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- [00:00]
Akilah Hughes
This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
- [00:05]
James Stout
Hello, my love.
- [00:06]
Ryan Weiss
I'm Ryan Weiss, and For the past 15 years I've been an emotional intelligence
- [00:10]
Dana Al Kurd
coach and a spiritual guide.
- [00:12]
Ryan Weiss
And I'm sharing with you my new
- [00:14]
Dana Al Kurd
podcast, Waking Up With Ryan. Waking Up With Ryan is a daily
- [00:17]
Emily Oster
audio video podcast here to help you
- [00:20]
Dana Al Kurd
connect with yourself before the noise of the day takes over. So let's start our days together with a moment of calm that's just for you.
- [00:29]
Ryan Weiss
Listen to Waking Up with ryan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:35]
Laurie Santos
Here's something that should not be as
- [00:37]
Akilah Hughes
complicated as it is getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akilah Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season
- [00:48]
Laurie Santos
2 is about both of those things.
- [00:50]
Robert Evans
As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a
- [00:53]
Ryan Weiss
majority black city in which there were
- [00:55]
Laurie Santos
more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaved people.
- [00:58]
Akilah Hughes
Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
- [01:03]
Laurie Santos
you get your podcasts. Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well being. Like the radical notion that we should get rid of small talk completely.
- [01:15]
Emily Oster
We talk about current events, we talk
- [01:17]
Dana Al Kurd
about what you do for a living.
- [01:18]
Laurie Santos
But not do you love what you
- [01:19]
Akilah Hughes
do for a living?
- [01:20]
Robert Evans
Is this your dream job?
- [01:21]
Laurie Santos
For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:35]
Akilah Hughes
Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages?
- [01:47]
Laurie Santos
Why did it start with us?
- [01:49]
Akilah Hughes
To long cons and stolen identities.
- [01:52]
Ryan Weiss
Who lies about being this sick?
- [01:54]
James Stout
This was the last time I ever
- [01:55]
Ryan Weiss
believed a word she said.
- [01:58]
Akilah Hughes
Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio
- [02:00]
Laurie Santos
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:06]
Akilah Hughes
Coal Zone Media.
- [02:08]
Dana Al Kurd
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.
- [02:33]
Akilah Hughes
Hello, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Dana Al Kurd, and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today, I want to talk about football, soccer, whatever, and I'll just start by saying, obviously FIFA is a terrible, terrible organization. And while there are many heartwarming events in this World cup, the World cup gets me, gets a lot of us. Despite everything, there have also been egregious incidents against players and referees and fans from the global South. Take, for example, what happened to the Somali referee who wasn't allowed to come into the US to do his job. He was kept hours and hours in the airport before being unceremoniously returned to Somalia. Similarly, the head of the Palestine Football association was denied a visa into the United States, not allowed to come to the World cup on US Soil. This is in spite of the fact that FIFA invited association heads from around the world to attend. And he did attend the opening game in Mexico City, or one of the worst incidents, if you can call it that, the way that the Iranian team has been treated. They weren't allowed to stay in the US despite the games they were playing in this country were constantly made to fly back to Mexico after every game. Clearly, they were put at a severe disadvantage because they weren't allowed to rest and recuperate like the other teams. And listen, I'm not going to say there's a conspiracy, but having not one, but three goals discounted by VAR eventually leading to their elimination from the tournament just adds insult to injury. But like I said, of course there are many heartwarming stories. For me as a Palestinian, it's been great to see how much Palestine keeps popping up, despite the fact that the environment in the United States is much more hostile on this issue than Qatar. The last World cup. People are still talking about Palestine and advocating for Palestine. Thousands of Bosnian supporters, for example, turned Toronto into a sea of blue as they marched toward the stadium for the Canada match chanting Free Palestine. And they did that in a number of places. Inglewood, Seattle. They also chanted Palestine within the stadiums in multiple games. At that Canada game, activists also unfurled a Kick Israel out of FIFA banner. And it makes sense, really, when you understand the experience of Bosnians with genocide themselves not too long ago. Similarly, Moroccan fans held Palestinian flags or wore Morocco jerseys with the word Palestine on it. And this showed up on TV at the very opening match in Mexico City. Pro Palestine died, demonstrators gathered to form a giant human Palestinian flag, and South Korean fans brought Palestinian flags to the tournament, honoring a promise they made during their qualifying when their fans had chanted, we'll take Palestine to the World cup with us. In Gaza, Palestinians are watching the games, too. Spain is the favorite team these days because of the government's position on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and because of superstar player Lamin Yamal, who has been unapologetically pro Palestine. Obviously, the genocide that has unfolded in Gaza and the war and killing that continues in the Middle east, in both occupied territories and in Lebanon are part of the reason why this issue seems to be ever present. But it didn't start with the genocide. The story of Palestine at the World cup is more layered than that. And the 2022 World cup in Qatar was a good demonstration of why Palestine keeps popping up and what Palestine represents to fans, especially Arab ones, then and everyone now. I know it might seem strange to be talking about this now, a few years after the fact, but I've been thinking about it a lot, especially given everything that has unfolded since. And I think the World cup moment is one of those events that gets more interesting, not less, as time passes back then as it does now. It's showing us something important, not just about Palestine, but about the limits of what governments can actually control when it comes to what their own people believe. So let's get into it. Palestine did not qualify for the 2022 World Cup. The Palestinian national football team was nowhere near Doha in an official capacity. And yet Arabs from across the region and across the world began referring to Palestine then as the 33rd team. Because Palestine was everywhere. At the 2022 World cup, there were Palestinian flags draped over shoulders in stadiums. Crowds erupted into chants of Multani, the Palestinian anthem. After Arab teams won, one Tunisian fan ran onto the pitch mid match for the Palestinian flag. And when Morocco pulled off their historic upset against Spain. So it's the first African and Arab team to ever reach the semifinals of a World Cup. Moroccan players ran to the crowd and held up the Palestinian flag. This was significant. Morocco had just signed the Abraham Accords with Israel only two years prior to this game, and their players didn't seem to care. Israeli journalists who traveled to Qatar to cover the tournament reported being close to coldly received, followed, and in some cases physically shut out of interviews by crowds of Arab fans. Some of these reporters were caught on camera claiming to be from other countries like France or Switzerland. In order to get people to talk to them, some of them masked their logos from their stations. Israeli media at the time expressed something between confusion and Outrage, one reporter remarked, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he basically said that the hostility wasn't just coming from governments as. As they had assumed. It was coming from ordinary people. And this surprised them, but it shouldn't have. Now, none of this was purely spontaneous. That's the part of the story I find most interesting and the part that gets maybe the least attention. Months before the World cup began, a Qatari activist group called Qatari Youth Opposed to Normalization, Q A Y O n started planning. They were founded in 2011, and by 2022, led predominantly by Qatari women, they had been working for over a decade to push back against Qatar's slow drift towards normalizing ties with Israel, which is something the Qatari government had been entertaining, largely under pressure from the United States and from its Gulf neighbors. And in a country where over 80% of people oppose normalization with Israel, this organization, Qatari Youth, had a base, but they had to work carefully because you can't have unsanctioned civil society organizations. There's all sorts of restrictions on independent activism, extremely severe in Khadan. But they saw the World cup as a window, an opportunity to turn what already existed, which was deep, widespread popular solidarity with Palestine, into something visible, coordinated and impossible to ignore. So they got to work. They persuaded Qatar's national team captain to wear a keffiyeh patterned armband before the opening match. And then there was this hashtag, the captain's armband is Palestinian, which started trending on Arabic Twitter. They reached out to Qatari influencers and prominent journalists who amplified the campaign across social media. And they called on local businesses to display signs that they were compliant with the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions movement. They also ran a kind of counterintelligence operation against Israeli media because they were the ones that began identifying Israeli journalists and their logos on social media, flagging them so that Arab fans at the tournament knew who to avoid. And this is how those videos of Israeli broadcasters being turned away kept appearing online. They also organized fans to chant for Palestine at the 48th minute of every match. That's not random. That's a reference to 1948 and to the Nakba, where close to a million Palestinians were expelled from their homes with the founding of the Israeli state. Key members of Qatari Youth said the goal was to turn Arab fans from sympathizers into participants. And they were honest about something else, too. This only worked because the ground was already ready. As they put it, the campaign would not have succeeded had it not been for people's own proactive support of the Palestinian cause. And that's worth sitting with for a moment. The organizing mattered, the strategy mattered, but the reason it spread so quickly so far is that there was already a fire there. Qatari youth just lit the match. Now, to understand why people were so upset, you have to understand the Abraham Accords. I've talked about it on this podcast before. The normalization agreements brokered by the Trump administration in 2020 between Israel and the UAE, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and later Sudan and Morocco. These deals were sold as historic breakthroughs, as a new era of peace. And in terms of official diplomatic relations, they were breakthroughs. They were historic. But there was a problem. Nobody asked the people, and these accords didn't solve anything. Now, Arab public opinion surveys have consistently shown that that the vast majority of Arabs opposed normalization with Israel absent a resolution to the question of Palestinian statehood and the ongoing occupation. And in the most recent polling before the accords, it was something like 88% of Arabs across 13 countries that rejected normalization with Israel. And nearly two thirds of those cited the occupation of Palestinian land as their reason. Only 7% cited something like religious objections. The theory had always been that if you normalize relations with Israel, without a resolution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Israel would not have any reason to try and resolve the conflict or address the grievances of Palestinians. That Israel perhaps would become more aggressive if the guardrails were off. So what the Abraham Accords actually did, from the perspective of ordinary Arabs, was deep in the sense that their governments wouldn't listen to them, were willing to sell them out, sell out the Palestinians for economic and security arrangements that disproportionately benefited ruling classes anyway. And the US Israeli security architecture. I've written about this academically, and what I found is a kind of paradox at the heart of these so called peace deals. Peace initiatives that don't address the root causes of conflict don't actually create peace. They create a different kind of violence, a structural violence, because they maintain the root causes of conflict and they enable authoritarian practices by governments. So Israel shares a lot of tools, surveillance technology, propaganda frameworks, security cooperation, both material and discursive tools. And these have a way of turning up in the hands of governments, repressing their own citizens. Now, I'm not saying the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain needed encouragement to repress their own citizens, but it's just another added layer, another way that the red lines shift and new ways that these governments can attack their own citizens and their own activists. For example, Emirati Activists involved in anti normalization activities after the accords became targets of surveillance operations. And people who spoke out about the deals faced travel bans. In Bahrain, civil society organizations were newly restricted. The quote, unquote peace came with a repressive apparatus baked in. Which is exactly why, when thousands of Arabs gathered in Doha's public squares to watch the World cup, the energy around Palestine wasn't some just like emotional sentiment. And it wasn't a relic. It was fresh. It was the anger of people who had just watched their governments make deals they never asked for and deals that were used to oppress them and not solve the Palestinian issue. There is a concept that academics and activists have used called sports normalization. The idea is that sports, because they're presented as apolitical or maybe as entertainment, as a space above politics, they can be used as a soft avenue for normalizing relationships that would be otherwise politically controversial. Israel has long pursued this strategy. The logic is if Israel and Arab athletes compete together, then this image of coexistence replaces the political reality of occupation. You don't need any kind of solution or diplomatic agreement. You just need enough footage of an Israeli in Moroccan shaking hands on the pitch to make people feel like things are moving in a good direction. Qatar youth were very explicit about targeting this. They hosted panels on sports normalization. They released a statement pointing out that Western political boycotts of Russia extended to sporting events after the invasion of Ukraine. And nobody then complained that sports were being mixed up with politics. And to them, the inconsistency was glaring, that mixing sports with politics was apparently fine when it was about sanctioning Russia, you know, admittedly very appropriately, but somehow inappropriate when it came to Palestinian rights. And this double standard. I've encountered it constantly in my work, the insistence that the Palestinian cause is uniquely problematic, uniquely in need of being kept out of polite conversation or unreasonable. This insistence falls apart the moment you compare it to any other conflict where the west has chosen a side. Now, the World cup made that visible in real time. When the Palestinian flag showed up in a stadium in Doha, it wasn't just a symbol of solidarity, it was an argument. It said, this issue is not resolved. We have not moved on. It doesn't matter what the Abraham Accords said or how many photo ops, it's going to make any of this go away. Now, I want to dwell for a minute on Morocco. Full disclosure, that's the team I support. I hope they go as far as possible. But Morocco is an interesting case, and I think it illuminates something about the limits of top down normalization. Like I said, the Moroccan government signed the Abraham Accords and the deal actually included US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Morocco has long occupied itself a case of a people's right to self determination and being traded away in this diplomatic agreement situation. So it was a completely cynical arrangement all around. And yet when Morocco beat Spain and reached the semifinals, their players held up the Palestinian flag. When Morocco beat Portugal and the streets of Rabat and Casablanca erupted, the Palestinian flag was there too. And fans in Doha who had traveled from across North Africa and the Middle east were wearing Palestinian keffiyehs chanting for Palestine Now. The Moroccan government's deal with Israel did not transfer to the Moroccan people. And this is the key insight from the World cup, the one that I keep coming back to, that governments can sign papers, but they can't really sign on behalf of public sentiment. And these countries are not democratic. So any kind of push to do something like this seems like a betrayal to their own citizens. And they can't normalize what has not been normalized in the hearts and minds of their own citizens. There is a kind of arrogance in the Abraham Accords framework. The assumption is that if you get the right signatures, if you get the right photo op on the White House lawn, that the conflict can be ignored at that the Palestinian cause can recede. But the World cup was a direct refutation of that assumption. Now I've been thinking about all of this in the context of everything that has happened since the genocide in Gaza. The daily images, the death tolls, the wholesale destruction of Gazan society and the ongoing question of what normalization means now and whether any of those Abraham Accords frameworks can survive what the world has watched happen. Now I do think it will survive. These governments do not care about what happened in Gaza, but what it shows is that the fears around the Abraham Accords were completely founded. Ignoring the Israeli Palestinian conflict would lead to an escalation in the violence. I think the World cup moment was a Preview back in 2022. It told us something about where popular Arab opinion actually was, not where governments claimed it was and not where Western media assumed it was, but where it actually was. And it showed us that organized strategic activism can channel that sentiment to something visible and politically costly for the forces of normalization. Now Qatar Youth Opposed to normalization was a small group and they were operating under real restrictions in a country that doesn't allow independent civil society. And they still managed to turn a global sporting event into one of the most visible expressions of Palestinian solidarity in years. And that matters not because a football tournament, a soccer tournament is going to solve anything. It doesn't. Palestinian families don't get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility, through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear into a manufactured consensus that was never real to begin with. And today, in 2026, this is not specific to Arab publics, even Western publics have seen their governments ignore genocide, have seen their rights recede as their government's ally to protect genocide in a variety of ways. Now, I'll end with something a little more personal. When I watched those World cup crowds back in 2022, when I saw all these different Arabs, Moroccans and Tunisians, and Saudis, people from countries that have varying and complicated relationships with this issue, all waving the Palestinian flag, I felt a kind of hope. And it's not naive. It's not the hope that this will be resolved soon or easily, but the hope that says Palestinians are not alone and the cause is not forgotten. And the silence that has been imposed on this question, attempted silence, top down, for so long, is not the consent it pretends to be. Governments can sign accords, but they can't erase what people know. And they cannot sign away what people feel when they watch a team lose and a flag goes up in a stadium and thousands of people start chanting. Palestine keeps showing up uninvited at every table that tries to exclude it. And I think it will keep doing that. Thank you so much for listening to it could happen here. I'm Dana Alker.
- [19:08]
Ryan Weiss
All new drinks are now at McDonald's
- [19:10]
Dana Al Kurd
with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher
- [19:14]
Robert Evans
and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping Boba. To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and Cook Cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six?
- [19:30]
Ryan Weiss
All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.
- [19:35]
James Stout
Refreshers contain caffeine.
- [19:37]
Laurie Santos
Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well being. Like we've been thinking about the loneliness epidemic all wrong.
- [19:48]
Robert Evans
You can be lonely in a marriage.
- [19:50]
Laurie Santos
You can be lonely at a party. And I don't think loneliness is actually about solitude.
- [19:55]
Ryan Weiss
Loneliness is about something much bigger.
- [19:57]
Laurie Santos
Or that we should get rid of small talk altogether.
- [20:00]
Dana Al Kurd
We talk about current events.
- [20:02]
Emily Oster
We talk about what you do for
- [20:03]
Ryan Weiss
a living, but not, do you love
- [20:04]
Akilah Hughes
what you do for a living?
- [20:05]
Emily Oster
Is this your dream job?
- [20:06]
Laurie Santos
Or that the mental health crisis isn't what we think it is and that kids today are doing better than we assume? It was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. We are so scared that we are going to underreact to a severe challenge that we tend to overreact. For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem.
- [20:46]
Robert Evans
If you come over here to play
- [20:48]
Laurie Santos
games, I'mma check you, okay? If you do some in the news
- [20:53]
James Stout
that don't sound good, I'm a play.
- [20:55]
Laurie Santos
You Join Yamaneka Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast. You're the Problem With Yamaneika.
- [21:03]
Robert Evans
Do you know? I just found out who Sydney Sweeney was.
- [21:06]
Laurie Santos
New episodes weekly every Wednesday as part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network.
- [21:12]
Robert Evans
If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men do better or do less so I don't have to do so much.
- [21:19]
Laurie Santos
So join Yamaneika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika and I'm out. Listen to youo're the Problem With Yamanika. Starting on July 15th on the iHeartRadio
- [21:30]
Ryan Weiss
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:36]
Robert Evans
You said to me, yo, you know, keep at it. Cause you let me rap for you. It was magical for all of us. Ah, we made it.
- [21:42]
Dana Al Kurd
We made it. Yeah, I'm like, we.
- [21:45]
Ryan Weiss
You know, I'm like, I know these
- [21:46]
James Stout
guys, but who are you?
- [21:49]
Robert Evans
I'm MC Gin, and this is last but not least, I'll be chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times. Like the co founder of Rough Riders, Darren D. Dean, talking about as a kid. Do you remember that we met even way before that?
- [22:04]
Laurie Santos
Let me think.
- [22:05]
Robert Evans
Did you walk up to the gate? That was me, Dee.
