. So it's getting people food, getting people water, just enough to survive. In other areas, folks are gathering supplies. There's all Power books. That is a big distribution site right now. Puma Mutual Aid out in the Palms area is doing a lot of really great work. The South Bay got swept last night, so South Bay Mutual Aid Club is replacing tents this morning. There's a Lot of the pet mutual aid groups who are gathering pet food and finding foster homes for a lot of the found dogs and cats. It's just, I mean I can't even list the amount of people right now that are like in their vehicles doing drop offs to, you know, the sidewalk project. There's a big skid row distribution point that is building up crowdsourcing insulin, things that like, you don't think about that people ran out of their house, that they need to live, they don't have time to go get a prescription.
- [22:31]
Jay Shetty
Right.
- [22:31]
James
You know, at a primary care provider like that, we need albuterol, that people are having asthma attacks. So there's these kind of burdens that mutual aid projects get around because people a don't have to fill out any forms, they don't have to wait. If we have it, you're going to be handed it. And you know, even medical providers as part of our projects have become a really big support as people on the streets are often very disabled. We have a lot of folks with diabetes, like diabetic open wounds, like just very horrible injuries that need constant care. All Power Bookstore has a free clinic called All Power Clinic and they offer free medical care and come with us on our routes here in K town to offer free treatment for folks. And, and I think that's something that is going to only grow, as you said, as this administration occurs. Homelessness rose 18% in the last year. And that's only been the case every year since we started counting. There is no way this administration is going to institute rent control or anything that keeps people from being displaced. One mutual aid project that I think people overlook often is the tenants unions, the LA tenants union mobilizing to care for their members, checking in on their disabled members. These kind of community based organizations where people know people, they know who to check up on, they know who's vulnerable. Those kind of organizations are invaluable in emergencies like these.
- [24:00]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, definitely. And like, I hope one good thing that can come out of this is that we can build stronger communities. Right. And we can. Hopefully folks who are finding themselves dependent on mutual aid for the first time can realize that like they can participate in that. And I know there are folks already, right. Who have like lost their homes, who are still out there helping other people, driving around rescuing people and stuff.
- [24:20]
James
Yeah. And I think we say this all the time in the homelessness space. You know, you're closer to being homeless than you are to be a billionaire. And I think this is one of the most direct examples like These people might have been well off maybe a month or two ago, and then now they have zero. You know, they're going to be fighting with insurance companies for maybe five years, you know, if some of them. And hopefully, you know, they end up recovering. But I hope they don't forget that climate change and emergency disasters are a great equalizer. And the people that show their faces, they're not the politicians, they're not the, the lobbyists, they're not, you know, the Democratic Party, you know, tm, it's your neighbor who has a mask for you. It's me, someone random from down the block who got a couple friends together who has water for you. You know, like that's who comes through and that's who you need to care for all the time, including your unhoused neighbors that are around you all the time, who live in your community and who face this emergency every day. You know, they don't know where they're going to sleep every night, they don't know where their next meal is coming from. Every day they get their stuff destroyed by the state, you know, regularly, if not once a week, very frequently. And I hope. This is really sad, but I hope it forces some empathy in people who otherwise don't think about themselves in this context of being a human that needs food, water and shelter. You know, the basics.
- [25:56]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, talking of food, water and shelter, those are things I need as well. And so to pay for them, I have to pivot to ads now. Okay, we're back. I think that was a really good plug for like, why mutual aid is important. And hopefully there are people who are listening.
- [26:21]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [26:21]
Jay Shetty
Or people who are finding themselves for the first time interested in helping, seeing a crisis. A lot of people like, will ask me if they can come help at the border and of course you can, but you should also help in your own community because there are people who need you there. And obviously that's very true in LA right now. So I want to like, give some resources, some ways people can help. If people are listening. In la, what are some, like, I know there are all kinds of efforts, but what are some concrete things they can do or some places they can go if they're in a, in a situation where they're not massively impacted by the fires and they want to help other people. What are some things they can do?
- [26:58]
James
You're free to follow k town4all on Instagram. We are constantly uploading on our stories year round. Fundraisers, resource requests, GoFundMes, et cetera. We really try to Stay connected with the LA Mutual Aid Network. And honestly, once you follow one of us, you kind of follow all of us because we're very supportive of each other's efforts. Mutual Aid LA is a good hub. They have a magazine that gets published every month that has a list of mutual aid programs all over la. If you can't come out on physical outreach with us, which we do on Saturdays, every Saturday, except the first Saturday of the month when we do our planning meeting, you're free to help us, you know, connect with others. You're free to help us financially, but we also, you know, you funny you mentioned this, James, but if you DM us and you're like, hey, I want to talk to someone about starting a project in my region, I'm so happy to hop on zoom with you, tell you how we do our distribution, tell you how we make our maps of encampments, tell you how we, you know, fund and crowdsource. Always happy to find that knowledge. And people message us all the time, can we start a Neighborhood for all chapter? And we're like, we're so honored that you would do that. Please don't ask, but you're totally welcome to. And so we have Pasadena for All that is doing great work. And Pasadena for All is definitely always in need of support. They are in a huge disaster zone. Altadena, Pasadena. Like all those areas are been evacuated. Palms Mutual Aid. But yeah, if you want to stay connected, you know, follow us on Instagram, K Town for All. Same Twitter, same on Blue sky and we'll hopefully be your input into the LA mutual aid scene. We're always so happy to support anyone else doing this work. And while we focus on the K Town neighborhood, LA is a giant place. And if you have any neighborhoods in Los Angeles that you feel passionate about or need extra attention, you know, we'll always be the ones to uplift those.
- [28:57]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, that's really cool. I think it's really important that we share. Like one of my friends, when we were doing border stuff, made a website where we documented all the stuff we did so that it was open source and available to people like how we built shelters and how we cooked and yeah, we don't need to reinvent the wheel every time. Like, we can all help each other get that star and not make the mistakes that we all made. So that's really cool that people can reach out to you. What about if they're a long way away and they just want to send some money, they want to help and they've got money they want to share.
- [29:24]
James
Yeah, you're always welcome to Venmo US K Town for all. Same on Venmo. We have a PayPal link. We have a website, ktownforall.org we are 501c3. If you'd like to donate in our, you know, in some kind of corporate fancy way, feel free to DM us. We just got that figured out. But yeah, all of our money gets spent directly on material goods. We don't have any employees. We don't have any overhead. Our volunteers are up to their necks in baby wipes usually when we get sock donations and things like that. And honestly, we prefer it that way just because we know what nonprofit requirements are like and that kind of burden that places on mutual aid projects and we're trying to avoid them. So every dime still goes to supplies. And I know every mutual aid project, J Town Action in Japantown as well, operates in a very similar model. I would just suggest people get plugged in to mutual aid la. They follow us on Instagram. Feel free to send any money. We're constantly on our stories, uploading GoFundMes and Venmos and stuff. I really appreciate their help out of the country and hope that one day orgs like ours are not needed anymore because we live in a great world there.
- [30:43]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, that'd be nice. Is there anything else? Like, do you have any bottlenecks or particular shortages that you want to shout out that the audience can maybe help you with?
- [30:51]
James
We're always looking for staples. So those are tents and tarps constantly. Those are often the most expensive items people have to purchase. Tents go about 30 to $40 each one and the government throws a lot of them away every week. So those items feel free to always DM me if you have some that you would like to drop off. But I will say mutual aid orgs are really good at building connections directly with vendors. And we usually get like a discount in buying in bulk. So I would really love to shake people from their fear of donating cash.
- [31:27]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:28]
James
I know a lot of folks feel comfortable like buying an item because you know that that's the item that's given out. But sometimes we get a better deal buying a thousand of those tents and your dollar goes farther. So, you know, tents, blankets, and again, don't be afraid to do this by yourself. Like you can go to Home Depot and buy a tent and hand it to someone. You can go to Home Depot and buy masks right now and hand them to someone. You don't have to wait for a group like this to be around and to help, particularly if your neighborhood needs you.
- [31:59]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, I think that's a really good message. It's a good place to end. Just to remind everyone, it's @ktownforall on Instagram and K Townforall on Venmo. Right?
- [32:07]
James
Yep.
- [32:08]
Jay Shetty
Great. Thanks so much.
- [32:09]
James
Thank you so much.
- [32:20]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, entertainment, sports and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondence and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the Fire and D. Enter Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shape shifters to bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.
- [33:31]
James
No.
- [33:34]
Jon Stewart
Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Tura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [34:02]
Robert Evans
Oh, it's. It Could Happen Here. A podcast from CES, the Consumer Electronics Show 2025. I am here with my friend and work partner, Garrison Davis. We have been trotting the boards. The boards being the Las Vegas Convention center all day. Garrison, today you started earlier than I did because I was catastrophically hungover after getting very drunk with a priest last night. Yeah, we had a nice dinner and then we set out to experience a fresh new hell. And in this case, that fresh new hell was what the AI Bros have ready for your children.
- [34:41]
H
No, it's funny how we both stumbled across AI products for kids like the same day during the exact same time.
- [34:48]
Robert Evans
Yeah, it really is remarkable that, like. Yeah, I guess in part just because that is such a focus. I think it has something to do with what you saw some of yesterday where. And I had caught a little the day before where they're like, yeah, they don't really like this stuff. We're gonna have to get around it. Like, obviously this is inevitable, but like, people really also seem to not enjoy it very much. No one can explain why, but I think that this may be like, okay, well, if we get them when they're young enough. If we train these kids, we can force this on them and they'll have no choice but to like it.
- [35:18]
H
And it's interesting you say that because the first thing I did today was go to a panel at the Venetian titled Raising AI Kids Responsibly, which is maybe the best title for any single panel.
- [35:31]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that's. That's fucked up.
- [35:34]
H
The description was, a new generation of kids are being brought up with AI technologies as a part of their lives. How does this affect their learning, entertainment and socialization? Which is a good question.
- [35:46]
Robert Evans
Yeah, we should be asking that.
- [35:47]
H
More people should. There was four people on the panel. Karen Ruth Wong from Ido Play Lab Partnerships, Nilo Luik from Skyrocket Toys, Melissa Hunter from Family Video Network, and Joshua Garrett from Readyland. And I'll talk about all these. All these different, like, companies and people in a sec.
- [36:07]
Jon Stewart
Yeah.
- [36:07]
H
So the panel started with Karen Ruth Wong from Aido, which is the. The company that first partnered with Sesame Workshop to start making online apps. So, you know, that was interesting to me because Sesame Workshop generally puts a lot of care into, like, you know, making media for children. This is a company that works with them. So I was interested in what she was going to say. And basically she talked not about any products that her company's making, but instead research into how, like, AI is affecting Gen Z, how Gen Z wants to, like, interact with AI, and talked about a whole bunch of research that her company has been doing for the past few years on, like, what people, you know, my age and, you know, younger, what their attitudes are towards this thing that has become like an increasingly encroaching part of their lives. I'm just gonna play a series of clips.
- [36:55]
Robert Evans
Couldn't be more excited.
- [36:57]
James
So I'll be sharing this morning a little bit about what we're learning. That question is, what if the tech savvy generation isn't buying it anymore? We have a lot of really interesting opinions and assumptions in our heads that these are the ones that are going.
- [37:09]
H
To be the first users and the first movers, and in many ways they.
- [37:12]
James
Are, but they're the ones that also come with the most informed opinions. Not just about how badly the tech feels, how cringy some of them might be landing, but also how it's affecting their sense of humanity.
- [37:25]
Robert Evans
That's fascinating.
- [37:26]
H
Yeah. The very first thing, this is literally like minutes into the panel, this is like, after they do their introductions, the first thing to talk about is how Gen Z is both an early adopter of New tech, but they're also kind of the most AI critical right now.
- [37:38]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cringey.
- [37:40]
H
Yeah, like how it feels cringy. And not just that, how it's affecting people's like, sense of humanity and viewing this, like, you know, in some ways as like an obstacle to get over. But also this is. I'm not sure how I feel about, like, you know, Karen and the company she's representing here because in some ways I felt like she was probably actually good. She just had to frame all of the things she was saying as, like, shocking revelations to all these tech bros. Be like, actually, it turns out kids surprisingly don't want their lives run by AI.
- [38:10]
Robert Evans
Yeah, don't want to communicate only with AI.
- [38:12]
H
I actually liked what she was saying. It's just her presentation of it felt kind of odd at times because of. Because of who the audience was.
- [38:19]
Robert Evans
Do you get the feeling that she was like a bad person trying to help other bad people sell poison to children or somebody who was trying to, in a way that these guys would listen to tell them that what they're doing isn't working?
- [38:32]
H
Maybe like 2080. So like a little bit of like, yeah, we have to sell some of this. But mostly it felt like trying to inform people about how this isn't really what people want. And, you know, it has a lot of actual drawbacks. Here's a clip of Karen talking about the sort of questions that they're asking kids to, you know, get data on how they feel about AI.
- [38:53]
James
Here's a few provocative ones. We really put tangible expressions of what it would be like to interact with potential AI tool. And so we ask questions like, okay, you recently had a friend breakup. What kind of intervention do you want? Do you want someone to counsel you through that process? Or do you want someone to kind of replace that friend for the time being just so you can, you know, back yourself out from that relationship. So by asking really tangible questions, by putting prototypes in front of youth, we were able to co design to view insights. This one always gets all audience members. We put out a provocational expression of imagine you could have an AI trained on your preferences, on your personalities, live.
- [39:35]
Danny Trejo
Your life for you.
- [39:36]
James
Imagine they could swipe your Tinder for you. They would have the icky conversations, or they would go through the awkward introductions. You know, new person in school. And we heard some really interesting things.
- [39:48]
Danny Trejo
I want to go on a bad.
- [39:49]
James
Date for myself and I want to have that education. There was a really interesting sign that being able to live life for yourself is a badge of honor.
- [39:59]
H
Being able to live life for yourself is a badge of honor.
- [40:03]
Robert Evans
Amazing that human beings don't want a robot to replace them in such drudgery as the search for love and human connection. Incredible that teens aren't interested in letting a robot go on dates for them.
- [40:15]
H
No, it's super interesting. And even the first things she said about, you know, you like, lost some friends. Do you want an AI to like, to, you know, like, counsel you or like, you know, like, like, like talk about your feelings? Or do you want a friend replacement? And no, people don't want a friend replacement. And this even like otter question of like, you know, like, like AI swiping your Tinder for you, trying to figure out what your preferences are, then no, like Gen Z wants to live life for themselves. So it's odd because, because that's what.
- [40:45]
Robert Evans
Being a person being a person is. Right?
- [40:46]
H
But like, it's odd how that's framed as like a surprising revelation.
- [40:50]
Robert Evans
Wow, these kids want to live lives.
- [40:52]
H
So, yeah, it was a kind of an odd panel to go to. She highlighted that the key areas of tension in AI for, for Gen Z is twofold creative expression and human relationships. These are the two biggest things that people are concerned about is how, how it will affect your ability to, you know, make art be creative and what it means for like, you know, relationships as a human being.
- [41:15]
Danny Trejo
Right.
- [41:15]
H
Especially if you're being asked questions about, you know, would you let an AI, like meet someone that you want to date first? Have them go through like a first like fake AI date to like, to like get through like icebreaker questions or something.
- [41:30]
Robert Evans
The amount of people I meet who feel that way about like their digital twins or like, who take pride in having like an AI trained off of their social media posts at events like these, it's shocking to me because, like, do you feel good about saying that a chatbot, you feel like it is you, that you have trained a chatbot to be a reasonable simulacrum of yourself? Do you feel good about thinking that? Does that make you happy about yourself?
- [41:57]
H
Well, and the data that this person was talking about showed no. Like people actually don't want these things.
- [42:03]
Danny Trejo
No, absolutely no.
- [42:03]
H
This actually isn't what anyone wants out of life. This isn't what anyone wants out of this technology.
- [42:08]
Danny Trejo
Right.
- [42:08]
H
Like we use AI all the time, you know, like, like, you know, like auto complete. It has a whole bunch of like, you know, pretty basic uses.
- [42:14]
Robert Evans
Yeah, it saves me from having to spell certain words too many times.
- [42:17]
H
Yeah, but we don't want it to, like, go on dates for us. And the whole part of being human is having, you know, a degree of bad experiences and that that helps shape us as people. And this isn't like a hurdle to get over. This is like a part of what it means to be human. And she kind of talked about that a little bit more in this last clip that I'll play.
- [42:37]
James
The next one here. I prefer to give opportunities to people over technology. I think these are the ones. And again, they have seen what it's like when people feel replaced. I'll definitely share a lot more, but starting off with a few key learnings, Gen Z's valid advice and perspective from lived experience. There's something about designing for friction. And we feel like designing for friction in our age of optimization, in our age of assuming that everything should move as fast as possible to make life as smooth as possible. There's something about the challenge and that comes back to play.
- [43:12]
H
Right.
