It Could Happen Here Weekly 254

0:01 Call zone media.

0:03 Hey, everybody.

0:04 Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

0:28 Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis, joined by Robert Evans.

0:35 Hello.

0:36 Hello, Garrison Davis. How are you doing today? I'm doing okay. I'm really, I'm getting prepared to vote. I'm psyching myself up.

0:45 Just like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps told you to do, huh?

0:49 I think that's what we want to start with. In general, this episode will be kind of going over the midterm polls as they are. in early October, kind of what we can get a sense of the election about a month out, now that we're just a few weeks away from the election. But a few weeks ago, the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps... Prince of the Pod.

1:15 Sure.

1:16 At this point, man... One bad day, full Stalinist, full Maoist. I mean, that's more, it's a slightly different-ist. A few weeks ago, the IRGC released a 26-page letter, not short. Not strong on brevity, the IRGC. Addressed to the American people, a spokesperson from the IRGC told Reuters, quote, the American people are not knowledgeable about many developments. We believe if they knew more, they would think differently and take other decisions, unquote.

1:56 You guys might have more faith in the American people than I do at this point.

2:00 The start of the letter and how it's addressed reads, to the honorable people of the United States of America, the scholars, the students, and the members of the media. I think that last part is important because at least some of them know that The American people are not reading a 26-page letter. This is going to be mostly read by journalists. This is going to be read by nerds on Twitter. And blue sky, I guess. And nerds on Twitter.

2:23 Yeah.

2:24 Now, I actually was able to get a short video. The IRGC also released a short video kind of summarizing the letter. And I will play that here for Robert. So that's, yeah, that's the special, that's the special video. Yeah, that really is. That's something else. So there's a few sections before. The bulk of the letter is arguing why Iran is the victor in the war, concrete evidence of Iran's victory. They have a section on the meaning of, quote, death to America. Yeah. Which reads, quote, Death to America does not in any way express any ill will toward the American people who have themselves suffered through the same oppression.

3:11 Death to America is a prayer for the eradication of the diabolical ruling elite whose seat of power is in the White House. And the letter goes on to say that the RGC and the people of Iran have no feeling of hostility toward the American people. And then they ask, how can the U.S. be saved? And this is what leads to the bulk of the letter saying, which is essentially trying to get Americans to vote harder. Oh, which...

3:37 You're finished, fascism.

3:39 Oh, man.

3:40 But there's also a few other interesting kind of like name drops here. Quote, God will come to the aid of the American people if they decide to change course. Thankfully, Americans are waking up to the truth. Over the past two years, Americans have participated in numerous demonstrations in cities across the U.S. to express their outrage at Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.

4:00 Moreover.

4:01 The No Kings rallies that swept across the U.S. last year were a nation- Okay, IRGC. Were a nation, right? Repudiation of the burgeoning autocratic tendencies within the American government. These powerful manifestations of collective action are evidence of a national awakening spreading through the U.S. Polls show that the majority of Americans, especially younger Americans, no longer wish to be complicit in their government's crimes against other nations, unquote.

4:30 Part of what makes this so funny to me is how diametrically opposed it is to the messaging coming out of like, you know, U.S. based like Maoists or like anti-imperialists, you know? Oh yeah, like the U.S. far left. Absolutely.

4:44 They're so much, so much more generous to the American people.

4:49 Yeah, that's something that's really, that's really funny to me. As for the vote harder section, let's read one paragraph here. Your response may be that you do not accept these atrocious actions, but are powerless to do anything about them. This answer, however, is not acceptable. You are the ones who empower with your votes. The government had allowed to do what it wants. Although American politicians often win your votes through deception of false promises, as Trump did, you can change the makeup of the government if you apply the criteria for good leadership in choosing the people you vote into office.

5:23 See, guys, I gotta tell you, it's not that easy. First off, I've voted every time I've gotten the chance, pretty much. I don't think I've ever empowered anyone with my votes.

5:33 You know, it's one of those kind of Adam Curtis moments. Yeah. We have the IRGC advocating the ideal of electoral politics, something that does not exist really in Iran either.

5:47 It's consistent with there's that one famous interview with an Iranian cleric where he's like, as Alexander de Tocqueville, who I'm sure all Americans have read once said, he's like, guys, you are way overestimating us.

6:02 So, yeah, if you have any sort of anti-imperialist impulses as per as per the IRGC, get your voter registration up to date.

6:12 Get your voter registration card and get out there.

6:15 If you're in line, stay in line. That's right. So part of why this letter was released is because it is just a few weeks away from the midterms. We are less than a month away from the 2026 midterm elections. And so I thought we should do a little update on polling and take a look at some of the close races.

6:34 Sure.

