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Refried Beans | An Official Proceeding (feat. Brian Klaas) | Dec 15, 2021
01:01:35
December 15, 2021 In the Hot Notes: Congress votes to hold Mark Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress; top Pence aid Kieth Kellogg is cooperating with the Committee; the Senate has passed a bill giving the Capitol Police Chief unilateral power to summon the National Guard; the DC Attorney General is suing the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers over the Capitol attack; a Mazars accountant and a Deutsche Bank lender take the stand in Manhattan; plus Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.
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- [00:00]
Alison Gill
MSW Media. Hey, everybody, it's Ag. And welcome to Refried Beans, where we play an episode of the Daily Beans podcast from the same week either one, two or three years ago so we can see how far we've come. So please enjoy this episode from days gone by and note the date in the intro. Refried beans. I like refried beans. That's why I want to try fried beans, because maybe they're just as good.
- [00:26]
Dana Goldberg
And we're wasting time.
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Alison Gill
Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Wednesday, December 15, 2021. Today, Congress votes to hold Mark Meadows in criminal contempt. Top Pence aide Keith Kellogg is cooperating with the 16 committee. The Senate has passed a bill giving the Capitol Police chief unilateral power to summon the National Guard. The D.C. attorney General is suing the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers over the Capitol attack. And a Mazars accountant and a Deutsche bank lender take the stand in Manhattan. I'm Alison Gill.
- [01:14]
Brian Klaas
And I'm Dana Goldberg.
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Alison Gill
Hey, Dana, how are you?
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Brian Klaas
I'm good, A.G. how are you?
- [01:20]
Alison Gill
I'm good. I've got a little bit of a frog in my throat, so I apologize.
- [01:24]
Brian Klaas
That's okay. I love frogs. Some people like frogs.
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Alison Gill
Ribbit. Hello, my baby hello, my honey hello.
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Brian Klaas
My ragtime gal and it is raining.
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Alison Gill
So you might hear some rain here in the studio. Not in the studio, but, you know, on top of it.
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Brian Klaas
Yeah. So we had a good rainstorm. Yeah, it just headed south to you. So it's out of the city. We've got our sunshine back in la, but we needed it. We needed it.
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Alison Gill
So, yeah, we definitely glad it was here. And it's going to be a rainy winter in California, which is good for the. For the watershed. So later in the show, Dana, I'm going to be talking with the author of the book Corruptible who Gets Power and How It Changes Us. Very prescient book. Awesome book by author Brian Kloss. And I'm happy to announce that that is the next book for the MSW Book Club.
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Brian Klaas
Wonderful.
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Alison Gill
On January 9th. Wonderful.
- [02:07]
Brian Klaas
Fantastic.
- [02:08]
Alison Gill
It's a really, really great book. Really great interview today. I think you're going to love it. But we do have so much news to get to because the hearing happened after we recorded yesterday and I wanted to talk a little bit about that. So let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. And Dana, when I say the hearing.
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Brian Klaas
I mean this was a fucking hearing. Like, this is the hearing probably of the century.
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Alison Gill
Yeah, that was. And we didn't know that until about an hour before the hearing that it was going to be more than just a vote. Yeah, right. I tweeted it out. It got like 30,000 retweets. Everyone's like, oh, shit. Tune in. Tune in. This isn't just a vote. And it turned out to be much more than just a vote. Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff went over the text messages sent to Meadows. Some of them, like a handful of the over 9,000 pages he's handed over to the committee. And these are the text messages sent to Meadows during the attack on the Capitol. Just bombarded with text messages to please beg the President to call off the attack. Right, Stop the attack. And there was another text message from a couple of text messages from Don Jr. And then another from members of Congress, and even one sent the next day from a member of Congress apologizing for not successfully overthrowing the government. So let's start with the Fox News texts first. The President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.
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Brian Klaas
His legacy.
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Alison Gill
I know that was Laura Ingraham who went on Fox later that night and said it was Antifa and BLM that was attacking the Capitol. The President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. Next up, from Brian Kilmeade, please get him on tv. Destroying everything you have accomplished. Everything you've accomplished. Okay, Your tax scam, that. Is that what they're talking about? And then, of course, Sean Hannity chimes in. Can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol? So those were Fox News. And then there was the Don Jr text. Don Jr says he's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough. He also texted, we need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It's gone too far and it's gotten out of hand. Too far? Gotten out of hand? Like too far from what? What was the original plan exactly? You know, and now that you know, they need to subpoena him, ask him what was okay and what was too far. What were you aiming for if that was too far and Meadows actually texted back, I'm pushing it hard. I agree. Which is proof right there. Well, it's not proof, but he's telling Don Jr that he has told Don Senior to, you know, call it off. But that. That is what establishes that Meadow relayed these messages to Trump, or at least he told Junior that he did. So if you ask whether Meadows ignored the pleas or relayed them to Trump, we know he relayed them. Which means Trump did nothing. But of course, this sets him up to be the patsy. Perfectly right, of course. Because if Donald. Because Donald didn't send a letter saying, I invoke executive privilege over Mark Meadows, he hung him out in the wind, and he started to cooperate, and then Trump got mad. He pulled back. Even Benny Thompson of the committee is now saying that Trump must have got to him after he started cooperating. And so, you know, you run into this question now as to whether. As to whether Meadows is the one who didn't do anything or if Trump was the one who didn't do anything, and Trump's gonna try to put it on Meadows. He said, no, he didn't tell me anything. That's what's gonna happen. And finally, there was a diatribe of other Trump aides and members of Congress begging Meadows to get Trump to stop the attack. One member of Congress that texted the next day and said, we tried everything we could in our objection to the six states, I'm sorry, nothing work. So that's the apology for not overthrowing the government.
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Brian Klaas
I've got money on who I think it is, but we'll find out.
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Alison Gill
We will find out soon enough. The committee has said they will name names. Right now. They aren't. She did not name the members of Congress, saying the investigation is still ongoing. Adam Schiff was just on the readout saying, we don't want to let them know what we're up to so they can corroborate their stories. That's akin to witness tampering, which is, again, why they wouldn't let Bannon release all of his shit, you know, witness testimony public in his discovery of his contempt case. The judge squashed that, by the way. And Liz today, during the full House debate to hold Meadows in contempt, had some very legal language to share, and she's been repeating this legal language. She said that Meadows testimony is necessary to answer a critical question as to whether Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly sought to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding. Those are very specific legal terms of art used to describe 18 U.S. code 1512. Let me read this for you so you can see how close it is to the language that she keeps repeating. It says, whoever corruptly obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding or attempts to do so shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years or both. Now, that's different from obstruction of Congress, which is the phrase we've heard, like, thrown around a lot. That's 18, US code 1505. That only comes with a five year sentence, Dana. And this is of note, what Liz Cheney is saying, because the Department of Justice has been charging Jan Sixers with obstruction of an official proceeding instead of seditious conspiracy because it's much easier to prove and it carries a 20 year sentence. Instead of a five year sentence. It's like seditious conspiracy. It carries a 20 year sentence. And remember when I said, Dana, that the DOJ was getting folks, I talked to Glenn Kershner about this every time I talked to him, that they're getting folks to plead guilty in the attack on the Capitol to felony obstruction of an official proceeding. And that I think that they're doing that to build a case against Trump. Because if the underlings say, yeah, I raised my hand, I did it. I tried to felony obstruct and impede a congressional proceeding because he told me to.
