The Necessary War on Data Centers

Summary

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It Could Happen Here

Episode: The Necessary War on Data Centers
Date: June 18, 2026
Host: Robert Evans (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)

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Episode Overview

This episode, hosted by Robert Evans, delves into the rapidly growing movement to oppose the development of new data centers, examining its roots, impact, and the broader implications for technology, environment, power structures, and grassroots activism. Evans approaches the topic as emblematic of a broader shift—how opposition to seemingly unseen infrastructure (data centers) can serve as a form of direct challenge to the dominant Silicon Valley tech oligarchies, while also uniting disparate American communities around a potent, grassroots cause.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. How Data Centers Became a Flashpoint (00:48 - 07:45)

• Evans opens with a personal anecdote illustrating how moments of public crisis can force a reevaluation of political stances:

  “...someone who does not in general support the personal ownership of firearms... reacted to the recent race riots… by saying something along the lines of, ‘I guess if this kind of stuff is on the table, I understand why people need AR15s now.’”
  (00:48)

• He pivots to data centers, framing the opposition as the "most hopeful change in domestic politics in quite some time," capable of striking at the heart of the tech oligarchy.
• Evans argues that while many misunderstand the true impact of data centers (“People don't just hate data centers for good reasons, they hate them for bad ones too...” (02:10)), the movement is substantial because data centers power nearly all aspects of modern life—banking, healthcare, logistics, cloud computing.

2. The Growth and Politicization of Data Center Opposition (07:45 - 14:06)

• Huge, organic growth in local opposition: Q1 2026 saw a record 75 projects blocked or delayed, with over 833 active opposition groups in 49 states.
• Noted academics argue that the movement is uniquely unifying, cutting across urban/rural and party lines (citing sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom’s observations).
• Evans introduces the concept of a “high likelihood of fundamentalism” (HLF) issue:

  “If you get drawn into it, you're really likely to become some kind of fundamentalist on the matter… abortion would be a good example of this sort of issue.”
  (09:33)

• Movement roots: For some, it’s about fighting AI's moral hazard; for others, water usage, local pollution, and higher utility bills.
• Cottom’s key insight:

  “The imminent risk of living next to a data center may be why they show up for a meeting, but they're committing to the issue for bigger, deeper reasons… voicing their objections, sharing their anxieties with others… is giving them something few politicians are offering: a taste of political power.”
  (10:56)

3. The Political Risk for Both Parties (14:06 - 18:47)

• Evans contends that neither Democrats nor Republicans are eager to champion the cause due to deep ties to tech capital.
• The scale of opposition’s impact: $130 billion in projects blocked just in early 2026, destabilizing tech’s speculative foundation.
• "Nearly all the money... is fake. Elon Musk could not produce a trillion dollars of real liquid US Dollars... Most of his wealth is in stock valuation."
• Panic is the market’s greatest enemy; every project delayed raises the risk of a tech stock crash.

Notable Quote

“Data Center Watch has calculated that the total value of data centers blocked in early 2026—this is just the first three months of this year—was around $130 billion, compared to a total of $156 billion in projects blocked in all of 2025.”
(16:25)

4. Media Counterattack: The Tech-Industry Pushback (18:47 - 24:25)

• Recent surge in pro-data center and anti-protest media, often using “whataboutism” (comparing data center water use to almonds).
• Evans critiques industry efforts to minimize environmental damage with misleading statistics and coordinated influencer campaigns.
• Cites the Environmental and Energy Study Institute:

  “Approximately 80% of the water, typically fresh water withdrawn by data centers, evaporates... The large volume of wastewater from data centers may overwhelm existing local facilities which were not designed to handle such a high volume.”
  (22:22)

5. Local Resistance: Case Studies (24:25 - 29:51)

• Box Elder County, Utah:
  Residents paid to register comments and organized against a three-Manhattan-sized project that would have threatened local water. The project was scaled back after community blowback.

  • Kevin O'Leary (the investor):

    “We really screwed it up... We pissed off a lot of people and that's not the way I do business.”
    (20:47)

• Northern Virginia:
  Saturated with over 300 data centers; local infrastructure and water under immense strain; job creation far below promises.