- [22:07]
Ryan Weiss
That was you?
- [22:07]
Robert Evans
That was me the day we found out that you and the whole crew was at Hip Factory. The mission was to get me to go to the gate, start freestyling, and see if I could get in the studio. I'm rapping and then suddenly I hear
- [22:18]
James Stout
a voice, hey, open the gate.
- [22:20]
Robert Evans
Let, let him in. The gate slowly went. Gum, gum, gum, gum, gum, gum. They all there watching this and they watch me walk into there. And that is a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. Listen. And last but not least, with MC Gen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [22:40]
James Stout
Before we start, I want to make something inescapably clear. I am not against human rights or the ideals they embody and aspire to. Human rights are in fact a flawed attempt at making the world a better place for all human beings. And it is exactly those flaws that I want to address here. Just having universal human rights does not mean any progress or any improvements in that regard are no longer necessary. To reach those there needs to be in depth conversations and critiques. I've deliberately chosen a provocative title to start this episode if said title makes it through post production. Because I think the best way to have this conversation is if we temporarily strip any blind assumptions. There should not for the time being be a standard answer to just default back to. So let me say it again, the concepts and ideals of universal human rights are good and well intended. This is not a plea against either of those. This is just to ensure that we can all engage with the flaws and the criticisms that are currently laid at the feet above those human rights. Please don't hate me. Further, there will be some abstract concepts and theories here. I'll do my best to explain them in layman's terms. Unfortunately, the ivory tower of the university is still a thing and I think this bit should be accessible to everyone, not just university educated people. So if I'm being a bit reductive or un nuanced, it is to make it widely available. And with that, hello everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen. Here I am, Mick. I am joined by the lovely James Stout. Hi James, how are you doing?
- [24:14]
Robert Evans
Hey, good. I'm good. I'm excited about this.
- [24:17]
James Stout
Yeah, we're going to go through a lot today. When I pitched this, I thought it would be just a fun 30 minute episode and now we're at like 5,000 words and 10 pages of script. So.
- [24:29]
Robert Evans
Yeah, these things can get away from you.
- [24:31]
James Stout
Yes, exactly. And there's always the context. It's always context. You can just throw things out there. But I had to kill some darlings, unfortunately. But there we go. So to start off, we first have to explore a little bit about the history of human rights and how they came to be when we are talking about rights. We are speaking of either a legal, a social or an ethical rule that is connected to legal systems, social conventions or neurorethical standpoints that are seen as normal for a certain group at a certain time because they evolve, they change. These rights are often inscribed, codified, or written down in either legal documents or in the public consciousness. And what I mean by the latter is like Omega Q for the bus or the train. It's not something that's often written down in illegal code or something. It's just an unwritten rule that exists between the people.
- [25:30]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Convention most likely.
- [25:32]
James Stout
If you're going to skip queues, you'll never be prosecuted or fined for that. People will probably think you're a bit of an asshole. So.
- [25:38]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [25:39]
James Stout
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948 by the UN. Prior to this, the concept of human rights was largely found in the idea of natural rights. The very first historical notion of this that we know of was in the Zoroastrian religion in the Iran region.
- [25:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [25:59]
James Stout
Which thought that citizens have a fundamental right to enlightened leadership and that people had the right to rise up against those who are wicked. Similar ideas surrounding rights are also found in ancient Greek philosophy like the Epicurean school of thought and the Stoics. Later it was also explicitly named by Roman philosophers, which they probably stole from the Greeks, like Cicero and Seneca did that. Cicero once said that we are born for justice and that right is based not upon opinions but upon nature. And I think this is important to zoom in on a bit. Romans were very. Not very religious, but it was a religious society. They had tons of deities. But despite that, it's to nature that Cicero makes that claim.
- [26:46]
Robert Evans
Yeah, as opposed to God or gods.
- [26:49]
James Stout
Right, exactly. There's something innate or something by virtue of being human that gives you those rights. There was in the 17th century was the English philosopher John Locke who discussed similar things, particularly that fundamental rights, as he called them, such as life, liberty and estate, estate meaning property in this case, are things that could not be handed over or transferred under the social contract. With social contract, it is often meant that you as an individual have surrendered some of your rights and. And handed them over to the authority under which you fall or to which you are subject. Often this exchange translates to that the authority to which you hand it over will then protect your remaining rights. Yeah, usually this is framed as consensual, as a voluntary deal you make or have made with, again, whichever authority happens to hold control over you. I also think it's worth noting that consent implies an active decision with knowledge and circumstances and the ability to consent. And this is just my. My own personal gripe. Whenever people refer back to the social contract, it's like, I didn't agree to anything. I must have missed that meeting.
- [28:06]
Robert Evans
But yeah, it relies on this, like, thought experiment. Right. Like, this idea of, like, would someone in X circumstance do y thing? This is what Hobbes does, right?
- [28:16]
James Stout
Yes.
- [28:17]
Robert Evans
Like, I guess Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau would be the people you'd want to read if you wanted to learn more about this. In Rojava, they have an explicit social contract.
- [28:24]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [28:24]
Robert Evans
Which is like a document, and people do get to consent on it. I guess I should say consult rather than consent. Right. There was a long consultative process that was part of the formation of the most recent social contract in Rojava, as opposed to requiring universal consensus to be established.
- [28:43]
James Stout
Once again, Rojava is leading the way.
- [28:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Showing us all the way. But that's relatively unusual.
- [28:49]
James Stout
Yeah. We will be touching a little bit on Hobbes and Rousseau.
- [28:53]
Robert Evans
Okay, fine.
- [28:54]
James Stout
But to sum the latter bit up, like, the virtue of being born hardly checks my boxes for active consent, but I think there's some bureaucrats out there who will disagree with me on that. As you said, James, the idea of the social contract came from philosophers like Rousseau and Hobbes and are a core to our contemporary understanding of social and political theory and are also foundational to most liberal democracies. The ideas as following. First, there was no state and no authority, and everyone was in a state of nature where human existence was harsh and brute and short.
- [29:34]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Nasty, brutish and short is the, like
- [29:37]
James Stout
his exact words, the Hobbes quote that
- [29:39]
Robert Evans
gets deployed a lot about people and things.
- [29:42]
James Stout
Yes. Ignoring the fact that Hobbes was an idiot.
- [29:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah. And that life without the state is not nasty, brutish, and short. And we have a lot of examples of this.
- [29:51]
James Stout
It's this retroactive justification because this is how things are now. So I am inventing a story to justify how we end up here.
- [30:00]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Jim Scott, I guess, kind of deals with this a little bit. Right. In the art of not being governed. When he's talking about the idea that those who exist without the state are behind those who exist within the state, as opposed to just on a different pathway they've chosen to follow.
- [30:14]
James Stout
Yeah. Because, like, we need the authority and you need a social contract, because otherwise humanity is just subject to its own worst impulses, like Hunger Games without the dystopian stuff inside it. Therefore, we need authority, which was created to keep the state of nature at bay and make or keep us civilized. And this also then ties in with, like, the monopoly on violence, because that is one of the rights that you surrender under the social contract and is given to, like, specialized government forces in order to use the violence that is necessary to maintain order. As a small side note, the whole state of nature thing is pretty much bullshit. On why that is is discussed at length in the dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengro. But it would be way too much to also include here. Yeah, you'd have to listen to me all week.
- [31:09]
Robert Evans
I do have an audiobook of the dawn of Everything and it is. It's a lot of audiobook.
- [31:13]
James Stout
Yeah, it's such a massive book. Just massive.
- [31:17]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [31:18]
James Stout
Just as a small clarification before we move on, there are many more notable figures who've written about, like, natural rights. Francis Hutcheon, Hegel and Thomas Paine. Clearly there are also many more who did that in the American context, like Thomas Jefferson. But everyone listening to this knows the American stuff way better than I do, so I'll just skip that. Including the parts where Jefferson was pretty selective on who counted as a human being and who didn't.
- [31:45]
Robert Evans
Many such cases.
- [31:46]
James Stout
Yeah, many such cases. Unfortunately, it has not gone away as much as it should have.
- [31:52]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [31:53]
James Stout
So the biggest criticism that we have here to address against natural rights is that you can't draw from facts. It's something that you say is out there, but you can prove it through science or through empirical research, through data collection. It's something that comes from tradition, authority or morality. There is no argument to be made that it exists in the same way as the coffee on my desk as I'm writing this. To put it very bluntly, natural rights being inherent or unalienable is just saying they exist because I say so. It has just as much weight as me claiming that I now own James chickens, which I now do. It is a fact.
- [32:37]
Robert Evans
You have to fight me for them. I'm not surrendering the monopoly on chickens.
- [32:40]
James Stout
Yes. You know where I live. You can FedEx them to me. So what has happened is by putting these natural rights into law, we can make them real or tangible in the sense that there is something you can point to. Like that thing says it, or this law says it. It transforms natural rights from something that is scientifically baseless into like a part of the social contract and thus should be upheld by whatever authority, state or government, you happen to be subject to. The creation of Constitutions in democracies is like a very explicit attempt to make rights real. But as we all know, they're also not infallible. In the wake of the horrors of the Second World War, the international community drafted and voted on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was a massive step at the time. Of the 58 member states at the time, 48 voted in favor of two did not participate and eight abstained from voting. For those of you who are paying attention, there are so little countries that voted on it because judges were less countries back then. And an exact number is very hard to find because all data sets and all definitions just differ. To this day, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still one of the most significant milestones of the 20th century. It has pretty neutral language in terms of culture, religion or anything particular political system. It also became a stepping stone for like the International Bill of Human Rights and several different treaties, with all 193 UN member states as of now, signing at least one or more of those treaties. Yeah, I can't understate how massive that achievement is. And before we were actually criticizing it. I do think it's right to recognize it, but it isn't perfect, which is why we're also going to kick against its shinbone for a while. So to the surprise of no one, human rights are flawed but good. They've also been used pretty disingenuously, and that is where I like to start. They have often been used as like a justification for war to obscure or hide other motivations. Like think of the Iraq war. No, not, not that one. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Yeah, the Saddam government publicly stated that they wanted to support a revolutionary government in Kuwait, that it was for Arab solidarity. They also cited that the current administration over there was incredibly unpopular and thus they had to invade for greater political and economic freedom for the Kuwaiti people. What was widely seen as like the actual motivations were oil resources and more regional control. Because of course, Russia has also used human rights as a reason for invading. You look very surprised at that. Shapes.
- [35:37]
Robert Evans
I was about to say the same thing. Russia loves to do this.
- [35:40]
James Stout
Yes, they did it in 2008 when they invaded Georgia because they had to protect Russian citizens and peacekeepers, while it was mainly about preventing NATO expansion in the newly independent Georgia. Same thing happened in 2014 when they first invaded Ukraine because Russian speakers had to be protected from Ukrainian fascists. There was also the Serbian forces in Bosnia and Kosovo where the Serbs were under threat, and India's campaign into East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh. Although in that latter one the motivations seem a bit more muddled because it appears there's some genuine concern there for human rights or humanitarian aid. But again, models limit time and I
- [36:27]
Robert Evans
think it's always telling where states decide that it's important to go to war for human rights and where they don't.
- [36:35]
James Stout
Right, yeah. We're very selective when these rights need to be enforced or when there's violence needed for it to be enforced.
- [36:43]
Robert Evans
Yeah. No one's rolling out to defend the human rights of Rohingya people in Myanmar, for example.
- [36:49]
James Stout
No, exactly. And I think you said this at some point, but when in Myanmar the revolution started, there was an explicit appeal to human rights.
- [36:59]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [37:00]
Robert Evans
And a very well elucidated appeal to R2P, the right to protect. I think I'd have to check responsibility to protect. It's what R2P stands for. Not right, but responsibility. So it's a responsibility of a state to intervene in the internal affairs of another state if human rights are being abused in that state. It's the best of my understanding of it anyway. And this is as it's been explained to me by many, many young people in Myanmar. I actually spoke to a young person in Myanmar who had orchestrated, at great risk to their life, a massive R2P like floating sort of symbol that could be seen from the air, I guess explicitly to alert the world that our human rights are being violated and we have human rights. So surely the people who guarantee those
- [37:51]
Dana Al Kurd
rights
- [37:53]
Robert Evans
will intervene to protect those rights. So like you saw signs explicitly calling on asean, on the un, on the European Union, on the United States, and like also people trying to make signs that were very funny so that they would go viral in English because they wanted the world to see them. And they figured if the world saw them, they'd be like, huh, human rights are being violated. And it took a lot of dead people for I think, because that's a very entrenched view that many of us have right, that we have these rights. We do. But rights only matter insofar as they are someone is prepared to use force to protect them in this instance. And nobody was apart from the people of Myanmar themselves.
- [38:36]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [38:36]
Robert Evans
So rights based discourse still vary, very common there. Now those rights are backed up by people who initially used homemade and 3D printed firearms and now have better firearms. But the reason those people have those rights is because they fought for them, not because the rights enforced themselves or any other state decided to enforce them.
- [38:56]
James Stout
No, exactly. It is pretty revealing that when a people desperately in need for their rights to be upheld by some force or by some army or whatever. And they're making explicit appeals to it. And the international community as a whole is like, nah, they get a close horizon areas, but they were unalienable.
- [39:18]
Robert Evans
So yeah, great.
- [39:20]
James Stout
They still technically had them sort of maybe, right, yeah. They should have bought a premium package. And Also, yes, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, I did not forget it was very much justified as a mission of liberation and freeing people from a dictator, while it was much again, oil and influence as it always is, which is why you will now have to listen to ads. So Cool Zone Media can get some much needed oil and influence.
- [39:50]
Robert Evans
Nice.
- [40:01]
James Stout
And we're back now loaded with petrodollars. It is time to dive deeper into the critiques. So someone whose work was incredibly influential in the realm of philosophy and ethics was Simone Vail. James, I think you may have heard of her.
- [40:18]
Robert Evans
Yeah, she was with the Darutti column, an international group. She burned herself frying eggs in a farmhouse that they liberated and had to go home.
- [40:28]
James Stout
Yes, she is a fascinating figure.
- [40:31]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Someone who just forest gumps through the history of amazing things in that time period.
- [40:38]
James Stout
Yes, I have written this down in the script, but when she was 8 or 9, she refused to eat chocolate or something in solidarity with the soldiers overseas or the soldiers who were fighting in World War I. There's tons of incredible stuff in there.
- [40:54]
Robert Evans
Oh, amazing. I didn't hear that.
- [40:56]
James Stout
Like, she taught at a university. But then in 1934, she took a leave of absence from teaching to work anonymously in two different labor factories because she better wanted to understand the working class. A few years later, she would join the anarchist Doruti column, as you said, and fight in the Spanish Civil War, where she very badly wanted to fight, despite her outspoken pacifism. But her comrades held her back because she was incredibly near sighted. They were like, yeah, we don't trust you with this machine gun.
- [41:28]
Akilah Hughes
Which.
- [41:29]
Emily Oster
Fair.
- [41:29]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [41:30]
James Stout
And she died eventually at a very young age in 1943 due to her poor health, that is, while she was sick. She would only eat whatever she thought residents of Nazi occupied France would be able to eat and refuse to eat more, as her biographer Richard Ries summed up. As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it, it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love. Well, that's badass in my book.
- [41:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, It's a cool way of phrasing too. It's a beautiful sentence.
- [42:01]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [42:02]
James Stout
Simone was very critical of the concept of rights, and she much preferred to speak of obligations. The latter, she argued, are much more fundamental than rights, because rights are only meaningful to the extent that others respect those rights. To her, rights are relative and related to certain conditions, but obligations exist outside those conditions. On the surface, this may seem like the same criticism we had earlier, that they only exist out there, and only because I say so. But I think she moves further than that because she sees a system that has its foundation on these obligations, specifically what she calls the need for a soul. To her, these needs are the things that we as human beings require to thrive. Food, shelter, medicine, but also equality, freedom of opinion, and security in the form of not having any persistent fears. There are many more in her book. I'm not going to delve much deeper in it because I think the gist is out there. This may seem like a very theoretical difference, but let me illustrate what I think is a very strong example of, like, rights versus obligations. I have stolen this metaphor from the Philosophize, this podcast, okay. From the episode in which the host discusses the modern day concentration camp and Giorgio Agamben. So all the credit to that host for this metaphor. So let's get back to those chickens that used to belong to James, but that I now own. Like, it is my right, in a legal and economic sense to sell these at the markets. And it is my right to sell them for any price that I think they are worth. Just as it is my right to very quickly go out of business because nobody wants to buy my $5,000 chickens. And now I'm going to be a bit provocative. James, feel free to respond.
- [43:52]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [43:53]
James Stout
What if someone were to be forced into prostitution either by coercion or violence? Okay, why is that wrong? Why is that disgusting and abhorrent?
- [44:04]
Robert Evans
Yeah, for many reasons.
- [44:06]
James Stout
Is the reason for that because this person has a legal right to not be forced into prostitution, or is there something else going on there?
- [44:15]
Robert Evans
Well, there's a lot more going on there. Right? It's a part. Because it's disgusting to us as people that someone's forced to do this without their consent and without consenting actively to doing a thing that they are being forced to do against their will.
- [44:31]
James Stout
Yeah, exactly. But it speaks to the nature of rights that, like, your first instinct is not to say, oh, but that's against the law. Your first instinct is to say like, oh, geez, that's fucked up.
- [44:42]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that's wrong.
- [44:44]
James Stout
And it is wrong because what you're doing is like violating the agency, the autonomy, the dignity, the sense of belonging to themselves and their bodies. It is something that. It is much more a gut feeling, something that is. That exists out there, rather than pointing to Law 23, subsection to paragraph three, whatever.
- [45:07]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [45:08]
James Stout
And we can put it in a more concrete example, like the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. In short, for those who are not familiar with either the book or the show, it's about a patriarchal, totalitarian republic, very religious, where some women are forcibly assigned to powerful and high status men to bear children for them. Now, in this society, the sexual violence, the forced pregnancies, the births, they're entirely legal, like the people doing it. And that's not just the men in those books. They are doing it within their rights. It is legal what they're doing. But also going to ask you, as like the listener, does that make it any less fucked up?