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Brian Klaas
Right.
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Alison Gill
And this is what I'm talking about. And now Liz Cheney is fucking saying it. And as quoting the statute in the contempt hearings. Oh, and remember how yesterday, Dana, we reported that federal judge, a Trump appointee named Nabni Friedrich had ruled that the Department of Justice can use that charge because the electoral vote certification she determined is an official proceeding?
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Brian Klaas
And why would she need to say that unless they were investigating and leaning in that direction?
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Alison Gill
Well, that was for two. It was for a couple of Oath Keepers who were suing saying, you can't, you know, charge me with this because the electoral vote count is not an official proceeding. And so they didn't, they didn't want that 20 year charge. Right. They wanted the 1505. Obstructing Congress keeps building it for a five year charge. And the judge said, nope. So pretty fucking cool. Oh, and by the way, Zoe Lofgren told Anderson Cooper whether or not the DOJ is pursuing crimes against Meadows other than contempt of Congress, they're very tight lipped. It's not appropriate for them to discuss who they're investigating. You won't know about it until they indict. Nice.
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Brian Klaas
That means indictments are coming.
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Alison Gill
Yeah, I think so, too. Hopefully we'll see. Fingers crossed. I don't know. Again, it's so quiet. We don't know. And also, Pence aide Keith Kellogg is cooperating with the committee. And when I say cooperating, he was asked by a reporter on the Hill if he was invoking privilege or pleading the Fifth, and he said no. And he's been there all day. He was in the Oval Office with Meadows and Trump during that attack.
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Brian Klaas
Oh, Fantastic. Fantastic. All right, moving on to this, we got D.C. attorney General Carl Racine. He's a Democrat, just FYI, on Tuesday, he sued the Proud Boys and Oath keepers over the January 6 attack on Congress, seeking to use a law written to cripple the Ku Klux Klan. This is really interesting. To seek stiff financial penalties from the far right groups that Racine alleges were responsible for the violence that day. Now, the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington cites the modern version of an 1871 law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. Now, that was enacted after the Civil War to safeguard government officials carrying out their duties and protect civil rights. Two similar suits have been filed already this year related to January 6th. One was by Rep. Benny Thompson, and he, as we know, that's the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. Another by a number of police officers who fought the rioters off that day. Now, Racine's suit, however, is the first effort by a government agency to hold individuals and organizations civilly responsible for the violence at the US Capitol on the day Congress ceremonially confirmed President Biden's 2020 election victory. Now, AG, there's a similar lawsuit. We just covered this a couple of weeks ago, I believe. And that was led to a $26 million verdict last month against more than a dozen of the nation's most influential white supremacists and hate groups for their role in the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. So that trial evidence that drew heavily on the defendant's text messages, social media posts and videos to reconstruct how they conspired in advance of the violence. Nice precedent set. Now, in the 1980s, a lawsuit drove an Alabama based faction of the Klan into bankruptcy, forcing members to turn over their local headquarters to the family of a murdered black man. So Racine suit names as defendants the Proud Boys International, llc, Oath Keepers. I know they fucking LLC themselves.
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Alison Gill
Corporation.
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Brian Klaas
I love it. There's the Oath Keepers and also a dozen, dozens of their most high profile members. Now, those are mostly individuals who are charged in federal court with committing crimes related to January 6th. So the goal is to unravel. So this is what they want to do here, the financing behind the groups and to secure. And they want to secure, quote, full restitution and recompense. That's what they're doing for the city of Washington specifically, which has incurred huge costs for treating hundreds of injured officer.
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Alison Gill
Got it? Yeah. And I mean, that's how. That's how this kind of lawsuit is how they bankrupted the Klan The Ku Klux Klan. So I'm all for it. And get this. Longtime accountant for former Donald who helped. He's still Donald, but former Donald, who helped prepare Trump's taxes and the financial statements his company used to woo lenders, testified recently before a New York grand jury investigating his financial practices. And that's according to two people familiar with that investigation. Accountant Donald Bender of the firm Mazars.
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Brian Klaas
Oh, look at that.
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Alison Gill
Appeared before a grand jury that was impaneled this fall by Manhattan DA Cy Vance to weigh potential criminal charges. In addition, in recent weeks, prosecutors have interviewed Rosemary Vrablic, a former managing director at Deutsche Bank. She got investigated, had to quit her job. Real big bummer. She arranged hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Trump. That's according to people familiar with the investigation. And she was pulling from all sorts of weird subsidiaries that probably were funded by Russian banks. But whatevs. Vraiblick's interview was not before the grand jury. Instead, one person said prosecutors pressed Vraiblick about Trump's role in dealings with the bank. So she didn't actually testify before the grand jury. And that's interesting, because in New York, if you testify before the grand jury, you get immunity. So maybe she's in trouble. It might be why she had to step down from Deutsche Bank.
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Brian Klaas
That seems like a valid guess.
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Alison Gill
I might draft her this week for the Fantasy Indictment League. The appearance by Bender and Vraiblick suggests prosecutors are seeking information about Trump's finances from a small circle of outside partners who handle details of Trump's taxes and real estate deals. Bender and Vraiblick were never Trump's employees, but they knew more about his company's inner workings than many employees did. And, Dana, this is why I said forever when everybody was hammering on getting Trump's taxes. I'm like, if his taxes. We want the Mazars documents, right? That's where we get documents. That's where we get testimony from his accountants that he is the one who fudged these numbers. Right now, prosecutors are investigating whether he broke the law by giving different valuations for the same properties at the same time. In some cases, for instance, he would provide low valuations to property tax officials while telling lenders the same property was worth much more, sometimes 30 times more. Bender's first appearance before the grand jury was brief, according to People, but they said he would return or could return for more testimony in the coming weeks. That means Bender's getting immunity. Unless he waived immunity, but he probably didn't. If Vance or Bragg ever Seeks to file charges against Trump himself. Okay. The burden of proof will be high. They would need to do more than simply prove that the numbers were wrong.
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Brian Klaas
Right.