  • Local resident:

    “There's a big fence around it for security purposes, so it's totally isolated from the community now, and it's only going to employ about 100 to 150 people on the same piece of land. That's the difference.”
    (25:35)

• Mişli, Romania:
  Parallels to US: Project brought only 10 jobs instead of the promised 300, dubious local economic benefit.

6. Strategic Outlook and Risks (29:51 - 32:33)

• The movement is going global: resistance stories from the US, Europe, Romania, the Netherlands, Germany, etc.
• Evans warns of the danger in opposing infrastructure that much of modern life depends on, but suggests that society must reconsider what is truly necessary.
  • Analogy:

    “In much the same way as I would give up my ability to buy pistachios and almonds year round to avoid California not having water, I'm willing to reconsider what miracles of daily life are really worth the cost if it turns out the cost is that high.”
    (31:45)

• The anti-data center campaign presents an opportunity for ordinary people to reclaim agency and force new questions about technology, economics, and shared resources.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• On the potential for a new kind of political fundamentalism:

  "That's why back in the 1970s the Republican Party adopted abortion as a central concern. Because if you get someone to become an anti-abortion activist, they'll vote just based on that. ...These are great issues to pull people into like a voting block with..."
  (09:33)

• On the true value of tech fortunes:

  “Most of [Elon Musk’s] wealth is in stock valuation, and those stocks are worth what they're worth because of consumer sentiment as much as anything objectively real.”
  (15:15)

• On pro-industry PR (“almonds use more water!”):

  “If you want a good response to that, just say, sure, put them out of business. Fuck em.”
  (21:17)

• On the environmental impact of data centers:

  “Data centers specifically built for the AI industry also have higher chip density, which requires more cooling, which uses more water. As time goes on, these increased demands lead to more and more being demanded of the local areas...”
  (24:01)

• On global solidarity:

  “Hatred of these people should know no geographical boundary, and this presents the possibility of international outreach as well as collaboration and strategizing.”
  (29:54)

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• The anti-data center movement is a rare unifier: It cuts across demographic and political divides, converting shallow “NIMBY” feelings into deep, systemic opposition to unchecked tech expansion.
• Environmental cost is real and severe: Communities are being pitted against powerful interests, and their activism is causing tangible, billion-dollar disruptions.
• The stakes are existential: The movement forces critical questions—what comforts and conveniences are worth sacrificing for survival, sustainability, and agency?
• It’s about agency and power:

  “...voicing their objections, sharing their anxieties... is giving them something few politicians are offering: a taste of political power.” (10:56)

Evans closes with a call to reconsider what is truly essential in modern life, suggesting that the struggle against new data centers could catalyze broader systemic change and restore power to local and global communities.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

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[Robert Evans]