- [45:47]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [45:48]
Robert Evans
Like, I guess we can argue the same thing. In the Islamic State, right. There were people who were forced into slavery, sexually assaulted. Sexual violence was commonplace. It was at least accepted. I'm not familiar with the exact legal structures of the Islamic State with regard to that, but certainly it was widespread and not condemned. And like that doesn't matter. It was still wrong. It was still disgusting.
- [46:12]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [46:12]
Robert Evans
Which is why people, including people in Kurdistan, decided to take up arms against it.
- [46:18]
James Stout
And very rightfully so.
- [46:19]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I guess they're like universal human rights were violated that their rights under the Islamic State, in so much as that was a state, which it was. We're not.
- [46:30]
James Stout
Yeah. And we'll get there. Because there's like a difference between having universal rights and having a sovereign that. That is going to respect them.
- [46:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [46:39]
James Stout
So, yeah, sorry for that painful metaphor. I think that both of these make it clear, although maybe painfully clear, like legality has nothing to do with it. Like the rights have nothing to do with it. It's your human response and your lack, or the fact that you have a sense of decency that makes something like wrong or right.
- [46:59]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [47:00]
James Stout
So the right to not be preyed upon can be taken away as they're all right, but the sense of injustice, of wrongness will not. There exists an obligation to the people in your community, regardless of which community or the size of it, to not do horrific shit like that and in the process destroy part of someone's soul. And being the lack of any empirical data does not mean that there isn't something there, even if it's just like a gut feeling or a sense of justice. Whale and myself would say it's wrong because we have an obligation to others to respect them. That by like just being born human you have to have your agency and your autonomy and your dignity respected. But do you know what will destroy your soul and being?
- [47:48]
Robert Evans
Is it the products and services that support this podcast?
- [47:51]
James Stout
It definitely is.
- [47:52]
Robert Evans
They already have.
- [48:04]
James Stout
And we're back after the identity crushing stream of serducts and produces or whatever. To quickly recap what we said before the break, which is that you can say that there is something beyond rights, as rights can conveniently be taken away when those in power think that is what they need to do. It is what Simone Vale would call the difference between being a subject and being an object. Being a subject is something in the sense that you can be subject to a queen. Through that lens, being a subject means that you're only seen as something that is value right in relation to the queen. There is a relational aspect here that defines what over who you are. Being seen as an object here means that you exist in and of yourself and that you're not defined because of the definition of something else. I think a good way to view this is to think of someone's child, son or daughter, and thinking of that same person as just themselves. Like in the first one, it's the relation that you emphasize. In the latter, you just see them as a person regardless of linear image or relation. Yeah, I fear this next part could be rather complex, but I'll do my best to go into layman's terms. It evolves some pretty complex philosophy about authors whom many people have read but few understand. Yeah, myself included. I'm an idiot. I'm just trying to make it make sense and make it like clear and legible for everyone who hasn't read these authors, and I probably wouldn't recommend reading them. So we're speaking of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. Both made some major critiques of human rights, and these are in relation to each other to an extent. So to start off, they make distinctions and definitions on what it is to be human and what it is to be recognized as a human being. Arendt uses the terms Zoe and Bios for this. Like the Greek terms, okay, Zoe is the idea and the concept of life in a purely biological sense, as just a biological unit that breathes, that consumes, that defecates.
- [50:19]
Robert Evans
Okay?
- [50:20]
James Stout
Think of someone living alone in the mountains without anyone else nearby or any contact with other human beings. Like biologically, yes, they are human, there's no denying that. But in terms of bios, meaning a life that has meaning and that is political, it becomes Less obvious that that person alone in the mountains can be recognized as human.
- [50:43]
Robert Evans
Sure, yeah. Part of being human is being part of a community. Right. We only are able to fully realize ourselves in the context of other people.
- [50:51]
James Stout
Exactly. And that is what I'm getting at. Not saying that this person that abounds is not a human being, but they're isolated and not part of a community. Think of making meaningful moments together with those dear to you. That is, in a sense, the meaning that the term bios kind of points to. Living alone in the woods also means there's no community or no sovereign power to hold someone accountable or to uphold their supposedly unalienable rights. As a little pointer between I'm going to use like state power, sovereign, or government pretty much interchangeably because I don't want to repeat the same words or say power every two sentences. I think that would make for a boring listening. But just so you as the listener know that that is somewhat intentional. So it is in the context of the man in the mountains that we should interpret Zoe and bios not like as in literal black and white checkboxes, but like, as a nuanced lens to look through. And if we look through this lens, then the following pops up. For someone to have bios, there needs to be a community. There needs to be a sovereign, or as Hannah Arendt would say, a political community that can be any group of people, any country, political identity or ideology that doesn't really matter for you to belong to a political community, whichever one of those categories it is. But that is the most fundamental right, according to Hannah Arendt, and we'll get into why she also calls it like, the right to have rights, the right to belong to a political community that in turn cherishes you and upholds those rights for you. The man in the woods has no one to do that for him. He lacks a certain political and legal recognition of his humanity that comes with being part of community. If we think of people on the move, of migrants or of stateless people, then we can look at them as not having a political community. And in the context of bios, as Aaron puts it, there is also no political community to emphasize their humanity or uphold their human rights.
- [53:10]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [53:11]
James Stout
Because there is no system or sovereign that can uphold them or enforce those ideas.
- [53:17]
Robert Evans
Sometimes they're able to act collectively to protect each other. Right. Like within that. But that is a different thing. Right? That's. Yeah, that's. I guess you could call that obligation.
- [53:30]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [53:30]
Robert Evans
That is their obligation to each other that they are fulfilling when they do that. Right, like that. As you say that. No. No powerful entity is obliged to protect their rights. You could look at the example of outdoor detention in the U.S. right? I remember once I was out feeding people in outdoor detention with Prop. Actually, he also has a podcast on this network. And we ran into this guy, had, like a. He had like, a polo on. And I was like, the fuck are you doing? Who the fuck is this? He had, like, nice shoes. And I was like, what's happening out here? This guy was from the office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. Because you have a bunch of rights in the U.S. right? That person came along and they had a clipboard and they did a bunch of stuff and it didn't matter, right? There's people. A bunch of those people's rights were being violated. I'm sure the person ticked a bunch of boxes on their. Like, which rights are being violated for them. It didn't feed those people. We did. Didn't keep them warm that night. We did. Didn't build them a shelter. We did.
- [54:25]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [54:25]
Robert Evans
Like, it was us fulfilling our obligations to each other, not their theoretical rights under the state, which mattered.
- [54:31]
James Stout
Exactly. And just to point out, like, they're prior to that, not necessarily part of your political community, but you just feel that it is your obligation as a human being to, like, I can help these people. I can feed them. I can keep them warm.
- [54:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah, exactly. Like. And is it Locke who does ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
- [54:50]
James Stout
Maybe not Hemingway.
- [54:53]
Robert Evans
Hemingway wrote the book, but it's based on. No, it's. Oh, man. Shit, we gotta Google this. Because otherwise that's not For Whom the Bell Tolls. John Donne. So other John. I think about that a lot. It's something I would hear, like, occasionally referenced in reference to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, including by John McCain, who wrote an obituary for the last American international brigadier to die. Which is, like, one of the less shitty things John McCain did, which he did many shitty things, terrible things. But, like, inherent in that is the idea that, like, the bell here being the funerary bell, right? That, like, I guess when humanity is devalued, my humanity is devalued. And, like, I am not fully realized as a person if people are being stripped of their dignity in my presence, in my community. So, like, those people are not part of my community, but, like, my community is being devalued because humanity is being devalued in my community. And the way I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen is by stepping in in order to protect those people, to keep those people safe, to show those people that fundamentally human dignity is guaranteed by other humans and not by other states.
- [56:02]
James Stout
Yeah, very well said. So I have one last example here. If there's too many examples for the listener, I apologize. But I just want to make it clear so I've done my best to find examples and explain them. The Sentinelese people in the Bay of Bengal, I think most of you have heard of them. They're like an indigenous people that are isolated on a single island and they've had little to no contact with the mainland or air quotes Modern world. Yeah, I think in 2018 or something there was a missionary.
- [56:35]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Every few years some bellend will try and go and give them the Bible and they'll kill them or fire arrows at them or.
- [56:41]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, those people.
- [56:44]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [56:44]
James Stout
Now like I can't guarantee that this is how what is going on because I haven't spoken to them obviously, but I'm guessing that they don't speak of human rights and we, the non sentinelese people don't really speak of their right to health care, their right to freedom of opinion. My point is more that like unless there is contact with them and they become like a political community, there are no, really not any human rights for them to speak of, of to uphold. Like in a sense they don't have human rights because there is no contact and nothing to uphold or enforce at this point. James, this is where we are going to isolate ourselves on an island until it is time for part two.
- [57:26]
Robert Evans
Yeah, perfect.
- [57:26]
James Stout
Looking forward to seeing you very soon again for our next shin kicking badass.
- [57:33]
Robert Evans
And I am fashioning a bow to defend us from Christian missionaries in boats.
- [57:37]
James Stout
Yes. Let us also throw like spears and arrows at missionaries coming to our isolated island.
- [57:43]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [57:54]
Laurie Santos
Here at the happiness Lab we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well being. Like we've been thinking about the loneliness epidemic all wrong.
- [58:05]
Robert Evans
You can be lonely in a marriage,
- [58:07]
Laurie Santos
you can be lonely at a party. And I don't think loneliness is actually about solitude.
- [58:11]
Ryan Weiss
Loneliness is about something much bigger.
- [58:14]
Laurie Santos
Or that we should get rid of small talk altogether.
- [58:17]
Emily Oster
We talk about current events, we talk about what you do for a living, but not do you love what you
- [58:21]
Akilah Hughes
do for a living?
- [58:21]
Emily Oster
Is this your dream job?
- [58:22]
Laurie Santos
Or that the mental health crisis isn't what we think it is and that kids today are doing better than we assume it was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. We are so scared that we are going to underreact to a severe challenge that we tend to overreact. For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'mma check you, okay? If you do some in the news
- [59:09]
James Stout
that don't sound good, I'm a play.
- [59:11]
Akilah Hughes
You.
- [59:12]
Laurie Santos
Join Yamaneka Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast, you're the Problem With Yamaneika.
- [59:19]
Robert Evans
Do you know I just found out who Sydney Sweeney was.
- [59:22]
Laurie Santos
New episodes weekly every Wednesday as part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Note.
- [59:28]
Robert Evans
If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men do better or do less so
- [59:34]
Ryan Weiss
I don't have to do so much.
- [59:35]
Laurie Santos
So join Yamaneika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamaneika and I'm out. Listen to youo're the Problem With Yamaneika starting on July 15th on the iHeartRadio
- [59:46]
Ryan Weiss
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [59:52]
Robert Evans
You said to me, yo, you know, keep at it cause you let me rap for you. It was magical for all of us. Ah, we made it.
- [59:59]
Dana Al Kurd
We made.
- [60:00]
Robert Evans
I'm like, we, you know, I'm like,
- [60:02]
James Stout
I know these guys, but who are you?
- [60:05]
Robert Evans
I'm MC Gin and this is Laugh. But not least, I'll be chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times. Like the co founder of Ruff Ryders, Darren D. Dean. Talking about as a kid. Do you remember that we met even way before that?
- [60:20]
James Stout
Let me think.
- [60:21]
Robert Evans
Did you walk up to the gate? That was me, Dee.
- [60:23]
Dana Al Kurd
That was you?
- [60:24]
Robert Evans
That was me the day we found out that you and the whole crew was at Hit Factory. The the mission was to get me to go to the gate, start freestyling and see if I could get in the studio. I'm rapping and then suddenly I hear a voice.
- [60:35]
Laurie Santos
Hey, open the gate.
- [60:36]
Robert Evans
Let let him in the gate. Slowly went gum, gum, gum, gum, gum, gum. They all there watching this and they watch me walk into there. And that is a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. Listen. And last but not least, with McGin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [60:55]
Akilah Hughes
I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert.
- [60:58]
James Stout
And I'm Perry Wilson.
- [60:59]
Emily Oster
I'm a medical doctor.
- [61:00]
Akilah Hughes
And this is our new podcast, Wellness
- [61:03]
Emily Oster
actually, because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays, and
- [61:08]
James Stout
some of it is awesome and some
- [61:10]
Akilah Hughes
of it is, well, actually, bull. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore.
- [61:21]
Emily Oster
Each episode we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic.
- [61:27]
Akilah Hughes
Like what's the deal with peptides?
- [61:29]
Ryan Weiss
What's the deal with GLP1s?
- [61:30]
Akilah Hughes
What's the deal with creatine?
- [61:31]
Emily Oster
What's the deal with cupping?
- [61:32]
Akilah Hughes
What's the deal with sleep?
- [61:34]
Emily Oster
So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. Might actually be just what the doctor
- [61:38]
Akilah Hughes
or the economist ordered.
- [61:41]
Emily Oster
Listen to Wellness actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone.
- [61:57]
James Stout
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I am still Mick and I am still with James. If for some reason you haven't listened to the first parts, I would strongly urge you to do that first, because we're going to dive straight in here and I'm afraid you're going to miss a lot of context and a lot of explanation as to what's going on. So, yes, our next shin kicking badass is Giorgio Agamben. I mentioned him before. Some of you may have heard from him because around the COVID pandemic, his work became incredibly popular all of a sudden. He follows a similar philosophical path that Dathana Arendt already laid out, but he goes like a few steps further. I'm sorry to say that we have once again some concepts to explore before we get to go deeper. Agamben strongly uses the concept of homo sacer. It's a Latin term used during some time in the Roman Republic. It means sacred man or accursed man. It is a person who is banned from society, might be killed by anybody, but must not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. So Akaben sees this as someone who is exiled from society and also not recognized as someone fit or worthy of being used in religious rituals. Like, in fact, the Roman state has declared that this person is just a biological life form. Okay, that's in Essence, what this boils down to, it upholds like the sovereign power over this person because it is like the Roman state that could enforce this or retract it, but for all intents and purposes, the homo sacer is stripped of humanity from political community, essentially rightless. And this is also a really weird position because you're still sort of subject to the state without the state wanting anything to do with you. Almost like a very one directional relationship. And Akambahn in turn adapts this concept of the homo sacer into his state of exception. In his work of the same name, he lays out how in times of emergency, usually this is what like the German philosopher Carl Schmidt often referred to, but Agamben is taking it in a, in a much cooler direction than Carl Schmitt ever did.
- [64:25]
Robert Evans
Okay.
- [64:26]
James Stout
In times of emergency, where on a political level the decision is made to increase the legal power of the sovereign system, this increase can be an addition of new laws or the annulment of others. The question of how legal this is, this increase in power is often a very, very gray area. Like martial law is a good example. Like there is a real perceived or imaginary threat to the country or society and thus whoever is in power invokes martial law and suddenly all bets are off because they can't be restricted by law. In order to deal with that situation, many a dictator has invoked martial law just so they could crush down on everything.
- [65:11]
Robert Evans
Yeah. There are so many places where I can think of where there's been a state of exception or a state of emergency for decades. Right. To an extent. Since the United States passed the Patriot Act. Or like, you know, in the United States we famously have the first 10amendments because the Constitution, which are referred to as a Bill of Rights. Right. Which enshrined many of the things that the state isn't supposed to do to us. Unless you happen to be in the border enforcement zone or subject to some of these like sneak and peek warrants that the Patriot act allows. Right. Or other. Other pieces of legislation as well.
- [65:45]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [65:45]
Robert Evans
Like there are many, many, many examples of this.
- [65:49]
Ryan Weiss
Yeah.
- [65:49]
James Stout
Where Hannah Arendt has like very distinct, like the Zoe and the Bios and Arganben sort of sees like an in between area where. Yeah. You become this homo sacer, where like you're not really the one, you're not really the other. And in that gray area just anything can happen.
- [66:06]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I think that like humans without rights concept is.
- [66:10]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [66:10]
Robert Evans
Useful.
- [66:11]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [66:11]
James Stout
And they become so fluid in a bad way. Like if I were to arrive at like lax, if I make the wrong joke while I'm in the gray zone, then probably every one of my orifices will be searched for, like, drugs or other things. But once I step out of lax, then, like, the LAPD can't do that to me.
- [66:31]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [66:32]
James Stout
Without a whole different bureaucratic legal animal that they'll have to deal with.
- [66:37]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [66:38]
James Stout
But, like, physically, I just took three steps, you know.
- [66:41]
Robert Evans
Right. Yeah, yeah. Or, like, if you think of the rights that migrants and refugees have.
- [66:47]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [66:47]
Robert Evans
Like, they can be in the same space as someone, but have completely different rights. Think about how the Rohingya people are in the camps in Bangladesh, for example. Like, a Bangladeshi person could come there, but they would have very different experiences of the state and their rights, especially if they tried to walk out of that.
- [67:04]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [67:05]
Robert Evans
Together.
- [67:05]
James Stout
Or like, Palestinians living in certain areas. And the Palestinians will need to be able to identify themselves at each checkpoint where they have to wait two hours. And an Israeli person will just walk through it and wave to the guards. They're the exception, so they can be treated differently.
- [67:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah. You literally have roads that they can't go on. Right. But, yeah, a Palestinian and Israeli person is a good example.
- [67:31]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [67:31]
Robert Evans
They could be holding hands, walking together, and enter a checkpoint, and from the moment they entered to the moment they left, they would have completely divergent experiences.
- [67:40]
James Stout
Exactly. And a whole different set of, like, legal rights and legal protections.
- [67:46]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [67:47]
James Stout
Another example that I wrote down here was, like, the pandemics and the lockdowns, because I know at least in the Netherlands, when we had lockdowns, it was very unclear as to if it was constitutionally even allowed to do that and if the crisis was severe enough that to justify those measures on a legal level.
- [68:06]
Robert Evans
Right, yeah. It's also a discussion here.
- [68:09]
James Stout
Yes. Well, I'm not an expert on the US So I can only use my own example here at this point. This is where all the critiques sort of start to blend together. And this is where I hope, like, it's going to make the most sense. As Simone Fael already said, like, rights are conditional and require power to uphold them. For you, as a subject, what we run into now is this distinction between being human as a biological unit or as a political one, because the latter has access to rights, the former doesn't. And as a consequence, that person becomes this homo sacer, in a sense, outside of society and the protections that that offers. You get all the downsides of being a subject, but none of the benefits, like the social contract sort of becomes revoked.