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Alison Gill
You have to show intent. You have to show why they were wrong. Trump has to be proven to intended. He had to intend to deceive. This is one of those things where you can be too dumb to crime. That proof is unlikely to come from an email. Trump has never used email, either as a businessman or a politician. Instead, legal experts say any evidence of Trump's intent would have to come from someone close to him who could report what he said about his finances and why. That's why Weisselberg is clammed up. While the numbers could implicate Mr. Trump, disclaimers and the statements that the data had not been audited or authenticated could help his defense, that underscores the challenge the prosecutors face as they grapple with whether to charge him or not. This is a real hard case to bring. I don't want anybody to get too, too excited. Trump's lawyers would most likely argue that no one, let alone sophisticated lenders, should have taken his valuations at face value, which is a good old Sidney Powell defense. No one can take anything I say seriously.
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Brian Klaas
Yeah, they're not that dumb. Who would believe me?
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Alison Gill
And same with Fox News. You can't expect anyone to reasonable person to believe any of that shit is true. They actually won a lawsuit with that. And even if his valuations were false, the lawyers might argue the lenders conducted their own analyses of Trump's assets and concluded he was a worthy borrower.
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Brian Klaas
You know, I mean, the other thing, and I don't. I don't even know if this is a right legal term, but it seems like someone can't testify on Trump's state of mind. It seems like hearsay. Whether or not they thought Trump was trying to deceive somebody. There would have to be proof. There would have to be an email. There would have to be a written letter. I mean, I would be interested to know if that would even stand up in court.
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Alison Gill
That's why these accountants are so important.
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Brian Klaas
Right, Exactly.
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Alison Gill
Right. Because they'd have a little more weight than, like, a Michael Cohen.
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Brian Klaas
Sure.
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Alison Gill
Who would definitely testify to that.
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Brian Klaas
Even though he went to jail.
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Alison Gill
Yeah. His testimony would have to be backed up by some sort of documentation because he's not a very reliable witness.
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Brian Klaas
Right.
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Alison Gill
Like, I don't know, never got credit for cooperating with the Southern District.
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Brian Klaas
Like a cash check for $125,000.
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Alison Gill
He was handing out boxing gloves and Cash in plastic Walmart bags to get people to rig the polls. So fucking essential is probably not most reliable witness. I love him. I love him to death. I'm glad he turned his life around, sure. But a thing. Got a book, doing a podcast, speaking his mind. That's cool. Yeah.
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Brian Klaas
Glad he found Jesus. All right, the last story. Today, the U.S. senate has unanimously passed a bill that would allow U.S. capitol Police, which is wonderful in Washington, D.C. to request assistance without prior approval during an emergency. Now, this was obviously spurred by January 6th. The bill would let the Chief Capitol Police unilaterally request assistance from the D.C. national Guard or federal law enforcement agencies and emergencies without prior approval of the U.S. cP board. Now, that's according to the U.S. senate periodical press gallery. The U.S. house will now have to vote on a companion bill before it becomes law. And it's going to be really interesting to see how people like Boebert and Greene and those jackasses vote on this thing. I'd be really interested to know because.
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Alison Gill
Senate did it with unanimous consent. They were like, yep, it's cool. It's cool by us.
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Brian Klaas
So this is a quote, the bipartisan bill addresses a major security challenge that was evident on January 6th. And it's part of our ongoing effort to strengthen capital security moving forward. And that's from Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt, one of the bill's two co authors. And that's what he said in a statement.
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Alison Gill
Yeah. And the USCP board, by the way. That's what. Remember how three people had to make an emergency recommendation? It was a House sergeant in arms and the Senate sergeant in arms and a third person. And Sund and Irving were two of those people and Irving refused to do it. He's also one of the people who knew where those vulnerable windows were. He resigned immediately after the Capitol attack. Anyway, so we will be right back with the author of Corruptible who Gets Power and How It Changes Us. His name is Brian Kloss. Awesome guy, very smart professor over in the uk. Really incredible book on power, power dynamics, leadership, how people get power, how. How people can become corrupt. Or do we? Are we born corrupt? It's really just truly amazing. You're going to love this interview. Stick around. We'll be right back after these messages. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Honored today to be joined by the author of the new book Corruptible who Gets Power and How It Changes Us. He's a Washington Post columnist, expert on authoritarianism, and political scientist at University College London. Please welcome Brian Klaas. Brian Hi.
- [19:26]
Dana Goldberg
Hi. Thanks for having me on.
- [19:27]
Alison Gill
Hey, it's really great to talk to you, and I just want to let everybody know. Currently, the MSW Book Club is covering Hear Write Matters by Colonel Alexander Vindman and his wife Rachel. Put me in touch with you about this amazing new book you've written, and I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about what prompted you to write it. I mean, I think I know, but what prompted you to write it and why the dialogue in it is so important?
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Dana Goldberg
Yeah, so I've written a few books in the past, and most recently, I had a book out about Trump's authoritarianism. And I wanted to zoom out a bit because one of the things that people always say to me as a political scientist is why is it that we have all these good and decent people around us, our friends and family are nice people, they act with integrity, they behave in honorable ways, and yet when we look at the leadership of the country, of businesses, et cetera, were so often let down. And so what I did is I actually didn't put the word Trump in this book. I was sick of it. But what I tried to figure out was, why is it that we end up with so many awful, rotten people so high up the hierarchy? And so what the book tries to do is to figure out, is there a dictatorial personality that draws itself towards power? Is there something about power that changes people? It's a chicken or the egg question. Is it that bad people seek power or that power turns people bad? And then it also looks at things like systems, because even though one of the things I do in my work as a political scientist is I sit down with. For this book, for example, I interviewed, I also am a really optimistic person, and I think that there's a lot of ways we can fix this. The book sketches out all the problems, but it closes with a lot of different solutions that I'm hopeful, over the longer run, can make a better society with better people in power.
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Alison Gill
Yeah. It's sort of a nature versus nurture thing. Right. Like, I just watched Trading Places probably for the thousandth time. And it's always an interesting question, whether the power corrupts absolutely or absolute power. And I was wondering through your research and your interviews if you found that it's more one or the other.
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Dana Goldberg
Yeah. So I tried to tackle this question a few different ways. The first is I tried to figure out whether a thirst for power is genetic. And there's actually been studies on this. They use twin studies, so they look at identical twins that compare them to fraternal twins trying to isolate genes versus upbringing. And they've identified something that they call a leadership gene, which has a correlation with people ending up in positions of power. And it's actually a pretty strong correlation. But the problem is that it doesn't deal with the fact that there are certain traits in us that make us better at getting power in modern society. Right. I mean, of course they controlled for being a male and being white and so on, but also being an affable, charismatic person makes you more likely to seek and obtain power in modern society. I mean, introverts have a harder time in job interviews than extroverts. So maybe the gene is actually correlated with other traits that help you get power. So also what I did was I sat down with people who were the offspring of power hungry abusers. And one of the most memorable experiences in the book was I went to Paris and I sipped wine with this daughter of a cannibalistic dictator, this guy named Jean Bedell Bokassa, who ruled the Central African Republic in the 1970s and allegedly served human flesh to Visini dignitaries at one point. And I sort of expected the daughter to be just repulsed by him. And she had this sort of weird Stockholm syndrome of thinking he's this great leader and so on, and was proud of her last name. And then at the end of the interview, when I asked her, are you going to angle to go back to the Central African Republic and become the next president, she did that thing that American politicians do where they say, I'm not ruling anything out. So, you know, I also looked at this from a variety of other angles. And, you know, even in the animal kingdom. Right. I mean, I looked at heritability of dominance in everything from zebrafish to hyenas, dolphins.