6:34 And let's start by talking about the current makeup of Congress. Right now in the House, 218 seats are held by Republicans, 214 by Democrats, and there's one independent who caucuses with the Republicans. 218 seats are what's needed for a majority. This has been a very small majority that the Republicans have been able to hold onto in the House these past few years. The Cook Political Report is forecasting that the Dems will pick up around five to 15 seats in the midterms, likely putting them in charge of the House with anywhere between 220 to 230 seats. And this lead in polling and their projected victory has only grown these past few weeks. It's not becoming a closer race for the Republicans.

7:22 No, things don't look good for them because gasoline costs all of the money in your pocket now.

7:28 That is a huge factor. That's a big part of the reason. I'll go over some of the kind of main issues driving the election person polling and gas prices is like number one or number two.

7:38 Yeah, I have trouble imagining anything other than other cost of living stuff being like a larger impact on voters.

7:47 Something that is interesting, the redistricting across Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah is will likely have a minimal impact in the results, like in total. There's obviously for the people actually impacted, the people whose votes are being diluted, especially.

8:04 Not that this is not bad or a problem. It's just they have fucked up enough that it's not going to benefit them to the extent.

8:11 That's what it.

8:11 Seemed like to me, that they're not going to benefit the way that they were.

8:15 No. So I don't want to discount the impact of the erosion of the Voting Rights Act by any means, or the just larger structural issues of partisan gerrymandering. But an analysis by Harvard estimated a net gain of only two seats for Republicans in these midterms, though other estimates give them a few more seats, anywhere between five to nine.

8:36 So we're looking at somewhere between a couple seats. I think nine is probably a bit optimistic. Yeah, for the Republicans. Around two to five seats they could net because of the redistricting measures. Could, might, yeah. coming years, going into 2028, when Virginia is able to push forward its redistricting again, which they tried to do earlier, but because of a procedural error, it was shot down. So that will also net Democrats a few more seats that will start to kind of even things out. And then we had this whole little fun redistricting for nothing.

9:14 Yeah, it's a real, just a marker of how badly they have botched their starting position going into this administration. Just kind of a catastrophic series of political decisions. We'll see if any of that matters, but it really does highlight how pissed off people are.

9:32 Now, obviously, the Senate is kind of the big question here.

9:37 Yeah.

9:37 Will Democrats be able to actually take the Senate? Will they be able to control all of Congress, not just the House? Yeah. Currently, the Republicans have a 53-seat majority, plus a Fetterman.

9:48 Mm-hmm.

9:49 And the vice president who can vote. So that kind of really throws a wrench in all these numbers, the Fetterman factor and the Vance factor. Democrats just have 45 seats plus two independents who caucus with the Democrats, like Bernie Sanders. So essentially, things actually sit at like 54 to 46, adjusting for independents and Fetterman. So Democrats really need a net gain of like four to five seats to be able to have the Senate be more of a competitive voting arena, also considering J.D. Vance. There are 35 Senate seats on the ballot next month. So Democrats will need to flip around four to five seats, like I said, and one of the seats Democrats have wanted to flip for a long time, and especially this year,

10:40 is Maine, with Susan Collins. One of our worst lawmakers.

10:45 Yes.

10:46 And ProPublica, as I reported on ED a few weeks ago, ProPublica did that great investigation into military contracting corruption and bribery involving Susan Collins. So union logger Troy Jackson is trying to unseat Collins. Right now, this race leans D or is a toss up. Morrist has Jackson up four points ahead of Collins among registered voters, but with a margin of error of 3.8%. So that's essentially still almost within the margin of error. This is going to be a very close race, right? A margin of error like that.

11:26 This is still basically a toss up. Other polling shows roughly the same results. Jackson up a few points, but within the margin of error. Per Morrist, among the Maine electorate, 57% think Collins will win. That's not saying 57% want Collins to win, but they think that will happen, right? That's what they think is more likely. A survey from the Maine People's Resource Center found Jackson ahead among independent voters, 58% to 33% for Collins. The Maine People's Resource Center is a progressive-leaning institution. Obviously, this race in Maine has been a big shit show, to say the least. And since Jackson has taken over as the nominee, Democratic Party establishment consultants have really swooped into Maine and have been trying

12:16 to keep Jackson on a tight leash. Jackson's campaign has not replicated the Platner-style intensive town hall strategy.

12:24 I think that would be a bad idea. Like, it would be really obvious if he just tried to be Graham Platner without the scandal, right?

12:31 Yeah. Yeah, let's try to be Graham Plattner, but I think it is, the style of campaigning is very different. Jackson's not as accessible to the electorate. Consultants have tried to keep him from doing Q & As at the events that he does end up doing. They've been dissuading him from talking about ICE and Israel and Palestine.