- [68:59]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [68:59]
James Stout
The tricky part is that power can also treat you differently based on, like, biological categories or political categories. Like, prison labor is a very good example of this. Yep. Under the 13th Amendment, slave labor was made illegal except as a punishment. So as soon as power can give you a punishment, some of your rights just dissipate.
- [69:23]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [69:23]
James Stout
Like, another. Another one is healthcare. Like, if you're a CIS woman experiencing, like, menopausal issues, it's relatively easy to get, like, hormone treatments. But if you're a trans woman, it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult or downright illegal to get those very same hormones. And that's also, like, this categorization in order to treat someone differently. So what I think I'm trying to say is that power can also navigate in such a way that even if you are part of a political community, it can negate the rights and the human rights that should come with it by categorizing you differently. This is Agamben's massive critique, because rather than you getting human rights and getting them respected by power, it makes you dependent on power to recognize and honor it.
- [70:18]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [70:18]
James Stout
In a way, human rights become a liability instead of a protection, because power, the sovereign, the state, can still decide whether or not to recognize you as, like, biological or political. So one of the most tangible and powerful examples of this not being recognized comes from our good friend James President Gregory Wookie Bush and his seaside resort in Guantanamo Bay. Yeah, I think I had that correct. Under international law, you're still entitled to have certain human rights when you are detained as a prisoner of war. I'll be citing a little bit from the third Geneva Convention in which this was, like, ratified. The status of POWs only applies in international armed conflict. POWs are usually members of armed forces or of one of the parties to a conflict who fall into the hands of the opposing party. The third Geneva convention also classifies other categories of people who have the right to POW status or may be treated as such. POWs must be treated humanely in all circumstances. They are protected against any act of violence, as well as against intimidation, insults, and public curiosity. International humanitarian law also defines the minimum acceptable conditions of detention, covering such issues as accommodation, food, clothing, hygiene, and medical care. So you know where this is going. Yeah, because Greg Water Walker Bush circumvented this all by proclaiming that certain people were not prisoners of war, but rather enemy combatants, and as such, not subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention. It's a bait and switch that is as smart as it is, like, diabolical, because power simply switches around the political community. That applies to you and suddenly they can do whatever they want to you because you're just the biological unit. It's a linguistic switcheroo.
- [72:31]
Robert Evans
Yeah. And it shows how our rights are perceived in US Law to come from the state as a guarantor of them.
- [72:38]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [72:38]
Robert Evans
Like, because these people were quote, unquote, terrorists and they weren't fighting on behalf of a state. Therefore obligations to them and to the state that we're at war with don't exist.
- [72:51]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [72:52]
Robert Evans
And like, so they. Therefore, they don't have rights because there is not a state to say, hey, you're violating them. Even though many, many Americans, including in many, many court cases, said, hey, you're violating their rights. And even when they were citizens of other countries, British people were in Guantanamo Bay.
- [73:09]
Ryan Weiss
Yeah.
- [73:09]
James Stout
From. From all over the world.
- [73:11]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [73:11]
James Stout
Also, I think there never has been a single conviction because of whatever the fuck happened in Guantanamo Bay.
- [73:17]
Robert Evans
Yeah. They have their own special court. I don't know if they've convicted people there, but they definitely have a court there.
- [73:23]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [73:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I didn't know about the convictions, but I remember teaching a sociology course and getting into Guantanamo Bay quite a lot. But that was some time ago. I've had students who were. Who served at Guantanamo Bay. And I think it's fair to say that, like, that the psychological damage that does to everybody involved should not be underestimated. Like, it goes back to your idea of, like, we have an inherent gut feeling of right and wrong and participating in something that you know to be wrong isn't good for you. It's not. It's not the same as being tortured and waterboarded, but knowing that you are in a place. I. To be clear, I don't know anyone who has participated in any of that, like, enhanced interrogation bullshit. But just being a fucking cook in a place where that happens is still damaging, I'm sure, to you and your sense of being a person who believes in their obligation to others.
- [74:19]
James Stout
Yeah. I would not trust anyone who wouldn't be affected by that.
- [74:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [74:26]
James Stout
That person who is not affected by that is either a psychopath or dead inside.
- [74:31]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [74:32]
James Stout
I'm not going to be nuanced about that. But this is the core of the entire critique against human rights, because it is simply the state decides that you're not part of a political community or just cuts you off from it and suddenly we can play like Hotel California 247 and drive you insane or lack of sleep. Too hot or too cold. It's so weird to have something that we are taught is unalienable it's actually just the premium option, but you can't buy it. There is a power that has to say, oh no, this person has the premium package and you get to have human rights. It is this right to have rights, as Arend said, that makes it really weird because you're still dependent and unless recognized, you're still just an animal existing out there. It's. Yeah, so, and this is why I thought it would be a good idea to have this discussion because I think we can look at pretty much any continent at the moment and see things like, oh, you can see this pattern everywhere.
- [75:36]
Robert Evans
Yeah, it's very relevant to the United States right now, right? Because like we got, you know, largely the Department of Homeland Security going out there doing stuff which is violative of people's rights, both in US and international law terms. And there's been a response, right, by certain groups of people. And I understand, right, if you have spent your whole life seeing rights as guaranteed by the state and the state is a benevolent actor, then it's hard to make that mind switch. I do understand that. But it actually doesn't matter. And this is very hard for some people to grasp, judging by my replies on BSKY app. Yeah, that's actually illegal. It doesn't matter, right? Like people just being like, oh, they can't do that while they're doing. Doesn't matter that they're violating like half the Bill of Rights in a two minute period. They're still doing it. There is no accountability because the state doesn't hold itself accountable. So like when we need to think of a framework where like our, our assumptions can line up with reality, you
- [76:31]
James Stout
come back to obligations. Because like what's, yeah, what do you think is right and wrong to happen to people?
- [76:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah, we'd meet that a lot with outdoor detention actually. Like when we were feeding people, like you'd be like, hey, just trying to get help from folks, you know, like trying to be like, hey, you know, we're trying to feed these folks and help us out, give us whatever. Like people will be asking friends and their community and then folks would be like, well they can't do that. They have the right to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'd be like, cool, do you want to come tell them? Like, we'll see how it goes, I guess. But like they are doing it and we have an obligation to take care of them. And like, I think people have become very comfortable outsourcing their obligation to the state without realizing that. Therefore they no longer get to Decide who gets rights and when. When you do that.
- [77:22]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [77:23]
James Stout
I think it's important to highlight, like, this little switcheroo. If you think of like, the Palestine protests, they can't outright ban protests because then you're very much violating the Constitution.
- [77:37]
Robert Evans
Right. Yeah.
- [77:37]
James Stout
But if you say, like, oh, no, but this is not because they're protesting. This is because it's anti Semitic and we need to protect these other people. The acts that are happening on the ground have not really changed, but the way you can approach this from a legal and a political level become a whole different ballgame. And I think that that doesn't pertain to human rights as much as, like, the example you, you mentioned. But it is, again, this bait and switch that keeps happening.
- [78:03]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [78:04]
James Stout
And I'm sure everyone listening can think of times or examples of that. And it is not great.
- [78:11]
Robert Evans
Yeah, It's. It's not great.
- [78:24]
James Stout
Yeah. That is all I have. Unfortunately, I don't have any advice or anything how to deal with this for you as the listener.
- [78:33]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [78:34]
James Stout
It doesn't help to tell if a cop. They're violating your human rights. They won't listen.
- [78:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I think it could be easy for people to assume that this is a hopeless thing. Right. Because the rights only matter when the state decides they matter, that therefore they don't matter. But it can also be a hopeful thing because maybe if we look at the example, I write about this in my book of the Yazidis when they were in Shanghai and they were on their mountain and the Islamic State, I think it was ISIS at that time, not sure if it had declared itself the Islamic State yet was surrounding them and like, very much coming to violate every single concept of rights and decency that one can imagine for a human being. Right. And I remember interviewing a Yepege commander about this in Rojava and him saying, obviously I'm translating here, so not a direct quotation, but we were very disappointed in the states of the world at that moment. And so we decided to go ourselves. Like, it was a very small number. Right. Like, different accounts have had different numbers of, I think entirely Kurdish. We can, we can debate of if a ZD people are Kurdish or not. But, like, it's not the place for that, is it?
- [79:41]
Dana Al Kurd
No.
- [79:42]
Robert Evans
People from the YPG who went to the mountain and eventually built corridor with their blood, with their bodies. Right. To allow those people to come to Rojava. Now, unfortunately, those people. This is a very good example now I think about it, actually. Right. So those people acted as guarantors of someone else's rights by fulfilling their obligation. Now, if we look at where the Yazidi people are, in some part, not every single Yazidi person, but many Yazidi people are still in refugee camps in Iraq.
- [80:13]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [80:13]
Robert Evans
The conditions that they are in. We hear a lot about how bad conditions are for the people in the Islamic State prisons or were. We do not hear as much about how bad conditions are for the Yazidi people. But they are bad.
- [80:24]
Dana Al Kurd
Right?
- [80:24]
Robert Evans
They have a right to a much better life. The states of the world are not fulfilling that right. They are not fulfilling their obligation to these people who did nothing other than live the way they've lived for thousands of years. And because that way was considered to be heretical by the Islamic State, they were targeted for genocide. Right. And would have been killed in much greater numbers were it not for those people who were willing to fulfill their obligation to go and defend them. And then the states of the world have let them down again. And so, you know, try to. Try to find a future for themselves. So, like, it's.
- [80:56]
James Stout
We're very good at that.
- [80:58]
Akilah Hughes
Yeah.
- [80:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah. This is the thing that we do.
- [80:59]
James Stout
I may have a hopeful example.
- [81:01]
Robert Evans
Nice.
- [81:02]
James Stout
I told you, James, that I had a random person living in my house. And, well, for you, the listeners, through the community, it became known to us that there was someone who had fled an unsafe home situation. Legal, adult, but I'm not entirely sure how much it should say, but it sounded very serious and we took it very seriously. And I had a spare room at that time. I did not know this person. I only have a first name. I never learned a second name or anything. Never asked for an id. I thought to myself, the world I want to live in is one where someone can feel safe in situations like that. So despite me being a pretty introverted person, I was like, okay, come live here, because you need some place to get back on your feet. You need somewhere to be safe. And that is a way in which you can uphold your obligations to other people also with the safety, security, without persistent fear, a roof over their heads, even just a place to cool down a bit and figure things out. And it would wreck my own political convictions to be able to help in such a situation and not do it, because I find it a little uncomfortable to have a stranger living in my house. Also, for the record, nothing was stolen. Nothing weird or bad happened. This person just lived here for a week and moved on. Yeah, but that is a way in which, like, you could also, in any small way, like, fulfill your obligation to other people. And to live in accordance with, like, your own convictions and your own moral and ideological compass.
- [82:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I think that's a great example of how you can act according to your obligation. Right. And we can all do that in different ways. Right. Like, different senses. And, like, that's one thing. Like, I liked what you said a lot. That, like, if the world you want to live in is one where that person can feel safe. And, like, we only do that by building it ourselves. My perception of politics is that, like, we are wasting our time asking the state to build that world for us. And instead we can build it, like, piece by piece along the way. And I know people perceive anarchism to be chaotic and violent, but most of the time when you're doing anarchism, you're making someone food or giving someone a blanket. Very nice, pleasant things to be doing. It makes me feel better that we can make a world where that happens through our individual actions.
- [83:38]
James Stout
Yeah. Very nice David Graeber metaphor there for the digging a well.
- [83:43]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [83:44]
James Stout
So like, like Mia likes to say, like, put a trans girl on your couch.
- [83:48]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [83:49]
James Stout
That's also protecting human rights.
- [83:50]
Robert Evans
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
- [83:53]
James Stout
I'm sorry, I just thought of it. But yeah, put someone on your couch who is in dire need of a safe place.
- [83:59]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [83:59]
James Stout
But be also safe yourself. Clearly, I think that's all we have. James. This was depressing and then uplifting enough.
- [84:06]
Robert Evans
Yeah. What we do here.
- [84:08]
Emily Oster
Okay.
- [84:08]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [84:09]
James Stout
Well, take care, everyone. And until next time,
- [84:23]
Akilah Hughes
Here at the
- [84:23]
Laurie Santos
Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well being. Like, we've been thinking about the loneliness epidemic all wrong.
- [84:34]
Robert Evans
You can be lonely in a marriage.
- [84:35]
Laurie Santos
You can be lonely at a party. I don't think loneliness is actually about solitude.
- [84:40]
Ryan Weiss
Loneliness is about something much bigger.
- [84:42]
Laurie Santos
Or that we should get rid of small talk altogether.
- [84:45]
Emily Oster
We talk about current events. We talk about what you do for
- [84:48]
Ryan Weiss
a living, but not, do you love
- [84:49]
Akilah Hughes
what you do for a living?
- [84:50]
Emily Oster
Is this your dream job?
- [84:51]
Laurie Santos
Or that the mental health crisis isn't what we think it is and that kids today are doing better than we assume. It was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. We are so scared that we are going to underreact to a severe challenge that we tend to overreact. For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I' ma check you, okay? If you do some in the news
- [85:38]
Robert Evans
that don't sound good, I'mma play you.
- [85:41]
Laurie Santos
Join Yamanika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on our new podcast. You're the Problem with Yamanika.
- [85:48]
Robert Evans
Do you know I just found out who Sydney Sweeney was.
- [85:51]
Laurie Santos
New episodes weekly every Wednesday as part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network.
- [85:57]
Robert Evans
If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men do better or do less so
- [86:02]
Ryan Weiss
I don't have to do so much.
- [86:04]
Laurie Santos
So join Yamaneika. Each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to youo're the Problem with yamaneika. Starting on July 15th on the iHeartRadio
- [86:15]
Ryan Weiss
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
- [86:18]
Akilah Hughes
your podcast,
- [86:21]
Robert Evans
you said to me, yo, you know, keep at it. Cause you let me rap for you. It was magical for all of us. Ah, we made it.
- [86:27]
Dana Al Kurd
We made it.
- [86:29]
Robert Evans
I'm like, we.
- [86:30]
Ryan Weiss
You know, I'm like, I know these
- [86:31]
James Stout
guys, but who are you?
- [86:34]
Robert Evans
I'm MC Jen and this is Laugh. But not least, I'll be chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times, like the co founder of Rough Riders, Darren D. Dean. Talking about as a kid. Do you remember that we met even way before that?
- [86:49]
Laurie Santos
Let me think.
- [86:50]
Robert Evans
Did you walk up to the gate? That was me. D. That was you? That was me the day we found out that you and the whole crew was at Hit Factory. The mission was to get me to go to the gate, start freestyling, and see if I could get in the studio. I'm rapping and then suddenly I hear a voice.
- [87:04]
James Stout
Hey, open the gate.
- [87:05]
Dana Al Kurd
Let.
- [87:05]
Robert Evans
Let him in the gate. Slowly went. They all there watching this, and they watch me walk into there. And that is a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. Listen. And last but not least, with McGen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [87:24]
Akilah Hughes
I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert.
- [87:27]
James Stout
And I'm Perry Wilson.
- [87:28]
Emily Oster
I'm a medical doctor.
- [87:29]
Akilah Hughes
And this is our new podcast, Wellness
- [87:31]
Emily Oster
actually, because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays. And some of it is awesome, awesome.
- [87:38]
Akilah Hughes
And some of it is, well, actually bull. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can
- [87:46]
Laurie Santos
tell you what's worth trying out and
- [87:48]
Akilah Hughes
what you can safely ignore.
- [87:49]
Emily Oster
Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and
- [87:55]
Ryan Weiss
wellness topic like what's the deal with peptides? What's the deal with GLP1s?
- [87:59]
Akilah Hughes
What's the deal with creatine?
- [88:00]
Emily Oster
What's the deal with cupping?
- [88:01]
Akilah Hughes
What's the deal with sleep?
- [88:03]
Emily Oster
So join us.
- [88:03]
Dana Al Kurd
As for a weekly dose of sanity
- [88:05]
Emily Oster
might actually be just what the doctor
- [88:07]
Akilah Hughes
or the economist ordered.
- [88:09]
Emily Oster
Listen to wellness actually on the iHeartRadio
- [88:12]
James Stout
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [88:25]
Dana Al Kurd
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it continuing to happen here. Here. I'm Robert Evans, and today I've got a friend of the pod, Laura Jadid, in the studio. Well, not literally in the studio. You know how things work with the Internet, folks. And last weekend, Laura traveled to the Great American State Fair in our nation's beautiful capital of Washington, D.C. where she witnessed a lovely celebration of America's 250th anniversary with no inclement weather whatsoever. Is that right, Laura?
- [88:57]
Akilah Hughes
No.
- [88:57]
Laurie Santos
It was charming and beautiful and very professionally done, and everyone had a lovely time.
- [89:01]
Dana Al Kurd
Awesome stuff, Laura. Yeah. Let's start. Was this just kind of as soon as he said he was doing this, you were like, well, I have to be there. This is just simply not an option for me to miss.
- [89:10]
Laurie Santos
I mean, I definitely wanted to go. I actually was in town for a different. I was there for a religious extremist conference, which is a whole different ball of wax. But it ended early and I was like, you know, I've got several hours before I need to return home. Why don't I go have a nice time at a fair? I haven't been to a fair in a while. I should go to a fair.
- [89:27]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah. So how was it? Walk us through, like, step by step, kind of your experiences at this Wonderful event celebrating 250 years as technically a country.
- [89:36]
Laurie Santos
Yes. Well, I would say the highlight, other than the weather, which we'll get into, was going into. There are. There's these little rooms where they've got booths for states and territories and departments of the government and random sponsors. And my favorite booth, I think, was probably the Department of Justice because it was completely empty. And by empty, I don't mean there wasn't anybody there. I mean that there was a card table, three folding chairs, a battered backdrop and nothing else.
- [90:04]
Dana Al Kurd
Sure, yeah, yeah.
- [90:06]
Laurie Santos
It was incredible and perfect. It was so heavy handed.
- [90:09]
Dana Al Kurd
That's great.