Cool Zone Media welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Robert Evans. Now, a few days ago I had the experience of listening to somebody that I've known for a while and known as a fairly mainstream liberal, someone who does not in general support the personal ownership of firearms, certainly not weapons like AR15s react to the recent race riots, pogroms, you know, whatever term I guess is most appropriate in Belfast, where racist mobs ran through the streets and attacking people in their homes, pulling them out of their homes, lighting their homes on fire, targeting these people because they were not white. And this person who I've known for a while, reacted to watching footage of this and reading headlines and their general shock and horror by saying something along the lines of, I guess if this kind of stuff is on the table, I understand why people need AR15s now. Nothing had actually changed about the way the world works to alter this person's opinion of guns or of reality. They were simply forced to confront an aspect of reality that had previously been obscured to them. Because in earlier days they had assumed that in any civilized nation, and they considered Northern Ireland to be part of a civilized nation, police would stop this kind of behavior. And if you feel like the rule of law is something you can trust on pretty immutably than someone else saying, no, I would rather have a gun of my own than trust a cop might sound like a maniac. Today's episode is not about guns or gun rights. It is, in the most direct sense, about data centers and the current people's war on building more of them. I see the current vast groundswell of support for this kind of activism and this fight in general as the most hopeful change in domestic politics in quite some time. And I think this movement could become a weapon that drives a stake into the hearts of the silicon oligarchy that currently rule quite a lot of our world. The problem is, any mass movement like this, especially one built on what is essentially also like the biggest name in the news right now, AI is going to involve a lot of misinformation and even disinformation. People don't just hate data centers for good reasons, they hate them for bad ones too. Or at least it would probably be more accurate for me to say a lot of people hate them for reasons that don't reflect something data centers actually do or make worse. The broader reason that I've seen some people have issues with this fight, with this mass movement against the construction of new data centers, is that data centers are utterly necessary modern infrastructure and incredibly crucial to the maintenance of what we would consider basic daily life. This is something that's true even without AI, and this is something that was true prior to the introduction of what Silicon Valley likes to call AI into all of our lives. It data centers are what make the age of cloud computing possible. And Starting in the 2000 and tens we decided that the cloud was where everything compute wise was increasingly going to happen in the future. There were pragmatic reasons for this. Having Word save your document to a cloud file that makes it instantly accessible from any machine with Internet access should you desire. That's a big leap forward in capability, at least in one direction. Likewise, having a watch on your body that can not just take down your biometric data during a workout, but can store it in analyze it over long periods of time, that offers people real utility. There's a reason products like this are very popular. You can't however, have the entire world mapped out and accessible for turn by turn navigation without needing a shitload of data centers somewhere, and in fact in quite a few somewheres to make that possible. Now of course there are also privacy trade offs for all of these kinds of products. That's been the entire logic of the Internet of Things era. You hand over your data and we deliver utility. Privacy advocates have had issues with this from the jump, but most people didn't because the benefits were obvious and most people don't like to read or think very hard if we can avoid it. For almost 20 years, consumers largely ignored the rollout of data centers around the world, even sometimes into our backyards, because big tech had reasonably good PR and most people were pretty happy with their gizmos. All in all, you get a hint of how uncontroversial this used to be In a 2022 article I found published on Microsoft's Source EMEA website written by Bill Briggs, the title was critical to our modern society How Data Centers Power Everyday Necessities now there was a little bit about AI in there, but this is 2022 and the hype cycle hadn't nearly hit its peak at that point. The article spent much more time emphasizing how integral data centers are in things that people want, like quote Simply put, they are the physical infrastructure behind cloud computing, and across Europe, Microsoft data centers are operating around the clock to support a wide spectrum of critical services, from the life saving work of doctors and first responders to essential services like groceries and online banking. At the same time, data centers also empower everyday necessities like food deliveries, remote work and video calls to family. The article goes on to include a quote from Raheel Nasir, an associate research director at a market research firm, who called data centers the invisible infrastructure, which I find interesting because absolutely no one would call it that today, right? People