12:52 Great.

12:52 So they really have been trying to keep him on a pretty tight leash. There's a story in New York Magazine a few weeks ago that kind of details how Democratic establishment consultants have been trying to lead the Jackson campaign that if people are interested in that specific topic, I recommend they check out. So this is one of the races that Democrats really do need to flip if they have a chance of winning the Senate. And it is, you know, theoretically possible, you know, he may be slightly ahead in the polls, but only very slightly. But I think, yeah, this is this is essentially a toss up. especially looking back at 2020 when the Democrat in that race also was, you know, a little bit ahead and Collins still ended

13:37 up walking away with it.

13:38 Yeah, I think they're I mean, they're they're both trying to avoid having another platner who gets like out of control of them and is saying shit that the DNC does not want to have to stand by. And I think they are also hoping that that Plattner's campaign at least did enough damage to Collins that she isn't going to be able to like pull out a win this time.

13:57 And maybe that'll be the case, you know, that might wind up being a play that works.

14:01 Definitely.

14:02 It's not a great position to have someone who is doing as well as Plattner had been doing get dropped out with a scandal that fucked up. Like that's a, that's a, that's not easy to handle.

14:12 Yes.

14:13 Especially mobilizing that many people who were already kind of disillusioned with politics, giving them that sort of hope and then having that hope be ripped away And then those people who maybe, some of them who even still want to be politically engaged, the Jackson campaign is not letting them touch the campaign with a 10-foot pole, which you could maybe understand their reasons for. But there's a lot of grassroots, very working-class-oriented activists who want to be involved in some way that are not being tapped.

14:42 Yeah.

14:42 And as strong as Plattner's campaign was, it was because it was built on the work that they were doing.

14:47 Yeah.

14:47 Not just him as a person. Yeah. So those are sort of complicating factors in this race.

14:52 And you know what's a complicating factor in this podcast episode, Garrison?

14:56 The fact that we have to pivot to ads in order to pay the bills. We have to pivot to ads right now.

15:00 Yeah.

15:00 Yeah. That is a complicating factor in our lives. And we're back.

15:15 How do you feel about North Carolina, Robert? Of the Carolinas, definitely my favorite.

15:20 That's so true, actually.

15:22 Easily the best of the Carolinas. Top 50% Carolina. Sorry to everyone in South Carolina. I'm not apologizing. I did not apologize, South Carolina. You need to know that.

15:33 Well, North Carolina could also be one of the states that flip for the Dems. Former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper is facing former RNC Chair Michael Watley. What a name. Who is running to replace Republican Senator Tom Tillis.

15:50 Those are both silly names. Have some self-respect.

15:53 God damn it. This race is leaning Democrat. This is not a toss-up.

15:57 Yeah.

15:58 Polls from late September have Cooper ahead 5 to 13 points. Yeah, that's pretty good. And last week, a Republican super PAC pulled $ 30 million of ad money out of the state to use in other races. So... That's a sign that at least even among some Republicans, they're kind of giving up on this. Roy Cooper is a pretty strong candidate for this state. I should say, as we're going through all of these sort of candidates, this is not, it could happen here, endorsing any candidate just because they belong to one party or another. Not our thing. I'm just talking about this in terms of what the Democrats want in order to take back power and the sort of how these candidates relate to each state. Roy Cooper... is

16:42 a relatively liked figure in North Carolina. That is reflected in the polling for this. His campaign is also helped by the fact he's not going up against an incumbent. He's not going up against someone who voters already are familiar with, already like, who they just want to keep in power. He's going up against a new guy, a former RNC chair. So this is one of those states where the Democrats will probably flip. You can kind of count this on the four to five states needed to flip.

17:08 This is the most kind of certain one. There'd be a massive polling error if it goes the other way or some sort of fuckery. And just a total misread of the situation on the ground. Now, one of the more interesting kind of surprises is Alaska, which could also flip for Democrats. The former Democratic congressman, Mary Peltola, is going up against sitting Senator Dan Sullivan. Paltola is definitely running more as, like, a centrist. Very pro-fossil fuels. You're in Alaska.

17:41 Yeah.

17:42 Pro-gun, too. Pro-gun. Her campaign slogan is Fish Family Freedom.

17:49 Yep.

17:49 That makes sense.

17:50 Not a terrible slogan for running in Alaska.

17:52 Not bad for Alaska. And rather than attacking Republicans, a lot of her campaign messaging is focused on taking on, quote, D.C., You know, it's very much like Alaska versus D.C. Yeah. Yeah.

18:04 Corruption is a massive issue for the whole electorate. So that makes sense. Like that's, yeah, kind of the obvious play.