- [90:10]
Laurie Santos
You know, I know people who use subtext and they're all cowards and there are no cowards in this administration.
- [90:15]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, your photos of that were really funny. So I guess the layout is like, it almost seems. Sounds like a trade show or something. We've got like these booths for each of the states and a bunch of government agencies. And then like what all is going on?
- [90:26]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, it's like if a Ren faire and a trade show had a baby and the baby had the worst aspects of both. It was incredible. Like, you enter it and I will say this. So you know people, you've probably seen pictures. Everyone's I think, seen pictures of what this thing looks like.
- [90:40]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [90:40]
Laurie Santos
And the fourth of July was different and that there were a lot of people there because that's the day people came from all over the country to celebrate the Fourth of July in D.C. so it was crowded, but everything else was somehow worse than it looked in the pictures because like, you know, you can see the pictures of like the Temu Arch and you see how bad it looks, but there's nothing in like walking towards it. And from a distance it's like, oh, that's an odd thing in the middle of a field, but it looks fine. And then the closer you get, the worse it looks. And it's just this, this kind of slow dawning horror of this like uncanny valley object. There are the two long buildings that were just going by either side basically for like the length of the Washington Mall. Just little like tent trailer buildings with canvas stapled to them. And the canvas had this illusion of columns and bas reliefs and stuff like that. And we've seen, you know that's in pictures. But walking down the mall and seeing that optical illusion not shift with your perspective is just. It's like being in a really badly rendered video game, but it's real and you're touching grass at the same time. And it's just the whole thing is so eerie and strange. Yeah.
- [91:44]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah. So what can you tell me about like the audience? Like what's the vibe like on the ground when you, when you show up, at least for the first portion of this before the weather starts to change.
- [91:53]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, so I've been to a lot of right wing events. It's kind of what I do. I've been, you know, I go to a lot of these and this was less maga forward. I'm not saying there were no Trump hats or Trump shirts, but they were. It was mostly just like America. Hell yeah. But everybody there was very clearly Republican. Everyone assumed everyone else was a Republican. The booth operators assumed everybody was a Republican. Pretty safe assumption. It was Maga lite, I'd say. I mean, it was almost more horrifying in that way because it felt like it was kind of realizing their fantasy of like all real Americans supporting Trump. You know, these were all the real Americans out here celebrating America. Just regular folks who think Trump's doing a great job and aren't at all disgusted by this fair. So the vibes were kind of cheerfully rancid, I'd say.
- [92:35]
Dana Al Kurd
Cheerfully rancid, yeah. What a great term to describe the country as a whole right now. Do you have any kind of like top faves, like of, of the, of the, the things you saw like on the ground? They're like, what stuff really stuck out to you.
- [92:47]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. So initially, before the weather went to hell and my focus changed, I decided because, you know, there's been a lot of articles about how absolutely God awful and dumb and silly the Sarahs.
- [92:57]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [92:58]
Laurie Santos
I decided to do something a little different. I was going to go to every single state and territory booth and rank them. And the variety in the state and territory booths I found interesting. You know, you had Oregon. Actually I gave out some like fake awards when I wrote about this on my substack and Oregon won the most fuck you award. It was close, but it was just this very small booth. Two of the walls, blank white canvas, kind of plasticky. And then there was just like a thing that said Oregon, the Beaver State. And there was kind of a, a little banner of some of the things that are in Oregon and a Columbia sports like bag just kind of clipped to it with like just a, you know, a kitchen clip. I was like, yeah, well that, that wins this.
- [93:35]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, that sounds like Oregon, baby.
- [93:37]
Laurie Santos
It was great. It was great. Yeah. And then you had like Puerto Rico, which was clearly sponsored by the businesses that want people to go to Puerto Rico for the tax breaks. And it was very lush and there were big screens and it was populated entirely by hot Puerto Rican guys who are teaching middle America how to salsa. And everyone enjoyed that very much so.
- [93:53]
Dana Al Kurd
Oh yeah, that sounds good.
- [93:55]
Laurie Santos
Ye. Georgia's was completely about poultry. AI generated entirely pictures of poultry sponsored by Purdue Chicken.
- [94:02]
Dana Al Kurd
Uh huh. That's what I think of when I think of Georgia, of course.
- [94:06]
Laurie Santos
Poultry, obviously. Yeah, the infamous Georgia poultries. Yes. And so it was like Some states went all out. Some states kind of were like, you should visit our state. Some states were like, we sold this booth to a company. And then some states were like, this is a booth. We are here.
- [94:21]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [94:21]
Dana Al Kurd
We're legally required.
- [94:23]
Laurie Santos
Yes. We have fulfilled our requirement to have an object at this fair.
- [94:28]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [94:28]
Laurie Santos
And then there were these, like, little flashes of normalcy in this otherwise very abnormal event. Those were almost more disconcerting because it was like a glimpse of what might have been. Like the DC Metro had a full scale subway car. Like three subway cars linked up, mockup railroad. And you go inside and it was like a museum of the history of the Metro and how it's helped D.C. and how it was built and fun facts about the Metro. And it's like kind of a boring exhibit, but it was an apolitical celebration of a real achievement.
- [94:57]
Robert Evans
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [94:59]
Laurie Santos
Right. And so, you know, naturally, Freedom250 hid that behind one of the long, low buildings and also a 24.7Kristen revival tent, just to be sure nobody accidentally stumbled on anything that wasn't just weird as hell.
- [95:10]
Dana Al Kurd
Just to make sure there wasn't anything that, like, Americans broadly could enjoy.
- [95:14]
Laurie Santos
Exactly. We can't have that. Like, yeah, it has to be here, but you don't have to put it out of the way. Don't worry about it.
- [95:20]
Dana Al Kurd
Got to be culture war oriented. Yeah.
- [95:22]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. So that was kind of the most normal. If I had to pick a most abnormal. And it's.
- [95:27]
Akilah Hughes
It's tough.
- [95:27]
Robert Evans
It's.
- [95:28]
Emily Oster
It's.
- [95:28]
Laurie Santos
That's a. That's a crowded field.
- [95:29]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [95:30]
Laurie Santos
The Department of Education Booth was completely 100% banners by far right organizations.
- [95:38]
Dana Al Kurd
Awesome. Great. I love to see that.
- [95:40]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [95:40]
Dana Al Kurd
So, yeah, just. Just purely the most like, racist homeschooling, forward cut school funds, vouchers. Yay. Like, teach kids Vietnam didn't happen. Gay people don't exist kind of bullshit. Great. A lot of turning point. Yeah.
- [95:54]
Laurie Santos
Oh, yeah, yeah, Very much. America's a Christian nation.
- [95:56]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [95:56]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. So weirdly, I was surprised TPUSA wasn't in there. One of the ones, Prageru, obviously, you know, the premier university of America, Prageru was in there. Also a thing called Patriot Academy, which I wrote an article about them in 2022, not realizing they would be part of our education system at the time. But I went to their constitutional self defense course at the Whittington center in New Mexico, where we learned how to shoot handguns and also about the biblical origins of our Constitution.
- [96:21]
Dana Al Kurd
So that's good.
- [96:22]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. It seems like a good thing. To teach kids. It seems like a really good program to implement maybe, you know, in our school systems.
- [96:29]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah. It's not like I'm not optimistic about the fact that that's the Department of education's booth.
- [96:35]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah. But it's not optimal.
- [96:38]
Dana Al Kurd
Not great. Yeah. Any other, like, weird kind of culture war signifiers at the booths that are particularly noteworthy?
- [96:45]
Laurie Santos
I mean, so this has been discussed elsewhere, but it clearly can't be mentioned enough. It feels like very emblematic of the time we're in. There was like a. I think it was the American. I don't think it was the Innovators Hall. It was America Made in America Hall. It was a much larger building with a lot more exhibits and right in the center of it, taking up the majority of the real estate. Like the largest by far. Just portraits after portrait, large oil paint portraits of the American flag, including a cross draped in the American flag, because why not? And the artist, whose name I guess is Scott Lobido, there's a quote by him above his beautiful works of exactly one subject, which says, and I quote, I have flirted eye to eye with Mona Lisa in Paris. I have touched the thick, painful brushstrokes of Van Gogh, and I gasped in awe at Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Yet still to this day, my favorite work of art is the Star Spangled Banner.
- [97:42]
Dana Al Kurd
Oh, my God. I'm on this guy's website right now, and the first thing on the Scott Lobido website is sign my petition to install a giant permanent flag at ground zero, New York city. It's got 116,000 signatures. Yeah, that really matters.
- [97:59]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah. No, and if there's one thing that ground zero needs, it's more American flag in the 911 museum. It's not very American. You would never know going down there about patriotism at all.
- [98:08]
Dana Al Kurd
He also has a documentary about him that I think is just an ad streaming on Amazon prime and Apple TV called the Relentless Patriots. Oh, God.
- [98:18]
Laurie Santos
Relentless is a fair adjective. You know, I found the paintings very relentless, personally.
- [98:23]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, his art is incredible stuff here. There's some very. For over 30 years, America's artist Scott Lobido and America's artist Scott Lobido, every first letter in that is capitalized, has respectfully painted thousands of renditions of Old Glory on schools, homes, firehouses, police stations, cars and canvases. Scott's past is rather colorful. Okay, so he's some sort of criminal. Yeah, Amazing shit. I really want to know about his colorful life prior to this point.
- [98:49]
Laurie Santos
Oh, my God. I like to imagine it was some kind of like petty theft and he's like, you know what would make me way more money?
- [98:55]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, it's just painting rude American flag drawings with Donald Trump in them. Or a fist in one of his works of art.
- [99:02]
Laurie Santos
Wow. Like, like a BLM fist or just a fist?
- [99:05]
Dana Al Kurd
No, it's like a fist in a flag and the fist is covered in like paint that's like flag colored.
- [99:11]
Laurie Santos
That makes sense.
- [99:12]
Dana Al Kurd
I'm on Facebook here. He's got a video of it. Let's wait for this fucking thing to start. But it looks like, yeah, he's unveiling a piece of art. I'm trying to click through to the unveiling because I don't care what this fucker has to say. But it looks like it's just a middle finger. Yeah, it's just a middle finger. Well, and I think it's a four fingered hand. No, no, there's a fifth. There's a fifth. But it's just not a very. Well, it's not like a good. Like the proportions are really bad on this. Anyway, I'm sorry, we're spending way too much time on Scott Lobato.
- [99:39]
Laurie Santos
I mean, I will say, if America had to have an artist right now, a poorly drawn middle finger, you could do worse. You could have a worse representation.
- [99:45]
Dana Al Kurd
Poorly sculpted middle finger. Yes.
- [99:47]
Emily Oster
Oh, my God.
- [99:48]
Dana Al Kurd
Speaking of poorly sculpted middle fingers, maybe our advertisers sell that. I don't know. That's not my job. And I'm back with Laura Deed. Laura, let's continue. What next do you want to tell us about the great American state? Also, it's not a state fair. It's like the federal. It's like the national fair.
- [100:15]
Laurie Santos
So, yeah, like the states were there, but kind of as guest stars.
- [100:19]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [100:20]
Ryan Weiss
So I don't know.
- [100:21]
Laurie Santos
I mean, the fair was just. It was, it was pretty boring. There was the Ferris wheel. The merry go round from the world Fair was probably the funnest thing there. That was from, you know, a time when America did things well. But yet, no, it was just kind of a lot of what I've just said, that is until the rain started. And I think that might be a decent place to go because. Yeah, it seemed that despite this having been forecast for about a week, they had made no plans whatsoever for what would happen if it actually did rain at all.
- [100:49]
Dana Al Kurd
Sure. That sounds like the Trump administration. Yeah.
- [100:52]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [100:52]
Dana Al Kurd
God wouldn't let that happen.
- [100:54]
Laurie Santos
No. God loves America. Why would he let it rain? Absolutely not. So at a certain point in the fair, my phone was dying. I had forgotten my charging brick at home, and I decided to charge it at the Department of Justice booth since no one was using it.
- [101:06]
Robert Evans
Sure.
- [101:06]
Laurie Santos
So I stuck in there and I, you know, plugged in my.
- [101:08]
Dana Al Kurd
You pay for the Department of Justice, you know, our tax dollars pay for that power, God damn it.
- [101:12]
Laurie Santos
My tax dollars? Yes. And no one, you know, I occupy the Department of Justice plugged in my phone. And about five minutes after that, this announcement starts going out over the speakers on loop for, like, you know, at least an hour and a half. Just, you know, due to inclement weather, the fair has been, quote, temporarily postponed. Please make your way to the exits, and then we'll let you back in when the storm blows over. And, you know, I'd waited an hour to get in like most people, and it was very hot, and they'd taken my nice pen away, and I was kind of salty about that. I didn't want to wait in line again. And I'm like, I have electricity here. I have my backup pen. They didn't find. I have Sour Patch Kids, and I'm just going to hang out. So I did that for a while until the fair people found me and kicked me out. And then when I went outside, I found that I was not alone in this logic, that a lot of fairgoers were like, we'll just get wet here instead of getting wet out there.
- [101:56]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [101:56]
Laurie Santos
Because they were telling us, you know, we'll go shelter in your cars or in the surrounding buildings. And, you know, we were encouraged not to bring cars because it's Washington, D.C. and there were a lot of people, and there's only so much parking, so people didn't have cars. And this is, you know, 7pm on a national holiday in the middle of D.C. so the buildings mostly weren't open either. So, you know, rather than go be wet outside, people decided to be wet inside. And this went on for about an hour until the cops showed up. And in a scene that I think would be recognizable to you as well, a line of cops just kind of trundling down the fair in motorcycles. The big difference between this and any other protest was that the cops were nice and not screaming or deploying tear gas and just kind of herded everyone out, you know, past the throngs of thousands already trying to get back in, because there was nowhere else for people to go except for to block traffic for blocks and blocks and blocks, which is what they did in the rain. It was. Yeah. And so you've got a crowd of people who are Both soaking wet and dehydrated, which is a great combination. And people start dropping as people are want to do. And so ambulances are coming through the crowd constantly. And you know this line that we always hear about protests, how they're, you know, they're blocking traffic and what if an emergency vehicle needed to come in? Well, that was very much in play, but for some reason that was okay. In this case, they just put on their sirens and went 2 mph and got through for what, I want to say about an hour. This was just everyone standing around, waiting to get back in, getting out of the way for ambulances, everyone getting more and more tightly packed until the crowd started doing those little, like, freaky lurches and shoves that, you know, it's like we're on the verge of a stampede here. Because they've planned this so well that, I mean, what else was going to happen? They weren't going to go home. It was temporarily postponed. So.
- [103:43]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [103:43]
Dana Al Kurd
You want to come back? Yeah. They said temporary. It's a terrible idea.
- [103:47]
Laurie Santos
Right? Yes. Like, don't go home, Hang out, wait outside the gates and get soaking wet. Because this is safer than being inside the fair where you could, like, do things instead of just standing around and being angry.
- [103:58]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah. It's both saying, like, we want you to stay out where you will be in danger, but also we want to put you into a situation where a lot of you have to move at once.
- [104:07]
Laurie Santos
Yes, yes. And they'll be upset and the security will be overwhelmed. Yeah, yeah. It was brilliant. Really, really brilliant stuff. And, you know, the storm continued to get worse. It did not improve. It just got more and more rainy, and people were more and more determined to stay. I mean, there was a little bit of attrition, but mostly, you know, and I fell in with a group that was more determined than most. They were, you know, following the ambulances in because the ambulances were making space, and it was a good way to move up, to just be completely antisocial in this way. Eventually, this group got far enough down the street that it seemed like we were going to make it in. And we kept moving a little bit. And there were the chants of usa. I believe God Bless America was sung at one point, but the progress slowed, and then it stopped. And then music began to play just beyond us inside the fence, and the crowd became a bit more agitated, and God Bless the USA started playing. And that was a huge catastrophe because, you know, that means the speech is about to start and we were going to miss Trump speaking Which was a problem. And then Trump started speaking, and this was the moment that I think that the crowd just completely broke their will and spirits broke because the reverberation from the poorly placed speakers was such that you could not understand him. It was kind of a nightmare world for me in a different way, because you could hear Trump's cadence and voice, but not his words. It was just this, like, psychotic babble of nothing. Just watching over us.
- [105:28]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah. Reading transcripts of it, even. It was just like. Honestly, it's like. It's like asmr.
- [105:33]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [105:34]
Dana Al Kurd
Right. Like, it's just he's. He's creating, at this point, like a soundscape for them to kind of exist inside for a little while.
- [105:41]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah. And then amplified by the fact that it was coming at us, you know, from several directions, out of sync. So truly incomprehensible. Just this weird Trumpian gibberish washing over this crowd. And the boo that erupted when they realized they couldn't hear their leader speak. It was just like a primal, like.
- [105:56]
Dana Al Kurd
That's funny.
- [105:56]
Laurie Santos
It was great. I was having the. I mean, I was soaking wet, having the best time.
- [106:01]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah. They're all in withdrawal. Yeah.
- [106:03]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. It's like. No. And so, you know, he speaks for a while, and midnight passes, and there have been no fireworks. So the Fourth of July, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, has now passed in D.C. with zero fireworks whatsoever. But, you know, everyone was excited for 850,000 fireworks to go off, which they eventually started to do at around, you know, 12:15. Completely obscured by the trees. Completely obscured.
- [106:30]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [106:31]
Laurie Santos
Could not see them at all after all that waiting.
- [106:34]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, I saw your pictures and stuff from it. It's like, you could. In, like, the top corner above a tree, you can see little bits of an explosion peeking out. Just the worst fireworks show. So frustrating.
- [106:45]
Laurie Santos
So bad.
- [106:46]
Emily Oster
Oh, my God.
- [106:48]
Laurie Santos
So I'm walking out and they're playing Journey, you know, so don't stop believing. Like, I have stopped believing.
- [106:53]
Emily Oster
And.
- [106:53]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, then Bon Jovi's living on a prayer. I'm not really living on anything at this point. The smoke is so thick, even if we could have seen it was just an orange glow on the horizon. It was just crackling of bombs.
- [107:03]
Dana Al Kurd
It was just awesome. Well, we will conclude this story and your experience at the Great American State Fair. But first, here's one last ad break. Okay, so how many times, I'm curious, would you estimate you heard Lee Green Woods, God bless the usa, during your time there?