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Alison Gill
What's up with dolphins? They're evil.
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Dana Goldberg
I do actually I talk a fair amount about animals in the book because there's a lot we can learn from them, I think, for hierarchy in human society. But, you know, like hyenas inherit dominance, so do zebrafish. And with mice, you can actually manipulate their genome and take a dominant mouse and make it super dominant or a submissive mouse and make it super submissive. So I think there's something to this. Right? And at the same time, I think a huge amount depends on the system. So we have people who are more or less power hungry in society. We can take that as a given. I think we mostly agree with that. Some of us don't want power, Some of us are obsessed with it. The system then dictates whether the good people gravitate towards power or not. One of the studies that I loved in the book was there's a study where they have people roll a dice 42 times and they say, every time you roll a six, we're going to give you some cash, but you get to report how many sixes you rolled. So you can lie. Right. And when they ran this study in India, one guy was so brazen as to report 42 sixes in a row, which I find amusing. But when they did sort of a follow up, they found that the people who lied on the dice rolls were also the people who wanted to be bureaucrats, civil servants, because that's where you could extort bribes and make money on the side. When they reran the study in Denmark, it was exactly the opposite. In fact. All of the people who lied wanted to go into business and all the people who were honest wanted to go into the civil service. So what I think you take away from that is that a rotten system attracts rotten people and a good system attracts good people. And that interacts with this sort of fundamental trait some of us do or do not have about whether we want power or not.
- [25:06]
Alison Gill
And a question, interesting question that just popped into my head while you were talking there about motive. Right. And I was wondering if you looked at that, because I've always wondered if it's power or money, because some people are willing to forfeit money for power because you just sort of inherently get all of this stuff that comes with it anyway. And did you look into that in your research?
- [25:31]
Dana Goldberg
Yeah. And it's different for different people, and that's why they sort of self sort. I mean, one of the things that you have with hierarchies is that people angle for where they want to be. And if you're somebody who has something called the dark triad, which I talk about in one of the chapters of the book, which is Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. Being a psychopath, does any of this sound familiar to us? In modern American history? These are traits that I think make you obsessed with power, but also unfortunately, very, very good at getting it. That's one of the lessons we've found. And there's massive amounts of evidence that those people are overrepresented in the highest echelons of business and politics. And so I think they often come together. But if you're obsessed with money but not power, you might gravitate a bit more towards business being outside of the spotlight. If you're more obsessed with Power, but not money. You might go towards politics. I think one of the things that's really interesting about this, though, is that when you think about these systems and how they sort people, you also have this optimal strategy that's a bit counterintuitive. The optimal strategy is actually to end up in second in command or close to the power, but not actually in the spotlight. We know this from a couple of different ways. One of them is through non human primate studies. If you look at baboons, you can basically study how quickly they age in their DNA. There's this process called DNA methylation. And what they found is, they said as far down the hierarchy as you go, that's the worst place to be. You don't have any resources. It's really stressful. You age really quickly. And then as you go top, as you rise up the sort of ladder, you get more and more healthy, less stressful, et cetera, until you hit the very top, the alpha. And the alpha ages really fast because they have a target on their back the whole time. So it's an extremely stressful position to be in. So what they found actually, is that the beta is a very good place to be as a baboon. And this is also true in the human world. We have lots of studies about power with business and Politics, for business CEOs age faster when they're in industries that have undergone a massive crisis. And with a study that looked up 200 years across 17 countries of people who won presidential elections versus the people who lost them and didn't get into power, the people who won died 4.4 years earlier on average than the people who lost. And so I think one of the lessons is that seek power at your own peril. Maybe the best place to be is just out of the spotlight, near the top, but not at the top.
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Alison Gill
Yeah, we've called that the power beta. Specifically speaking of, let's just say Senator Lindsey Graham, who was compared. Actually, it's funny that you bring up animals because he was compared to. There was a fish in the animal kingdom that hangs on to the big sharks and eats the stuff off the sharks and, like, sort of eats the, like the leftovers and the crumbs. And he's like, hey. And he finds the alpha shark and just sort of goes with him. So they were calling him the Lindsey fish. And I see that a lot where people prefer that position, like you said, it's a lot less stressful. But you seem to get all of the, you know, it's a coattail situation.
- [28:44]
Dana Goldberg
Yeah, and, you know, I think this is something where there's a lot of variation in the strategies in which people get into power and how much they're obsessed with that sort of spotlight aspect of it. But I also think, you know, one of the things that I think we need to think more carefully about when you talk about motive, for example, one of the areas in the book that stuck with me in the research was looking at policing, which is slightly. It's different from politics, but it's a big political hot button issue right now for good reason in the United States. And what I looked at in that was I tried to look up how do we recruit police? Like, what are the videos? What are the messages that we have when we say you should become a police officer? And I found this amazing video in Doraville, Georgia, population 10,000, just outside of Atlanta, where the video starts with the Punisher logo flashing, which, by the way, is a vigilante who punishes and tortures criminals. And then it has these guys in camouflage, army camouflage, in a literal tank scream into view with death metal music. They get out of the hatch, they throw their smoke grenade, they shoot their guns, they get back into the tank and they roll off into the sunset. And I thought to myself, who signs up after they see that if I wanted to be a community support officer, if I was not a super militaristic man, which I'm not, by the way, this is something where I would think, I'm not going to go to that police department. It's not a good fit for me. And what New Zealand did that I thought was very clever here was they decided to deliberately counteract this. They said, we know that the people who are bigots and bullies and racists and so on are probably going to throw their hat in the ring to be bigots and bullies in racists in uniform, because it's really appealing to them. So we're going to make a recruitment video that specifically tries to deter them. And it basically creates a video that's funny. It's all community oriented. It's a series of people who don't look like your stereotype of cops. There are no guns drawn. And at the end, the criminal, the quote unquote criminal that they're chasing turns out to be a border collie that's stolen a purse. And at the end it flashes. Do you care enough to be a cop? And you think, okay, the difference between the Punisher logo and the do you care enough to be a cop? Logo is the difference between abusive policing and Community oriented policing. And so when it comes to motive, I think it's not just the people that seek power. It's the systems that say we want you and how they portray it. And I think we have that. The Republican Party is a really broken mechanism right now in that regard because you look at Paul Gosar or somebody like him and the people who want to be Paul Gosar, they're the next generation of Republican candidates. So I think we have to think at all these different levels who seeks power, who obtains it, how the system actually attracts the wrong kind of people and how you can reform it.