18:12 And really prioritizing Alaska as like its own special interest because it's so different from every other state. Part of Feltola's strategy is trying to, you know, is trying to attract certain Republicans. So she's not really going hard against Republicans per se, but attacking the sort of like D.C.

18:28 swamp establishment. That's that's that's her main strategy here. New York Times-Siena poll from late September to early October has Peltola up seven points.

18:38 Yeah, that's a pretty solid lead. Alaska's been wavering the last couple of elections between blue and red. So this is not like a sea change, right? This is kind of an incremental change in some of the And obviously, the disaster that is this administration has pushed things further along than I think it otherwise would be. But this is it's been moving in this direction a while.

19:02 Yeah.

19:02 And like Alaska hasn't had a Democratic senator in like almost 20 years. this would be a significant event if this happened. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't mean to say it wouldn't.

19:11 I've just been like this, this pattern has been occurring since before like Trump too.

19:15 Right.

19:16 And obviously there's this general pattern of in the midterms, usually, especially the house, but sometimes the Senate as well, shifts to the opposition party. You know, this is like politics 101. This is a very basic pattern. And what we're looking at is this, this could be even stronger this year than some years previously, probably not as strong as 2018, but, But taking back the Senate and the House would be huge, especially because of how far they have to go in the Senate in order to retake it. Yeah. Now, the race in Alaska, this definitely used to lean Republican, right?

19:47 This was not seen to be a very competitive race. But recently, this went to a toss-up, right? And now, some models even have it leaning Democrat. So this is one race where there's been a lot of movement. And J.D. Vance was dropped into Alaska to campaign for Sullivan last week. something that they may not have needed to do or thought they needed to do a few months ago. But now now this is competitive enough that they're sending in the vice president. Will J.D. Vance actually help Republicans win the state? That's that's certainly debatable. But I don't know if I would be putting J.D. in as my pen.

20:22 That's the thing, right? I don't like it. Like, I don't know who.

20:26 I put in as my pen shitter right now in the Republican bench, but it would not advance would be the bottom of my list.

20:32 Like, honestly, send in Fetterman. No, legitimately, yes. He'll do better for you in this instance. Sending Fetterman to campaign for the Republicans would be, I think, probably a smarter move. Yeah, you could convince him to do it. What a nightmare.

20:49 What a horrible situation. It's it's things are really bad, buddy. Things are really bad. I know when like we were getting shot at by federal agents in Portland, things were bad, but things are a lot darker.

21:03 Yeah, well, I'm about to get maybe shot at by federal agents in like 20 minutes. So, yeah, because they just shot a dude with an actual gun in New York.

21:11 Yeah.

21:12 Time is a spiral.

21:13 Yeah.

21:15 Let's talk about Texas.

21:17 Sure.

21:18 Yeah, I'm excited to talk about Texas because this is the first time I get to be like a little optimistic about more than like two Texas elections, actually.

21:29 So, yeah, I'm I'm excited. Let's talk about Talafrico. Talafrico. In terms of the big, big question is Texas with James Talarico going up against Kenny Pax, Ken Paxton. K-Pax, as I like to call him. You probably didn't see that movie, Garrison. It's not good. No, no. I did just see Out of Sight, the Steven Soderbergh movie. I don't know if I've seen that one. From like the 90s.

21:54 It's like the proto Ocean's Eleven. Okay. It's the hottest I've ever seen George Clooney. Oh, Cloon Tang. Okay. He plays like a serial bank robber. That's a good role for him. Who keeps going to jail, prison, then he breaks out. And then it kind of cuts between a few different timelines as he gets into a sort of doomed romance with a federal marshal played by Jennifer Lopez.

22:16 Okay, I was going to say I've seen this movie and then... Well, no, I have seen this movie with J-Lo. Yeah, yeah, I have seen this movie. It's hard to tell because like the first half of that description is like 18 different George Clooney movies.

22:27 Exactly. He's like a bank robber. He keeps going to prison. No, especially like the late 90s, early 2000s. This is like his role. He had this like on lock. Yeah. The hottest bank robber you've ever seen. Yeah, people love a criminal. Speaking of, Ken Paxton, not doing great in the polls. Yeah. Marist and New York Times have Tallarico up six points as of late September, with a recent Fox News poll showing Tallarico at 51% to Paxton's 49%. Not good for old Kay Pax. No. There's also this big enthusiasm gap that the Fox News poll really focused on. Among MAGA Republicans, 64% say they're extremely interested in the midterms. But for non-MAGA Republicans, only 50% is extremely interested in the midterms. So that's

23:25 almost like a 15% gap among Republicans for Republicans. how much they're invested in these midterms. And this difference does not exist on the Democratic side. The Fox News polling has Democrats broken down into two categories, similar to MAGA or non-MAGA. They have DSA Democrats and non-DSA Democrats. Which is funny on its face. DSA Democrats are at 68%, non-DSA is at 67%. So basically no gap.