- [107:33]
Laurie Santos
You know, believe it or not just before Trump came out. Just the one, which was.
- [107:36]
Dana Al Kurd
Oh, just one. That's good. That's good.
- [107:38]
Robert Evans
That's not bad.
- [107:38]
Laurie Santos
I was surprised as well. I assumed it would be playing nonstop, but I guess that's like Trump's theme song.
- [107:42]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They wanted to keep it, like, for him. It's like a WWF thing. That's like what plays him on stage or whatever.
- [107:50]
Robert Evans
Exactly, yeah.
- [107:51]
Laurie Santos
You know, I feel like this was a small rebellion because there was music playing inside of the state fair, but what you had was like, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville as I'm, like, staring at the arch, just. I mean, they played Fortunate Son, which I guess isn't surprising.
- [108:05]
Dana Al Kurd
Not surprising. Not really proper, but not really proper.
- [108:08]
Laurie Santos
Katy Perry's Firework played several times because, I mean, you know, of course, firework, Fourth of July. So it wasn't really like a big patriotic music fest. It was just kind of like pop music that was barely related and. Or a little sad.
- [108:21]
James Stout
It was.
- [108:22]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah. Odd.
- [108:24]
Dana Al Kurd
Odd. Well, anything else about the event at all that you feel like is really worth getting into here at the end of our tale.
- [108:32]
Laurie Santos
I mean, the fact that there isn't, I feel like is in itself something like. It was so empty. It was such an empty thing. Everything was so sad and small and lazy and trashy and cheap.
- [108:46]
Dana Al Kurd
The feeling I kept having was that it all felt AI generated. Even the stuff that, like, couldn't have been. Like, the arch looked like an AI generated image just stuck in the real world. And like, a lot of the booths, I mean, there was a lot of AI art there, but it just. Everything. All of your pictures. I kept thinking, it's like my friend is trapped in, like, an AI generated version of reality. That's really lazy.
- [109:10]
Laurie Santos
It's exactly. That is such a good way to put it. It really did. It was just like the ethos of AI infused this place. Like, it's kind of like if you described. I mean, I feel like I'm comparing everything to the back rooms right now, because I just watched it and I'm a little obsessed, but, like, what a.
- [109:25]
Dana Al Kurd
Backrooms vibes, this person.
- [109:28]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. And yet, I mean, it really was like if somebody described what a building was and then someone who'd never seen one before was like, oh, like this, right? Like, yeah, sure. Like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just. No, it was so soulless. I mean, you know, whether or not you care for America, I personally, you know, like, I. Country's got a lot of problems. I would like a lot of them to Be better. But, you know, I live here. I'd like it to be nice. And it was just kind of embarrassing. It was sad that this. This is really what we are right now. We are just. Yeah, this, like, soulless, AI esque phoned in. Sad, partisan. Like, that part is not even the right word. Like radically far right bullshit. Yeah, yeah, it's gross.
- [110:11]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah.
- [110:12]
Dana Al Kurd
Gross.
- [110:12]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [110:13]
Dana Al Kurd
It's, like, funny in a cosmic sense, but mostly depressing, to be honest.
- [110:18]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed my time there because I enjoy depressing horrible things, but I can't say that, like, if I was giving a Yelp review, it feels right in
- [110:26]
Dana Al Kurd
this era of America to be, like, depressed and disappointed.
- [110:30]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah. Like the people. And I've caught myself doing this too. Like, you know, this isn't a representation of who we are. Like, yes, it is.
- [110:35]
Dana Al Kurd
No, this is a pretty good rep. Yeah.
- [110:38]
Robert Evans
This is exactly who we are.
- [110:39]
Laurie Santos
What do we do? I got the vibe.
- [110:40]
Dana Al Kurd
More or less.
- [110:44]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. 4.5 stars. Nailed it.
- [110:46]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, I say that a lot. Like, whenever someone's like, this isn't who we are. Isn't it?
- [110:51]
Robert Evans
Have you been us?
- [110:53]
Laurie Santos
I have.
- [110:54]
Robert Evans
And this feels like us to me.
- [110:59]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah. Periodically during, like, the riots in 2020, I'd post some footage and one of the comics would be like, this isn't the America I grew up in. It's like, I don't know, it's the one I grew up in.
- [111:12]
Laurie Santos
I mean, it. The one I grew up in. But that's because I lived in areas where the police weren't. So. Yeah, it was always there. I just wasn't visiting it, you know?
- [111:19]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [111:21]
Dana Al Kurd
Well, Laura, anything else pluggables to plug at the end here?
- [111:25]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, well, you can. You can check out. I've got a newsletter@firewalled media.com. i am Laura jadeed on basically every social media platform. Mostly active on Blue sky right now, but theoretically on all the other ones as well. And yeah, come, come check me out. I am the only lurid jade in the world, so I'm very easy to find.
- [111:40]
Dana Al Kurd
Excellent. All right, well, thank you, Laura, and thank you all for listening. We'll be back at some point in the future. Well, actually, tomorrow. You know how this works.
- [112:00]
Laurie Santos
Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well being. Like, we've been thinking about the loneliness epidemic all wrong.
- [112:11]
Robert Evans
You can be lonely in a marriage,
- [112:13]
Laurie Santos
you can be lonely at a party. I don't think loneliness is actually about solitude.
- [112:18]
Ryan Weiss
Loneliness is about something much bigger.
- [112:20]
Laurie Santos
Or that we should get rid of small talk altogether.
- [112:23]
Ryan Weiss
We talk about current events.
- [112:24]
Emily Oster
We talk about what you do for
- [112:25]
James Stout
a living, but not do you love
- [112:27]
Robert Evans
what you do for a living?
- [112:28]
Emily Oster
Is this your dream job?
- [112:29]
Laurie Santos
Or that the mental health crisis isn't what we think it is, and that kids today are doing better than we assume. It was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. We are so scared that we are going to underreact to a severe challenge that we tend to overreact. For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'mma check you, okay? If you do some in the news
- [113:15]
Robert Evans
that don't sound good, I'mma play you.
- [113:18]
Laurie Santos
Join Yamanika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast. You're the Problem with Yamanika.
- [113:26]
Robert Evans
Do you know? I just found out who Sydney Sweeney was.
- [113:29]
Laurie Santos
New episodes weekly every Wednesday as part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network.
- [113:34]
Robert Evans
If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men do better or do less so
- [113:40]
Ryan Weiss
I don't have to do so much.
- [113:41]
Laurie Santos
So join Yamaneika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika and I'm out.
- [113:48]
Robert Evans
Listen to youo're the Problem With Y'.
- [113:50]
Dana Al Kurd
All.
- [113:50]
Laurie Santos
Dominica, starting on July 15th on the
- [113:52]
Ryan Weiss
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [113:59]
Robert Evans
You said to me, yo, you know, keep at it. Cause you let me rap for you. It was magical for all of us. Ah, we made it.
- [114:05]
Dana Al Kurd
We made it. Yeah. I'm like, we, you know, I'm like,
- [114:08]
James Stout
I know these guys, but who are you?
- [114:11]
Robert Evans
I'm MC Jen. And this is last but not least, I'll be chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times. Like the co founder of Rough Riders, Darren D. Dean, talking about as a kid. Do you remember that? We met even way before that.
- [114:27]
Laurie Santos
Let me think.
- [114:27]
Robert Evans
Did you walk up to the gate? That was me, Dean.
- [114:29]
Ryan Weiss
That was you. That was me.
- [114:31]
Robert Evans
The day we found out that you and the whole crew was at Hit Factory. The mission was to get me to go to the gate, start freestyling and see if I could get in the studio. I'm rapping and then suddenly I hear a voice.
- [114:41]
Laurie Santos
Hey, open the gate.
- [114:42]
Robert Evans
Let, let him in the gate slowly went. They all there watching this and they watch me walk into there. And that is a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. Listen. And last but not least, with MC Gen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [115:01]
Akilah Hughes
I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert.
- [115:04]
James Stout
And I'm Perry Wilson.
- [115:05]
Emily Oster
I'm a medical doctor.
- [115:07]
Akilah Hughes
And this is our new podcast, Wellness
- [115:09]
Emily Oster
actually, because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays.
- [115:14]
Laurie Santos
And some of it is awesome and
- [115:16]
Akilah Hughes
some of it is, well, actually. Bull. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can
- [115:23]
Laurie Santos
tell you what's worth trying out and
- [115:25]
Akilah Hughes
what you can safely ignore.
- [115:27]
Emily Oster
Each episode we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and
- [115:32]
Ryan Weiss
wellness topic like what's the deal with peptides? What's the deal with GLP1s?
- [115:36]
Akilah Hughes
What's the deal with creatine?
- [115:38]
Robert Evans
What's the deal with cupping?
- [115:39]
Akilah Hughes
What's the deal with sleep?
- [115:40]
Emily Oster
So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. Might actually be just what the doctor
- [115:45]
Akilah Hughes
or the economist ordered.
- [115:47]
Emily Oster
Listen to wellness actually on the iHeartRadio
- [115:49]
James Stout
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [115:59]
Dana Al Kurd
Foreign
- [116:03]
Ryan Weiss
this is it could happen. This is it could happen here. Executive disorder.
- [116:09]
Dana Al Kurd
That's right.
- [116:10]
Ryan Weiss
Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of July 1 to July 8 for some small things. Last week, Ben Gvir, the Israeli national security minister, canceled an upcoming trip to New York City for the UN Police summit amidst calls for him to be arrested for war crimes.
- [116:40]
Dana Al Kurd
That's good. That's good to see. It's nice to see that he's, he's feel scared, even a little, you know?
- [116:45]
Ryan Weiss
Yes.
- [116:46]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [116:47]
Ryan Weiss
The planned protest outside of the UN took place even though Ben GVIR did not travel to the city. No one really knows if Mitch McConnell is actually still alive as he remains hospitalized after being admitted in mid June for suffering cardiac arrest. On. On Tuesday, a bunch of Republican senators said that they for sure talked to him for multiple minutes. About all his favorite topics.
- [117:13]
Dana Al Kurd
Definitely not AI generated images and shit. Yeah.
- [117:17]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [117:18]
Ryan Weiss
There's really no clear indication on what his current mental state is. Laura Loomer has said that he's effectively brain dead. Not a reliable source either.
- [117:28]
Dana Al Kurd
Not at all.
- [117:28]
Emily Oster
No.
- [117:30]
Ryan Weiss
But the audio from the 911 call.
- [117:33]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [117:33]
Ryan Weiss
Indicates there was CPR being performed.
- [117:36]
Dana Al Kurd
So based purely on that, what Loomer says is very likely because when people at McConnell's age need CPR and are like, at the time at which EMS arrives, this is not an uncommon result. Like what. What Loomer suggested.
- [117:51]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [117:51]
Ryan Weiss
We could see a historic weekend at Bernie's. Even in American politics, if Republicans want to hold on to the Senate seat without doing a special election, honestly, it'd
- [118:02]
Dana Al Kurd
be the best way to honor his memory. Like that's the appropriate way to honor Mitch McConnell's memory.
- [118:07]
Emily Oster
One last filibuster.
- [118:09]
Dana Al Kurd
Kind of breaking the law. One last time to see stack things in the GOP's deck.
- [118:15]
Emily Oster
I. I also. I also want to note that friend of the show, Myra Lazine from Trans News Network did request comment about the status of McConnell from his office and has not received a reply. We will let you know if. If we get any kind of confirmation from their press staff that he is in fact alive.
- [118:35]
Ryan Weiss
And our colleague James Stout, who will have a special segment later on this episode, also wanted us to note that San Diego has begun defunding and closing more than 30 public toilets today.
- [118:48]
Dana Al Kurd
Cool.
- [118:49]
Ryan Weiss
To that I will add in a not humble brag fashion, that Mamdani and the MTA announced a new plan to expand bus routes.
- [118:59]
Dana Al Kurd
Great.
- [119:01]
Ryan Weiss
The same day.
- [119:02]
Dana Al Kurd
Anyway, you can have either world people, but not. Not if you live in California, actually.
- [119:07]
Ryan Weiss
No toilets or slightly faster buses. The two choices of American polit politics.
- [119:12]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, the two choices that are presented to voters.
- [119:15]
Emily Oster
Well, okay, I'm going to present a third choice, which is. I do want to talk briefly about something that's happening in France right now. There is an attempt that has passed the lower house and is pending a vote from the upper house as we speak, to pass a police immunity law. I don't know what exactly the term to describe it is, but it is a law that would automatically treat any police killing as justified until proven otherwise. This is obviously an extremely dangerous bill. It effectively allows the police to, as long as there are no witnesses, kill someone and not be investigated or removed for it. So that is still technically making its way through the French parliament, but very much looks like it could pass and is extremely bleak.
- [120:03]
Dana Al Kurd
Cool.
- [120:04]
Emily Oster
Yeah. Obviously this is a Bill backed by the French far right that's also being backed by, you know, a bunch of the French, quote, unquote, center right. And, yeah, quite bad.
- [120:16]
Ryan Weiss
Speaking of bad, let's get on to our first main story this week. As many of you know, there's been a major update in the main Senate race. On Monday, a woman named Jenny Rasico came forward with an allegation that Graham Platner raped her in 2021. Rascoe told POLITICO and CNN that she and Platner had been seeing each other on and off for about two years. And then one night in 2021, Platner entered her home, quote, unquote, heavily intoxicated, despite Rasico explicitly telling him not to come over. Once inside, Platner forced himself on her while she resisted and repeatedly told him to stop. And then he raped her. Rascoe told Politico that Platner did not remember what he did the next morning, but shortly thereafter, she cut off contact with him after telling him what happened that night was not consensual.
- [121:07]
Dana Al Kurd
Yep, I guess this is what it took, unfortunately. And, like, I'm sorry this lady had to come forward and say this.
- [121:15]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [121:15]
Dana Al Kurd
But, you know, it does look like this has done the job, finally, of ending this guy's career. I mean, I guess we'll see. Anything could happen still. But I don't know what else to say.
- [121:29]
Ryan Weiss
Her specific allegation is heavily corroborated in the reporting.
- [121:34]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [121:34]
Ryan Weiss
Politico interviewed the woman's next boyfriend, who in 2023, she told him about what happened with Platner and also reviewed emails to a therapist discussing the sexual assault. Politico published some private Facebook messages between Rasico and a friend of hers whom she warned against getting involved with Platner. And that was years before he ran for office. I'll read some of those texts here. He can be charming and funny, and he's a decently intelligent person. He's not all bad, but I ended up in a bad situation with him, and I will just very politely call him consensually careless at times. She followed up by writing, when drunk, plus ptsd, he lies. Also doesn't listen to you when drunk, unquote.
- [122:23]
Dana Al Kurd
And it's still remarkable, honestly, how much slack she was trying to cut him in that message. Like, unnecessarily empathetic way of expressing that to someone else about a person who had done that to you. Yeah, I don't know. That's what struck me about that.
- [122:38]
Ryan Weiss
One of the most, like, devastating parts of this is that Rasico told Politico that she previously withheld this accusation because she agrees with Platner's political platform. Yeah, quote, one of the reasons I didn't come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics but not supporting him as a person. I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person. Unquote.
- [123:06]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [123:07]
Ryan Weiss
After Resco made this allegation, which is Platner's first public allegation of rape or sexual assault, Lindsay Fifeld, the Republican operative who was at the center of the New York Times report on Platner last month, told the Washington Post that Platner sneakily removed condoms during sex.
- [123:29]
Robert Evans
Jesus.
- [123:30]
Ryan Weiss
Which is also a form of sexual assault.
- [123:33]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [123:34]
Ryan Weiss
In a video released on Monday, Platner denied the allegations and said, quote, we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward. Following the allegation, Platner lost high profile endorsements, many of his volunteers, and support from community organizations. The 30,000 member activist organization, Maine People's alliance, whom Platner was a member of, withdrew their endorsement and told him to step down. The Democrat nominee for governor, Hannah Pinnegree, who Platner supported as a ranked choice candidate, released a statement calling for him to drop out of the race, quote, for Maine, for the future of control of the U.S. senate. And because no party should stand behind a candidate facing allegations of assault, Graham Platner should exit the race immediately. Democrats need a nominee who can beat Susan Collins in November. Graham Platner is no longer that candidate. Graham Platner tapped into something real voters hungry for change showed up with real passion and energy. That energy doesn't have to go away. It needs a new candidate to carry it forward. That last little section by Hannah is part of what I was trying to express in my recent piece outlining the campaign's platform and on the ground strategy. And I think looking back at his campaign, it really is worth trying to understand why it worked as well as it did. Up to this point. Up to this allegation, this election has highlighted that there can be a considerable gap in the way certain candidates are talked about online and how they are viewed by the local organizations or the local electorate. Now, at least the organizations are breaking with Platner. We don't have a great idea yet of how voters see him post these allegations, but there was a series of focus groups that the Bulwark ran in June with a group of Maine women who supported Platner, but said that they would draw the line at an allegation of sexual assault. So my last episode was focusing on trying to explain how he won the primary and how his relationships with unions and local activist groups contributed to that campaign success. And there is a reason that I waited till after the primary to discuss that platform in detail. And we had done some piecemeal reporting on some of his other scandals, but the information circulated on Blue sky right now about Daniel Moroff, who was mentioned in the piece, was not as publicly accessible when that episode was written. And I think a piece fully evaluating or relitigating all the personal issues with Platner or some of his staff would have needed to be a separate episode, which is why that piece starts off with mentioning all of the main scandals before narrowing its focus on why he won the nomination and focusing on why he won the nomination so handily, like over 50 points against a Democratic establishment candidate. I think it's really important to understand what's happening in American politics right now, right?