- [43:12]
James
Why would we spend so much time to hit a ball several hundred yards away? There's something about the joy of achieving, the joy of overcoming challenge, the joy.
- [43:22]
H
Of moving through your first friend breakup, your boyfriend or girlfriend breakup that makes.
- [43:26]
James
Him into a person.
- [43:28]
H
And as many times as helicopter parents.
- [43:30]
James
Or as people who are designing technology assume that the smoothest possible path is the best possible path. There's some pushback there.
- [43:38]
Robert Evans
Some pushback. Some pushback to the idea that, like, you should live a life, your one precious life should be lived.
- [43:46]
H
No, but there's a whole bunch of interesting stuff there. Gen Z has great fears about being replaced.
- [43:51]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [43:51]
H
You know, like, having, like, workforce replacement. Gen Z prefers to actually, like, make connections and network with other people our age and actually, like, share opportunities.
- [44:00]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [44:01]
H
In previous panels, this is, this was something that was also talked about, how millennials were way more, like, selective about, like, sharing, like, employment opportunities because they were, like, so focused on, like, making sure that they make it. And there's a lot more like, like, open collaboration and sharing, sharing opportunities.
- [44:13]
Robert Evans
It's harder. So you guys have to be better about that.
- [44:16]
H
Yeah, yeah. No talking about, you know, like, designing for friction. Like, there's, like, there's value in something being challenging.
- [44:23]
Robert Evans
That was very interesting because surprise about that because it is this kind of. I'm sure most of these people were born to wealth and privilege. And the first thing that people do with money, the primary reason to have money is to reduce friction. The fact that that's surprising to anyone that, like, no, like, friction's necessary, otherwise you're not A person. I mean, it's like that. It's like the ghoul we saw the other night. Right. Like, you know, they're just not really people, you know?
- [44:51]
H
One thing she kind of closed on in this section is talking about how Gen Z does not trust AI to understand the nuance of their lives. Especially in this age of tech optimization. That misses a part of what it means to feel proud of yourself and the work that you've done. Something she just talked about at the very end of the panel was how they hadn't factored in Gen Z. And people in general will feel proud about making a piece of art.
- [45:16]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [45:17]
H
And they don't have that same sense of pride for an AI generated image.
- [45:22]
Robert Evans
No.
- [45:22]
H
Whether it's like, a screenplay, whether it's whatever someone gave an example of. Like, you know, I have a kid who does creative stuff. They edit videos. Right. And there is AI tools that make editing videos, like, easier. But if the AI does all the work, they don't feel happy about that. Like, they don't feel proud. They don't feel like they've actually achieved something. And you have to feel proud about the work that you've done. So, like, there's actually a sense of, like, ownership over, like, the art that we create. An exact quote was, quote, you can't eliminate life. Formative aspects, unquote, which is like, yes, life.
- [45:55]
Robert Evans
Yeah. You don't ever do anything.
- [45:57]
H
I'm happy someone at CES is saying this. The fact that it needs to be said at all, very bleak.
- [46:03]
Robert Evans
Very sad.
- [46:04]
H
It's really bleak.
- [46:05]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Dating people, making friends, being social, doing whatever it is you do for a living as yourself is what life is like.
- [46:16]
H
Yeah. I think the last thing that she talked about was, like, Gen Z aren't technophobes, but they do have strong boundaries.
- [46:22]
Robert Evans
Yeah, good.
- [46:23]
H
And they. They have to reinforce their own sense of self because we're constantly being bombarded with, you know, slop content, influencers, podcasts, live streams, like, everything, you know, TikTok, social media. So we. We have strong, like, boundaries on how tech, like, integrates into our lives. And a lot of the way these tech bros want AI to, like, become more invasive. We are not super into.
- [46:44]
Robert Evans
No. Like, all they're offering people is, like, this machine will do everything that you actually want to do with your time. And also, you won't have a job. Like, that's what big tech is promising. Gen Z. Yeah.
- [46:56]
H
So that's how I started my day.
- [46:57]
Robert Evans
Speaking of, Gen Z stands for zillions of dollars. That we'll get if you listen to these ads. And we're back.
- [47:16]
H
So unfortunately, that panel wasn't just talking about how kids maybe don't want AI to run their lives. It also had two other people from AI products. The first one that I'll mention is called Readyland, which I think partnered with Amazon to some degree. It at least uses like Amazon Alexa's. It's essentially a choose your own adventure storybook with like an actual physical copy that Alexa will read to you and you can talk to it. So you can talk to characters and choose different pathways. I was more skeptical at it at first because I just don't like AIs reading books to kids. But this became more of like an interactive story thing and it actually seemed kind of good at what it was doing. And then the guy behind it clarified, Readyland is not using AI to generate new content for kids. Kids. It's all like pre programmed, like human paths, you know, just with so many variables already built in based on, you know, like if you're making food in one of these books or like, you know, a kid wants to go on like a weird side quest. The AI already has like stuff for how to handle that. It knows how to say these words, it knows how to stitch together these things. But it's not actually generating new content itself. If everything is like pre baked, it can just be assembled in many different ways. Okay, so every time you read a book to the kid, it'll be slightly different because the kid will respond to certain plot elements. The kid can talk to characters, ask questions. So this was actually pretty interesting. The fact that it's simply just not even generating new content makes it miles better than any of these other AI kids products.
- [48:43]
Robert Evans
That it's actually just kind of using some of the tech that makes up AI to allow you to make something humans wrote more reactive.
- [48:50]
H
Exactly. Yeah. So it's actually a pretty interesting piece of technology. And it's not just Alexa reading a storybook. It has like a large interactive element which, you know, that makes the Alexa part, you know, actually useful. And then there was this other product. What was this, what's, what was this one called? It's from a company called Skyrocket Toys. Po, the AI Teddy bear or, or something like that. Yeah, Po. Po, the AI Bear, which does generate live content with, with guardrails.
- [49:20]
Robert Evans
He did say, oh good.
- [49:22]
H
But the AI content both comes from the input and, but he talked about guardrails, you know, he said, you know, chat GPT does have internal guardrails, but the Reliability is suspect, which there certainly is, considering just last week there was a piece of news about Chat GPT helping someone build a bomb.
- [49:40]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah. Which they used in just this magical city.
- [49:43]
H
Yes. So he did say that like guardrail reliability can be suspect, but there is a difference when you have certainly like, like more like child friendly features turned on. But he admitted that like moderation is part of the challenge. I don't know. Basically how this works is you have an app synced up with this AI teddy bear that talks with a not very pleasing voice.
- [50:03]
Robert Evans
Oh, I gotta hear it.
- [50:05]
H
Do you want me to pull this up?
- [50:06]
Robert Evans
Yes, absolutely.
- [50:07]
H
Okay. But basically you put in a whole bunch of story inputs being like, I want the story set in this place, I want it featuring these types of characters. I want this archetype to be the villain. It has like dozens, if not hundreds of archetypal things that you can like click and then the teddy bear will generate a new story. So it is generating new content, but with like pre baked characters essentially. So then it'll stitch together the story. The weirder you make the variables, the weirder the story is going to be. Let me play a clip for Robert here. Hey there, Nelo.
- [50:36]
Danny Trejo
It's a bright and shiny January morning. The perfect time for another story. Did you know that in Las Vegas where our story takes place, they have a gigantic Ferris wheel called the High Roller?
- [50:49]
Robert Evans
It's taller than the Statue of Liberty. So he'll pull in real world events and places based on the setting that you choose.
- [50:56]
James
What if I told you there's a.
- [50:58]
Danny Trejo
Mystery waiting to be unraveled at the Consumer Electronics Show? There's excitement in the air and Poe.
- [51:05]
H
Is on the case.
- [51:06]
Robert Evans
That guy like sitting there talking, almost rolling his eyes at his own product while it yaps in his lap is a perfect, like, he clearly didn't think about how that would look because it does not make an appealing ad for the product.
- [51:20]
H
No. So it doesn't sound good. So yeah, they generated a story set in CES in Las Vegas and he would occasionally interrupt the bear to like explain what it was doing. So that was the other product. Not nearly as polished or like really, really as thoughtful as like the AI storybook. But you know, maybe if you are tired of having to, you know, talk to your kid, you can just get one of these teddy bears to throw.
- [51:45]
Robert Evans
Their own front raise it. I mean, it looks like you could probably handle all of the physical contact they need too. So you don't even need to ever touch your child. And in fact you can Just have chatgpt root that through the bear and never even see your own flesh and blood. Like I think ideally you would have them cut out of there, you know, really surgically remove that baby, you know, a month or two early. And that way you can kind of absolutely minimize the amount of time that you ever spend in contact with your spawn.
- [52:11]
H
One other thing I will add is that the Readyland guy, the AI Storybook, specifically when talking about, you know, the importance of guardrails, he said that there's multiple levels to safety. Right. An AI kids robot that swears right is one thing that's pretty easy to avoid actually. Like that's, that's pretty easy.
- [52:26]
Robert Evans
There's a limited number of swear words. Right.
- [52:28]
H
And you could just like, you could just block out certain things from happening. You can build that in. But another aspect that's really important to safety is like the accuracy of the things it's saying. Right? Like, what if it's saying something that's supposed to be, you know, some like, factual statement about the world that just like, isn't true or could actually like lead to danger? Right. What if it tells your kid to do something which is actually kind of dangerous? Or what if it says like not even, not even directly telling them, but you know, it says something that if the kid then tries to do that, it's really dangerous. And like this is why their storybook program, you know, does not generate new content. So everything it says is like, it's like already pre approved. Like it already is going to have, you know, like verified, like verified safe, you know, sentences versus this AI teddy bear because it is generating new content. You know, it could, if things go horribly wrong, you know, talk about drinking bleach, you know. Yeah, theoretically, you know, just, just like something, you know, like things can go wrong. So it's not just about, you know, avoiding bad words or talking about sex or you know, those types of like, like inappropriate things. It's also making sure it's not like hallucinating or, or saying things that could like, lead to like dangerous situations.
- [53:33]
Robert Evans
Right. Well, the good news is that I don't think these are going to be wildly successful products. I mean, I guess we'll see. But these are super expensive and like, did you get a price point for that bear?
- [53:48]
H
I did not hear a price point for the bear.
- [53:50]
Robert Evans
I'm curious as to what they're going to be charging for it. I mean, we'll see if any of this stuff really does take off. I wouldn't consider it optimism to hope this stuff takes off but like they don't seem like great products to me. So I guess we'll see. I read something very interesting that is related exactly and it probably was. He might have been talking about like that weird bear or something. I read something very interesting on the subject of like AI children's toys from a guy who was like an AI developer. This was from a post on Twitter by Alex Volkov. I got my 6 year old daughter an AI toy for her birthday that arrived for Christmas. Instead she unpacked it all excited. I explained that this isn't like other toys, that this one has AI in it. She of course knows what AI is, has seen the things I've built and interacted with with them, chatted with ChatGPT in Santa mode, knows that Daddy is doing AI, etc. So a very interesting experiment happened after Magical Toys reached out and fixed the issue. Reference below. She started playing with this dino, chatted with it and then learned to turn it off and doesn't want it to talk anymore. She still loves playing with it, dressed it up. It now has paper shoes and a top hat that we made together. But every time I asks her if she'd like to chat with it, she says no. A few times it turned it back on and she did speak with it for a bit and then she just turned it off again, not wanting to engage. I gently asked why and I wasn't really able to understand where there's the resistance. It's not weird to her. In fact, at one point she was pretending the Dino was a baby and was turned on. So I told her let's ask it to pretend to be a baby and it obliged and said okay. So we asked it to cry. Granted they don't have an amazing advanced voice mode like OpenAI, so it did its best. But it sounded weird which made her laugh really hard. It was basically making crying sounds like talking. And also there are still technical issues. The voice is sometimes choppy, so it could be that that it's still uncanny for her. I'm honestly fascinated about why the AI aspect of this didn't connect with my 6 year old.
- [55:36]
H
Because it's creepy.
- [55:37]
Robert Evans
Because it's people, they don't like it. Nobody wants this. Yeah, ick. Yeah, ick. I know this is a sample size of one kid here and I'm sure many, many things will change as she'll grow and learn to interact with more AIs in different forms. But the first toy contact was interestingly, almost a complete failure.
- [55:56]
H
That is interesting.
- [55:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah, I find that fucking fascinating.
- [56:00]
H
Yeah. No one wants this. Even six olds are like, I would prefer just a regular toy you can play with.
- [56:06]
Robert Evans
I would prefer. I'll pretend it's a robot, but I don't want it to be a robot that talks to me.
- [56:12]
H
So Poe the AI bear is $50 on Amazon.
- [56:15]
Robert Evans
Oh, that's not bad, actually. No, that's good. Okay, good. All right, well, maybe we can even.
- [56:20]
H
Maybe order one and see and see what we can get out of it.
- [56:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [56:25]
H
All right, we're going to go on another break and return to talk once again about AI products for your children. Okay, we're back.
- [56:44]
Robert Evans
So we went and saw something else today while you were at a different chunk of the event talking to yet another flying car company that promises to revolutionize the ease with which we can all do 9 11s. Super excited for that future, by the way. I stumbled upon the booth for a company called tcl.
- [57:02]
H
A pretty big company.
- [57:03]
Robert Evans
A fairly large, yeah, large company. Make a lot of TVs, stuff like that. They had a couple of things. They had an AI laundry machine.
- [57:09]
H
So many AI laundry bots.
- [57:11]
Robert Evans
Yeah, this one was the worst because it's like this little almost a soft, rounded pyramid shape. It hangs your laundry. They say they can't do folding yet, so it just sort of like picks up dry laundry and holds it.
- [57:25]
H
Like it just suspends it in the air.
- [57:26]
Robert Evans
It suspends it in the air inside of itself. And also it can only do a kilogram of laundry. The only thing they had in there was like handkerchiefs and scarfs. So it's like probably a couple of thousand dollars. But you can. AI can clean your handkerchiefs and scarfs.
- [57:41]
H
As opposed to my regular washing machine.
- [57:43]
Robert Evans
Yeah, and they had a washing machine that it can identify and count exactly what clothes are in it, not how many of them there are. And it'll tell you the soil level and yada, yada, yada, yada. Like, I'm sure some people will want this shit, but it's like, yeah, only people who have a lot of money and want to spend it on a laundry machine. Because I don't see that it actually reduces the amount of work you need to do at this point. But the thing they had at the booth that caught my eye was a robot toy for kids. AI Space Me is the name of the robot baby. Yoda was a partial inspiration because like Furby. Yeah, Porn Furby. There's some porg in there. It's a two part toy. The interior part is like a swaddled up, almost looking Little porg thing with a cute face. And the eyes are reasonably good. Like, they did a decent job of the eyes. Not looking creepy, but like, that blink and change color and contract and expand. And then it's got, like, two little flapper arms that can, like, wiggle. And it's seated inside almost like the aliens in Independence Day. It's seated inside, like, this large rolling body frame that allows it to move around on the ground. And so it's supposed to, like, be your child's friend. And the first thing that was upsetting to me, because they had this video ad that would play every so often, and it was very creepy. And, you know, I thought back to when we were doing the interview with the guy who had, like, the robot for old people. He was like, it's very important that it not tell them it loves them. That it, like, always reiterate that it's a false thing. This robot just keeps telling the kid, I love you, like, I care for you. When the lady did a demo, she was like, it's a toy that actually knows and cares about your child. And, like, no, it's not. No, it's not. Don't say that. That shouldn't be illegal for you to say that for you to sell this to children and tell them it's an intelligent being that loves them is, like, deeply abusive, in my opinion. Like, that is actually child abuse because it's not alive. Anyway, so I had to bring Garrison over because you needed to see it.
- [59:42]
H
Oh, and saw it, I did.
- [59:43]
Mel Robbins
Yeah.
- [59:43]
Robert Evans
And I'm going to play a little clip from the ad, so I want you to hear the way this thing sounds.
- [59:52]
Jay Shetty
Every heartwarming moment shared and grown with.
- [59:56]
Danny Trejo
Amy reminds us that this is what.
- [60:00]
Robert Evans
We call love.
- [60:06]
Jay Shetty
And this is what we call AI.
- [60:09]
H
Oh, my God.
- [60:12]
Robert Evans
I found that profoundly upsetting.
- [60:13]
H
Disturbing.
- [60:14]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Your kid can, like, pick it up and, like, walk with it. It'll, like, talk to them. It'll make up stories. It'll, like, look at pictures your kid draws and then generate them into, like, live AI Videos you can put a pin on. And it will record stuff that your kid does and play it back to you at night as a video. So, again, absolutely minimizing the amount of time you have to spend with your child.
- [60:34]
H
It's in the car.
- [60:36]
Robert Evans
Yeah. It takes over your car so that, like, it's talking to you from the screens in your car.
- [60:42]
H
Like, the taking this thing everywhere the kid goes. It's like, the kid's main interaction with the world is with this little rolling plastic furby and yeah. Talking about expressing love and how damaging this must be for a four year old to have the first thing that it constantly express love and affection for is this little rolling robot that you're gonna throw in the garbage in four years when you're too old for it. How traumatizing and deeply fucked up that's gonna be for your sense of self and love and affection.