23:52 Jeez.

23:57 And I think this has less to do with Tallarico's specific characteristics as a candidate and everything to do with the fact that Ken Paxton is the literal Christian devil.

24:05 Yes, he is Satan. And people want to see him beaten.

24:08 Yes.

24:11 But I mean, these numbers are not just interesting because of the gap between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans, but also MAGA Republicans are at 64% for enthusiasm versus Democrats are at 67, 68. So that's a few points ahead just for enthusiasm. against the mega kind of hardcore. And the other really worrying part of this for Republicans is that out of the percent that say that they will vote, mega is at 76%, non-mega is at 65%. That's an 11% gap.

24:39 And similarly, this gap does not exist for the Democrats, DSA or otherwise. That is really interesting.

24:51 And it says a lot about MAGA Republicans that they have just completely given up any kind of like moral.

24:58 Standards for their candidates. Do not care. Does not matter at all.

25:02 In a lot of the country, Republicans and MAGA Republicans are synonyms, but that's not the case in a lot of Texas. Like Texas has a lot of Bush Republicans still. Yeah.

25:11 I mean, like those people still likely are going to vote for Trump in the presidential election. Absolutely. But oversimplifying their, like all of their politics to MAGA is, I think it's a sort of theoretical mistake. It's a mistake.

25:24 Those people are not, some of them are, because there's a chunk of Republicans that look like they're going to Tallarico, but.

25:30 It's not a huge chunk.

25:32 It's more that some of them just aren't going to vote or are going to put in like a protest candidate. You know, I've read some interviews to that stance with like Republican voters who are on sort of the Bush Republican side of things being like, I'm just going to put in a protest vote or something, which in this instance is just as good as voting for Tallarico in terms of stopping Paxton from winning again, because the Republicans who have some degree of moral fiber left are also disgusted with Ken Paxton.

25:56 He's gross. On that topic. I don't know if you saw this. Ken Paxton's ex-wife. who is a Texas state senator, was tapped for an election ad where she does not even say her ex-husband's name, but just begs people to vote for the quote Republican ticket to stay on the team. I want to play the ad.

26:18 Yeah.

26:19 God, this is great.

26:20 I'm Texas Senator Angela Paxton.

26:22 People have asked my thoughts about.

26:23 This election and turns out I have some. Let's talk about the elephant.

26:27 In the room.

26:29 In a general election, it's not as much about the individual players on the team.

26:33 It's about getting the whole team across the finish line.

26:36 Either we hold every Republican seat or we hand the future of Texas to the other team. That's why I'm voting for the Republican ticket on November 3rd. Let's hold the line together.

26:47 Texas PAC is responsible for the content of this advertising. Rousing.

26:50 Won't even say his name. Crazy stuff.

26:54 Wow. Wild stuff. Hold your nose and vote for my shitty ex, the psychopath. Especially because she starts by saying, let's address the elephant in the room. And then doesn't. Does not at all. Does not address the elephant.

27:07 Can't bring herself to say his name.

27:10 Oh my God, that's amazing. It's one of the most incredible political ads I've ever seen. Almost as good as, we may as well play this one. This is technically a House ad. Unfortunately, we're going to drop it here in the Senate section. But in terms of talking about political ads. This is an ad running in Ohio in response to a series of anti-trans ads that the Republicans have been blasting in the airwaves.

27:35 Seen these ads?

27:36 They're a complete lie.

27:38 Records show not only is this woman actually from Texas, she didn't have any surgery as He protected men who abused young girls by voting in the Senate to block the release of the Epstein files. Maybe that's because Husted took one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars from associates of Jeffrey Epstein. Ten times more than any other senator. John Husted should be ashamed.

28:03 I'm sure Brown and I approve this message.

28:05 It's that easy. It's that easy, folks. Yeah.

28:08 Yeah. Yeah.

28:10 The ads made for you, really. If the Republicans want to make, quote unquote, protecting young girls the center of their politics.

28:17 Yeah.

28:18 They fucking handed you the silver platter. The Epstein's right there. Yeah.

28:22 It's frustrating because Tallarico has fucking recently made some kind of bows to the anti-trans kids in sports panic shit, which was very wishy-washy.

28:33 Wishy-washy, flippy-floppy, not standing firmly where he should be, certainly.

28:37 No, and I don't think that's helping him. Honestly, I think the primary thing helping him is that Ken Paxton is an abominable monster.