- [126:35]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [126:36]
Ryan Weiss
Platner got the most votes in state primary history. He did 83 town halls, amassed over 15,000 volunteers. And just a semiotic analysis of Platner as a person doesn't tell us how his campaign attracted such historic support in Maine. Right. Politics isn't just about vibes and symbols or even individual character, but rather structural forces. And there is a distinctness at the root of politics between symbols and, like, the real forces of society. Those forces can be aesthetically flexible and adapt a lot of different symbols. For every Graham Platner, right, a bad guy who represented good politics in Maine, there are many more people who represent very bad politics who, who dress themselves up in a spotless, like, moral symbology. Look at right now, right? There's a lot of Democratic, like, party figures who are taking a lap. People who have supported Andrew Cuomo and the Clintons who are saying, like, aha, I told you so. Who couldn't have seen this coming? And, like, that's. That's gross on its face because of the types of behavior that they are very clearly okay with excusing to put forward their candidates. But. But also, I think this, this. This reaction of, like, who couldn't see this coming, right? There's all these red flags. This also, like, fails to, like, understand how we got to this point. Like, Platner wasn't chosen to be the nominee by online leftists, but rather the people of Maine. But there are contributing factors that led us to a very. A very precarious situation, including the lack of serious vetting by some of the consultants working on this campaign.
- [128:20]
Dana Al Kurd
Oh yeah.
- [128:20]
Ryan Weiss
As well as Chuck Schumer's clearing the field of other Democratic candidates, which helped create this effectively, one on one Mills v. Platner matchup, while other qualified candidates were pushed into the governor's race. And now some of those people might be going after the Senate nomination. Following the assumed dropout of Platner in these next few days, we do have to wonder.
- [128:44]
Dana Al Kurd
And by the time people listen to this, there's a good chance, I guess, this, this won't matter. But, like, what if he decides to just fuck the party, right? Like, what if they don't sort all this out? It's not an impossible situation. From where we're sitting right now, I don't think it's the likeliest, but it's not impossible. From where we are right now, it's not impossible.
- [129:03]
Ryan Weiss
And that is an interesting kind of thing to think about.
- [129:05]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [129:06]
Ryan Weiss
Consultants like Morse Katz are urging him to drop out. And there is a lot of reports coming out that are suggesting that he will. And to this point, Platner has been a very effective conveyor of a working class centric platform. And his resilience as a candidate through his other well publicized personal issues have proven a real hunger for a new kind of politics. But by making himself the avatar of that movement in Maine, he has also severely compromised the movement. There's a lot of people who supported his campaign despite his past based on this idea that, that those past experiences led him to this working class politics his campaign was predicated on that he was not the same person who made those like awful Reddit posts a decade ago. But the details in the recency of this rape allegation suggests that is not really the case. This allegation affirms a larger pattern of behavior which is itself disqualifying and illuminates false and misleading statements Platner has made to supporters, which further undermine his integrity, reliability, and the trust necessary for an electorate for unions and community organizations to put forward a candidate with faith that he will follow through on the working class platform that he adopted. This redemption story that the campaign ran with attracted a lot of supporters. Supporters who Platner assured that no new damaging allegations would be coming out against him. Then this not only betrays the trust of those supporters and his volunteers, but it also puts the viability of their shared working class politics at risk based on their association with him and especially this new accusation of rape.
- [130:54]
Emily Oster
I think there's two things that are sort of important to keep in Mind when thinking about this one is that it's quite common for someone who is a rapist to also, you know, be extremely charismatic, to be a good communicator, to be very skilled at medication manipulating social situations, and that none of the things that they can be good at make it okay for them to be a rapist. But also that's how a lot of the people who are able to do these kinds of things are able to maintain themselves and are able to survive. That's how a lot of politicians who get into this place are able to just survive, despite the fact that they have credible rape allegations. Like we should mention, you know, for example, that there are significant credible rape allegations against the President of the United States. A thing that has not stopped him from being elected twice.
- [131:43]
Dana Al Kurd
A conviction, not just allegations.
- [131:46]
Ryan Weiss
A conviction found liable in civil court.
- [131:49]
Emily Oster
Yeah, multiple allegations. Right. Like, you know, and then I think the second issue here, right, and this is something you were mentioning when you're talking about like the problem with him making himself the avatar of this sort of like movement of structural forces, is that this is just to some extent one of the risks and one of the challenges you face when you're attempting to run a working class movement that is centered around a charismatic figure because there is always just a decent chance that they've done something horrible. This is a problem with just the structure of electoral democracy, right?
- [132:19]
Ryan Weiss
Yeah.
- [132:19]
Emily Oster
This is a structural problem with the way that electoral democracy is about selecting your rulers and the fact that people who want to become rulers also just have a higher chance of being able to get away with shit like this. And that's something that, that you have to manage to make sure that like your movements are not just one guy who can fuck the entire thing over by being a piece of shit.
- [132:40]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [132:41]
Ryan Weiss
And yeah, Rasico specifically talking about how she hesitated to come forward because she agrees with this, with this politics, with this movement, I mean, is completely devastating. And like this reminds me of, you know, the Cesar Chavez allegations. Right. Like sexual assault is a problem across everything from, you know, like non hierarchical anarchist organizing to the labor movement to electoral campaigns. Not every rapist is going to have a Nazi tattoo.
- [133:10]
Dana Al Kurd
Bad politics.
- [133:11]
Ryan Weiss
No, not everyone is going to have bad politics. Right.
- [133:14]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [133:14]
Ryan Weiss
And like relooking at the sort of many red flags this has. I think a lot of people saw that, like something like this is a possibility, but a possibility is not an inevitability.
- [133:23]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [133:24]
Ryan Weiss
And for a lot of people, especially in Maine.
- [133:26]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [133:26]
Ryan Weiss
The, the political platform and the community ties that platner established outweighed the. The many red flags of Platner as a person. He kind of pushed that to a very. A very far limit. Like, farther than I've seen in a lot of electoral campaigns of how far he was able to maintain support.
- [133:43]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [133:44]
Ryan Weiss
Rather than that illustrating something uniquely special about Platner as a person, that shows the depth of the desire to unseat Susan Collins and the lack of trust in the Democratic establishment. Now, this rape allegation is obviously completely discrediting by itself and also because of how it clearly illuminates this pattern of lying and dishonesty. I think that that that compounds a lot of the issues that people have been talking about with Platner for a long time. And, you know, like, even something like the tattoo. Right. Even if he did not know what the tattoo was when he got it,
- [134:20]
Dana Al Kurd
which I never believed. Like, and we said that when at the time, that. That's. That was never a credible story. Right.
- [134:26]
Ryan Weiss
Fellow Marines in his group who also got the tattoo were interviewed by Zito. They said they didn't know what it was.
- [134:32]
Dana Al Kurd
That's not what I'm talking about is he stated that he had not realized prior to it coming out that it was Nazi. After he had said that he loved the movie Come and See, which that image is in repeatedly. That was when I was like, well, he's a liar, Right?
- [134:45]
Ryan Weiss
Yes.
- [134:46]
Dana Al Kurd
We said. We talked about this on air, by the way, just to be clear.
- [134:49]
Ryan Weiss
Yes. And debating whether or not he is a Nazi overlooks the other very clear issues exemplified by the tattoo. You know, recklessness, poor judgment. And then considering these new allegations, you know, Platner's dishonesty. Right. Based on the conflicting reports of when he learned of the tattoos, Nazi associations. And I think that bolsters the fact that he has a pattern of lying and especially, like, lying to get into power. Multiple times these past few months, Platner has reassured senators, supporters, and volunteers that no new allegations would be coming out against him, even while he was aware that Jenny Rascoe was speaking with outlets like the New York Times. Platner has until July 13 to drop out of the race to be removed from the ballot, and the party has until July 27 to select a new candidate to appear on the November ballot. There's a lot of conflicting reporting on when exactly Platner is going to drop out and why he has not yet. And I might do an update on this based on what will change in the next few hours, the next day. But as of right now, there is seemingly A conflict or kind of like a power struggle between his campaign and the Democratic Party on deciding the transparency of the process to select the next candidate. There's been a few people from the governor's race, as I mentioned, who's thrown their hat in the ring. Troy Jackson has filed paperwork. He was the only DSA endorsed candidate in the main governor's race, also endorsed by Sanders. Dr. Nurav Shah, a kind of more like moderate progressive, announced his intention and as part of his announcement he mentioned opposition to Israel. So he's kind of trying to move in the direction of Platinus politics, even though traditionally he has been more of a moderate liberal. We'll find out in these next few days if the platform and campaign style that was so successful can transfer to someone else. Because I think this campaign has provided a very effective blueprint of in person engagement, town halls, leaning on local organizing connections and having those connections and organized labor help determine a platform. A platform that has stuff like Medicare for All, tax the Rich, no Money for Israel, Supreme Court reform, destroying Citizens United, but also stuff like investing in manufacturing, public utilities, building clean energy and strengthening labor organizing laws. Yeah, quick update here. A few hours after recording, Platner released a lengthy 11 minute video maintaining these allegations are false and attacking the corporate media system and the quote, unquote political establishment. Towards the end of the video, he announced the campaign is suspending operations and said he will withdraw from the race, though he has not yet officially dropped out of the race and reports indicate he will not do so until Monday, which is the deadline. Also, on Wednesday night we got a better look at what the replacement process is going to be. And instead of an open caucus, basically a mini primary. The mainstay Democrats, have decided to go Forward with a 600 person nominating convention with 500 delegates elected proportionally by county committees and 100 delegates from the state committee. This is not the most open or Democratic option the state party could have gone forward with and could cause some real blowback from voters who will be unable to participate in choosing the nominee.
- [138:31]
Dana Al Kurd
Well, we should talk about, I guess, the Ryan Grim of it all.
- [138:35]
Ryan Weiss
Yeah, sure.
- [138:36]
Dana Al Kurd
So, Ryan Grimm with Dropside News published earlier today.
- [138:39]
Ryan Weiss
And breaking points as well.
- [138:40]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, and breaking points earlier today. This is Wednesday the 8th, when we recorded that essentially the initial reports had not mentioned a couple of what they felt were relevant facts, one of which was that before texting him not to come over, she had texted about needing a massage on her glutes, which I don't see as super relevant. No, I think the argument being made, particularly by Dropsite is that, like, well, this was still a relevant detail that was not included. The other thing that was in that report that is more relevant is the fact that Politico had details about this assault way before they released them. Right. Like, way before it actually came out that may have been relevant to voters. I do think that's a fair critique. I don't agree with the relevance at all of her mentioning that she needed a massage. That's not an invitation to sex. That's. That. That doesn't like. I see that as entirely unrelev. And I. I think that this is within a tradition of that particular journalist defending people that he likes from allegations that are credible. I don't particularly respect this decision, but it's relevant.
- [139:44]
Ryan Weiss
No, it's a pretty gross move to take this moment and then try to, like, inject any amount of doubt into what's happened and peddling this politely. I'll say soft rape apology. That's. It's disgusting. There's a very similar thing coming from the Young Turks, from. And Kasparian and. And Cenk. I'm happy that the majority report people turned on Graham, like, immediately apologized for defending him throughout these. These past. These past few months and. And said that they were wrong about him as a person. Yeah, I'm glad they did that. But what Grim did here and what the Young Turks are doing is just completely despicable.
- [140:27]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [140:28]
Robert Evans
I think it's gross, repulsive. Yeah.
- [140:30]
Dana Al Kurd
I don't think there's any reason to bring that specific detail up other than to try to inject doubt, like you said.
- [140:38]
Emily Oster
Yeah. I want to say just one thing about the way that consent works, which is that if you withdraw consent at any time, no matter what happened before it is withdrawn, that's that. That's how it works. And if anyone, like, regardless of what happened until that moment, you have to continue consenting. And if you stop consenting, the moment you stop consenting, like you have stopped consenting, it becomes assault. I just. I want to be extremely clear about that because people are trying to muddy the waters about this, and this is just an important thing for people to understand about the way that consent works.
- [141:11]
Dana Al Kurd
I think that would be even more relevant if she'd said come over and then said don't later. But, like, what she said was not even starting the.
- [141:18]
Emily Oster
Yeah, yeah, no, it's not even that. But. But I just.
- [141:21]
Robert Evans
I just.
- [141:22]
Emily Oster
I just want to be clear about.
- [141:22]
Ryan Weiss
According to Grim's report, she did not even ask him for a massage.
- [141:26]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [141:27]
Ryan Weiss
His entire motivation to do this is, is so, is so suspicious. Like he's trying to say this is about like journalistic integrity and how Politico and CNN were dishonest with yeah. Rasico's, you know, claims and like that's, that's, it's completely absurd. I think anyone with half a brain cell can see what he's trying to do here and it's, and it's gross.
- [141:45]
Dana Al Kurd
I simply don't agree with that. Yeah, yeah.
- [141:48]
Emily Oster
And, and I think the other thing that's kind of very bleak about this is that like there is more proof here than.
- [141:56]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [141:57]
Emily Oster
Most people who are sexually assaulted are going to have. Right. And this is still the reaction that, that it's getting from like, fortunately not a very large number of people, but still people who have large parts but still pretty influential. Yeah.
- [142:11]
Ryan Weiss
People. Yeah, yeah.
- [142:11]
Emily Oster
And, and that's, you know, like this is part of the reason why, you know, when this shit happens everywhere from like five person anarchist collectives up to like the DSA up to like the Democratic Party, up to the like the President of the fucking United States. Why this shit plays out like this, because this is just a structural factor of politics writ large, is that you are going to have to deal with people who fucking do this and their fight to get away with it and people who try to run cover for them.
- [142:40]
Akilah Hughes
Yeah.
- [142:40]
Dana Al Kurd
I think this is part of why I have an issue sometimes with folks when there's like a new allegation against like a conservative politician or like a right wing church figure or something and they're like, it's always these guys. It's like, no, it's every like pedophilia is all over the place. It exists in left wing organizations and right wing organizations and when you start being like, well this is a thing the bad people do, not a thing the good people do, then you've created a place in which the people who do that have cover. Like that's, that's what you're doing when you're like, no bad people do that. So no one that I agree with would.
- [143:11]
Emily Oster
Yeah, yeah. Like sexual violence and getting away with it. That's a structural force.
- [143:15]
Dana Al Kurd
Right?
- [143:15]
Emily Oster
Like that's, that's something that is brought about by like large scale structural forces that.
- [143:19]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [143:20]
Emily Oster
Regardless of what people stated, politics are. Transcend those divides and people do it anyways.
- [143:25]
Ryan Weiss
Well, let's go on a break and then we will return with more news because more things happened this, this past week.
- [143:33]
Emily Oster
Ye.
- [143:44]
Dana Al Kurd
All right, we're back. And you know, there's Simply nothing to say, but it's time for a little musical interlude. Rockin chasbah Rockin chasbah
- [144:09]
Emily Oster
Ah.
- [144:09]
Dana Al Kurd
Oh, God. That just hits every single time.
- [144:11]
Ryan Weiss
It's been too long.
- [144:13]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, it really has. It really has.
- [144:14]
Emily Oster
It really has.
- [144:16]
Dana Al Kurd
Time makes fools of us all. Mia, what's happening in tariffs today?
- [144:20]
Emily Oster
The tariffs have been in committee, which is why the tariff song has been in the box, but they are no longer in committee. So long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, which is to say February in a slightly, we talked about the possibility of Trump replacing the tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down by using a series of different sets of tariffs. One of the sets that we mentioned are tariffs imposed by using Section 301 of the US Trade act of 1974. This allows the administration to carry out an investigation into unfair trade practices and then impose tariffs after the investigation is concluded. Now, the administration basically set one of these investigations in motion, effectively the moment the ruling was decided in February, and on July 2, they returned with their conclusions, which, lo and behold, found that 54 countries were failing to take appropriate measures to, quote, impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. Now, these countries, on top of Russia and China, include traditional US Allies like Israel, Japan, South Korea, and India.
- [145:34]
Ryan Weiss
I think you mean the Islamic Republic of Japan. I'm sorry, I could not let that one escape me.
- [145:42]
Emily Oster
I missed that reference.
- [145:43]
Laurie Santos
Did someone trump.
- [145:45]
Ryan Weiss
Trump today said the words the Islamic Republic of Japan. I think he did not mean to say the Islamic Republic of Japan.
- [145:55]
Dana Al Kurd
What country has taken fewer Islamic refugees than Japan? Like, I don't even understand how that could be.
- [146:02]
Robert Evans
Like a conservative bugbear.
- [146:04]
Ryan Weiss
He says the Islamic Republic of Japan fired missiles at US Ships.
- [146:09]
Dana Al Kurd
Okay, okay. He just misspoke. He misspoke. He was trying to say Iran. But you just said it's just a normal senior moment from our president as he launches or continues a series of illegal attacks on foreign countries. Just a normal senior moment from our warmonger president.
- [146:26]
Robert Evans
We're good.
- [146:26]
Dana Al Kurd
We're good. Everything's fine.
- [146:28]
Emily Oster
Yes. Incredible stuff happening here that are. Yeah. Our president cannot produce. Actually, admitted, admittedly, this is not the first time in our lifetimes that our president has not been able to correctly name the country which he is bombing.
- [146:43]
Dana Al Kurd
Sure isn't. Sure isn't. It's not even the second president that this has happened to in our lifetime. No, I'm not certain it's the third.
- [146:53]
Emily Oster
We're like three out of four. I'm pretty sure Bill Clinton could Do it. So that's like three out of five.
- [146:58]
Dana Al Kurd
But I don't. I'm not 100%. He's a country boy. He probably fucked it up once. Now, we didn't bomb as many people when he was president, but we didn't bomb no people.
- [147:07]
Emily Oster
That's probably true. Good God. Good God.
- [147:10]
Ryan Weiss
Okay, so sorry. Sorry. My apologies.
- [147:13]
Dana Al Kurd
It's okay. It's okay.