only saw them as invisible back then because there hadn't been much public discussion about these things and there weren't nearly as many of them. To be fair, in 2022, the Del Oro Group estimated global data center CAPEX to have been about $241 billion. McKinsey is currently predicting global spending on data centers will reach $7 trillion by the number of data center projects in development or under contract exploded pretty much right after Microsoft put out the article I quoted from earlier, and this put millions of people face to face with the reality of data center construction projects. Many of them revolted. Q1 of 2026 saw a record 75 data center projects blocked or delayed nationwide, which made it, in NBC's words, the most blocked and delayed quarter for data center projects on record. Researchers at Data World Watch told journalists they did not consider this a cyclical spike, calling it instead a structural shift caused as, quote, communities internalized an opposition playbook, legislative sessions introduced formal regulatory uncertainty, and the number of active opposition groups more than doubled to 833 across 49 states. Now, the rapid and obviously organic nature of this growth has alarmed certain Democratic and Republican politicians, largely the ones who have taken money from the tech industry. Some of these folks have panicked and insisted that Chinese government propaganda is behind the growth in opposition to data centers. The New York Times published a piece by sociologist Tracy McMillan Cottam, who argued that Democrats need to make the issue of data centers their issue because she believes that these protests could have a significant impact on the midterms. And in 2028, in her column, she states that she wasn't initially sold on the value of data center protests, but time around activists convinced her that she'd been wrong, in part because this was not an issue that inherently drew urban or suburban or rural voters together. But all of them, like it didn't inherently pull at Republican or Democratic voters, and thus it was a way to bring people together and get them working together in common cause. Which is a really beneficial thing to do if you're trying to pull people closer into like a broader political alignment with you. And I would add to that point, just based on my own research and what I've seen, I feel like the fight against data centers is something that has what I like to call a high likelihood of fundamentalism in it, or hlf. And an HLF issue is a, is a kind of political fight that if you get drawn into it, you're really likely to become some kind of fundamentalist on the matter. And abortion would be a good example of this sort of issue. Right. That's why Back in the 1970s, the Republican Party adopted abortion as a central concern. Because if you get someone to become an anti abortion activist, they'll vote just based on that. Right. And if one party is against abortion and one party's for it, they'll never consider the party that is even open minded to it being legal in some limited sense. Right. They become an absolutist on the matter. These are great issues to pull people into like a voting block with, because if you can get them to associate that issue with your party, you can kind of immunize that chunk of your voter base from economic concerns or other points of attack, at least in theory. Now, different issues tend to create fundamentalists for different reasons. People who are organizing against data centers aren't doing it usually because they think the idea of a data center is wrong. But many of them do believe that AI is evil and immoral. And AI is the reason that so many new data centers are going up. Many more people oppose new data centers for the specific reason they see them as a threat to their own personal environment and to their own power bills and to the cleanliness of their own water and air. It may seem as if this is the kind of support that would tend to breed shallow activists. If you just don't want a data center in your hometown, that doesn't mean you give a fuck about one going up in Mississippi or wherever you don't live. After all, none of these people presumably cared about the data centers that had been going up five years ago, 10 years ago, before the issue became salient to them. But as Tressie Cottam wrote, the realities of doing this kind of organism on the ground have a tendency to transcend the reasons individuals start getting into the fight. Quote I have been watching this new groundswell of dissent firsthand in community meetings, organizing sessions, and civic trainings here in North Carolina, the resistance has lifelong joiners, alumni from environmental and housing movements, and young organizers. There are also a lot of people who have never dreamed of being disagreeable in public, much less consider joining a raucous social movement. The imminent risk of living next to a data center may be why they show up for a meeting, but they're committing to the issue for bigger, deeper reasons. Political corruption and corporate malfeasance make them feel politically impotent, voicing their objections, sharing their anxieties with others, recalling politicians who override them, and in some cases, beating the opposition is giving them something few politicians are offering a taste of political power. And we'll continue. But first, here's some ads. Nobody does it better than Regent Seven Seas Cruises. 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the more their real self comes out. They're gonna be gross.