- [61:18]
Robert Evans
The mix of things that we're trying to have this do. Like the other ones were billed as toys. This was billed as a friend for.
- [61:24]
H
Your child as well as a home assistant.
- [61:27]
Robert Evans
Yeah. It's supposed to also act as like, it'll change that. You can hook it into your smart home so it can change the temperature. They did a little in person demo where a woman pretending to be a mom talked with it about like planning. Planned a birthday party for her kid with it.
- [61:41]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [61:41]
Robert Evans
And it like put food in her Amazon cart and like changed the temperature inside because more people were coming over. One of the things they advertise is security mode where it like travels around your house at night and acts as a sentry watching your home. Like wild stuff.
- [61:57]
H
No, it's. It was. Honestly, I've seen a few like disturbing things. You know, all of like the, the new drone tech to have like solar powered drones that can stay in the air to drop bombs is like bad. But like this type of stuff, like really dehumanizing. It really like viscerally upsets me.
- [62:14]
Robert Evans
Yeah. And I think probably very bad for children. Everything they showed us was incredibly curated. Like when we watched this live thing where she was having a very fluid conversation with it that was clearly scripted.
- [62:28]
H
Yes.
- [62:28]
Robert Evans
And so I wonder how well this thing actually works in practice.
- [62:32]
H
We never got an actual live demo.
- [62:35]
Danny Trejo
No.
- [62:35]
Robert Evans
Because they always show it perfectly recognizing the kid, perfectly recognizing what's in their little kid drawings. Stuff, what it's supposed to be to make beautiful creepily shiny AI moving versions and stuff. So like, I wonder how much less good it's going to be in reality than the thing that they've showed us. But it's definitely some amount shittier than what they've displayed already. And part of why I think that is like we went to check out the booth that this other. The South Korean company just called. I think SK had like a. They called it a quantum security camera that was AI enabled. And then thinking about how like in the ads it always like recognized the kid and its parents in a drawing accurately. Well, this one, when I flipped off the camera with both middle fingers, recognized it and wrote up a description of a man giving the camera a thumbs up. Like, I'm really curious for when these things hit the market and people start buying them, like, what sort of up stuff it'll do and how kind of big the seams are. I don't expect a long life for this thing, which is going to be inventory funnier because, like there was already a big $800, like children's companion AI toy that failed last year and the company shut off access to them. And like, so parents had to explain to their kids who had bonded with this thing that it was dying forever. And that's especially exciting to me because they, they had, they've built a robot that talks to your kid and tells it it loves them. And eventually that robot is going to be taken away from the child by the company when it no longer becomes profitable. And that's, I'm excited for that. Like new ground and how to fuck up kids. Anyway, that's what I got Garrison.
- [64:07]
H
What an uplifting CES adventure. No, that's all.
- [64:12]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that's all great. All right, everybody. Well, this has been behind the bastards.
- [64:16]
H
No, it's not.
- [64:17]
Robert Evans
Or no, it's not. What is this? This has been. It could happen here. A podcast by somebody who is slowly going insane. Yeah.
- [64:24]
H
Because we're like four days in Vegas now. We still have one more day.
- [64:28]
Robert Evans
I'm out of my mind. I'm completely broken.
- [64:31]
H
Hopefully tomorrow we'll have our final of our like on the ground coverage with our, with our CES Bestin Show.
- [64:37]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [64:37]
H
So end on maybe, maybe a high note. So see you there.
- [64:51]
Jon Stewart
Catch Jon Stewart back in action on the Daily show and in your ear with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you go. Get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by I Heart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of Michael Tura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [66:27]
Danny Trejo
Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast increasingly about it having happened. We have. We have spent a long time on this show talking about what the second Trump administration is going to be for trans people. And, you know, go listen to those episodes. The short version is that it's going to be very, very bad. We're facing care bans, we're facing federal funding bans. Things are about to get unbelievably bleak. But this campaign didn't come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of almost a decade's worth of fighting by the right. And I think we have a tendency to treat the rights campaign against trans people as something abstract, right? As a sort of abstract political debate, or even if it affects us. We tend to treat the subjects, the immediate subject of the harassment as sort of these distant, famous figures. But the issue with looking at it this way is that this harassment, the hatred, the violence, is happening to real people with real names and faces who live lives exactly like yours. The difference between you sitting in your house right now and someone whose face is on TV is about the difference between whether a few right wing journalists discover who you are. So today we're going to be talking to someone who has been subject to almost the entire spectrum and range of the sort of emergent far right campaign against trans people, who has seen basically the entire campaign against trans people evolve specifically in the far right's harassment against them. And that person is the artist and musician Precious Child out of la. Welcome to the show. I wish it was under better circumstances.
- [68:08]
Mel Robbins
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Mira, Glad to be here.
- [68:11]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And I'm excited to talk to you. I'm slightly apprehensive in the sense that, my God, this stuff sucks, but, yeah.
- [68:22]
Mel Robbins
Well, you know, it's our lives. What can we do? Yeah, what will we do?
- [68:27]
Danny Trejo
Wow. Yes. That's the question for the end of the episode is what are we going to do about all of this shit? But, but let's go back to sort of the beginning. Can you sort of talk about your first encounter with, I guess at that point, what was a not especially mainstream part of the religious right back in around 2018?
- [68:48]
Mel Robbins
Yeah. So I've been making music as Precious Child for almost a decade. And it was my very first album that I put out one called Trapped that had this track on it titled Phantom, and that was an instrumental track with just some kind of whispery vocals, you know. It wasn't a song per se. It was experimental. And I put out a music video with it, and it was pretty. It's pretty creepy. There's flashing lights. You know, if you think of movies from the 80s like Hellraiser, it's kind of like that, you know, like, kind of evocative of some type of greater supernatural horror. And the far right, at that time, the far right, vintage 2018, they found it and started reporting it en masse and tagging their friends and saying, report this, report this. And this was on Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube as well. And that video, like, as I said, you know, it's creepy, but there's nothing political in it. And there's a little bit of, like, of blood, but there's no gore. But they found it unsettling and explicitly satanic. That's what they said. This is satanic. And that was my first brush with the. Right.
- [70:10]
James
Yeah.
- [70:10]
Danny Trejo
And that's really interesting to me that it's specifically the satanic angle that they're taking, because it's like, in this early enough phase that they're still sort of developing their reasons to be angry. They haven't quite, like, metastas phobia is like they're driving things, so they're kind of. They're reaching back into this kind of satanic panic era. Like the weird 90s and 2000s stuff that, like, when I was growing up, the town that I grew up was super religious and, like, you know, we had to have lists of, like, if you were inviting, like, a friend in high school to a party whose parents could know that it was a Halloween party and whose parents couldn't because they would freak out about witches. It's like that kind of thing, which. I don't know, it feels like, almost quaint now, even as stuff's escalated.
- [70:58]
Mel Robbins
But, yeah, it was, as you said, it was a moral panic. And their point was that I was amoral for making art like this. And this is the same thing that's happening today. I'm amoral for the art that I make. And it's not just my art, but it's me. It's me.
- [71:17]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [71:19]
Mel Robbins
And I think that's perhaps what has changed as well. Like, before, they were saying that this is a satanic evil person because they're making this art, and now they're saying this is a satanic evil person making satanic evil art.
- [71:31]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And I think part of the focus on art here, right, is this kind of mirrored reflection of the sort of. I mean, of the Original Nazis, right. Like one of their big things was this like crackdown on, quote unquote degenerate art. And they had like these like, quote unquote degenerate art festivals of just like Jewish artists and people whose art they didn't like. And it was, you know, like, like a thing that was like a significant factor in their rise. And I think there's this sort of mirror of it here, but I don't know, starting in a weirder place in some ways, like starting more out of this very, very weird, like Christian moral panic shit. That's, I guess, if you want to look at how this plays out, like, that's kind of where it is in like 2018. Right. This is the first bathroom bill has been passed by 2018, it was Carolina. But there's a huge backlash to it. And that's something that's I think, very different than now where all of this anti trans shit is happening and everyone's just kind of going, eh, so do you want to talk about the second time you became a target of the far right?
- [72:40]
Mel Robbins
Yeah, I mean, realistically, this has been pretty constant throughout my life as a public artist. And, and there was another track on that album that was also targeted, one titled My Little Violet Door that has some more provocative imagery than the track. Phantom has some nudity. And that was a collaboration between myself and a artist who is trans themselves, Kade out of Brazil. And that has again, some body horror in it. There's commentary about gender norms and plastic surgery and identity, but it wasn't explicitly political. Again, it was kind of a surreal body horror video. And that was brigade reported not in 2018, but in 2019 and actually taken down from YouTube and then reinstated. And that video is notable because as a result of what's going on today, YouTube took that down. Despite it being up for five years without a problem. It had tens of thousands of views and now it's gone. So that was the second time.
- [73:56]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And that one I think is interesting too, in the sense of that one's a lot more, it's more overtly trans. And it's also, I think the more trans you are, the more very obviously trans it is, is. And this is, I guess, something that's very common among trans artists is this kind of like art that's an exploration of sort of body horror. And you know, I mean, I, I, I, I, I'm not gonna project onto it. I don't know if this is what you specifically are doing, but like, you know, there's, there's a Lot of it. That's body horror as this sort of metaphor for dysphoria and like, as this way of sort of thinking about the things that are happening to your body and things that have been done to your body and the things that you're doing back to it.
- [74:41]
Mel Robbins
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I. I didn't really think too much about the concepts in that direction when I made it or when or. And I know Kate didn't either at that time. However, the truth is, for much of my young life, I felt out of. Out of body. And I wanted my flesh to match my personal vision of myself and my identity. And that was something I struggled with for quite a long time. When I was young, I didn't have access to the information and communities that are out there now that support trans people. And I have had some gender confirming procedures done, but not as many as I think I would have when I was younger. I did feel existential discordance. And I don't know if that's a word, but if it's not, I'm going to coin it because pretty sure it is. I didn't feel in concordance with my flesh. And so, you know, I came to experiment what the boundaries were of my fleshy identity and my existence and my art.
- [75:51]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, and I think there's something about the way that your art works and the way that a lot of queer artists are where there's, you know, and this isn't to say that all crew artists like this, but there's definitely like an edge to it. There's stuff going on. There's body horror things happening. There's like 80s aesthetic Y stuff. And I think it conflicts with this kind of weird Kincaid. Everything is like happy and cozy sort of kitsch aesthetic thing that a lot of like this kind of fascism is really into. They use a kind of aesthetic sensibility as a weapon to go after stuff that they opposed for more overtly political reasons. They can do this kind of like, hey, look at this disgusting thing, et cetera, et cetera, kind of attack on queer art as a result of this kind of like fascist kitsch aesthetic thing that's kind of like this, you know, the sort of like cultural norm in our society. And I think I haven't 100% worked out the political implications of this. But I think there's this kind of connection between their weaponization of like, revulsion and their weaponization of this reaction to like, anything that's kind of like horror y that they kind of like use as the political attack yeah.
- [76:58]
Mel Robbins
You know, I think gender is horrifying, period.
- [77:01]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [77:02]
Mel Robbins
Not just for queer people, but also for CIS people. Like, I'm gonna defend CIS people here for a second. So. CIS people struggle with gender dysphoria. I think maybe I won't say every bit as much as trans people, but they sure fucking struggle with it.
- [77:20]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [77:20]
Mel Robbins
For instance, an example I will give is, is facial hair. Lots of people that were assigned male at birth, they fret and worry over their facial hair. Is it too much, is it too little than people that are assigned female at birth. You know, if they have facial hair, you know, they fret over it, you know, will people see it? Do I have to bleach it? Do I have to pluck it? People fret over, like, their freaking jawlines. Like, you know, if you, if you search online, like, masculine jawline, how do I get. There's a huge community out there of assigned male at birth CIS men that are trying to get more defined jawlines because they feel that their genetics are presenting them as a non optimal male, quote unquote. And of course, same thing for quote unquote females. Like, do I have the female feminine body? Is it curvy enough in the right ways? Is my waist slim enough? You know, am I just brick shaped? And then all the industries around that, that. And that, I think is horrifying. And everyone goes through that and struggles with it, and very few people are lucky enough to embody the ideals of gender that we thrust upon ourselves. And to me, that is a tragedy.
- [78:32]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And I think that sort of like fear and that sort of, like, grinding experience of being forced to, like, perform a gender in a certain way. Well, okay, I'm not gonna say perform, because the Butler scholars are gonna get extremely mad at me, but.
- [78:47]
James
The way.
- [78:47]
Danny Trejo
In which you're forced to sort of live up standards that are sort of nonsense, I think it gets to this thing where, you know, you could either sort of, like, muddle through it and try to ignore the distance as much as you can. You can attempt to fight it, or you can get extremely bad at everyone else is trying to do something about it. And I think we're seeing an explosion of the last option. Yeah, unfortunately, we need to go to ads, which is another thing that drives a whole bunch of this. Luckily, these are audio ads, so hopefully they're not not driving beauty standards, but, you know, who knows? And people are wizards. They'll find a way.
- [79:22]
Mel Robbins
Brought to you by Maybelline.
- [79:35]
Danny Trejo
And we are back. I mean, I guess the Washington State Highway Patrol does enforce gender norms on people. People?
- [79:42]
Mel Robbins
They sure do. May I give another example of hideous gender norms?
- [79:49]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [79:49]
Mel Robbins
So you listener, you're hearing me, right? And you're hearing my voice. And this is another thing that all people fret about. It's not just trans people. Lots of afabs. I know, I'm just gonna say AFAB and amab. Okay, Lots of afabs. I know. You know, they have pretty darn deep voices naturally. And they. I've talked with them privately and they say that they worry about how husky their voice is when they just relax. And then same thing for amabs, they talk about worrying if their voice is squeaky and thin. I talk like a frickin wrestler from wwe. You know, like people. People like the cis people struggle with that too. So, you know, just something as simple as our appearance and our voice, you know, we're just torturing ourselves. And ultimately, I gotta say, Mia, you know, I'm a trans woman. However, ultimately I'm a gender abolitionist because this shit sucks.
- [80:47]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, it's. It's not. It's not great. It's not a good time for anyone involved.
- [80:52]
Mel Robbins
Yeah.
- [80:53]
Danny Trejo
And speaking of bad times, this isn't even an ad pivot. I just do this now. It's really bad. I do it to people in my daily life. They're like, why are you ad pivoting me? And I'm like, oh, God. But yeah, I guess, God, this and the sort of racialization aspect and I don't know, sort of the aspect of zones of gender. Performance. God damn it. I keep saying performance and I literally mean that you were performing it as in you were acting and not the butler thing of your performing it to make it real. Please don't yell at me. In the comments. I had, I had the guy who wrote a writer on the Big Bang Theory yelled at me specifically about that on Twitter one time. So now I'm paranoid. Okay, sorry. I've derailed this enough, partially because this next part is really depressing. But so a while back on this show, my co host, Garrison, who is, I don't know, probably having an absolutely terrible time at the Consumer Electronics show right now, covered a specific far right panic that became known as the Wii Spa controversy. Do you want to talk about how the right stuck you into that shit? Because Jesus Christ.
- [82:05]
Mel Robbins
Yeah, so, you know, in 2018, as I said, I put out this album and then I put out another, and so I was touring the country and Canada and stuff, doing shows pretty much constantly. And then 2020 happened and I became involved in the George Floyd uprising and the Black Lives Matter marches and protesting. And so I began to livestream those protests and marches with the specific intent of contextualizing what the heck was going on on the streets to people watching. Because a lot of people, you know, regardless of their politics, did not understand what the issues were. And the thing is, in la, there were a lot of like continual police murders even through the riots. And by police murders, I mean the cops shooting unarmed black people in the back as they were running away or executions, you know, shooting them in the car, that, that type of thing.
- [83:04]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [83:04]
Mel Robbins
And so I was explaining that to the viewers, like, this is why people are in the streets. This is a specific issue. These are the laws surrounding it and why these actions by the police are not just horrifying, they're also illegal. And so I was doing that and I became pretty darn visceral and popular. Like I was maybe one of the top five best known activists or racial justice voices. And I was targeted by a right wing activist who was known for blocking the vaccination clinics at Dodger Stadium specifically because I was visible, because I was trans. And so she, she went for me and posted and said that I was a transgender individual who was in the women's spa of Wii Spa and I was sexually harassing people. And that went viral on social media. It was covered on Fox News for a week. I was getting constant death threats. And yeah, I was doxxed. It was, was pretty terrible, especially because I was not that person in the spa. And I was only best picked up because I was picked up for my visibility. My response to that was I didn't immediately say, yeah, it wasn't me, it wasn't me, leave me alone, leave me alone. I didn't do that because I knew that if I said that then they would just pick and attack some other trans person. And I know that like the shit that the right wing machine enacts, if it happens to one of us, it can happen to all of us and it likely will.