- [31:22]
Alison Gill
Yeah. And speaking of how the system either attracting the wrong kind of people or breeding the wrong kind of people, I have some more questions about that, but I have to take a quick break. Will you stay with me?
- [31:30]
Dana Goldberg
Of course.
- [31:31]
Alison Gill
Thanks, everybody. We'll be right back after these messages. We'll be right back, everybody. Welcome back. We're talking with the author of Corruptible who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, Brian Kloss. And Brian, before the break, you were talking about looking into some police things. What was going on with the Zealand and their, you know, recruitment videos. And I was instantly reminded of I've been for over a decade now, close to two decades, an advocate for survivors of military sexual trauma. And we have been looking into whether the military sort of attracts predators or if they create them, what kind of people want to join the military because of the, you know, the much higher rate of sexual harassment and assault in the military. And when we look at the insurrection, for example, so many people who are ex cops, ex military, or in these violent extremist groups who dress like they're in the military and go and play military or cops, et cetera. And I was wondering if you had looked at all into, I think the same would stand to reason for police as it would for the military. But I was wondering if you looked into the military specifically.
- [32:49]
Brian Klaas
Yeah.
- [32:49]
Dana Goldberg
So, I mean, I think there's a similar dynamic with the military as there is with the police. And the way I'd say it is that there's plenty of people who join the military or join the police because they want to serve their community. But the key word is disproportionate. Right. There's a disproportionate number of people and a disproportionate kind of person who looks at the idea of carrying a gun and the power that is associated with it. Potentially in a foreign country where you're allowed to shoot people or in the police where you're allowed to patrol streets of a different ethnicity to you and abuse those people where they think this sounds great. And so I talked to the head of the Metropolitan Police in London, the person, not the head of it, but the person who used to be in charge of recruitment for the Metropolitan Police in London. And she said the same thing about the military as she would about the police, which he said, if you're one of these bad apples, being a bad apple with a uniform and a gun is really attractive. So you have to design a system that counteracts that. Now, at the same time, being in those systems does make you worse. It is true that power corrupts. One of the chapters I have outlines how that actually works, and it changes your brain chemistry. There's neuroscience evidence about this. There's all sorts of evidence that we can point to of how power changes you. But one of the ways, and this speaks to the simplicity of some of these interventions that you can avoid some of this behavior is with something as simple as rotation. And this would be true in the military as much as in policing. So what they found in various places where abuse of power often exists is that if you end up with the same sort of either group of people or same partner in the police force, you start to trust that person. And if both of you exist in a culture of abuse or, you know, breaking the rules or, God forbid, sexual assault, you end up in a situation where you think, I can get away with this because this person has my back. Now, if you constantly rotate people, you lose that. You start to worry about the new blood that's going to tell on you or is going to expose you or at least be watching you. And so one of the things that enlightened police forces and enlightened military groups use is they use rotation, where they try to make sure that people are constantly being floated around, not because there's any sort of distrust necessarily. You don't want to have a culture where you say all soldiers are bad or all cops are bad, but you do want to have a situation where they actually fear bad behavior. And so I think there's a real value to oversight here. Now, when you talk about the January 6th people, these people are play acting, and they're play acting in extremely dangerous ways where they want to dress up like the military, but they don't want any of the oversight or training or any of the formal apparatuses associated with it. So I think those are the most dangerous. I think at least the military has some systems. If you're joining the Oath Keepers and walking around the capital with your hidden weapon or whatever it is. Those people are basically all the people who probably would have been screened out when the military started to check their background and so on. So you'd hope so anyway. But of course there are some that get through the cracks and end up in positions of power within existing structures.
- [35:44]
Alison Gill
Yeah, especially I'm thinking border patrol when they like doubled the amount of border patrol and lowered the standards to get in. Now we've, we've addressed like, we've talked about the New Zealand police recruitment videos, we've talked about oversight and I was hoping you could give us a little bit more into how we can reform society to ensure that more women and racial minorities end up in position of authority. Because that's the sort of representation I think that is required to serve the community and the communities that they work in more effectively and less power hungry wise or greedy wise. Can you talk a little bit about some more solutions that we can maybe have a hand in ourselves?
- [36:28]
Dana Goldberg
Yeah, it's a great question. I have a whole chapter I call the Power Delusion which is about how this sort of existing biases in our brains have caused us to make very stupid decisions about modern leadership that systematically bias against women and ethnic minorities. And there's lots and lots of evolutionary psychology and social psychology evidence that points to this. So it's a real problem. There's a couple things I'd point to. One is a very simple one, and this won't work for presidents, but it will work for a lot of other more normal systems of power in everyday lives. And that's anonymity when it comes to the ways that we screen and promote people into positions of power. So I'm a professor over here in the UK and one of the things that's interesting about the way the system works here is that you don't know who you're grading. So in other words, I have absolutely no idea whose paper is in front of me when I start grading them. It's completely blind. There's no name, there's just a number. And there's studies that have shown that with CVs, if you submit the same quality of CV but you just alter the name on the top to be either a white sounding name or a black sounding name, or a woman or a man, the differential outcomes are profound. In other words, if you have a male on the top, they get a higher starting salary, more likely to get it called for an interview. The same is of course true when you have white candidates versus Black candidates. And that's proof that there's biases in us that are not related to merit. Right. Because it's quite clear that they're the same CVs. The only thing that's being changed is the name or the gender of the person being applying for the job. So one way is try to anonymize these a lot more. It'd make it much, much more equitable. The other thing I think that's important is that we can't wait for society to be enlightened enough to actually have clear representation that's demographically proportional at the highest echelons of politics. It's not going to happen anytime soon. We're not going to have the same number of women and men or the same number of ethnic minorities and white people or at least proportionate numbers in the next year or two. What we could do in the next year or two is develop something that I propose in the book called a citizen assembly that is selected randomly the same way that juries are selected. So there's precedent for this. In ancient Greece they used this device called the Claritarion where it randomly selected citizens to make decisions. Decisions. They actually replace politicians in Greece. What I think they should do instead is we should have basically a jury duty type system of let's say for the House, 435 randomly selected Americans who then make decisions that are non binding but are publicly visible. And what I think is so important about that is it would expose when there was a difference between what the House did and what these 435 randomly selected Americans did in terms of their choice, because it would expose the effects of lobbying, it would expose the effects of all sorts of aspects of our politics that are all for the wrong reasons. And crucially because it's random, it would actually be demographically representative. So you'd actually have people making these kinds of decisions that would look like the United States, which is very different from what we actually have in Congress now.
- [39:39]
Alison Gill
That's brilliant. I love it. We have this shadow House of Representatives and I'm so glad you brought up anonymization. One of the things that I did when I worked for the federal government, I worked for Department of Veterans Affairs. I was a hiring manager. This goes back to maybe 2012, 2011 was I started requiring that they take names and genders out of the resumes that I would go through to select who was going to be interviewed.