28:44 He's awful. He's the devil. Like.

28:49 And to run against the devil, you simply have to not be the devil.

28:52 I guess it's harder than that. Trump won.

28:54 And also offer people real things as well. I think I'm not being fair to the campaign. Like he has run a much better campaign than that.

29:00 Well, I'm also just saying like in general, I think the sort of running as just not Trump. Yes. That's not one as a strategy. That's not enough.

29:08 Tallarico has worked hard to portray himself as, other than being a Democrat, like a Texas Christian that Texans can find respectable, right?

29:19 Yeah.

29:21 We'll talk a little bit more about Texas, but first, here are some ads.

29:37 And we're back. I did want to mention one more thing about the KPAX campaign. Paxton's Senate campaign recently put out a series of missing posters demanding proof of life for James Tallarico. Oh, yeah. A little less than two weeks ago, he took sick with the flu. He got diagnosed on September 30th. And after that, he had to like attend. He attended like a Hispanic Business Council meeting via video that had been scheduled to attend in person.

30:03 Yeah.

30:04 He told attendees, I'm running a fever and I'm at my most contagious right now. And I guess I've been shaking too many hands on the campaign trail. So I want to keep everybody safe. He stated that if he passed his illness to somebody's grandmother or baby, he couldn't live with himself. Totally reasonable thing. But Paxton's campaign put out this like old West looking like wanted poster of him demanding proof of life because he's been absent 12 days from the campaign trail.

30:28 They're doing the fucking Mitch McConnell bullshit. Yeah, it's it's nonsense.

30:33 He's been making statements. He's just not. He's sick.

30:36 That happens.

30:37 He's booked for a CNN town hall on October 14th. There's been a pretty bad illness going around. I think there's probably a few.

30:45 There is a cold. There is a COVID strain.

30:47 And he's young for politics, but he's also at the age in which flus and shit hit yard.

30:51 He's not a baby. I did see a clip from the president in the past few days talking about this. And he said that Paxton's hiding because he's been forced to eat meat when running. And so he's been vomiting up meat all the time. And that's why he's not... What? Non-visible. Donald, what? What the fuck? Because Trump just learned what veganism is. Yeah.

31:15 And he says it really funny. And it's been like the main thing he's been attacking Talafrico with is that the fact that he's like.

31:22 Alleged vegan, right? Because he's not a vegan.

31:25 Yes.

31:26 No, even if you were a vegan, if you wanted to win a major election in Texas, you would lie about that.

31:32 Yeah.

31:32 That's almost more of a disqualifying factor in Texas politics than being a Democrat.

31:36 Yeah.

31:37 But yeah, that's been the main thing Trump's been trying to attack Talifrico for is this alleged vegan status and the idea that Talifrico is having to fake being a meat eater and has gotten sick from eating meat and is thus vomiting. And that's why he's out of the spotlight. Yeah, of course. That's definitely it. Simple, basic stuff. Politics 101.

32:00 Yeah, politics something or other. The gubernatorial election is also going to be this year for Texas. And this is like the first time in a while that it's looked actually kind of competitive. Gina Hinojosa is running against Greg Abbott, who is. right up there with Ken Paxton in terms of being an evil scumbag. Like he is just a monster, although a much more popular monster than Ken Paxton is with voters. But even so, Hinojosa is giving him a run for his money. Right now, the real clear politics average trend has Abbott at 48.1 and Hinojosa at 46.4.

32:41 But there are several polls that have Hinojosa ahead, including YouGov and The New York Times Siena poll has her up by three. Marist has her up by three. Recon MR at Siena has her up by four. Now, obviously, there are some like Telemundo has Abbott up by seven. Fox has Abbott up by five. And there are definitely more polls that have Abbott ahead. But this looks close enough that like it's being considered by a lot of people to be a.

33:06 Toss up or close to a toss up. It's competitive. It's competitive.

33:10 Like she really could pull it off. I'm not saying I think that's the likeliest. thing to happen here because this is still Texas. And I just can't be that optimistic about the gubernatorial race. But I would love it if Gina could unseat Greg Abbott because he is just a fucking monster.

33:29 And yeah, she's running a really good campaign.

33:32 Yeah.

33:33 She's currently in the House of Representatives representing the 49th District.

33:36 The Texas House or the federal? In the Texas House. She's a state legislator. The Texas House.

33:41 Okay.

33:41 Got it. Yeah.

33:42 And she worked for the AFL prior to that. She's been a lawyer for quite some time. She was part of the legal team that sued Tom DeLay. The Hinojos are like a prominent North Texas family. I went to school with one of her, I don't know if it was her kid or like a cousin or something, but like the Hino Yoses are like a prominent wealthy family in, in North Texas.