- [84:45]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And I mean, I think the thing that it reminds me the most, something we've also covered on this. This is one of the problems with talking about this. It's like doing this for so long that like there's very few things that I can say that I can't be like. I've said this on the show before, but we spent a lot of time, specifically Garrison spent a lot of time covering the way that every time there's a mass shooter, the right immediately just like picks A random trans person. And goes, it was this. And this reminds me a lot of the same thing, although this is a more targeted. Like we've invented a fake controversy about a trans person and then we're going to like, also just pick a random famous trans. Well, not even famous, but like a random trans person that we know about and don't like.
- [85:25]
Mel Robbins
It's my understanding that this 2021 Wii Spa controversy that I was targeted for became something of a right wing playbook. It was after that that that they started saying, oh, this and that person is trans. And before that they didn't have a real moral panic around trans people. Unless you look all the way back to the, what, North Carolina? South Carolina bathroom, man.
- [85:51]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, I mean, I think there's an interesting intermediary thing too where. So my friend Vicky Osterweil, who, depending on when this episode comes out you'll be hearing from either right before this episode or right after, had another version of this where she wrote a book called In Defensive Looting. It came out in 2020 and just for like three months became, I don't know, three months, like two months, like, became the, like the giant figure with which everyone who didn't like the uprising was just like taking shit out on. So, like sitting congress. People were like denouncing this book that you wrote. Every mainstream media outlet, like, specifically had their editorial people going like, this book is evil. Vicky is evil. And I think that was also like this moment of deep connection between the backlash of the uprisings and the anti trans uprisings, because the people who, you know, are trying to maintain a white supremacist gender system, like intimately themselves, even if they don't understand it on a theoretical level, understand that these things are preserving the same systems of violence. And so they picked us as sort of like the wedge point to break this thing apart. And I think with Vicky, they hadn't really figured out how to do it. And I think it was specifically your case, the Wii Spa, like you being put in as the figure of the Wii Spa is where they like actually really figured out how to do the whole thing. And yeah, there's just something really bleak about both how effective it was and the fact that it's like, these are just people. I don't know, this isn't the thing that's happening to sort of like abstract figures. It's just like, yeah, people I'm having conversations with or how they did this, just. I don't know. I wish I had more analysis, but.
- [87:39]
Mel Robbins
But yeah, I think that trans people like to, to greater America, to most, to a lot of America, I'll say, are, are sensational. You know, people, people imagine chicks with dicks and dudes with dudes without dicks. And, and so I think that's really exciting for a lot of people now. For better or for worse, I think for worse. But yeah, I think that's just like, people and their bodies.
- [88:08]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [88:08]
Mel Robbins
Like, you know, I guess some people walk around thinking all the time about other people's crotches. I'm not gonna say that's a bad thing. Crotch sniffers, you are seen.
- [88:20]
Danny Trejo
Okay. You know, but on the other hand, right, there's this aspect of which, like, like, you know, there's this sort of sensationalism, but then there's also the experience of being a trans person is like, I too, am trying to find a way to not pay rent. Like, that's like, I don't know.
- [88:37]
Mel Robbins
Yeah. So back to, Back to Wii Spa. Yeah, that was a pretty terrible experience for me. I'm, I'm not going to lie about it. You know, I, I, I'm glad that I stood up for, for myself. I'm glad I stood up for trans people, that I didn't pass the. It was also really difficult and traumatic and I didn't appreciate the death threats. I didn't appreciate being doxed. And, you know, people have come after me my, my whole life. Like, I present, I think just naturally, physically, Like I present as being genderqueer. Like, I've been pretty, like, veering, like, looking femme my, my entire life. That had nothing to do with my internal identity. I've been weird my entire life. I've perpetually been curious and provocative and interested in things that were provocative. And so I've been harassed my whole life. However, until we spa, I hadn't experienced strangers by the hundreds saying that they're gonna hunt me down and fucking shoot me.
- [89:39]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [89:40]
Mel Robbins
I never know if someone will recognize me when I'm out and be like, hey, buddy, I know you.
- [89:45]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And it's one of these things where, like, the more of a target on you, the more likely it is to happen. And even people who don't have targets on them, like, I know people who've never experienced anything like this that have still just, like, had attacks on them, and it's fucking terrifying. It is an absolutely terrible way to have to live and a terrible sort of thing to have to experience, especially as it's just intensifying.
- [90:10]
Mel Robbins
So, yeah, that was 2021, and that changed me, that experience of being targeted and Just picked on out of the freaking blue. That changed me as an artist.
- [90:19]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [90:20]
Mel Robbins
And at the same time, it also firmly established me as a sort of celebrity. And I want to speak to that because there's different tiers of celebrity. You know, at the.
- [90:32]
Danny Trejo
Yes.
- [90:34]
Mel Robbins
At the, at the top, there's the tier that's known as I get a Christmas card from Tom Cruise every year and that's an actual thing and that's the A list. And you know, you're on the A list because Tom Cruise sends, sends your Christmas card. And at the bottom is me, who's been in mass media many times now, but has none of the benefits.
- [90:58]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [90:59]
Mel Robbins
You know, I make very little money as an artist and I don't have an entourage. I can tour and I play some shows and some of them are sold out. I'm playing a show in LA that's sold out, but I'm not playing large venues. I maybe play 300, 500 capacity, tops. And most of the places I play are small clubs, 150 or so. I don't have the protection that most celebrities inherently have. Have. I don't have book deals, I don't have movie deals, I don't even have an agent, I don't even have a record label.
- [91:39]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [91:40]
Mel Robbins
So I'm, I'm the freaking D tier. I'm the D tier and they're coming after me.
- [91:47]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And it's, I mean, and that's the thing about the sort of like this status of like niche D tier Internet micro celebrity is like, I don't, like, I feel like I, I got the best possible version of it where like, I got a job that pays slightly. I think I might have hit. No, I'm still, I'm still below the median salary of a CIS man in the us but I'm approaching it. We're getting closer every year. Every union fight we approach median CIS man salary. But like, yeah, the situation I got is effectively the equivalent of winning the trans lottery. Right. Like, this is about the best you could possibly hope for if you're a trans person and you get famous. Like. Yeah, I mean, like, I get that. Threats too. Right. Like nothing, nothing anywhere near the scale that you get. And mostly what happens is like, I mean, like single digit numbers of trans people in the US have the kind of protection that actual celebrity gives you and everyone else. Celebrity is just another, it's just a giant target painted on you. And yeah. So you have, you have none of the benefits and all of the sort of, hey, here is 150 million people who absolutely hate you and who've been primed and targeted, like specifically at you.
- [92:59]
Mel Robbins
Yeah, it's something that I wonder about. Like, why, why would they do something like this? Why would Fox News be talking about me? Why would the founder of the proud boys, Gavin McInnes, did a whole video about me. Proud Boys is a terrorist group, if you don't know listener. They were recognized as a terrorist group by Canada, not here, because, like, we're just cool with that shit here. Their white supremacist terrorist group. So why me? Why would a congress person come after me? And my own hypothesis is that they punch down because they secretly believe that they themselves are weak. And attacking me, attacking people like me is a fight that they can win. And my view is that it's not a fight that they can win because they've already lost. They're trying to get power in small, small ways, false ways, in my opinion. They're trying to get money. First of all, they want money. They want their views, they want their donations. And that's the entire top of the pyramid for them. And for me, though, I'm a fucking artist. And power is something that I've always been developing because I've sought to know myself. I've sought to understand who I am and why. And that extends to myself as a queer person. To come to understand myself, who I am as a queer person. That's not something they'll ever have. So I've already fucking won. And same with all the other queer people that are under attack, all the other DCT or queer celebrities out there, we fucking won, hopefully.
- [94:47]
Danny Trejo
Well, and I think part of this is also like, the reason this campaign is happening is because they're trying to stop the tide from coming in. And they saw how far in the tide had already come and now they're trying to like dam off the tide. And you know, probably it's not going to work work, but the only way that it can is if everyone just sits here, does nothing and lets them just keep building and building and building more walls. It's something that is within our power to resist. We just have to actually do it right. You have to actually organize. You have to talk to the people around you. You have to go get them to do things to resist this. And if we do, yeah, the things that we've already won, the things that we are going to win are going to stick. But if not, things are going to to get really, really bad really quickly. And dude. Yeah, and speaking of things getting very bad very quickly, Here are some more ads before we get back to things getting worse. We are back. Yeah. You've been specifically targeted BY A sitting U.S. congresswoman, Nancy Mace, who is the person who actually, I don't know if we talked about the bathroom stuff here yet, but she, she's the, the sort of person behind an attempt to get trans people to not be able to use the bathroom on Capitol Hill. She's become a leading anti trans figure in Congress. Literally every single thing that she tweets about is about trans women and how they should be put in men's jails, which, which is just an incredibly cynical ploy to make a bunch of people get horribly raped and killed, which is one of the predominant things that happens when we get put in Ben's prisons. And she specifically came after Hughes. You want to talk about how that happened? And the latest sort of a congresswoman tweets and a fucking social media company does their bidding.
- [96:47]
Mel Robbins
Yeah. So right at the end of 2024, I think it was on December 28th, I was doxxed by a right wing troll Nazi that has doxxed multiple friends of mine, the activist friends, artist friends. And they pointed out in their, in a tweet how my art was on YouTube. Specifically my music videos were on YouTube, YouTube, calling for violence and how I was an evil trans person. And they added like@Symbol YouTube and said that these videos are in violation of your terms of service. Why are they still up? And Nancy Mace saw that because if you look at her Twitter, it's all just dox and trans people and perpetual like rage bait about the queer menace, the trans menace. And so she saw that and retweeted and said, YouTube, this clearly violates your terms of service. Why haven't you done anything? And then immediately following that, my videos were taken down, the ones that were mentioned in these tweets. And as I said before, some. One of these videos, what was titled My Little Problem, that's been up for seven years.
- [98:10]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, real long time.
- [98:13]
Mel Robbins
Yeah. And YouTube's terms of service are. They're very clear. And I do my best to stay within YouTube terms of service so my work doesn't get taken down. And they state that stuff like violence, minimal nudity, that is allowed within the context of art, within the context of music videos. And so my, my videos, you know, they weren't designed to. This is from the terms of service. They weren't designed to sexually titillate or gratify. That's exactly what it says in the terms. They weren't recreations of real life violence. And they weren't real life violence, but they were still removed at the behest, at the easy click press of Nancy Mace.
- [99:04]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, and I think there's a couple of things going on here, one of which is. So we've seen this with. With Facebook in the last. I guess when this comes out, it'll be like a week ago. But, you know, Facebook has instated policies that allow you to basically say slurs against queer people and allow you to call queer people mental illnesses and stuff like that. That's very specifically. You can only do to queer people. You can't do to anyone else. And I think there's this sort of trend here of, I don't know, with Facebook, I wouldn't say that it's like compliance with the sort of new Trump regime because, like, this is just who Facebook is. Right. Like, they did the Rohingya genocide. Like, they did the genocide in degree, too. That was also a Facebook thing. So they've always just been evil and have been sort of looking for the excuse that they need to, like, drop the hammer on us. But I think YouTube to some extent, too, what we're seeing right now is this kind of, like, mask coming off moment where people are realizing that with Trump and power, they can just drop the hammer on a queer artist, because specifically, like, on a trans artist. Because now they have this sort of, like, backing to do this stuff. And the right has, you know, realized that they can feel like YouTube take this video down and they'll do it. And that's a really terrifying precedent in a lot of ways. And also it's very, you know, it's like, yeah, obviously pointing at hypocrisy does nothing. But, like, I'm trying to think of a more explicit demonstration of censorship than a member of the government says that something should be taken down, and it's taken down. It's like, it's really something.
- [100:39]
Mel Robbins
Yeah. You know, it makes me kind of afraid, honestly, because, you know, before I was a victim of a moral panic, and now my work is effectively being disappeared with little fanfare. So what's going to happen next? What will we see just made invisible and unseen? And I know that in this country I have freedom of speech, but that's really bullshit. We all know that I'm not going to reach many people if I stand on a street corner at the park and yell at people. What matters nowadays is the freedom of reach that these social media platforms control that are themselves controlled now by the Republican Party. And what happens when Our freedom of reach is annihilated, and then suddenly trans people are actually invisible. We're very close to that. I think Nancy proved that.
- [101:36]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And disappearing people from the mainstream is the first step for how you destroy a people.
- [101:42]
Mel Robbins
Yeah. Art is perhaps the loudest way a person can speak. And I know that's why she came after my art.
- [101:54]
Danny Trejo
There's something just incredibly galling about watching this whole thing happen. And then, like, the next tweet is again, a sitting member of the US Government saying that trans women should be put in men's prisons. And it's like, okay, one of these is considered violence by sort of the media machine, and one of them isn't.
- [102:08]
Mel Robbins
Yeah. Does she even actually do work for the people of South Carolina? Like, all she does is just, like, start shit with trans people. Like, like, she's just another lousy politician trying to be an entertainer. And she's just a knockoff Prada of a bootleg Trump. That's what she is. And she's not even good at her fucking politics. She's tried to get this bathroom ban for disallowing trans people to use a bathroom at the U.S. capitol. And her own freaking party kicked the bill out of the bylaws for this year, so she couldn't even get the. And, yeah, so I guess she thinks you can get a win by harassing me. Harassing my art.
- [102:52]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [102:53]
Mel Robbins
Trying to get people to come after me.
- [102:55]
Danny Trejo
You know, these people are not as powerful as they want you to believe. Right. A lot of their stuff just fails. But they will only fail if people are willing to resist and people are willing to stop them. And that's the thing that's needed in this moment. Is organization is, you know, like, is is organization. It is action. It is, it is now, it is now the time to go do whatever political activity thing. You've been being like, ah, should I be organizing a union? Should I be, like, setting up strikes? Should I be doing street demonstrations? It's like, yep, it's time. It's time to go. Because otherwise, you know, and I, I think this is something that, like, every trans person now understands intimately, and I think most people don't, which is that, that right now it's us. But, you know, in two years, assuming we're all still alive, there's a very good chance that it's going to be you like, showing up on this show because a fucking congressperson has deliberately intervened to destroy your life. And I, I, I would rather we had stopped this before it got to any of us, but they're going to come for you too unless we stop them. Thank you so much for coming on the show and where can people find you and find your art and yeah, support you.
- [104:08]
Mel Robbins
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really like talking with you. It's been very good. And listeners, you can find my work on Spotify. You can also check out my website@precious child.com and please sign up for my mailing list there as well. That is the best and most direct way for me to stay in touch with my friends and family. I'm also Precious Child on Instagram, on TikTok, I am the last Precious Child. I also will be doing live shows this spring and summer in the US and so follow me on my website and on social media to stay up to date on that and come say hi in person.
- [104:52]
Danny Trejo
Hell yeah. We will have links to all of that in the description. So yeah, go check it out and resist the creep of fascism there's one.
- [105:04]
Mel Robbins
Thing I want to add about I said earlier about personal power and how I have to develop my own personal power by getting to know myself. I want to tell you trans people out there, you queer people and your allies, that first thing is getting to know yourself and then next thing is like fuck these fucking laws. Fuck these fucking lawmakers. Get to know each other and strengthen our bonds with each other because those are bigger than any type of oppressive laws they may put upon us. And it's only by the strength that we develop with each other, within each other that we will persevere.
- [105:56]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondence and contributors, and with extended interviews and exclusive exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Tales from the Shadows presented by I Heart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.
- [107:06]
Danny Trejo
I know he.
- [107:10]
Jon Stewart
Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Tura Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [107:37]
Robert Evans
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it, the Consumer Electronics Show. Happening here to everyone. And of course, it is in fact happening to everyone. Because over the course of the day, all of our subjects here, all. All of our experts here have watched different kinds of dudes explain the different kinds of jobs they want to replace with a chatbot that was trained on ra. So I'm gonna go around a circle and introduce our guests today. First off, we've got the great Ed ongueso Junior. Ed, thank you for being here.
- [108:08]
I
Thanks for having me on.
- [108:09]
Robert Evans
We've got Garrison Davis, who's also great. But I'm not gonna say it at the same time. Cause I don't want Ed's compliment to feel like less, but you're contractually obligated to not mind.
- [108:20]
H
Yes. Thank you, boss. Great to be here, as always.
- [108:28]
Robert Evans
Very natural. Very natural. Zai.
- [108:31]
H
Hi.
- [108:31]
Mel Robbins
Hi. Hello.
- [108:32]
Robert Evans
Hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you. This is your first CES as well.
- [108:36]
Mel Robbins
That's right.
- [108:37]
Robert Evans
Your first time being a journalist.
- [108:39]
Mel Robbins
Also true.
- [108:40]
Robert Evans
How do you feel doing the job that Alex Garland has just reminded us in the movie Civil War is a fundamentally noble, perfect endeavor only practiced by heroes.