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back. I think it's really important to emphasize something that Cottam said at the end of that last quote, which is that part of why the anti data center movement is potent and why it tends to draw people in much deeper than maybe the initial shallowness of why they got in would suggest, that is that it offers them a sense of political power and of agency in an age in which people are being trained more and more to feel as if they have no agency. You can't stop this, you can't fight this. Or alternatively, this guy will do the fighting for you, right? People are getting it from all sides, wherever they actually land in the political aisle. And that's, quite frankly, not very much fun. It's really fun to feel like you're a part of a movement like this that's kicking ass and taking names. Now, I don't share the long term goals that led Cottom to write that article, at least not all of them. I get the sense that she wants to give the Democratic Party a powerful new long term voting bloc. I don't care so much about that now. I do, of course, want to see the Republican Party beaten electorally and more Democratic votes is the only current way to do that, but the Democratic Party is not morally or logistically capable of doing anything but betraying these people in the long run. I really do believe that the reason why is the reason why the party has been incredibly slow to embrace these activists in any cohesive fashion. This movement is death for Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley has a lot of fucking money. And when I say death, don't think I'm exaggerating. Data Center Watch has calculated that the total value of data centers blocked in early 2026 this is just the first three months of this year was around $130 billion, compared to a total of $156 billion in projects blocked in all of 2025. Now a huge month last year for data construction expenses in the US Was last July, which was actually a historic month, and that represented about $14 billion in expenses. So the value of the projects that have been stopped are significant, even in tech industry terms. More to the point, nearly all the money that underlies and underwrites these corporations and their owners is fake. Elon Musk could not produce a trillion dollars of real liquid US Dollars if he wanted to, because that simply is not how assets work. Most of his wealth is in stock valuation, and those stocks are worth what they're worth because of consumer sentiment as much as anything objectively real. The entire AI bubble is being underwritten by the belief that this will be worth it. There are trillions in value here, and we just need to spend a few trillion more to unlock them. None of that value can be unlocked without data centers, and if you throw a wrench in their plans to build more, you can hobble the whole effort. Any delay or serious setback creates the risk of a panic, and panic is their greatest enemy. All it takes is one sufficiently disastrous crash to kill many of these big overvalued companies. SpaceX and Anthropic and OpenAI and Microsoft and Meta can't all survive a market collapse, just as they won't, sadly, all die. Nor can their billionaire bosses. All remain masters of the universe if they fall off their perch in a raid that shatters the global economy. We won't even have to bring all of these guys to court. Some of them will get done in by their former friends overseas. There's a reason why some VC types have already started trying to describe anti data center activism as terroristic. They are in fact, terrified of it. This segment from an Ars Technica article by Ashley Bellinger should give you an idea of what I'm discussing. Quote the researchers suggested that the back half of 2025 marked a turning point as data center opposition emerged as a national level narrative that showed the AI industry can no longer see the fights as individual zoning disputes. It is now reshaping elections, regulation and site viability nationwide, Datacenter Watch reported last year. Where before officials were criticized for quietly signing deals without discussing construction with nearby residents, now they're encountering backlash before any deal is in the books, Data Center Watch found. In some cases, researchers reported, opposition mobilized before any project was officially filed. The mere rumor of a data center was enough to trigger organized resistance. Now folks, when you hit this level of cultural inflection with a movement, you are in an extremely powerful but also very dangerous position. There's a reason that Steve Bannon's also made waves recently by encouraging his side to start reaching out to the anti data center people. He knows this energy can be co opted, or at least he believes it can. For my part, I want to see this energy harnessed. I want to see it burn brightly like the working flame of an oxyacetylene torch, because I want to see it used to cut directly into the belly of the industry that I hate. The best way for us to do this right now is to create as many moments as possible where projects to construct new data centers clash with protesters. Each of these conflicts has the potential to spark a panic in the market, and every piece of bad press contributes to the overall weight of public opinion and expectation against AI and against big tech. We never know which piece will be the one that breaks this current incarnation of the industry. The name of the game for us then is to create as many moments as we can that endanger the future of this market and the industry behind it. And we can do that entirely legally by forcing them to confront reality. None of these data center projects are sold to towns and cities based on real, accurate information about how they will impact the environment and the local community. One good example of this recently from the United States is a story earlier this year about a data center project in Box Elder County, Utah. The proposed buildings together would have been three times the size of Manhattan and stretched across multiple sites. The project was championed by celebrity billionaire Kevin o', Leary, who was also the VC behind it. For a separate article in Ars Technica, residents top concern was the Stratos data center project draining local waters, and they were willing to pay to protect them, most especially the vulnerable Great Salt Lake. Many locals paid a $15 fee to register comments to block the transfer of 1900 acre feet of water from a ranch to to the hyperscale data center. Other concerns include electricity bills rising and potential risks to air quality, local wildlife and land. Venture capitalist Kevin o', Leary, chair of o' Leary Digital and shark tank investor, is behind the construction of the project. He told a local