34:01 Hmm.

34:02 So, It's very interesting that she's and I haven't enough of a deep dive. I think a lot of what's helping her is just the general unpopularity of the Republican Party right now. And I do kind of suspect that Greg Abbott is being dragged down a little bit by Ken Paxton, too, like that, just the general the overall trend.

34:22 And also, like, I think he knows is probably benefiting from some of the enthusiasm that Tallarico's campaign has helped to generate, too.

34:27 Right.

34:28 Obviously, she's also made a lot of really good moves on her own that have increased enthusiasm. But in general, I think because Texas looks competitive in a way it really hasn't, it's benefiting probably both candidates a lot. Just that that is bringing more people out to volunteer. It's bringing more people out to donate. Just creating this impression that like this might be a winnable fight has done a lot.

34:50 Yeah.

34:50 So that's one to keep watch on. Again, I would say a gun to my head. Abbott's still probably going to eke out a victory, but I can't say definitely.

34:59 Right. Yeah, he does have that sort of incumbent advantage. And that's another factor with the Tallarico-Paxton thing. Paxton does not have that incumbent advantage. I think Corbyn would be a much harder candidate for Tallarico to beat.

35:13 This wouldn't be an election if Corbyn had won the primary.

35:15 That's why we were sort of softly excited when Paxton won. Because as dangerous as it is for Paxton to potentially be in the Senate... He has a much bigger attack radius or attack surface than Cornyn does. Another one of these kind of long shots, actually, I would say the biggest long shot for a flip is in Florida with progressive Democrat Angie Nixon running against Ashley Moody, who took Rubio's seat. The best poll for Nixon as of a few days ago is by Florida Politics, and according to them, the race is at a tie, 45%. But a recent poll from Stetson University has Moody leading 51 to 40, so 11 points. A YouGov poll from late September to early October has Moody five points ahead, with 5% of likely voters still undecided. Though, actually, as of just a

36:13 few hours ago, as of recording, we're recording this on Thursday night, Florida Politics did another poll, which shows Moody at 47% and Angie Nixon at 45% within margin of error. So a slight difference from the last poll that had them tied. This is one of those races that the Democrats, as the DNC, is not actually expecting Nixon to win.

36:39 They're not really pumping much money in, or really any money in. They're not helping. All of this is the result of just Nixon being a really good politician. The fact that the race is this close. And the Nixons are sort of like sleeper candidates. I was not familiar with Nixon until the primary. Since then, I've watched videos of her working in the state house. from these past few years and then campaign appearances, she is great. She is really good. A really clear communicator of working class issues, issues of impacting the black community in Florida, right? This Florida is a state we often like reduced to kind of the worst of the worst people, but there's a lot of like good people in Florida as well. They

37:23 just haven't been represented in, in politics for almost, almost as long as I've been alive. Yeah.

37:28 Yeah.

37:29 Yeah.

37:29 I mean, it gets forgotten, but there's like a reason why the 2000 election hinged on Florida. And it was because it was really close.

37:37 And I'm really interested to see what the results of this race is, because this will indicate kind of how much Trump is hurting the Republicans. If it's like a really, really close race, if the results are really close. And it will also point to Nixon's strength as a candidate. And I'm interested to watch what she does after this election, whether or not she wins. Now, of course, there's the other close race, which is in Michigan, which currently leans Democrat with Abdul El-Sayed on average, polling about 3% ahead of former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers. A Mars poll from late September has El-Sayed at 51 to Rogers 44, a seven point lead. That's El-Sayed's most favorable poll. A New York Times Siena poll from mid-September shows El-Sayed up five points.

38:21 A Fox poll has him up one point. If Abdul wins, Dems could hold on to this seat, strengthening their chances of controlling the Senate. But this would not be a flip. So this is something that they really need to hold on to in order to have a chance. But this will not go towards the sort of four to five seats they need in order to flip. Before we close, I do want to just mention a few of the sort of underlying factors that could be influencing this election.

38:46 One of the big ones just is Trump and how much everyone hates him. He has a 36% approval rating. which is the lowest pre-midterm approval rating in 50 years. Yeah, that makes sense. Not good. Not great for the Republicans. Not what you'd want, yeah. Not what you would want. And remember when I was talking about the enthusiasm gap that the Fox poll was showing? The latest KFF health tracking poll, it's from the organization formerly known as Kaiser Family Foundation. They found a very large enthusiasm gap between parties in their last poll with Democratic voters... Much more likely than Republican voters to say they're, quote, more motivated to vote this year. Way more than usual. It's 63% to 38%. That's a huge gap. The cost of healthcare

39:37 and gas tie as voters' top affordability worries. A quarter of respondents said that they are very worried about affording each ahead of food, utilities, and housing. So 25% said they were very worried about affording health care. 25% said they're very worried about affording gas. So that's the tie. It's 50% of the concern. It's those two. The Democratic Party has a clear edge over the Republican Party on who voters trust to handle many top issues in the election, including cost of health care. 42% of respondents trust the Democrats more on these issues. For cost of living, 39% of respondents trust Democrats more, going to 25% for the Republicans.