- [108:49]
Mel Robbins
I love wearing a dress shirt and tie and just getting very drunk.
- [108:53]
Robert Evans
Yeah. You were very surprised when I gave you your gun, but you can't be a journalist without one. Yeah, Yeah. I love playing with it.
- [109:03]
I
Without the safety, remember?
- [109:05]
Robert Evans
And last, but certainly not least, in fact, maybe better than some people in the room. Again, I'm not going to say who. You can wonder that for yourself. Feel insincere. Thanks, David Roth.
- [109:16]
J
Thanks. I agree that I'm pretty good. How much better I am than how many people in this room.
- [109:21]
Robert Evans
I'm not.
- [109:22]
J
I'm not even really like. That's not something I like talking about.
- [109:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah, exactly. Because we haven't gotten those numbers back from OpenAI.
- [109:28]
J
Yeah.
- [109:28]
Robert Evans
It would be irresponsible to speculate at the men.
- [109:31]
I
You gotta wait for 03.
- [109:34]
Robert Evans
So what I want to do here, I think this is kind of our roll up. We've spent our last day on the floor. I want to go around and I'll start first so you guys have a second to get your thoughts together. What comes to mind immediately is like, this is the thing that I had the most positive reaction to, and this is the thing that I had the most negative reaction to. I think it's a solid way for us to start out. And I think my most negative reaction, obviously, was The Amy artificial child best friend toy, which was deeply upsetting and uncomfortable. And I hated both that. Like I could tell from an industrial design standpoint, pretty good design. Like it looked like something like, oh, a kid will think that's cute. And from a. This is our intent for this product standpoint, it felt like a replacement for the love of a adults in the life of a small child. Which I thought was like evil in a profound way. And I guess the best thing that I saw. I'm not perfectly competent at this point to analyze how well it worked, but from the demo I saw, I was very impressed with. In aqi, Nakis basically reads facial micro motions in order to let people control a computer. Not exclusively, but especially if they're quadriplegic or whatever. Like I thought that was really interesting and it's the kind of thing. Cause honestly I might loop that in with. There was a AI assisted like cane for people who are blind. There was another device that allowed you to control a computer through like facial movements in your mouth. That was like a retainer. All of the stuff that's like, oh, these are like, really? People care a lot about helping somebody regain the ability to utilize technology to let them reconnect to the world. That's like the opposite of replacing a child's parents with a toy. Ed, you're in the hot seat. Next.
- [111:08]
I
You know, the thing I loved the most was obviously the global Pavilion for connecting Web3 businesses across crypto blockchain. Oh yeah, DeFi FinTech, CBDCs, which are central bank, digital currencies and legal advocacy. You know this I love legal advocacy. Made my heart flutter. Because you know what? Even when you think they're down, crypto finds a way to squirm into your life.
- [111:40]
H
It really is the zombie of the tech world.
- [111:43]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [111:43]
H
Because it's dead and yet it's undead. It's constantly trying to crawl back.
- [111:49]
J
Somehow the fact that it's dead makes it more dangerous now.
- [111:52]
Danny Trejo
Exactly.
- [111:54]
H
It's specifically a zombie. I will try to figure out what's the vampire. But specifically Krypto is the zombie.
- [112:00]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah. When I first read the line that is not dead dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die. It would be referred to a coin.
- [112:10]
I
When I think of, you know, 28 years later trailer where they use that poem.
- [112:16]
Danny Trejo
Oh, the Kimberly poem.
- [112:18]
Robert Evans
Yeah, the three poem. Yeah.
- [112:19]
James
Six.
- [112:19]
I
You know, like them just guessing where the price of bitcoin is going to go. I think we're at the beginning of a golden age. Not for us, but for the grifters, you know.
- [112:29]
Robert Evans
Oh, God.
- [112:29]
I
Next week, when our dear golden boy gets. Our orange boy gets elected. So I inaugurated because he already won the election. He sure did.
- [112:41]
H
Well, that's debatable. I think there was some very curious irregularities in multiple swing states.
- [112:48]
Robert Evans
Straightforward from here to be encouraging. The blue and on stuff here, people.
- [112:52]
J
Have no ability let them have it.
- [112:57]
Robert Evans
You're right. He wasn't shot at all. That was all an AI trick.
- [113:00]
I
Yeah, that was too. That was an OP.
- [113:01]
Robert Evans
An AR15 would blow your whole head off that way.
- [113:04]
I
You know the thing I actually did like the most similar to you, I really did like the assistive tech. I mean, the stuff that is for people who are disabled, not able bodied, or experiencing either cognitive decline or, you know, neurodegenerative things or paralyzed. Like, this is actual stuff that we need a lot more investment in development and I assume maybe to scale up production of it and figure out ways that it can be offered to people in a variety or in a spectrum of use cases. Right. I think the stuff that I did not like.
- [113:37]
Andrina
Hmm.
- [113:38]
I
You know, I didn't really care for a lot of the luxury surveillance stuff, you know, the fake CGMs that, you know, I'll never forget this one telling someone right next to me it was a medical device. And when I asked, she looks at my tag and goes, no, it's not a medical device.
- [114:01]
Robert Evans
Not in any legally binding sense. We had a beautiful moment where it was this like. It was like a set of smart goggles, which there were a lot of, that had like night vision, but also it had like threat assessments. The specific thing they bragged is like, it can help a police officer identify if somebody has a gun. Right.
- [114:19]
H
Oh, boy.
- [114:20]
Mel Robbins
Nice.
- [114:21]
Robert Evans
This was right after we had gone to an AI security camera that I had flipped off with both hands and it had identified as a man giving the thumbs up to the camera. And I was like, I don't feel great about it. Identifying guns.
- [114:33]
I
Luxury surveillance for health, luxury surveillance for AI recognition. Also, like, they had it in litter boxes and shit. Don't need that. Really don't fucking need that. Why does the litter box need to be connected to the Internet? And why does it need a camera in it?
- [114:45]
Robert Evans
You know, that does make me think of a better world where we have exactly as much money and focus on AI, but it's all integrating it into CAT focused products. Like $50 billion being poured into Cat.
- [114:58]
J
Translate whatever your cat is saying into French perfectly.
- [115:02]
Robert Evans
Your cat can make deals with Chinese businesses and by the way we've hooked him up to venture capital. He has an open line to Softbank.
- [115:10]
I
Siri, why? You know that I would love this translation. Let's help my cat make some deals, help me figure out why or how he learned to open my door. You know, things like this. But what we get now, Bullshit.
- [115:23]
Robert Evans
I want to see a guy dressed as Steve Jobs be like, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally done it. We have gotten across the concept of death to a cat. They now understand their mortality.
- [115:33]
Danny Trejo
Just meowing.
- [115:38]
J
That, like, common ad where he's talking about AI, but he's like, we taught Proust to a dog got a turtleneck on.
- [115:46]
I
What a dog would think about Proust.
- [115:49]
Robert Evans
A dog sitting at a table smoking a cigarette.
- [115:53]
I
The future.
- [115:58]
Robert Evans
Garrison, you're up.
- [116:00]
H
Best of ces, I think, was definitely the VLC media booth at the park where they. They had like, they had big, big traffic cones on their head, wearing them, like wizard hats with, with huge cloaks.
- [116:13]
Robert Evans
They were dressed as wizards.
- [116:14]
H
Yeah, they were dressed as wizards. And we walked up to them and.
- [116:17]
Robert Evans
They said, let's, let's start vlc, folks, if you. If you don't know this. This was especially relevant to those of us who pirated a lot. It's a media app that allows you to basically play any kind of, like, any video file. Video file, yes, or audio file. And now it will automatically give you subtitles, too. Using local AI. That's not like reaching to the cloud or anything to do it.
- [116:36]
H
Because putting subtitles on pirated media can sometimes be really hard. So they said, we have something that analyzes the audio that's being spoken in whatever media you're watching, and we will put subtitles up for you. We walked up and, and we're like, so what do you have here? Like, we are not selling anything.
- [116:51]
James
We, we.
- [116:52]
H
We have nothing to sell you.
- [116:54]
Robert Evans
And it's beautiful. They're French. So it was in this like, yeah, yeah, wonderful accent. I'm not going to fake the degree of like, I don't give a fuck about anything else in this stupid goddamn show that they gave off. They exuded it.
- [117:06]
H
And they're by far the coolest because of something Robert you said to them.
- [117:10]
Robert Evans
I walked up and I was like, vlc is a very popular app. They just crossed 6 billion downloads. I've been using them for almost as long as you've been alive. And I walked up and I was like, I've been using your product for 15 years in order to pirate media. And they said very nonchalantly, keep going, Keep Going.
- [117:26]
Danny Trejo
Keep going.
- [117:28]
H
Keep doing that.
- [117:29]
Robert Evans
Keep doing that.
- [117:30]
I
I'm obsessed. That's amazing.
- [117:32]
J
I feel bad about this too because, like, I. It's a good app. I have also used it. I saw the guy in the hat and I was like, oh, it's the VLC from, you know, from on your desktop. And then I was like, that's stupid. I don't need to talk to the man. He's wearing a hat and a cape. And I'm glad that you followed through as a journalist, pushed aside your instinct to be like, do not approach a stranger in a cape.
- [117:52]
Robert Evans
Garrison does not have that instinct.
- [117:54]
H
No, no, Quite the contrary. I feel a magnetic attraction.
- [118:00]
Robert Evans
This is why I keep an air tag on them. Great way to get abducted, I think.
- [118:08]
H
Similarly, obviously, all of the AI stuff for kids, all of like the AI slop is like, obviously bad. We've talked about that a lot already. The other thing that's like, kind of like the worst is similar to what you said, Ed, like the level of surveillance tech. I tried out multiple AI systems that are supposed to like detect and predict behavior based on facial expressions or gesture. And this is really tricky. There was one at Eureka park, it's a South Korean company that's powered, I believe by Samsung with money. And also they've access to like, their training data. They're called Visomatic. And specifically why this exists, it is a camera that you can put on a. Put on a computer. It will, it will detect where your face is pointing and where your eyes are paying attention to. And the reason why this exists is for online test taking. It's so people don't like, look at their phone to like, to like cheat. So it tracks where your eyes are moving and if your eyes look down too much, it's going to flag it as someone's possibly cheating. So this was obviously like introduced after the pandemic. There's a lot of online test taking. Samsung uses this tech themselves for any kind of like online exams that they as a company will put on. You know, whether it's like, for people, students, employees. But they also had like other features where you could switch it. I assume it's doing all the same work. It just displays differently on the monitor instead. It can, you know, do like object detection, you know, what you're wearing and the general, like, behavior analysis if you seem like you're behaving suspiciously. Which is something that we tried at the SK booth, which also a South Korean company for their own like, like surveillance detection. But I asked Visomatic like, like what kind of use cases do you see for this beyond test taking? And they're like, yeah, yeah, general surveillance. Like, yeah, we want to learn how to like predict or like analyze potentially suspicious human behavior. As we were walking by the SK version 1. Quite funny thing is, as I walked by, it first identified me as a blonde woman holding a cup. It then changed and said blonde person, which I think is pretty.
- [120:05]
Robert Evans
It's pretty neat, very progressive. It's doing the opposite of a Facebook. Yeah.
- [120:09]
H
It could sense the pronouns. It's like, hmm, maybe.
- [120:12]
Danny Trejo
Maybe not a.
- [120:13]
H
Maybe not a woman, maybe not a blonde person. But. But yes, that was, you know, something that was like quite well done. Specifically the visomatic stuff, like very functional. It could tell when I was looking at the screen, when I was looking at my phone. It could tell from like various, various angles, like what, what I was holding, what I was looking at, where my attention was being directed. Like it was, it was very well done. It was very accurate. But, you know, possibly scary.
- [120:39]
Robert Evans
Well, speaking of possibly scary, the sponsors of this podcast don't know who they are. Could be the Washington State Highway Patrol again, in which case, thank you boys for your noble service on our nation's roads. I'm not saying that because I got pulled over the other week and I'm really trying to fight a court case right now. I would never do that. Anyway, thanks guys. And we're back.
- [121:14]
Mel Robbins
Is it my turn?
- [121:15]
Robert Evans
It is your turn.
- [121:16]
H
Okay, so I'm going to introduce our special white woman correspondent, Zai to give us some exciting breaking news in the white woman tech development world.
- [121:27]
Mel Robbins
Okay, so the first one is positive for context, I'm a trans woman and one of the booths, that was pretty interesting. It was this group. Were they French? Garrett, do you remember?
- [121:39]
Andrina
I.
- [121:40]
H
You know, they're European. They're called Ellie. Ellie Health. That's E, L, I. Anyways, this is.
- [121:48]
Mel Robbins
A at home hormone tester. So it is saliva based. It's like a little disposable package. Currently they only advertise cortisol and progesterone, but they have plans for estradiol and other hormones.
- [122:04]
H
Testosterone as well.
- [122:05]
Mel Robbins
Testosterone as well. Sorry. And yeah, so you swab your mouth in the morning or evening and then you wait, what was it, like 15 minutes?
- [122:16]
H
20 minutes.
- [122:16]
Mel Robbins
20 minutes. And then you scan this little like QR thing on the device and your phone calculates what your levels are, are. And this has very interesting implications for like the diy, like hormone market or use case. I started DIY and did my own like blood test But a lot of, like, trans kids don't have access to that. So this is a. It's a good idea if it's actually effective. Like, we don't have hands on yet. We haven't tested it yet, but I would love to do a comparison of, like, testing my own levels and then trying this. Very interesting, very intriguing.
- [122:57]
H
Yeah, we will certainly, as soon as possible, test this compared to the regular, like, mail in blood tests, which is like the current way to do it, but that requires shipping your blood to a laboratory, and that's maybe not always the best or even, like, convenient. So being able to test this just at home without shipping any of your DNA to some random laboratory would be really, really cool.
- [123:18]
Mel Robbins
Right. There's no insurance involved. This is completely supposedly closed source.
- [123:25]
Robert Evans
From what y'all were telling me earlier today, when you explained this to me, it sounded kind of like the people making this have an understanding of the dangers inherent, particularly to the trans community and why they might want to use this. And a focus on privacy for that reason. I didn't press them on that because.
- [123:42]
Mel Robbins
I don't know, I felt a little weird.
- [123:44]
Robert Evans
It's ces. You never. Yeah, it's a wide variety of.
- [123:47]
H
Yeah, no, we tried to extract as much intel as possible about kind of what their future plans are, but. But not specifically, like, in that level, but privacy.
- [123:55]
Robert Evans
Like, they seemed like they had. Of course, of course.
- [123:58]
H
Because it's. Because. It's. Because it is your own, like, DNA and hormones, you know? Like, I. I do not know if this company is even thinking about trans people, if it is trans friendly, but it could be used by trans people regardless.
- [124:09]
Robert Evans
Yeah, much like a Glock.
- [124:11]
H
Exactly, exactly.
- [124:14]
Mel Robbins
The potential is great. And then probably my least favorite booth, I have to call out some other white women. My SoCal boho white women is EVGECT.
- [124:27]
Robert Evans
And how's that spelled? E V E V J E C T. Okay.
- [124:32]
Mel Robbins
And what this is.
- [124:33]
Robert Evans
Oh, God, yes.
- [124:35]
Mel Robbins
This is a special plug for your charging port of your ev. So the idea is a nefarious party sees you in your fancy EV and approaches you and you need a quick getaway. Their words, their words, their words, by the way. Like, they see your fancy car and you're at Target. So this device will, like, eject. You can just drive away from the charging port.
- [125:03]
Robert Evans
It ejects the power cord.
- [125:05]
Mel Robbins
It ejects the power cord, by the.
- [125:06]
Robert Evans
Way, leaving broken pieces of plastic on both the charger.
- [125:09]
Mel Robbins
Non usable, by the way. Like, this is not reusable.
- [125:12]
H
What is single use one time use yes.
- [125:16]
Mel Robbins
So yeah, all those, all Those people targeting SoCal white women, this is finally.
- [125:23]
J
Someone is serving the community of people that think that if you find a zip tie on your car door handle, Ms. 13 is that.
- [125:30]
H
That was the first thing I said as soon, as soon as we walked away, I was like, this product wins the Cool Zone media award for the, the most white woman product. It's specifically like if you see a slice of cheese on your windshield, you're already targeted right away. This is, this is that exact demographic of people who think they're going to get trafficked in like your local like.
- [125:50]
Danny Trejo
Olive Garden parking lot gang stalked Americans.
- [125:54]
Robert Evans
In the Tesla charging station in Brentwood, California where the average income is like in the eight figures. I gotta say though, you're being very unfair to them. It was so nice of them to put down the phone where they were doom scrolling TikTok to look at all of the different reasons their kids are going to be abducted and talk to you about this product.
- [126:13]
J
You know, they're like, finally someone's gonna do something about it. Create a disposable piece of plastic.
- [126:19]
I
You notice that guy's always sitting down at the gym and the coffee shop and the gas station. This is so he doesn't get to be careful.