- [40:05]
Dana Goldberg
That's wonderful.
- [40:06]
Alison Gill
And then we would interview them on the phone.
- [40:07]
Dana Goldberg
That's great.
- [40:08]
Alison Gill
We would do phone interviews. And I did that because of inherent biases that I am, I can recognize my privilege, but that I might not be able to see and that others who were interviewing because we had multiple managers in the interview process that others might not be able to see. And I think that anyone who's listening to this, who's a hiring manager, can employ this very simple thing to help eliminate the biases that we, as much as we want to acknowledge and be better people, that sometimes are just not visible to ourselves. I'm so glad that you brought that up. Finally, before I let you go, different aspects of leadership types as well I think is very important. And getting my PhD in public health and my MBA. How many leadership courses and seminars have we taken, Brian? Really hours and hours and hours, hundreds of hours. And some of the things that really stuck with me are the differences in leadership qualities, whether it be servant leadership and transformational leadership versus authoritative or transactional leadership. And I think that wondering again if those are learned or inherited, I think.
- [41:21]
Dana Goldberg
That they're system based. One of the things that I found really interesting, the weirdest thing probably I did for the book, is I interviewed Paul Bremer, who was the viceroy of Iraq in 2003, and he ran the country, basically. And now he is, believe it or not, a ski instructor in Vermont. So I went out and had a ski lesson with him before the pandemic struck. And one of the things that really stood out to me with him talking to him was that he's a very polarizing figure for a lot of reasons. And there's plenty of things to criticize about Bremer. But I used him in the book for a different insight, which is he served with distinction when he was the ambassador to Malawi and Norway and some other places. He ended up in Iraq. And one of the first things he proposed was shooting looters as a way to send the signal that there was order in the sort of midst of chaos post invasion. And what I took away from that was it's context specific, right? I mean, imagine him saying in Norway, in Oslo, he's like, oh, we're going to shoot some looters to send a message it would never happen. Now, you can still be appalled by the idea of shooting looters in Iraq, of course, but the point is that the context dictates a lot of the behavior. And so that's very, very true with systems of leadership. And I also think one of the things that I talk about in the book that we haven't covered, that relevant for this question. Is what about us? Right? You can't be a leader unless you have followers. And so why do we pick awful leaders? This is one of the things that I've grappled with during the Trump eras. Why is it that nearly half of the country's voters are willing to back Donald Trump and love him? And so that I also get into some of these really interesting angles of a field called evolutionary psychology, which looks at how biases in our Stone Age brains, which is to say our brains haven't evolved much in the last 50 to 200,000 years, but our lifestyle has massively. The way we have leaders has changed massively. And so what they've found is that these biases continue to this day, such that if you ask people to select a leader, but you first say, oh, by the way, it's in times of a crisis, there's a conflict or a famine or a pandemic, that a physically large male figure is more likely to be picked in those times, which is not an accident, why we call them strong men. And when you think about that, that's why Vladimir Putin poses shirtless. It's why Donald Trump had the speech that was the American carnage speech early on in his presidency, his inauguration speech, because he's trying to send the signal that only I can fix this. It's trying to prime that part in certain brains in American society that respond to strongman leadership. And so that's a very different type of leadership than what you're talking about, servant leadership or the idea of actually public service. And so I think what's so important here is that we have to attack this problem from all angles. One thing that I think unifies Americans, probably one of the only things that I think unifies Americans is people think our leaders suck. They basically think that we have bad people in power. And I think that that is something that Democrats and Republicans say we could do better on. So how do we fix it? Well, we have to think about every aspect. Who seeks power, who gets power, how they retain power, the system around power, and why we give power to bad people. And so that's why in the 250 pages, I'm taking this sweeping view of all these different angles to try to figure out the answer to that question. Because, as I said at the beginning, I'm an optimist at heart. I think these are solvable problems. Humans are very smart. We have very good ways of dealing with stupid cognitive biases in our brains. We have very sophisticated structures to sort of deter abuses. But they could be Much better. And so I think it's not rocket science. It just requires a fundamental rethink of how we allocate power in modern society. And I hope people take some of the lessons and we can make things a bit better a little bit at a time.
- [45:18]
Alison Gill
Yeah, you're right. I mean, because if you're looking at the leaders and not the followers, you're missing half the equation. And you know, I've talked to Mary Trump several times about the 71 million people who voted for Trump and how if you indict Trump and put him in jail, they don't go away. But, you know, and people can be very corruptible. I'm thinking Milgram, you know, Abu Ghraib, stuff like that. So, you know, in people who are followers who follow positions of authority can be very easily corruptible by corrupt leaders. But this is absolutely fascinating and I'm very happy to announce that starting on January 9, the MSW Book Club is going to be going through your book Corruptible, chapter by chapter, sort of a book report in a series. And that on the final episode that will air, I believe February 27th, you will come back and join us to answer any questions throughout that seven series process of going through the book about the book. And our subscribers can do that@patreon.com Mueller she wrote there'll be a form there that they can fill out and ask you questions about the book as I go through it. So I'm very excited about that. I recommend everybody grab a copy. It's called who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas. K L A A S this is a very important book for us to understand because we aren't out of the woods in our democracy and in our own lives. I think we need to understand how leadership and followership can be transformative or corrupted. So I really thank you for your time today. This has been. I could talk to you for another three hours easy.
- [46:52]
Dana Goldberg
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be on the show and I'm so excited to be part of the book club.
- [46:56]
Alison Gill
Awesome. Thank you. Everybody Will be right back. Stick around for the good news after these messages. Will be ready, everybody. Welcome back. It's time for the good news.
- [47:10]
Dana Goldberg
Likes good news, everyone.
- [47:12]
Alison Gill
Then good news, everyone. Good news, good news. And if you have any good news you want to send in or photos of your happy places or kids, say idioms idiots of the Senate. You know, how dumb is Louie Gohmert? That's a game we haven't seen in a while. Want to send us a haiku? Whatever. Send us anything. You can do it by going to DailyBeansPod.com and clicking on Contact. And if you have a case, if you have a dispute for Amy's court, dung dung. You can send that into us too and Amy will decide your case for you.
- [47:47]
Brian Klaas
Happily. I'm sure.
- [47:49]
Alison Gill
It's so much fun too. She has a blast with it. First up from Sam. Pronouns they, them, hello, Amy, Dana, and whoever that third person is. Oh no.
- [48:00]
Brian Klaas
I'm just staying quiet on this one.
- [48:03]
Alison Gill
Writing in to share some good news today in the vein of fine and pleasant misery. As Patrick McManus would say, last summer I went camping for the first time, tagging along with my friends group, a few of whom listened to the show. Oh cool. After two excellent trips, I decided to come along for a winter camping trip last weekend. After a 20 minute hike in, we set up our tents, got a fire started and most importantly, unpacked the drinks. Yes, we had a delicious dinner of chili and cornbread. Mm. And when night fell, however, the Michigan weather began.