- [147:15]
Emily Oster
Returning from this, this, this bleak interlude. So again, countries that the US Are saying, like, are not enforcing this prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. So these, again, include a bunch of traditional US allies like Japan, South Korea, India and Israel, which is sort of interesting. It also says, quote, the following six economies have failed to effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan. So on this list, that is the entire eu, Canada, Mexico, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Turkey, which is a list of the world's largest economies. And then also there's a few kind of oddball ones like poor Sri Lanka, which. They really have something out for Sri Lanka. I don't know exactly why it keeps showing up on these tariff lists despite the fact that these poor people have been just suffering unbelievably devastating economic consequences for a very long time. Now. I am in the unfortunate position of having to agree with California's Attorney General, a thing I am not typically doing. But he did, in fact say something which is true, that this list of countries is in fact 99% of all U.S. imports. So, okay, now we can obviously note here the hypocrisy of imposing tariffs for forced labor in a country whose constitution specifically allows forced labor for prisoners. And note that, you know, forced labor of various kinds, from indentured servitude to debt, peonage to various kinds of slavery, have been key elements to the development of capitalism from the beginning. But this is not about forced labor at all, as I think anyone who is even remotely paying attention will understand. So the tariff rates are nominally tied to setting up systems that ensure that goods produced with forced labor aren't being sent to the US with countries who are, like, out of compliance with the US system would do that, getting a 12%, 12.5% tariff rate and countries who are complying facing 10% tariff rates. That's at least the theory. The practice is not that, as the diplomat notes, quote, the proposed tariff rates, however, cannot be explained by human rights concerns alone. Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines have not established import Prohibition systems meeting US standards and face a 12.5% tariff. Malaysia and Cambodia likewise lack such systems, but face a tariff of only 10%. So this is just a fairly naked attempt to reimpose the set of tariffs that Trump initially imposed in February in the wake of that Supreme Court decision. We talked about those in a different episode. They are up for a July 24 deadline. So it's pretty clear that this report is timed to come out in a way that allows these tariffs, which are very, very similar to the ones that were already in place, to go into effect. Now, it's worth noting that those tariffs had some bad court rulings. They're probably not going to last long enough to get, like, a good Supreme Court ruling on it before they come out of effect. So those ones probably won't be lifted by a court order just because there's not enough time. But there's a good chance that these terrorists are also not going to survive. But the California attorney general is part of a very large group of state attorney generals, which features the attorney general of almost every state with a Democratic governor, which I'm not going to read
- [150:36]
Ryan Weiss
the list out because it's a bunch
- [150:37]
Emily Oster
of them, but they are once again suing the administration over these tariffs. So here we are again riding the tariff rollercoaster. And yeah, we're back with the Trump administration trying to impose 10 to 12% tariffs on most of the economies in the world.
- [150:56]
Ryan Weiss
Speaking of the Islamic Republic of not Japan.
- [151:00]
Emily Oster
Oh, boy.
- [151:01]
Ryan Weiss
Here is James Stout with a special segment.
- [151:06]
Robert Evans
So what I want to talk about today is this lawsuit recently filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, represented by Public Citizen, which has some incredible accusations about what the United States government has done to people who are Iranian nationals seeking asylum in the United States. Specifically, they're alleging that the US Government has disclosed confidential information on Iranian nationals seeking asylum in the USA to the Iranian government. I am going to reference a complaint and quote from it a bit length, quite a bit here, because these accusations are crazy. Not crazy in that I think they're false. I don't think they're false crazy in that they are abhorrent and disgusting, especially when you consider that the United States government has consistently talked about the rights of people in Iran while all the time violating those same rights. So let's quote from that complaint. Quote. Many of the asylum seekers are pro democracy protesters, members of religious minorities, such as evangelical Christians or members of the LGBTQ community who seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran, disclosing their confidential information to the Iranian government violates the asylum seekers confidentiality rights, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran directly or through chain rafalement via third countries at risk persecution, torture and death following their arrival in Iran. If you're not familiar with chain refinement, it's sending someone to a third country that will then send them to the place that the USA can't or won't send them due to concerns of persecution or torture. So it's an end run around international law. It's barred by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the UN Convention against Torture, but the US has been doing it a lot under the Trump 2.0 regime. In the course of my work I have met Iranians from all of the groups described in this complaint as well as those who are ethnic minorities in country. In addition to being parts of the groups described in this complaint, can think of a group of young Iranian women I met in the Dalian Gap who I spent a good deal of time talking to. Really lovely folks. There's a man with them as well actually, now I think about it, you can hear them in my Darien series I met some Iranian Christians in outdoor detention. A number of them remember one of them was having a heart problem, so he spent a deal of time trying to help her and get her medical attention. As I've covered before on this show throughout the USA and Israel's bombing campaign on Iran Iran has kept killing its own citizens in the last couple of weeks. It has engaged some of the armed Kurdish groups and there have been casualties on both sides. The process of the US Government sharing these records with Iran, the suit alleges, began in March of 2025. It seems to have continued when the US was bombing Iran that year. It seems to have continued while Iran massacred thousands of its own citizens in January of this year, and it continued throughout the United States and Israel's current war on Iran. Indeed, a flight left for Iran on January 25th of this year as the dead from the pro democracy protests were only recently in their graves. Iran doesn't have an embassy in the US and these affairs go through the Iranian Interests section of the Pakistani Embassy. It was to that Iranian Interest section that the State Department reached out in March of 2025. According to the lawsuit, the March 2025 meeting produced an agreement between the United States government and the Iranian government, under which ICE and Iranian government officials have begun holding monthly meetings to share the immigration files and information of Iranians in ICE custody. In addition, since the March 2025 meeting, US government officials have periodically mailed or hand delivered immigration files of Iranians in ICE custody to the Iranian government. It then goes on to allege that ICE has provided officials from the Iranian Interest Section with access to people that it has detained and worked with the Iranian government to pressure these people to waive their rights. This is going to be them signing quote unquote voluntary deportation paperwork where it basically is non voluntary when they're held against their will, pressure to do it, but that's what you'll hear it called. Many of the Iranian detainees did not consent to meet with the Iranian Interest Section officials, but were required to do so by ice. According to Iranian detainees who met with an Iranian intersection official, the official had knowledge of their immigration cases, including the details of their asylum applications. These non consensual meetings with the Interest Section official solidified the detainees belief that they have been identified to the very same repressive government that they had fled. The United States government allowed the Iranian government to select the Iranians deported to Iran. According to this complaint, some of those people were then interrogated by the Intelligence section of the IRGC on their rifle in Iran. Some of these people had detailed on their application as they must to make a good asylum application.
- [156:14]
James Stout
Right.
- [156:15]
Robert Evans
That they had participated in the 2022 Janjan Azadi movement. Woman Life Freedom. It's a Kurdish slogan slogan of the Kurdish Freedom Movement that was used by pro democracy protesters in Iran after the murder of Gina Amini by Iranian police. This sparked a whole movement. Right. I'm sure you can find a great deal of good writing on that movement. It was very well covered. I have met women who took part in that movement. As I said before, you can hear some of them in some of my podcasts. They tried with every fiber of their being to make Iran better.
- [156:53]
Dana Al Kurd
Right?
- [156:53]
Robert Evans
They saw their friends die to try and make Iran better and then they fled because it was made very clear to them that the state was willing to fill the streets with blood before it changed. Now those people are obviously afraid of telling the truth on their asylum applications or even to their lawyers, especially while they're in detention, because they now know that that information could be delivered directly into the hands of the Iranian government. They may have said in their applications, I was part of this movement because I'm opposed to the government. And now that information is being delivered to the government. They came here to experience some of the freedoms that their friends died for and instead they were hand delivered to the regime that they had fled from the US did not ask for any protections or guarantees for their safety. At the very same time, the USA was using the rights of Iranian people as a pretext for its war in Iran. It did this as it was depriving people of those very same rights back here. This is disgusting. I will link to the complaint in the sources if you'd like to read it yourself. I'm going to keep an eye on this one. Even amongst the horrors of the second Trump administration, this is just particularly apparent.
- [158:09]
Ryan Weiss
We'll go on a break and then return for one more batch of news. We are back. Next up, two shootings by ICE which have both occurred just this last week, exactly half a year after the shooting of Renee Good.
- [158:35]
Emily Oster
Robert.
- [158:36]
Dana Al Kurd
Video captured Wednesday morning in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, showed ICE attempting to arrest an undocumented immigrant from Mexico named Clemente Laura Hernandez. There's video of this incident. You can see like a black car with flashing lights, like an unmarked police car blocking, like a white suv. Agents get out of the car and rush the suv. And again, they just kind of look like guys with guns in a moment. And one of them starts screaming that he's going to shatter the window and yelling at the driver. At that point, the driver pulls away in a panic. They hit the black unmarked car that had been blocking them. They speed off. Fucking ICE points out they're going wrong way down a one way street. And they, they hit another uninvolved civilian vehicle. And it's like, yeah, they were panicked because an unmarked car drove up and gunmen ran out and started surrounding and screaming at them.
- [159:31]
James Stout
It scared them.
- [159:32]
Dana Al Kurd
That's the kind of shit that happens in countries where the cartels are in charge of everything. If you pretend that like ICE is in any meaningful way different from a cartel or a gang, as of us recording this, this, this person has not been taken into custody. I hope they stay that way.
- [159:46]
Laurie Santos
Yeah.
- [159:47]
Dana Al Kurd
Also earlier this week in Houston, Texas, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who is 52 years old, was driving in the East End when the same basic thing happened. Unmarked cars surround him. Guys with guns get out. He gets really scared and he drives off and he gets shot as he's driving away. ICE accused him of having weaponized the vehicle. He was taken to the hospital where he died. Salgado Araujo had no criminal record. He had been in the country for more than 30 years. He was in a car with several people, including his brother. There's no evidence whatsoever of any kind of violence in his past. There's no evidence that he wanted to hurt anyone. There's no evidence that he was doing anything but being terrified by unmarked armed men surrounding him. His son has come out and said that if he knew they were ice, he certainly would have stopped and complied. He had no idea what was happening, which, again, seems very credible to me. There's already been a cavalcade of people coming out to demand an independent and impartial investigation into what happened, including U.S. representative Sylvia Garcia, who's a Democrat from Texas, and obviously his son. And Alejandra Salinas, a Houston City Council manager, also called for an immediate and partial investigation. I don't know what good I think that's going to do. Like, realistically, for one thing, no law enforcement entity can be trusted to conduct an independent and impartial investigation of ice, period, especially right now. For another, there's literally no way to guarantee that they will be held to account, even if the evidence, and I think it suggests that they were acting entirely wrongly and murdered a man. Like, I don't believe anything's gonna happen to this guy at this point. So, yeah, I guess I support the idea of an independent and impartial investigation. I just don't think that's gonna get us anywhere yet.
- [161:39]
Emily Oster
Yeah, I mean, I think if we want an actual independent, like, impartial investigation, it's going to have to happen after this administration regime is out of power. And that's a thing that can be done.
- [161:50]
Dana Al Kurd
Right.
- [161:50]
Emily Oster
But it's going to just take a bunch of time until these people don't have control of all of the state security services. And in the meantime, they're just going to keep doing the same shooting over and over again.
- [162:02]
Ryan Weiss
There's been growing protests in Houston these past few days. This is some audio recorded Tuesday published by Reuters.
- [162:10]
Laurie Santos
People are here to work. Families are dying. People are dying.
- [162:13]
Dana Al Kurd
What are they doing?
- [162:14]
Laurie Santos
Murdering innocent Mexican people that come to work? They come here to work. So what if they don't got papers? So what?
- [162:21]
Robert Evans
Immigrants are welcome here.
- [162:23]
Laurie Santos
Say hello.
- [162:24]
Robert Evans
Say it clear.
- [162:25]
Laurie Santos
Immigrants are welcome here. Trump did this to us. What happened to taking the murderers out? What happened to taking the rapists out? What happened to taking the drug dealers down? Not innocent people. That's not what you said, President Trump.
- [162:39]
Robert Evans
You didn't say that.
- [162:40]
Ryan Weiss
Since then, the protests have only grown. On Wednesday evening, hundreds of people marched in Magnolia park on the street where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot by ice. For our last segment, let's talk about America. 250. So this past weekend marked the 250th anniversary of the United States, and things went off without a hitch. I heard the Great American State Fair was lots of fun. That it was. It was totally packed. That no parts of any stages nearly killed dancers as they were setting up the event, that there was no severe weather events that disrupted it. I heard it was fun. And adding to the fun was President Trump, who spent much of the 4th of July weekend talking about the growing threat of communism and the need to pass the Save America act following the Supreme Court's ruling in support of counting mail in ballots. In Trump's July 4 speech commemorating the historic occasion of America's 250th birthday, the president said that to keep America great, we must pass the Save America act, the troubled voter restriction bill that has failed to pass Congress. All voters must provide a little thing called proof of citizenship. There will be no mail in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment or travel. And you won't have cheating on the elections anymore. It's very simple. Unquote. Speaker Johnson has indicated his plan to pass another version of the SAVE act through reconciliation. The bill has repeatedly been stalled in the Senate, and that has bolstered a lot of Trump's frustrations these past few months. Now, following the Supreme Court ruling, it appears that Republicans will take another crack at it. But Trump also spent much of the America250 address railing against communism. America will never be a communist country. It's like a cancer. You gotta cut it out and you gotta cut it out fast. The communist system is the opposite of the American system, and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. Unquote. Real, real 1950s style reaction. Christ, to seven Social Democrats getting elected. But I think that the fact that how scared he is and other people, including on the Democratic Party side, and you know, there's been a wave of articles from the Atlantic really scared of it. The more kind of social democratic, democratic, socialist direction that the party's been going, really frightened. In fact, I think like a few days ago, Trump even said the words a social Democrat and said they're just communists. But the fact that Trump had to learn what Social Democrat is is a really interesting indicator of where we are at as a. On the eve of July 4th, Trump gave another speech at Mount Rushmore after speaking to the AI Ghost of Roosevelt.
- [166:10]
James Stout
God.
- [166:11]
Ryan Weiss
And during this Mount Rushmore speech, he spoke at length about how communism is a, quote, moral threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl harbor, or even 9, 11.
- [166:27]
Dana Al Kurd
World War I is simply not a threat to our country and not, not in any way, shape or form was our country threatened at any point in World War I. Obviously, some Americans were killed as a result of Germany attacking shipping, but in no way were we in danger.
- [166:39]
James Stout
Yeah. And then, like, does he understand that
- [166:41]
Emily Oster
Pearl harbor was part of World War II? Like, does he, like, get that? I.
- [166:45]
Dana Al Kurd
He was just shooting buzzwords off. I think that's all that was.
- [166:48]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [166:49]
Emily Oster
Incredible guy. To control the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in human history.
- [166:55]
Ryan Weiss
Trump also called communism the enemy of the Constitution, the enemy of July 4, 1776. Quote, on the eve of this 250th anniversary of American heritage, we resolve and swear for all to hear that the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism quickly. President Trump also had this banger line, which is the only clip I actually want to play of this speech.
- [167:25]
Dana Al Kurd
You can be loyal to Karl Marx
- [167:27]
James Stout
or you can be loyal to America.
- [167:30]
Dana Al Kurd
You can be a communist or you
- [167:32]
James Stout
can be a patriot. You cannot be both.
- [167:35]
Dana Al Kurd
As for those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage, tell our children that
- [167:41]
Robert Evans
we live on stolen land or that
- [167:44]
Dana Al Kurd
our heroes were oppressors, they're doing something much worse than slandering our past.
- [167:50]
James Stout
They are slandering and attacking our future. Not going to let that happen.
- [167:55]
Ryan Weiss
You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America.
- [168:00]
Emily Oster
Yeah, so true. So true. President Donald Trump.
- [168:05]
Ryan Weiss
It's just really stunning thinking about this is how the President of the United States is spending the 250th anniversary of the country. Yeah, that. He. He thinks it is important to start bringing this stuff up. I just thought that was a little interesting tidbit that happened this weekend. Anyway, I think that is all we have for news this week.
- [168:29]
Dana Al Kurd
Okay. Well, I guess it's been. It hasn't been a short news week, but, you know, we don't always have to talk for an hour and 20 minutes about the shit that's happening. You now kind of know what's happening.
- [168:38]
Ryan Weiss
No, this is just a 55 to 1 hour and 3 minutes with James segment instead. A short Newsweek.
- [168:45]
Dana Al Kurd
Yeah, a short news week. All right, go. Go with Christ, my friends.
- [168:48]
Ryan Weiss
We reported the news.
- [168:50]
James Stout
We reported the news.
- [168:58]
Dana Al Kurd
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
- [169:04]
Akilah Hughes
It could happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.
- [169:25]
Robert Evans
This is Tony Ayo from the Real Report with Tony Yayo and Uncle Murder. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent, streaming, even Extra Sosa at your favorite burrito spot? But with Boost Mobile, you don't have
- [169:34]
Dana Al Kurd
to play the Willis Go up soon game.
- [169:36]
Robert Evans
Boost Mobile offers an unlimited talk, text
- [169:38]
Dana Al Kurd
and data plan at a price that'll never go up.
- [169:41]
Robert Evans
It's the same price you'll pay for Life. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up.
- [169:46]
Dana Al Kurd
Only at boost mobile.
- [169:47]
Robert Evans
After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan.
- [169:56]
Laurie Santos
Here's something that should not be as
- [169:57]
Akilah Hughes
complicated as it is getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akilah Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season
- [170:09]
Laurie Santos
2 is about both of those things.
- [170:11]
Robert Evans
As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a
- [170:14]
Ryan Weiss
majority black city in which there were
- [170:16]
Laurie Santos
more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaved people.
- [170:19]
Akilah Hughes
Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
- [170:23]
Laurie Santos
you get your podcasts.
- [170:26]
James Stout
Hello my love.
- [170:27]
Ryan Weiss
I'm Ryan Weiss, and For the past 15 years I've been an emotional intelligence
- [170:31]
Dana Al Kurd
coach and a spiritual guide, and I'm sharing with you my new podcast, Waking Up With Ryan. Waking Up With Ryan is a daily
- [170:38]
Emily Oster
audio video podcast here to help you
- [170:41]
Dana Al Kurd
connect with yourself before the noise of the day takes over. So let's start our days together with a moment of calm that's just for you. Listen to Waking Up with ryan on
- [170:51]
Ryan Weiss
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
- [170:54]
James Stout
you get your podcasts.
- [170:55]
Laurie Santos
Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well being. Like the radical notion that we should get rid of small talk completely.
- [171:06]
Ryan Weiss
We talk about current events.
- [171:07]
Emily Oster
We talk about what you do for a living.
- [171:09]
Laurie Santos
But not do you love what you
- [171:10]
Akilah Hughes
do for a living?
- [171:10]
Robert Evans
Is this your dream job?
- [171:12]
Laurie Santos
For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [171:25]
Akilah Hughes
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.