ABC affiliate that he regrets not working with state officials to be more transparent about the project. From the beginning, we really screwed it up, o' Leary said. While confirming he was not expecting this intense kind of blowback from the public, he claimed that he and state officials anticipated that people would be excited about the major local investment and made huge mistakes by not involving the public more in discussions. Based on that assumption, we pissed off a lot of people and that's not the way I do business, o' Leary said. That's not now, given that he undeniably did business this way, I disagree, but that's beside the point. The resistance was successful. Now, the project wasn't killed entirely, but it has been massively scaled back and may yet die on the vine. The fact that resistance to this huge project and many like it, has caused so much damage to the industry that has prompted a scale response. In late May and early June of 2026, I noticed a drip and then a flood of new articles and viral content critical of the anti data center protests. One good example of this would be a June 10th article on the website Bar Chart by Nash Riggins. It was titled Data Centers get a bad rap for using too much Water and Energy. It turns out Almonds suck up even more now in this incredibly snotty little shit of an article. Nash is reporting on the fact that a bunch of pro AI influencers had, with shocking coordination, started posting online responding to complaints about data center water usage by pointing out how wasteful it really is to grow almonds. You know the almond industry uses even more water than AI does. And you know, if you want a good response to that, just say, sure, put them out of business. Fuck em. Another popular article in this genre was a blog post by Andy Masley. He critiqued the argument that AI was particularly wasteful by making arguments like this, per an interview with him on Azfamily, almost all of that 1.7 trillion gallons of water per year is specifically water that is withdrawn. In the return to the source, Masley told me, referring to a widely cited estimate from Karen house, Empire of AI. The book claimed surging AI demand could use up to 1.7 trillion gallons of fresh water globally by 2027, or half the water annually withdrawn in the UK. Masley says the word use in that sentence is misleading. Data centers do evaporate most of the water they use on site for cooling, but on site use represents only about 20% of their total water footprint. The other 80% comes from power plants that heat water to spin turbines. That water is then returned, mostly unchanged to its source. Masley's viral post got him interviewed by the New York Times and earned a correction from the author of the book. But his critiques about specific claims made there shouldn't be seen as having any overall legitimacy to the broader argument about data center water use. For one thing, he acts as if all data centers function the same way basically both in terms of how they're powered and in terms of how they do cooling. And thus you can make the kind of assumption assumptions about water use that is making and you just fucking can't. Now, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute has published an expansive analysis of data centers and water consumption. They point out that this is all much more complex than Masley's quote might lead you to believe, and I'm going to read from that article Quote in the context of data centers, water consumption refers to the amount of water withdrawn from blue or gray sources minus the water discharged by the centers. Primarily warm water left over from cooling the it racks. The consumed water is generally the water that evaporates or is otherwise taken out of immediate human usage. Withdrawal of fresh water from local streams or underground aquifers may lead to aquifer exhaustion, particularly in water stressed areas. Approximately 80% of the water, typically fresh water withdrawn by data centers evaporates with the remaining water discharged into municipal wastewater facilities. The large volume of wastewater from data centers may overwhelm existing local facilities which were not designed to handle such a high volume. And again, one of the things that Masley tends to ignore is that even when you're putting this water back into the system, quote unquote, that doesn't mean it's going back into the aquifers that it was pulled out of. It doesn't mean that it's going back into the same way, which can still cause massive issues. Now, how water efficient a data center is is going to vary depending on the climate of its location. But because these tend to require a lot of space, many are built in places where land is cheap. Those places are often hot and dry, like Utah and Wyoming. Data centers in hotter climates use more water. Data centers specifically built for the AI industry also have higher chip density, which requires more cooling, which uses more water. As time goes on, these increased demands lead to more and more being demanded of the local areas that agree to host data centers. Since data centers don't lend themselves to any other industries or create very many jobs, this often leaves local communities dependent upon them, which means they have no choice but to say yes to ever harsher environmental demands. I'm not creating a hypothetical here. This has happened over and over again, and I'm going to read again from that article by eesi.org Northern Virginia is considered the world capital for data centers, with over 300 operational data centers spread across four counties. Collectively, all data centers in Northern Virginia consumed close to 2 billion gallons of water in 2023, a 63% increase from 2019. Luton county, with approximately 200 operational data centers, used about 900 million gallons of water in 2023. This has led Luton Water, the county's Fresh Water Authority, to rely heavily on potable water for data centers rather than reclaimed water. Now, activists looking for cautionary tales about what data center addiction could do to an area should look no further than Northern Virginia. The region started saying yes to such development decades ago, when the industry was very much different. Back then, AOL was based there, and their data center was part of an overall campus that employed more than 5,000 people, per an article by the Lincoln Institute. The campus has since been demolished, and three large data center facilities are being built on the site. There's a big fence around it for security purposes, so it's totally isolated from the community now, and it's only going to employ about 100 to 150 people on the same piece of land. That's the difference. That's a quote from a local resident, and we'll hear from some other local residents. But first, here's ads.