- [48:31]
Brian Klaas
Oh goodness.
- [48:32]
Alison Gill
Began. I love that it started raining, which we expected and we're prepared for. But what we weren't prepared for was in the morning, after getting only a couple hours of sleep from the cold and starting a fire with a very wet wood to keep warm, it began storming thunder, pouring rain, howling wind, with the temperature barely getting above freezing. Thankfully, the fire was saved with some quick thinking and a pot lid. The rest of the day could be described as cold and shivering with frequent rain or snow and us huddled around the fire for warmth. It reminds me of the old you remember Jim Gaffigan, Dana? Where he's like we ever heard the phrase happy camper? I don't know why they say that camping is terrible, sam goes on to say. Fortunately, the third day was only cold and we hiked out around noon for after breakfast. But with all the layers we were wearing, by the end of the hike, we were all hot, sweaty messes as we piled into the truck. We had lunch at a local restaurant and chatted. Then I drove most of us home. Between driving halfway across the state and the typical Midwestern extra long goodbyes, Welp, you don't just hit your leg and go, well, that's what we did in my family. I didn't get home until about 10 o'clock, wanted nothing more than to shower off the stench. Three days of wearing the same clothes next to a spooky campfire and then crawl into bed. I was already planning my next trip. Between the company, the food beauty of Michigan in the winter, and the peace of disconnecting from the modern world for a little while, I had an excellent time. I made a few mistakes, but I learned what not to do for the next time. And at the very worst, I got a story to tell my friends. Before this year, I would have never considered myself a person who enjoys camping. So I encourage all your listeners who get the opportunity to take it and find out for themselves. Attached are a few pictures of my weekend. Keep up the good work bringing us the news every day. You're faithful, if a bit smelly listener, Sam.
- [50:17]
Brian Klaas
Oh my God. I love it.
- [50:20]
Alison Gill
Oh my God, that looks freezing.
- [50:22]
Brian Klaas
It does. Great, great submission though. Sam.
- [50:25]
Alison Gill
That was a wonderful, wonderful story. I didn't mean to bash on camping, but you enjoy it. You go on right ahead and enjoy it.
- [50:33]
Brian Klaas
All right. I'm going to go right on ahead and move on to Dan, who doesn't have pronouns here. Dearest Laguminati, I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for the work you do. You've been a beacon of hope and an emotional mooring for so many of us out here, floundering through the most trying of times that we all miss you. When you take time for yourself, you always have content for us and it means the world. That said, cue scary music. Dun dun dun. I have a clarification regarding books of the Bible. From a recovering escapee of Christian upbringing, there are at least four books of the Bible named for, quote, John, the gospel of John 1 John, 2nd John, 3rd John.
- [51:13]
Alison Gill
Now, the gospel of John were to be 3rd John. Right?
- [51:16]
Brian Klaas
Jesus. One thing I know is, dear John, the Gospel of John is often just referred to as John. This is where you get John 3:16. Anytime someone refers to John without a preceding ordinal number, they're referring to the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is John's retelling of, quote, the good news of Christ.
- [51:36]
Alison Gill
Oh, I get it. So it's like there's Miss Universe, then there's the first runner up and the second runner up.
- [51:42]
Brian Klaas
And this is just John. Exactly.
- [51:44]
Alison Gill
This is John, John 3:16. That's the gospel of John 3:16. Yeah.
- [51:50]
Brian Klaas
What Dan's saying here is the Gospel of John is John's retelling of the good news of Christ and his deeds while among us. Now, the other books of John are his letters to various congregations.
- [52:00]
Alison Gill
Oh, so it's the same John, Same John.
- [52:02]
Brian Klaas
He's just writing some letters.
- [52:03]
Alison Gill
I know. I knew that I was just. Because I was Joking about how it must suck to be the third John.
- [52:10]
Brian Klaas
As penance for my audacity in sending you a clarification, I have some shit adults say sweet. My coworker, in reference to a project she was working on, quote, I should be done next week. It's not rocket surgery.
- [52:22]
Alison Gill
Yep, yep.
- [52:24]
Brian Klaas
Same coworker bragging on her memory, said, I've got a photogenic memory. I never forget.
- [52:30]
Alison Gill
She's gotta be kidding, right?
- [52:31]
Brian Klaas
I don't know this person. Sounds like she's very serious about these. And finally, my beloved mother in law who was Greek. Yes, my big Greek wedding is real. Not is real, is real.
- [52:43]
Alison Gill
Is real. Admonished there's a hole in this cake.
- [52:48]
Brian Klaas
Admonished her granddaughter for eating too much sugar. She said, don't eat too much dessert. You don't want to get sugar beatties sugar pits.
- [52:57]
Alison Gill
The biopsy, the bibopsy.
- [52:59]
Brian Klaas
Yep, sugar beatties sugar. Anyway, please keep up the fantastic work, ladies. And that was from Dan.
- [53:06]
Alison Gill
Thanks Dan. Next up, from Jason on Patreon. Hey Ag. Been listening for many years. Never felt the need to comment before. I'm not on Twitter, so I'm going to leave a Twitter thread comment here. Your quote, seemingly conflicting ideologies thread is a revelation of sorts. Getting to the heart of what's been so difficult to communicate for the past year about the uncomfortable position we're all in. The writing in and of itself is also a very lovely prose. Also fuck sublime. Okay, now I've got to read it to you because otherwise it's not going to make much sense. Okay, so let me scroll through here and see if I can find it.
- [53:44]
Brian Klaas
Pull it up.
- [53:45]
Alison Gill
But yeah, I posted this thread last night when I was. I don't know, I was kind of one of those heavy thinking nights. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you ever have those? Of course. Like where you're just thinking about things more than you normally would. So running through my head, this was the. These were the thoughts. Dana. This is a thread. Seemingly conflicting ideologies I hold at once. Okay, the DOJ is busting its ass, but is also taking too long. I wish Garland would tell us more, but glad he's tight lipped. Mueller did his job but left a lot of questions unanswered. The January 6th committee is kick ass, but it's also not very forthcoming right now. Secrecy is necessary, but so is transparency. Garland is good, but also trepidatious. I like that the DOJ is suing Texas, but hate that they're repping Trump against Eugene, Carol. Justice takes a long time to get right, but we don't have a lot of time. Biden's doing a great job, but he does make mistakes. Moderates are stripping the build back better, Bill, but good is better than perfect. Inflation is bad, but recovering from a pandemic is good. I appreciate the system, but OLC memos are garbage. I want to lock up the 16 criminals forever, but I also stand for defendants rights. I want Bannon to be in prison awaiting trial without bail, but I also advocate for a no bail system. I love freedom and push for government regulations. I like Newsom's idea of vigilante justice for guns, but I hate the idea of anyone infringing on anyone's rights. I love the troops, but I hate war. I wanted to pull out of Afghanistan, but hate that we had to leave people behind. I'm a boss, but I love unions. I love government, but I hate waiting. That's a bad. I love the OLC when they support my ideas but hate when they issue memos supporting torture. I love complex things but wish Dems could have simple messaging. I live in San Diego, but I hate Sublime and I love finishing projects but might add to this later. That's all it says.