- [126:28]
Robert Evans
I feel like I could have upsold them and like, what if we put some explosives in this? You know, really like keep them off of car, like blow like a flashbang.
- [126:36]
I
Create a diversion inside of it, Called the police station and took a picture of him and sent it.
- [126:42]
Robert Evans
Someone scared a lady driving a vibe. That's one of the electric cars, right?
- [126:47]
H
Yeah, it's like a crocodile tail. As soon as it ejects, it whips around immobilizing anyone in the vicinity.
- [126:55]
Robert Evans
We're calling it the Iguana. And it does spin with enough force to break a groan. Man's thought.
- [127:00]
I
Yes.
- [127:00]
H
Yes.
- [127:01]
Jon Stewart
Okay.
- [127:02]
Robert Evans
David Roth.
- [127:03]
J
So there's a lot of, I guess I gather less than in years past that this was at one point basically a car show. There was not a lot of transit stuff this time around. I didn't get to see very much of it, but I did have, and I guess this is both my best and my worst experience, the most powerful transit experience of my life. So I live in New York City, I take the subway pretty much everywhere I go. And it has its ups and downs. For the most part it's good. It moves like 1200 people through a tunnel at 30 odd miles. An. And for the most part, everybody leaves everybody else alone or watches videos on their phone and stuff. But I knew that there had to be a better way. And at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I got to experience it. You're familiar Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur. Yeah. So he invented something called the Hyperloop, which is a car that goes through a tunnel that's the exact same size as the car at 11 miles an hour. And it takes. Someone has to drive. And also someone has to help you get into the car, but you can fit up to three additional people into the car. So that ratio, that's everyone I know. Yes. Right. So, yeah, you got two people moving three people 200 yards at the speed of like a brisk walk.
- [128:14]
Robert Evans
Now, David, this kind of technology wasn't possible just a few decades ago, Right?
- [128:18]
J
Exactly. I mean, this was the sort of thing that there had been tunnels. They were mostly used by animals.
- [128:23]
Robert Evans
Voles, miners.
- [128:24]
J
Yes, right.
- [128:25]
Jon Stewart
Neanderthals.
- [128:25]
J
Yeah.
- [128:26]
Robert Evans
And that was mostly for pirates in at least one movie I saw recently. Yes.
- [128:29]
J
But no one had thought about it as a transit sort of thing. It was more of a place where you would go if you needed to get copper, of course, but in this case. So this is like where it's good to have. And I guess every CES is like this. This was my first to be reminded that there are visionaries out there who are like, what if you put car through her? What if instead of a thing that moves multiple people at once, you had a thing that took exactly the same number of people to move that number of people?
- [129:00]
Robert Evans
Slightly more than one person.
- [129:02]
H
Yeah.
- [129:02]
J
So that was cool. I mean, it's just like fun to see where this stuff is going. And I really wonder if we're not gonna start seeing things like cars on the streets of American cities.
- [129:12]
Robert Evans
It could be okay, Dave.
- [129:17]
J
I mean, most of the. Obviously this is the something with going last. There was like three or four good things. You all said them. I thought the accessibility tech stuff was the. The stuff that made me feel good about what was going on here. And there was a great deal of stuff that made me feel like, pretty.
- [129:30]
Robert Evans
Bad about what was going on here.
- [129:31]
J
Up to and including, like the surveillance stuff beyond the, you know, like advanced Samsung powered snitch tech so that nobody. So whatever your boss can tell if you're really looking at the zoom that you're on.
- [129:44]
Danny Trejo
Yep.
- [129:44]
J
Don't really love that. That personally, but for me, a lot of the smart home stuff is a real drag, just in the sense that it clearly, first of all, beyond being sort of unnecessary, there is a level of just willingly giving over Your agency over the small moments that make human life human life. And just being like, I would really love it if just an artificial intelligence could pick my pants out for the day. I'll simply stand here waiting for that to happen. Just fucking grim. Actually, like didn't really care for it. I feel like you gotta like, what are you using that time to do?
- [130:20]
Robert Evans
Yeah. What are you getting? What are you optimizing from yourself by not having like pieces of like the thing that a human being does, which is like pick your clothes.
- [130:29]
J
Right.
- [130:29]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I wonder how you feel about this. Cause you and I have been going to CES from I guess a broadly similar number of years.
- [130:36]
J
Like I've never been to ces.
- [130:37]
Robert Evans
Oh really? This is your first time?
- [130:38]
J
No, I'm a fucking sports sportswriter, man. Like this is. I'll be out here because Ed got me a folding bed.
- [130:43]
Robert Evans
Dead eyed veteran.
- [130:45]
J
Oh yeah. Well, I'm very tired.
- [130:46]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [130:47]
J
This is the thing with like, I think as far as I can tell, it seems like it's a loop where you more or less like you start out, it's too much. You get big eye right away and then you just sort of feel zombified. But then we have talked to people over the last few days that are like, you know, I remember like 14 cess ago. That was pretty good. Like. And they're also tired and also deranged by this point in the film.
- [131:08]
Robert Evans
Yeah. The first time someone showed me a tablet computer, I was like, oh man, science has given me everything I want.
- [131:13]
J
And I guess, I don't know. Do you remember when the last one was that you felt even sort of that stirring?
- [131:21]
Robert Evans
Yeah. 2011 or 12 when they did. I got to see inductive charging of a car for the first time and it was so big. The Las Vegas Convention center is like the size of a city. And seeing the lights in that whole convention center dim as they were doing this, it was very inefficient.
- [131:42]
J
Not out of reverence, but because power was going.
- [131:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah. But that was like, oh wow, this is kind of amazing that this is even possible. But yeah, not really sense. Not really sense.
- [131:55]
J
That's why I'm really glad that there's lights in the hyperloop talk.
- [131:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Otherwise it'd be unless something goes wrong.
- [132:01]
J
It would have started to seem kind of grim otherwise.
- [132:03]
Robert Evans
Well, the smart home stuff is interesting because that has been as long as I've been going to these. They've been trying to sell people on smart homes and I don't think I've Ever gotten a good idea of what a smart home is that I think a person would want? I can think of two things a person would want, Right. One of them is it would be nice if, like, I didn't have to think about playing music. I could just, like, tell my house to play the music I wanted, and it would play the music, and I could hear it everywhere, and I didn't have to futz with a bunch of shit. And the second is, what if I'm coming home from vacation and my house is cold? It would be nice to turn on the heater like, an hour before I get home. And one of those things you'd use every day, and one of those things is not really viable to base a business off of, but they keep trying to find new ways to stick computers in my house. And I don't know, does anyone else have anything they want out of a fucking smart house home?
- [132:52]
Danny Trejo
No.
- [132:52]
J
I mean, it's not an accident that my apartment is basically going to be in the year 2005 forever. I mean, it's expensive to do all this stuff. This was the bit that with so many of these demos, you start to notice how incredibly grandiose the residences in which all of this stuff is being sort of postulated as being useful is. It's like the Lexus December to remember sales event type energy. Just a big fucking.
- [133:18]
Robert Evans
What lives do you live?
- [133:19]
J
Yeah, this also. We've talked about this on Ed's show that, like, there's a lot of stuff here that feels like the first 15 minutes of a George Romero movie, like, just getting you set for. Eventually there's going to be a lot of, like, you know, disembowelings and hideous shambling zombies.
- [133:33]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [133:33]
J
And Smart home. Not a bad horror movie concept. I don't think it's a great consumer concept.
- [133:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Speaking of great consumer concepts, the ads for this podcast. All right, we're back, and I want to close us out by asking everybody a question, which is how do you feel about where tech is going?
- [134:01]
I
I think we're going to hell. I think we are speeding, wrapped it up very fast into a sweet abyss. I'm worried about the fact that so much of the tech is oriented around surveillance, around precursor forms of prepping, around very soft forms of, like, perfection and optimization that rhyme with eugenics. I'm like, I don't like the direction that a lot of this stuff is going, but also, I don't know what to do about it because so much of it is driven by private interests. Right. It's like venture capitalists, well capitalized individuals and the firms that they're connected to decide what we get to get pushed. And these corporations.
- [134:49]
Robert Evans
Yeah. The nature of. You can really tell that a lot of the health products are very optimized for rich tech executives. There was a lot of sleep products that all relied on you being willing to bathe yourself in speakers, playing binaural beats while you slept and at different devices. Measure your do an ecg and it's like, I don't know, my aunt's not gonna do that.
- [135:11]
I
Yeah, I was. I talk with my partner about this. They have type 1 diabetes. They have a CGM. They use it constantly. And we've been talking about and thinking about writing about how there have been a crop of devices that are trying to push onto you this idea that you need to have close monitoring of it to preempt if you are going to be pre diabetic or to optimize what you're eating throughout the day. But that when you actually dig into what they're doing, it's part of this track of rhetoric where it's like, well, if your sugar slightly goes out, it's because you're being a bad person. It's because you're eating the way that you shouldn't. It's because there's a moral failing or character failing there that this tech can help purify you of and you can be your best self, which is really just like not large, you know. And I feel that sort of rhetoric lurking behind a lot of the biometric surveillance stuff. Even though there are applications that are not that.
- [136:03]
Robert Evans
Yeah. You know, it's kind of focused on like the sin. The health sins that you're committing. We spent a decent amount of this week hanging out with the kids. Catholic priest and I do feel like several tech companies were the ones trying to sell us indulgences.
- [136:15]
I
Right. Yeah.
- [136:17]
Robert Evans
Yeah. All right. Gar.
- [136:19]
H
There's small improvements for consumer tech.
- [136:22]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [136:22]
H
This is a very consumer based or it's supposed to be a consumer based tech show. There's products like the Shokz headphones which every year get a little bit better. I tried out bone conducting headphones last year which are very good. They work underwater.
- [136:37]
Robert Evans
If you're deaf in an ear, you can deafen in the earth music the way you used to be able to.
- [136:41]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [136:41]
H
Like very cool stuff. This year they have what they called air conductive. I don't quite know how it works, but it does work. I can hear it if you're standing like two, three feet away. There's no sound bleed, but I, I hear music in the middle of my head despite having to not put an earbud actually like in my ear. They're super useful, they work great. Really good sound quality, they're durable.
- [137:01]
Robert Evans
I'm on year two of the same pair that I run with every single day. Like, like Sweat Rain. Great product.
- [137:07]
H
It's like, like small improvements, right? It's not necessarily like revolutionizing hearing, but it's, it's very, very small improvements. Whereas the other kind of big, big trend which isn't necessarily like wholly consumer based, it's kind of what these larger companies are trying to move towards is I feel like they're trying to replace friendship with this form of like technology and like AI enabled technology. You used to have friends to get recommended new music. You used to have friends to tell you about new stuff that they're interested in. No longer. Now you have an AI agent that can do that for you. You don't need friends to help. Kind of talk about you had a rough breakup. Instead you can have a short term replacement using AI. You can have a friend replacement, a girlfriend replacement. It's all these things that are trying to replace the core concept of friends, friendship. Even as like a, even, even as, even as like a baby, even as a toddler. Your first friend doesn't need to be people you meet outside. It can be this little hovering robot you have in the living room that can also organize your fridge, tell you what to tell you what you need on your shopping list, roll around your house in the middle of the night with, with cameras. And that could be your first friend. It's replacing the core concept of friendship. It's this move towards complete optimization of every aspect of human life, make it as smooth as possible, that completely ignores like what it means to be human.
- [138:32]
Robert Evans
It's the fascinating difference between that elder care robot leq, which was clearly a man with a tremendous amount of empathy trying to design a device to help people, and what I usually see with AI, which is trying to design a device to remove the need for human empathy. Like I went to a, there was a vet app called Leica that's like chatgpt for veterinarians. And they were like, yeah, you know what? Most of it we focused initially on like technical questions. So like if I have these symptoms, what can that mean? But what vets kept asking us is like, we would really like advice on how to talk to people that their pets are going to die. And I was like, do you, are vets not Getting out of vet school, Noah, because that's like, that's a big part of being a vet. Like, do they need chatgpt for this?
- [139:13]
H
I saw this other company that was like, it was designed to help you get over the loss of your pet, where you could pump tons of photos of your pet into this AI, into this AI generator and it will generate new images. And this, this is proven to help you move on from loss, which is literally a Nathan Fielder joke from, like, seven years ago. Yeah, it's seven years ago. And like, no, you should talk with your friends about that. That's why you are a human. That's how you can move on from loss. You. You have to make new connections. Poorly AI generated images of your cat aren't gonna help you move on. Like, what? Why? Anyway.
- [139:54]
Robert Evans
Oh, that's bleak.
- [139:54]
H
Replacing friendship is the thing that I see a lot of the tech world wanting to do. Maybe because they don't really understand real human relationships that aren't, like, innately transactional. I'm not sure, but that is like a huge trend that I've seen multiple. Multiple people mention.
- [140:09]
Robert Evans
All right, Zai.
- [140:11]
Mel Robbins
So I've worked in this industry for like, three years now, and this is my first big convention. And I would say this has just affirmed pretty much all of my disillusions with the tech world. And most of it's just nonsense. And maybe the post Civ people are onto some stuff.
- [140:31]
Robert Evans
Well, you. You say that, but I really do think Viridox is going to revolutionize the way in which mysterious fogs kill large numbers of people. I'm just slapping these people. Maybe, but don't name it something so sinister. Yeah, yeah.
- [140:45]
J
If you were to be like, this is the thing that keeps your apples fresh for a long time, that would be great. I would just.
- [140:49]
Robert Evans
Don't call it apple fresh.
- [140:50]
Danny Trejo
Yes.
- [140:51]
Robert Evans
But call it Apple fresh.
- [140:53]
H
By the way, you should listen to better offline to hear context for Veritox, which we discussed on the last episode of our daily CES coverage over there with the wonderful Ed Zitron. But essentially, Veridox is this mist that gets sprayed on produce, which allegedly helps it stay shelf stable for a few more days. 33%.
- [141:12]
J
33%, exactly.
- [141:14]
Robert Evans
So maybe that shelf stable mist will also translate to waking up the dead.
- [141:18]
H
Possibly.
- [141:18]
J
But you don't know that it's gonna do. You don't know that it's not going to do that either.
- [141:23]
I
We just know it keeps things fresh.
- [141:24]
J
Yes.
- [141:24]
Robert Evans
As a journalist, it's our job to.
- [141:26]
H
Ask these questions and we Discuss that way more in depth on Better offline.
- [141:30]
J
Yeah, we do discuss whether ability to bring red leaf lettuce back to life does have any repercussions in a pet cemetery sort of way for your possibly dead loved ones. David, it's me. Sorry. Yeah, a lot of good points. I mean, I think Gary and Edward both made the point about the sort of sociopathic thread of a lot of this just sort of like an inability to understand not just what people might want from a technology, I think, which is to feel not. I mean, there probably are people, I imagine that's like. If you were the guy, the dude that's like trying to age himself backwards, you know, he's like Brian Johnson. Yeah, Brian Johnson. We love Brian. Yeah. But he, like. I feel like he would have been walking through this, clapping his hands with delight.
- [142:14]
Robert Evans
Clapping his hands the whole time. Eating his 400 pills a day.
- [142:17]
J
Yeah.
- [142:17]
H
Drinking his son's blood.
- [142:19]
J
Yep. Time for. Yeah, it's a.
- [142:20]
Robert Evans
It's in fairness, I drink his son's blood pretty right. That's not bad.
- [142:25]
J
The high quality plot. But. But that it felt like it was that. That there was a lot of this sort of like an optimization unto, like transcending being human at all. And I don't think, I mean, again, there probably are people that want that. They certainly have money. I don't imagine that. I think what most people would like. I mean, you don't expect technology to make you feel more human, but something I've been thinking about a lot. We've been talking about this a lot on Better Offline. But there's a passivity that a lot of this sort of seems to be forcing onto people where you're just like sort of things are happening to you that make your life more efficient and convenient. And I don't think that I want that. I mean, I'm older than. And poorer than the market that I think they're aiming for with this, but certainly old enough to remember, as you said, finding music, that's a thing that your friends tell you about it. And in my case, I mean, again, just being in my middle age, you go to a store and you flip through shit. There's a distinction between finding something and being given something or being fed to something like your foie gras goose. And it's just getting sort of piped into your brain and life and being. And I think it's an important distinction. I think that little bit of agency of having some sense of doing the things that you want to do. Like I would Imagine that. Well, I don't have to imagine it. Technology that helps you do that as opposed to doing it for you. I think that I don't want stuff that makes me feel less human. I don't want stuff that makes me feel more like I'm in a fucking Matrix pod. And I think that a lot of the stuff that was out there seemed targeted towards the matrix pod dwelling community.
- [144:05]
Robert Evans
Yeah, I think that's. That's about the best line we could go out on. Like, that's. That's. Yeah. You nailed it.
- [144:11]
J
Thanks. I thought I crushed that one.