[Hoda Kotb]

Hey, I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. Together we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges.

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Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

Happy Pride from the Outspoken Podcast Network. All month long and all year round, we're celebrating being loud, proud and always original. It's me, Brandon Kyle Goodman, host of the podcast Tell Me Something Messy. Check out my show for Unfiltered Takes on dating, relationships, and adulting. The more you get comfortable with someone,

[Robert Evans]

the more their real self comes out. They're gonna be gross.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

What's the grossest thing about a man burping? Shut it down. Listen to High Key for the best pop culture takes. And there are no girls on the Internet. For all your tech news, for your favorite celebrity Kikis, check out outlaws with T.S. madison. Wait, so Luke was the son of Vader?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

And Vader was turned by RuPaul. Yeah, well, somebody turned him. Some old, old, old witch. Learn to love yourself unapologetically with BFF Black Fat Femme, and start your day with intention with waking up with with Ryan. Coming in July, celebrate pride with the outspoken Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Pride and listen now.

[Sanjana Bhasker and Tyler McCall]

Why is everyone obsessed with romance right now? Like, everyone Your co worker who quote unquote doesn't read, is reading romance your mom booktok the entire Internet. I'm Sanjana bhasker. I'm Tyler McCall. And this is Radio 831, a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse, and what all of it says about how we actually love, yearn, and obsess. We're going to Wuthering Heights, which, for the record, is not a romance novel. And yet it has haunted the romance genre for 200 years. We're getting into dark romance age gaps, certain Russian hockey players, and sentient objects in love, which is a thing. That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Champs podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Swae Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that I be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do.

[Robert Evans]

Like Prince, he dropped like, 30 albums. We dropped like five right now.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

That's the rate we got to be going.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's a good attitude.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

You'll also hear stories from industry legends and hip hop pioneers like Fab five Freddy. I directed one of Nas's early videos. Which one? One Love.

[Jenny Garth]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nas was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of you know, conscious stuff. And he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Champs brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Champs from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. Now, I've mostly discussed the fight against data centers thus far as an American thing, and it isn't. I think it is particularly relevant to our upcoming elections in a way that deserves particular attention. But this is a global fight. And it is a global fight not just because people hate AI, but because data centers and the AI they enable have come to symbolize the tech elite who have bought our world and who are in the process of burning it to the ground. Hatred of these people should know no geographical boundary, and this presents the possibility of international outreach as well as collaboration and strategizing. As an example, I'll discuss a small community in Romania, Mishli, which is located in one of the poorest sections of the country. In 2020, they said hello to a team from Cluster Power who wanted to construct a data center in the area. The mayor gave a welcoming speech that should sound familiar to many of you. We are incredibly proud to have an investor on board and to see people talking about the data center in Mishli. The company contributes to the local economy by paying taxes here and has chosen this area as its headquarters. So that all sounds great, but I found an article for Algorithm Watch that notes quote no documentation was provided to verify the tax revenue actually generated for the commune. By June of 2024, only 10 jobs had been created, compared to at least 300 that had been promised. Now you can find stories that are almost identical to this all over the United States, but also elsewhere in Europe, like the Netherlands and Germany, and in many other places besides. Everywhere these companies do business, they leave behind broken promises and lies, like a trail of gasoline reeking behind them as they go. Why shouldn't we drop a match and watch the fire catch them? There are dangers to embracing a movement based around opposing the construction of infrastructure that is necessary for a lot of modern life. But I might argue those dangers look a lot less scary if we recognize that necessary for modern current life and necessary for life itself aren't necessarily the same thing. In much the same way as I would give up my ability to buy pistachios and almonds year round to avoid California not having water, I'm willing to reconsider what miracles of daily life are really worth the cost if it turns out the cost is that high and the scariest thing in the world to the people who currently run it is. Perhaps one day soon everyone will start to feel this way. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening. This is an iHeart podcast.

[Sanjana Bhasker and Tyler McCall]

Guaranteed Human.