- [55:40]
Brian Klaas
It's really good.
- [55:41]
Alison Gill
Thanks, man.
- [55:42]
Brian Klaas
Really good. That was awesome.
- [55:44]
Alison Gill
Thanks. Appreciate that.
- [55:45]
Brian Klaas
I like the way your brain works. It's a good brain. All right. This one makes me want to drive to San Francisco and you'll understand why. Anonymous. This is from Anonymous, pronounced she and her. Here's a seasonal misheard lyric for you. I was far too old when I realized that Mele Kalikimaka is not a wise way to say Merry Christmas, but the island way. I can't be the only one, right?
- [56:09]
Alison Gill
That's awesome.
- [56:10]
Brian Klaas
That is funny. Now this is what I was talking about. Attaches. A photo of sweet Junebug and Junebug's available for adoption from Mutville Senior Dog Rescue.
- [56:19]
Alison Gill
Muttville Senior.
- [56:20]
Brian Klaas
Love it.
- [56:21]
Alison Gill
Bring it home to Muttville.
- [56:23]
Brian Klaas
In my old town, San Francisco, at an estimated 13 years young. It says old, but I said young. She's reaching old lady status, but her foster says she's still energetic, lovable and has no issues wearing clothes.
- [56:37]
Alison Gill
Important questions to answer. Thank you.
- [56:40]
Brian Klaas
Look how cute Judenbug is.
- [56:42]
Alison Gill
I know. The baby, the baby, the ears. So cute. Thank you for sending that in. We'll have that information for you. San Francisco. And you want to adopt a gym bug. We'll have that information in the show notes. Next up from Valerie Pronoun. She and her hello Lagoonati one and all. I've been meaning to get in touch for literal years, but have never really felt like what I had to say was important enough or interesting enough to submit. However, I wanted to share with a wider community an idea for the holiday party season that I've always loved and one that we used to do at my old job as a features editor at my small town paper when I still lived in the United States. It's a Secret Santa gift exchange with a twist. We'd set our spend limit, pull everyone's name out of a hat, then we would buy our Secret Santa gifts for that person, imagining them as a child. This led to some active investigations about the person whose name you had drawn. For example, I had no idea that the advertising rep I had chosen was heavy into My Little Pony as a little girl, but her colleagues let me know we'd spend to the set limit. Everyone remove the price tags, wrap the gifts for exchange at our holiday party after dinner. It was both exciting and delighting to see what everyone received and there was genuine experiences of getting to know some of the formative experiences of our colleagues. It offered a different perspective on their personalities and longer term it made for me at least it made it difficult to stay angry with someone if I imagined them as a Buck tooth kid playing catch with their new softball mitt. The best part, in my opinion is that we then would all donate the gifts still in their packaging to Toys for Tots and the gifts would then go on to make a new batch of kids happy. This is getting to me on Christmas morning. It's a gift that gives at least twice. You get to know your colleagues more deeply. You get to see what your colleagues think about you as a kid. You get to make child happy with a neat present and you get to feel good about the whole thing. I realize that it's a challenge to adopt during a global pandemic, but I hope that the community keeps in mind for any particular gift exchange. I've tried unsuccessfully to export it to other jobs to adopt this tradition. Yeah, this tradition. I tried to export it to other places I've worked since leaving the paper and moved to the UK to marry my husband. Congrats. But I live in hope that someone else will pick up the baton and spread some holiday magic for those less fortunate than others. Thank you for all the incredible work you've done since the humble kitchen beginnings for keeping this immigrant informed of the slow motion car crash that was the last administration. The amount of chronicling and dissemination you do in your podcast is incredibly impressive and so necessary to keep holding people to account. Big up the fourth estate. Thank you. I'd also like to take a minute to thank whoever it was that sponsored my premium account. I don't really mind advertisements, but not being able to see everyone's pod pet tax photos was getting to me. I appreciate them and admission to behind the Beans so much. I hope everyone has had safe and happy holiday season. Takes a much needed rest over the next few weeks. Ready to come back. Keep the pressure up to hold the former guy to account. Many thanks for all you do. Team Lothian Cat Rescue is a charity run cat only no kill shelter and I see they have three beautiful black cats needing homes. Black cats are often overlooked because humans are superstitious. I guess I will almost always choose a black cat to adopt because of this. I love them. Here's one looking for a home that maybe one of the other Scottish area listeners could give a new home to. He is@lothiancatrescue.org he's two. Look at him.
- [60:04]
Brian Klaas
Oh, AJ. AJ is a shy lad with a sleek black coat and he's never lived.
- [60:11]
Alison Gill
I don't know what that's children or animals. Until now. He really likes to go out and about. It's a shy lad.
- [60:18]
Brian Klaas
So cute. It's a shy lad.
- [60:20]
Alison Gill
I need a garden, it says. So cute. Look at the next one.
- [60:25]
Brian Klaas
There's a kittens.
- [60:26]
Alison Gill
Here's our two that we adopted from the same shelter three years ago when they were so small their eyes were kind of blue. This is a picture of them and we had them about three months. Pablo's on the left, Olaf on the right.
- [60:36]
Brian Klaas
Oh my God. Pablo and Olaf. What great names for kittens. They're so cute.
- [60:40]
Alison Gill
Oh, that's a man face on the on top there.
- [60:43]
Brian Klaas
Oh my God. So cute.
- [60:44]
Alison Gill
Look at that chin. Wonderful. Thank you for all these submissions everybody and what a great idea. Gift exchange of what you would get them when they were a kid and then you give all the toys to charity.
- [60:55]
Brian Klaas
I know, that's brilliant.
- [60:57]
Alison Gill
I love that. If anybody does that, if anybody, it might be too late. Christmas parties are usually like the first or second week of December for work. But if you do that, I want to hear about it. I want to hear stories about it. So if you want to set that up and I imagine it would just you would learn so much about your co workers and yourself too. Like you just have that cool nostalgic feeling totally of being a kid. Rad. Dana, any final thoughts?
- [61:19]
Brian Klaas
I do not have any final thoughts for today, my friend.
- [61:21]
Alison Gill
All right, well, everyone tune in tomorrow, and we'll see if Dana has any final thoughts. Until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, and take care of your mental health. I've been ag.
- [61:31]
Brian Klaas
And I've been dg.
- [61:32]
Alison Gill
And them's the beans. Refried beans. I like refried beans.