- [144:12]
Robert Evans
Yeah, you did. You did.
- [144:14]
Danny Trejo
Great job, Dave.
- [144:15]
H
Where can people find your work, Dave?
- [144:16]
J
Defector.com. why? Let me do that without crushing my water.
- [144:19]
Robert Evans
No, no, no, no.
- [144:20]
J
That's difficult.
- [144:21]
Robert Evans
That's a load bearing piece of content.
- [144:23]
J
Defector.com is the website and Ed big.
- [144:26]
I
Blackjack a bit on Twitter and Blue sky, this Machine Kills is my podcast. Techbubble.substack.com is the newsletter.
- [144:35]
Robert Evans
Hell yeah. Do you want to tell people how to find you zai@neowoman on Twitter with zeros.
- [144:44]
H
Zeros for Neo.
- [144:45]
Robert Evans
Zeros. All right, everybody. Well, that's gonna do it for us here at. It could happen here and our week at ces, you know, just try to hug your loved ones until the viridox sweeps through all of their homes, neighborhoods. Y. Oh, no. It's in the room. It's in the room.
- [145:12]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show and he's bringing his signature wit and inside site straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondence and contributors, and with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio alone, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tale from the Shadows presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horrors stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shape shifters to bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Tura Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.
- [146:53]
Danny Trejo
Welcome to Nick It Happened Here, a podcast about things falling apart how to put them back together again. I am your host, Mickey Along Returned for the holidays. Returned, rejuvenated, returned, refreshed, Returned to do something a little bit different in the coming weeks. We're going to be doing a lot of nitty gritty analysis of the coming wave of fascism. But what we haven't really been doing as much. What I want to take some time to do today is to talk about fascism at a sort of macro level and what it looks like right now and also talk about an extremely cooked guy who blew himself up in a cybertruck cut side of Trump building. And with me to talk about this is writer, organizer, agitator, doer of so many different things that like, I don't know, someone's going to write a great biography in like 100 years. It is, it is the one and only Vicki Osterweil.
- [147:50]
Andrina
Thank you. Sorry I couldn't keep the giggle down long enough for you to get to the intro before your, you find people could hear me.
- [147:59]
Danny Trejo
Oh, I'm glad to have you here. And part, part of this, the initial thing that was like, okay, we need to do this was I, I, I saw you called all of this the years of lead paint. And that is just, it is stuck in my mind every, for every single second of every day since then.
- [148:17]
Andrina
Yeah, yeah. I was writing for the journal that I am working and fundraising for. KA Go to this out. But I wrote a piece about how unpleasant the cyberpunk dystopia is in the face of, you know, that sort of that image of the cybertruck on fire outside the Trump Hotel. Then about, you know, as we are about to talk about, Matthew Livelsberger, I think is how it's pronounced. Who's the Green Beret then? Big Trump fan who thought blowing up a cyber trunk outside of the Trump Hotel would start not a race war, but the purging of Democratic politicians. Is that what we think his.
- [148:49]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. Vision was now that that seems to be it. Like politicians and like it's kind of an evolution of the like purge, the deep state thing where he wants Democrats gone from like the army and.
- [149:00]
Andrina
Right, right.
- [149:01]
Danny Trejo
You know, so it's the kind of more generic version of like the sort of Nazi fantasy of the Day of the Rope from the Turner Diaries is kind of like metastasized into all this right wing culture where they have their own sort of like less race war.
- [149:14]
James
Yeah.
- [149:14]
Danny Trejo
Or like less anti semitic versions of it. Yes. And that's apparently what this guy was trying to start off by exactly blowing himself up with a truck full of fireworks in front of a Trump.
- [149:27]
Andrina
So basically, this guy, despite being a Green Beret, which, like, say what you will, arguably some of the most trained and experienced murderers in the world, you know, whatever else you say about them.
- [149:37]
Danny Trejo
And this is important, you know, like, I'm not sure there's any capacity drop in the world that is greater than the drop from like Green Beret to like, like former Green Beret. This guy was active duty. So like.
- [149:48]
Andrina
Right, yes, yes, exactly.
- [149:51]
Danny Trejo
This wasn't even like a cooked vet. This is a guy who is like in the shit.
- [149:55]
Andrina
And we know that he was drinking the Kool Aid because he used ChatGPT, we've just found out today, to help plan his attack. But unfortunately, despite his murder expertise, which undeniable cybertruck, like all Teslas, is designed mostly to endanger the people inside it because. Because they won't sue Tesla, because they're already huge super fans. And what I really mean, of course, is that they have just terrible safety protocols. And the cybertruck, which is like a 12 year old's idea of a good idea, which is an incredibly, incredibly firm stainless steel body which does not crumple and does not take damage, which means that your frail human body inside it in an accident bashes against a wall of steel, metal. It's very dangerous. Dangerous to be inside, but the car doesn't take damage. And that means that if you leave a bomb in it, the sides of the car were fine, so the explosion went straight up. Right. So it did no damage to the hotel. It's not clear if he intended that, but it seems like he probably wanted to do a little damage to the hotel. Most people who are doing suicide bombings want that, I would imagine. So anyway, all of this is to say you have this guy who's like an active duty Green Beret, who believes for some reason that attacking a Trump hotel in an Elon Musk car will somehow lead to the murder of Democrats. But he's so tech pilled that he takes a cybertruck, which doesn't even work as a bomb and dies in it and just leaves this like horrible image. And I mean, I'm, you know, I'm being flippant about this, like, it's awful thing, obviously, but no one else was hurt except himself. I mean, the image was everywhere on social media for like the last three days of that, of that cybertruck on fire outside the Trump Towers. Yeah, it was the perfect image of a thing I had already been thinking of as the years of Lead paint. So I wrote an essay around that basically.
- [151:40]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, so I want to start talking about this by getting a little bit into what the years of lead are because I imagine some of you like there's probably like, I don't know, there's probably several thousand of you who are obsessive nerds about the years of lead and like know the name of every single guy he was implicated for these car bombings. But for everyone else who's normal, and I count myself among the non normal people because I did. I spent about two years going, going down the years of lead rabbit hole and destroyed my brain same. But the years of lead were this thing in roughly the 70s and the 80s in Italy where as a response to the sort of rising power of the left through the 60s and like the giant uprisings 1968. And Italy is kind of different from the rest of Europe because in Italy, you know, like in France for example, France has this huge uprising in May 68. Like they nearly knock off the government. Like workers councils have seized control of the factory. Like they lose this or bot, like there's you know, the president's like fleeing in a helicopter. But then after that like they kind of never seriously threatened the French government again. Yeah, in Italy that is not true. Like 68 in Italy there's a very similar thing going on. But like the seizure of the factories has been going on since like, I mean stuff like this has been happening since the 50s and it really only stops in 1977 when like they have one last big push uprising and it fails, kills. So as a way to contain this, the Italian government develops this strategy of backing right wing terror groups and then also orchestrating left wing terror groups. And by terror groups, I mean like the most famous thing in this is called the Bologna train bombing, 1980, that kills 85 people, wounds like 290. Like it's a really, really horrific attack and it's immediately blamed at an anarchist group. It turns out it's not an anarchist group. It is a state backed like fact fascist group. And yeah, like there are other ones I will pass over to Vicky to talk about like the other terrible shit that they did.
- [153:29]
Andrina
Well, that bombing kind of ends in some ways ends the years of lead. You could, you could end it there. It's sort of the last big terrorist month. The first thing, the event that like sort of after 68 kind of starts, it is this thing called the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, which is like at a, at an agriculture bank I think is what it's called. It's just like. But 17 people are killed, almost 100 people are wounded. And the first thing that the police do is they blame anarchists in 68 as well. And there's a famous, there's a famous case of this anarchist organizer named Pinelli who is arrested and then while he is under interrogation, falls out of the window of the police department to his death.
- [154:05]
Danny Trejo
Yep.
- [154:06]
Andrina
It has still never been proven that he was pushed. The police claimed he jumped out after they interrogated him really hard.
- [154:13]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, sure.
- [154:15]
Andrina
Like, there's a very famous Italian play about it by Dario Foe called the Death of an Anarchist. So blame the anarchists. They literally murder a leading anarchist printer and organizer. And then of course, it turns out that it was this terrorist group called Ordone Nuovo who was, you know, this neo fascist group that had, let's say, significant overlap with parts of the Italian state. And I think like one way of understanding the years of lead, I think that might be easy for people who aren't familiar with it, is that it's, it's like a very low level civil war. I think the closest thing we can maybe think of is the troubles in Northern Ireland. Ireland, yeah. And the reason those were a little different was because a lot of those attacks were happening in England, whereas, like the, you know, the movement was in Ireland. But this is very similar, which is like there's these armed wings both on the right and the left that are like both meeting in combat and sort of fighting each other. But in this instance, rather than a colonial occupation that they're fighting against, the Italian government was literally both paying for arming the fascists and instructing them to frame the left for these attacks.
- [155:13]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, and there's, I mean, there's other stuff too. We're not going to get into the kidnapping of Aldo Moro here. I have explained this on the show at some point. I think it's in, I think it's in. If you go to the Halloween episode we did where we talk about conspiracies, I've explained that whole thing. But like the goal of this, right, the reason that, you know, they're, they're giving all of these weapons to these like, stay behind networks that were designed to like fight a Soviet invasion. And like in having all these bombings was specifically something they call the strategy of test tension, which is a strategy of promoting sort of mass violence and promoting terror as a strategy to drive people back towards the state. Because the idea was. And this, and this seems to have worked. You know, you, you scare people enough by the Fact that there's, you know, there's bombs going off all the time, people are getting killed, people are getting kidnapped. There's all of this just like horror happening. And the goal is to get people to turn to the state for, you know, sort of order insecurity and like, stop doing all of this uprising stuff because we need, you know, we need the sort of terrorists to end. And it was extremely effective. And the sort of knowledge of this has, I guess, proliferated through the American left in the last, like, decade. And that has led to a lot of, I think, kind of unhelpful comparisons. You will hear people sometimes talk about like American Gladio, which is Gladio is those. The stay behind networks that were armed by the Italian state and used as sort of the basis of these neo fascist groups and like, like to refer to this sort of like, I don't know, to like what's happening in the US and that's not really what's happening. And this is where I want to pass it to Vicky to talk about sort of the characteristics of what we're calling the years of lead paints and how they're sort of different from the Italian ones.
- [156:48]
Andrina
Yeah. In classic American fashion, everything is more chaotic and autonomous.
- [156:52]
Danny Trejo
Yes.
- [156:53]
Andrina
And widely proliferated. And also widely proliferated all over America products and services. Did I do good?
- [156:59]
Danny Trejo
Let's support this podcast. That's a good one. Thank you. We are back.
- [157:15]
Robert Evans
All right.
- [157:15]
Danny Trejo
Years of blood paint, let's go.
- [157:17]
Andrina
Yes. Right. So I actually think, you know, as you were saying that I think actually a thing that might be the closest to Gladio, and it's not Gladio because that was very conscious and it was like these stay behind networks that were organized explicitly, but the US State defense of the Second Amendment and of like, assault rifle availability and making the US the sort of home for military surplus. Because obviously, like the military industrial complex sells lots of guns. It's a very helpful thing that. Producing a reign of mass shooters who also operate in a sort of years of lead terroristic sort of strategy of tension way, I think might actually be close, but you can tell that that's very disorganized.
- [157:53]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [157:53]
Andrina
It's very distributed through the social. It's done by, you know, volunteers. Right.
- [157:59]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And also the people who are doing the years of lead are unbelievably cynical about it.
- [158:04]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [158:04]
Danny Trejo
Like, they don't. They don't believe any of this shit. Right?
- [158:07]
Andrina
Yes, yes, no, exactly.
- [158:08]
Danny Trejo
Whereas Second Amendment guys. Like, that stuff is driven a lot by sort of like hardline True believers who aren't trying to sort of like fuel a bunch of mass shooting to push people in. Towards extreme, like increasingly right wing politics. That's sort of like not, not what they were trying to do. But that's sort of, you know, that's the net effect of a lot of the stuff.
- [158:26]
Andrina
Yeah, it wasn't a conscious effort at all. But that's also not the years of lead paint. That's just like a similar thing, the years of lead paint, which is obviously like, which is a joke about. There's this big reactionary myth from like the Freakonomics guys, I think that like the rise in crime is like correlated to like the use of lead paint in children's bedrooms.
- [158:45]
Danny Trejo
Which is really funny because for the Freakonomics guy, that that is a downright left wing theory, like by his standards.
- [158:52]
Andrina
Exactly. Or maybe it was a dude directing it. I don't even remember now. Anyway, so it was a Freakonomics. So it became, it became a meme to like talk about sort of boomers and Generation X people, you know, having the blood paint in their gasoline and in their walls causal this stuff. Obviously I'm not advocating that kind of like ableist insult when I talk about this and it's a memetic way of making fun of that concept. But all of that to say they have completely drunk. Drunk the Kool Aid, right? Yeah, the fascists, as you're saying, Mia. They knew what they were doing. They knew they were framing the left. They were like making it up. But like a lot of people on the right.
- [159:28]
Danny Trejo
In Italy.
- [159:29]
Andrina
Yeah, yeah, in Italy. Excuse me, in Italy, in the 60s, in the, in the actual years of lead. Years of lead paint, you've got people genuinely probably believing that January 6th was Antifa. Like people whose friends were there, you know. Yeah, like stuff like Q. And the other thing that. The reason that this is years of lead painted, not the first Trump administration is because during the first Trump administration there was actually pretty well organized on the ground fascist movements. And they could certainly come back in the US right now. There's no reason they couldn't.
- [159:58]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, and it's also worth talking about. We'll be covering this on the show at some point in the future when we've had time to go through the documents. But there was recently a massive, from distributed denial of secrets, a massive drop of stuff on the militia movements from a guy who infiltrated it. There's a very good ProPublica story talking about the guy that we'll link in the show notes. So the Militia movement has survived. But the kind of stuff that we saw in 2017, 2018, 2020 is not.
- [160:26]
Andrina
Yeah, the Proud boys Q anon, the folks who made up J6 and the folks who made up the alt right broadly, were largely defeated by anti fascists in the street. And then the people who remained QAnon folks who were, I think, you know, some of those people were pretty hardcore neo Nazis, obviously, but a lot of those folks were confused Internet boomers. Right. And like, those people mostly got discouraged by the repression. The repression. So I think successfully sort of put the end to the organized Q stuff.
- [160:56]
Danny Trejo
Yeah, well, and, and, and also. And also we've talked about on this show. The other thing that put an end to that was that the Daily Wire figured out that you could use the. Literally the exact same structure of QAnon, but make it about trans people.
- [161:05]
Andrina
Yes.
- [161:06]
Danny Trejo
And that has been unbelievably effective.
- [161:08]
Andrina
No, the strategy as a media strategy has continued.
- [161:11]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [161:12]
Andrina
But as an on the ground organizing principle, it's not that functional. Yeah, it's not. Which is very lucky. But what that means is that Trump has come to power without a ground movement in the same way that he had in 2015, 2016. Like, that was a real movement. His rallies were really well attended. His rallies this election, people left early. You know, it was like. It was like going to see a losing team and their last home game of the season, you know, was the vibe at those rallies.
- [161:36]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. To do a very specific example, it's like the vibe is like the last games of the Oakland Athletics before they were fucking run out to. Before their owner moved into Las Vegas.
- [161:45]
Andrina
Exactly.
- [161:46]
Danny Trejo
Where, like, they've had an incredibly disappointing season, like, deliberately by the owner who decided to make. Who made a bad team so people wouldn't fight him. Like moving the team to la, like, it's like that kind of shit.
- [161:56]
Andrina
Yeah, those were the vibes. And yet, of course, the Democrats in their inf. Infinite, infinite capacities, lost the election. And so what that means, though, is that, is that you have this moment where actually the right has as much power in the federal government as it's ever had. You know, the resistance is, you know, they. You know, they're very proud of legally handing power to the man and ending all of his charges or whatever. But the street movement is disorganized, so you have this gap between the two where there's this really powerful media apparatus. Fox News, News, Truth, Social X, the Everything app, you know, all of these, like, all these places where the fascist, you know, and I guess Meta has now just officially announced they're like going to remove all content restrictions or whatever today. I mean, you know, when we're recording this. So it's just there's this huge, spectacular apparatus, but there isn't this on the ground organizing. So you get people like this Green Beret, who has been really radicalized, made angry, desperate, and, and like, is blowing not even the Trump Hotel up, which would be a nonsensical thing to do, but like literally failing to blow the Trump Hotel up.
- [163:04]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [163:04]
Andrina
In an attempt to start the race war by getting Democrats hung. So it's still kind of strategy of tension stuff. Right. The imagination of, as you said, the Turner Diaries or the sort of, like, you know, the, the right wing terror NETWORKS in the U.S. you know, they, there's a reason they're obsessed with attack, attacking electrical power grids. Right. They think if you cause enough chaos, like, you will return everything to the Hobbesian world of all against all and you'll get a race war and everything will fall apart. Whatever. It's, you know, it's step one, kill my family. Step two, question mark, question mark. Step three, white supremacist revolution. Yeah, it's horrifying. I mean, it's a horrifying, horrifying idea. But that's happening in these groups that have really, really. They believe, I think genuinely that like, I think the right does not understand the difference between, between like Nancy Pelosi and Assada Shakur. Like, they see them both as equally dangerous. Right. They hate Liz Cheney.
- [163:54]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [163:54]
Andrina
Like, in the final days of the election, she was the person they were saying, we're going to go after her. Like, Liz Cheney, like, really, like, yeah.
- [164:01]
Danny Trejo
It'S like, like the, the closest parallel I can think of this is like there was a faction of people during the Cold War who thought that like the Sino Soviet split between Russia and China was like faked. And like there were literally guys murdering each other. Other, like Chinese and Russian troops were firing artillery at each other like on the border, like in 69. Right. Like, and there were people who were convinced for the entire Cold War, even as, like, as China is invading Vietnam, are completely convinced that the entire thing is a ploy and that like, and that's the secretly, like the USSR and the PRC are working together. And these are not like, you know, some random guys in street. Like, these are, these are like the guys at like the peak of conservative power power are absolutely convinced that this is true. And this is, I think, yeah, like, this is the kind of thing we're in now with just like, these people are completely cooked. They don't. They don't have any analytical ability whatsoever. They. They just. They actually have drunk their own Kool Aid.
- [164:53]
Andrina
There was just a scoop. Sorry, I'm just going to drop this really quick. There was a scoop right before we got on to record that. Heritage foundation, you know, authors of Product 2085, their new big plan is to go after Wikipedia. They want to take down Wikipedia. Like, because. Because that's a place you can verify facts. They've already got the post, They've got the times. Like, what are they going to do? They got to go after Wikipedia. This is the kind of, like, level of unreality they're trying to build.
- [165:17]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. And do you know what else builds a world of unreality and then attempts to sell it to you. Ooh. Products and services that support this podcast.
- [165:24]
Andrina
Yes.
- [165:35]
Danny Trejo
We are back. I'm very proud of that one. That's one of the best ones I've ever done. And I just, completely, off the top of my head, just came back better than ever.
- [165:43]
Andrina
That was really good.
- [165:44]
Danny Trejo
She's never been so bad. So I want to move a little bit from the just what is the state look like? How pilled are these people? Kind of thing to. I want to talk a bit about the sort of macro thing that's going on here, because I think part of what's happening here, and it's become kind of unfashionable in academia to talk about neoliberalism because everyone got upset, obsessed with, like, the chips act and like, the capacity of the state or whatever. But I. I think actually, if you want to understand what's going on here, a good place to go is like going back to your David Graeber and he has this line talking about neoliberalism. I think this might. God, I should have actually looked up where this quote is from before I quote it. I think it might be from the shock of victory. But he has this line about how neoliberalism, when given a choice between making their system actually work and making it seem like any alternative to neoliberalism is impossible. It will always choose making the alternative seem impossible, because that's what neoliberalism is. Right. This is, you know, the sort of maxim of. Of Margaret Thatcher is there is no alternative. It is a system that is designed to destroy all alternatives in the. You know, and this includes the possibility of a future and the goal of this. And this is, I think, the sort of dominant affect of the years of leading paint Is this induced helplessness?
- [167:04]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [167:04]
Danny Trejo
There's something, Vicki, I would ask you about the sort of like, induced helplessness of this moment.
- [167:09]
Andrina
Yeah, yeah. I was sort of vibing with what you were saying, but, yeah, I think a lot of people online have accepted sort of, you know, don't give in in advance. Right. But, like, I think one big thing that has been part of the Biden like, strategy of counter revolution and part of what's been going on over the last four years, but indeed over the last four decades as well as sort of part of neoliberalism, is like the idea that you actually really can't do stuff yourself. You need a market, you need assistance, you need a professional, you need an expert to make a choice. Right. And any choice made otherwise, you know, is doomed to failure. Right. And I think part of why Trump feels like, to people, some people, like, he's resisting neoliberalism is because he's like, no, no, no, I don't listen to experts. I don't listen to anyone except my gut. I just do what I want. Want the incredibly exhausting and miserablest strategy of the previous 30 years of politics, which is you get a ton of expert reviews and then you do a political change that moves things like 12% one way. You know, nudge politics as like Barack Obama loved or whatever, right? So that's sort of like, there's that sense, but then on the individual sense, it's also about distributing the workplaces and breaking down the possibility of labor solidarity. Right? Because part of what the 60s were, was and the reason the 60s lasted so long in Italy is because Italy had the biggest factories and had the, like the last. In Western Europe, they had the last folks still becoming proletarians from peasantry, like coming up from Sicily. So they had this like, massive, massive factories that had these like, crazy strikes over and over again. So the distribution of labor, you know, with globalization, neoliberalism, blah, blah, blah, breaking down labor workforce. Like, we also are very helpless individually in our workplace, right? And we go to the HR department to get help, right. Or we sort of get self care. We, like, work on ourselves. We get therapy. You know, our boss offers us thoughts and prayers, right. When things are hard. But, like, there's a big attempt to allow people to define themselves. Sort of the carrot. The carrot of the 60s was like, you know, you get to like, have an identity like, okay, we won't be officially racist.
- [169:14]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [169:14]
Andrina
Quote unquote, you know, okay, we won't be officially sexist. They claim, okay, whatever. None of that's true. But they, but they sort of sell that and then they say, but in return you have to like do all of the self work. You have to be an identity in the marketplace. So basically you get exhausted because like even choosing what shoes to wear becomes like both an identity defining question and an exhausting slog through debt structures and infinite marketplaces. Right. Like, and so, so that in Spoonie world we call that sort of choice paralysis. Right? And I think that's broadly accepted as well, that you have so much choice that you feel absolutely helpless in the face of it. You can't do anything. And so that produces a craving for authoritarianism, for authority. Right? That's another thing people want is like someone else decide for me, I'm sick of thinking about this.
- [170:03]
James
Yeah.
- [170:03]
Danny Trejo
And that's I think been one of the most important aspects of everything that's been happening right now is this sort of strategy of exhaustion and this demand for someone else to make choices for you, to free you from this just like this endless nightmare of like trying to figure out which healthcare plan you're supposed to buy and shit like that. And oh my God. And the right has a bunch of alternatives here, right? Like this is the fantasy of what tradwives is. It's like, what if someone else did your thinking for you? It's also the entire logic behind AI, right? And find this sort of AI agents thing that they're like pushing right now. Go listen to our CES coverage and don't care much about it is like, what if someone just like planned your life for you, right? What, what, what if you could talk to a machine and it would plan all your trips and it would tell you what to eat and we would tell you how to live. And this is, you know, this is also the structure of how cults work. Like this is why cults have been able to attract people that like I think the, the media conception of cults you wouldn't think would be in them is why there's so many engineers in cults. Because there's like a bunch of people who have to make choices constantly. And the cult is like, hey, what if I just like made all of these choices for you? And this is ultimately, you know, we talked about this a little bit before. This is ultimately part of what's going on with like Trumpism, right? Because Trump is also to some extent like if you're in this movement, like you no longer have to choose anymore. You just, you know, here is the guy, the guy is going to do the thing for you. This is also, if you go back to your original sort of conceptions of fascism, right, it's about the sort of populace delegates their will into the single heroic individual, and the single heroic individual, like, acts out outside of the bonds of the system in order to preserve it and does all this stuff for you. And I think there's a combination of that with this sort of paralysis and exhaustion, particularly like exhaustion and anxiety also. And this is something that is very well documented that we're not going to get into it full here, but all of the stuff we've been talking about, about the information space, where there's just constant deluge of just nonsense, and that's designed specifically not even necessarily to convince you that something is true, but to convince you that it's impossible to figure out what is happening and to make you just give up. And when you're refusing to make a choice between, like, was there a gas attack in Syria or was it, like, staged by the rebels of the false flag, right? You refusing to make the choice has the effect of legitimizing both of them and also removes you from sort of the field of play of action. And this has been a really important part of this to sort of demobilize the left. Like, it's part of what the sort of Tulsa Gabbard Gambit was, right, was that you could take a bunch of this sort of rising, nominally anti imperialist thing and you could just do this shit to them. And now Tulsi Gabbard is one of the big people in Trump world, right?
- [172:37]
Andrina
I think. What's his name? I disrespect him by not remembering his name, but I should, for the podcast, Steve Bannon put it well when he said flood the zone with shit, right, is sort of the strategy. You just release so much terrible information that it doesn't matter. And this is how Trump also, like, kept ahead of his, you know, many scandals is he would just, like, say the next most outrageous thing and, you know, you'd have to commit to responding to one. But he was already at the next thing and it was just a sort of like, amplifying, amplifying wave of like, chaos and, and nonsense that you eventually, yeah, you get bowled over by it. You get exhausted. And I think, you know, you mentioned healthcare markets. And I think, like, that's really, that's really telling too, because we've just like, lived through a pandemic. We're in the midst of a pandemic. Covid has. Is in another wave that, like, no one has named right now. And no one even mentioned health care, let alone the pandemic during the election of 2024.
- [173:29]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [173:29]
Andrina
So part of what's been going on, too, is that there has been this mass push by the Biden administration and the Democrats to make us forget what happened in 2020 in terms of the uprising and to make us forget the pandemic, which is so unpopular and which. Which continuing to actually prevent would have done significant damage to the economy. Right. It was already pretty bad for it, and it would have continued to get worse. So everyone had to be forced back to work. How do you force people back to work who evidently care about each other and their own safety? You lie to them. You confuse them about what's actually going on, Right? So there's been this huge priming of the pump for this strategy by Biden and the Democrats and by our own exhaustion over the pandemic and the fact that we had to go back to work, so we had to get over the cognitive dissonance of that. So all of these factors together have produced a psychic stew culturally in which people are very susceptible to just throwing up their hands and going, I don't know, whatever.
- [174:27]
Danny Trejo
Yeah. But on the other hand, the strategy of the years of lead was a strategy born of strength, right? The years of lead paint. This is not a strategy built by people who have an incredibly solid grasp on paper power. Right? The actual base that put Trump in power, Right? And their actual political base is incredibly brittle. Right? They are about to tank the entire global economy, like, through.
- [174:50]
Jon Stewart
By.
- [174:50]
Danny Trejo
By putting, like, 50 tariffs on, like, every single country in the world. They. Okay, let's. Let's be accurate here On. On. On Chinese, Mexican, and Canadian goods, which is like, okay, like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna ask you, as an exercise to the reader, to go look up the places that the US Import things from, right? So, like, you know, this is how you resist. This is how you resist. Your. Your learned helplessness is by going and researching things for yourself. But, you know, they're about to annihilate the entire economy when the thing that brought them to power was fury at rising prices, right? These fucking arrogant bastards have sown the wind and they are going to reap the fucking whirlwind. The basis of this fucking. Of this entire show, you know? And I ask you this, like, dear listener, do you think these people can hold 330 million people in line by sheer force? No, of course not. There's no fucking way. This is the most heavily armed population that has ever existed in human History. Right. This strategy is a strategy that is built around getting your compliance.
- [175:49]
Robert Evans
Yes.
- [175:50]
Danny Trejo
And if they can't get your compliance by you agreeing with them, they're going to attempt to get your compliance by just taking you out of the equation. Right. They need you scared. They need you confused. They need you completely convinced of your own helplessness. They need you to forget that, as the old song says, in your hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold. They need you to forget the next line of the song, which goes, we can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old where the union makes us strong. This is the entire fucking thing, Right? Right. If these people were actually strong, they would not need an entire strategy that was based around political demobilization.
- [176:29]
Andrina
Yeah, exactly.
- [176:31]
Danny Trejo
And the thing is, right, the thing about this moment is that basically everyone is incredibly disorganized. However, comma, that means that you just literally any random person can just take the things that you know how to do and start organizing. The system is designed to make sure that you don't do that. And guess what? It's not. Not very hard for you to pick up the things that you know how to do. For you to use the relationships and people you know in your life to get together with them and to go do things. And they are fucking terrified of this.
- [177:03]
Andrina
Yes.
- [177:03]
Danny Trejo
Their entire strategy is to make sure that you simply do not do this. And every single one of you has the power to do this. And I know this because I also was just some random dipshit. Like, I was just literally a random college student, right? Like, I was just some asshole. And I just started doing things right? And I got together with my friends and we fucking. We made a tenants union and we did anti ice stuff. We did all of this shit. And it wasn't that like any of us are any different than you. We just, you know, decided one day we were going to do it. And it happens to return one last time to David Graeber, one of one of his most famous quotes is, the ultimate hidden truth of this world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently. And everyone who is in power right now is absolutely terrified of the idea of you making this world differently. And together we can do that.
- [177:51]
Andrina
Yes, that's exactly right. And another thing that I think is really powerful about getting started in that way is that all of those false choices, they become so much less important. And actually, when you have a real goal that you and your friends have made together that you're building towards. It's actually a lot easier to make choices as to make decisions, because you would know what you need for the next step. Or you'll have an idea of it. You might make a mistake, you might be wrong, but each step along that way, it's an easier way to do this and to feel the power of real choices rather than the false choices of, do you want your AI from Grok or do you want it from ChatGPT? Right. And obviously that's a joke, but it's true that they aren't offering us anything anymore. They have decided. They have decided that what we get is stomped. We get stomped on. That's what they've agreed to give us is like getting stomped on. Like, okay, that was always what they wanted to give us in the past. But they might learn very, very quickly in reaping the whirlwind, that the reason that a century of American politicians have tipped their hat to democratic norms and have tried really hard to preserve the niceties of the government is because they have a slightly fresher memory of the French Revolution and the guillotines which haunts them. Or the Haitian Revolution, which is the real fear lurking behind the fear of the French.
- [179:14]
Danny Trejo
Yeah.
- [179:15]
Andrina
When the slaves rose up and destroyed the sugar plantation of Haiti. And it has been punished ever since. The point being that these things that they are overwhelming, this flooding the zone was shit, as Mia says, is a. Is from a position of weakness. Because when they were strong, when they were strong, they had Obama was a sign of strength. We can elect a black person, a black man in this racist country, and we. And he can just go on hope, like, and he can actually make very few changes, and he'll still be incredibly popular, like, even through, you know, a huge economic collapse. Right. That was a sort of strong gesture. Trump is a sign of real senescence. And I use the phrase advisedly, and there are a lot of holes. And they have drunk the Kool Aid. The right has drunk the Kool Aid. They don't know the difference between Democrats and anarchists. Not really. Yeah, they genuinely don't really know the difference. Some of them do, their philosophers do. But the main ones on the street have no idea about the difference. That gives us a lot of space to move. That gives us a lot of space to take action, to build things that are invisible to. To them and that might be invisible to social media, which is a place built around reinforcing our helplessness in many ways. The strategies we have to take will be less visible in many ways, I think, than they were in previous times. And they're going to have to be of necessity, because MAGA is basically, you know, it's the Eye of Sauron, and if it lands on, you're in trouble, but if it doesn't, you can just kind of move. And if you don't run into any trouble, like you can get a lot done. I think that's as much as I'll say about that. But there's a lot to do and there's a lot of movements to make and a lot of building to do that will both give you a sense of power and solve these big problems for you and your community. And if enough people start doing that, then they will take away all their power.
- [181:08]
Robert Evans
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Internet universe.
- [181:14]
James
It Could Happen Here is a production.
- [181:15]
Mel Robbins
Of Cool Zone Media.
- [181:16]
James
For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media.
- [181:18]
H
Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
- [181:24]
James
Or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
- [181:32]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart is back at the Daily show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondence and contributors, and with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Treh, and step into the Flames of Fright, an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends of and Lord of Latin America. Listen to nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.
- [182:40]
Jay Shetty
Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest interview is with Mel Robbins.
- [182:45]
Mel Robbins
Work has been seen as the number one cause of stress. How can the let them theory help? As you notice the stress come up.
- [182:53]
James
Jay, you're simply going to say let them. You have no idea right now how.
- [182:57]
Andrina
Much time and energy is being wasted because of other people's behavior.
- [183:01]
James
It's like a death by a thousand cuts.
- [183:03]
Jay Shetty
Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [183:10]
James
Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, Me Wheezy wtf and me, Mandy B as we dive deep into the world of non traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, sex and love.
- [183:27]
Robert Evans
That's right, every Monday and Wednesday we both invite you to unlearn the outdated.
- [183:32]
James
Narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability and authenticity, we share our personal journeys, navigating.
- [183:40]
Robert Evans
Our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships and engage in thought provoking discussions.
- [183:46]
James
That challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that'll resonate with your experience Experiences Decisions Decisions is going to be your go to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of.
- [184:02]
Robert Evans
Relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections.
- [184:05]
James
Tune in and join in the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.