40:24 And the cost of living was the top issue for both Democrat and independent voters, while Republican voters wanted candidates to discuss, quote, fraud. That's the big issue for Republicans right now. This is, you know, J.D. Vance's task force, the post kind of doge thing, is they're really obsessed with this idea of fraud, and not really the type of fraud that Robert or I would talk about. You know, I think Everyone's pretty familiar with how much we're all being ripped off all the time. Scam culture is huge.

40:56 Corporate fraud. The only culture. It's everything, right? And that's not what Republicans are interested in. They are wanting to kick people off public benefits, right? That's the type of fraud that they are mostly interested in. To close, the most interesting part about this KFF poll, though, is the numbers around Medicare for all. Quote, two thirds of the public, 66%, said they favor Medicare for All, the highest share KFF has recorded since it began polling the idea in 2016. And, this is the really crazy part, quote, about half, 52%, said they would favor Medicare for All if it eliminated private health insurance companies, while 47% oppose. That is a huge change from like five years ago. This has been

41:44 the biggest kind of protest against Medicare for All is the idea that it would take away your private health care. When respondents get told this in polling, historically, we've seen support for Medicare for All take a big dip. This is the first time a majority of respondents have said they would still support Medicare for All if it took away private health care. To quote KFF, quote, This marks a departure from when KFF last asked this question in October 2020, when the prospect of eliminating private health insurance companies led to lower support for Medicare for All at just 37%. So this is a huge thing. And I would be remiss to mention, you know, most of these candidates we're talking about in the Senate, the Democratic ones,

42:25 you know, Troy Jackson, Angie Nixon, Abdul, Al-Said, they are running on Medicare for all. This has become a big resurgent topic, this election. The cost of healthcare is a big topic in these midterms. And rather than doing this sort of Pete Buttigieg style, Medicare for all who want it, you know, just kind of vaguely talking about having a public option, right? These candidates are being a bit more strict about Medicare for all as like an actual policy and as a policy guarantee. I think Abdul's policy has some slight differences where it does not completely eliminate private health care, but it says that private health care should become redundant and still has a focus on a universal single payer system, which is much closer to the Bernie

43:12 Sanders version than the sort of like half-assed versions that we've seen from other progressive candidates, you know, running for president like six years ago. So something that, you know, maybe two or three years ago, I felt like is kind of like a political, you know, bygone. This is focused on like Medicare for all is definitely coming back in a big way. And people are not nearly as scared of the prospect of them not having private insurance because private insurance sucks. Yeah, it's gotten even worse. Like we're what, like two years after the Mangione assassination, things still suck. Everyone still hates health care companies.

43:48 Yeah.

43:49 Only hate them more as time goes on. So, yeah, that is the kind of rough overview of the issues affecting the midterms and where the polling stands now just a few weeks away from November. I want to say third. Let's see if I'm right. I am right.

44:04 Boom.

44:05 We'll probably do a few more polling updates on executive disorder as we get closer to to Election Day. Absolutely. But yeah, that's that's all for me here. Yeah.

44:14 Remember, guys, do what the IRGC would want you to do. Register to vote. We're not telling you to vote.

44:21 The IRGC is. No, the Iranian government is. We're not. Good stuff.

44:41 Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where the here is France and the it is it.

44:47 I am your host, Mia Wong.

44:50 And today we are going to be talking about the enormous and incredibly militant student protests in France.

44:57 And with me to talk about this is Faiza, who is a political analyst and feminist theorist in France. And Faiza, welcome to the show.

45:05 Thank you for having me, Mia.

45:07 Hello, everybody. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk with you about this because there has been so much unbelievably wild stuff happening both good and bad and like oh my.

45:20 God it's like hundreds of thousands of people in the streets most of whom are like 15 16 like oh my.

45:33 God it is so exciting to watch I mean, I've wanted to see such an uprising for so long. And it's finally starting to happen.

45:45 Yeah.

45:46 It was a slow build up this past couple of years. But I feel like something is maybe happening. And not just in France. Like the whole Gen Z worldwide is really tired of this shit. And is hitting the streets. And I love it. And I'm here for it.

46:07 It's amazing.

46:08 It is.

46:09 And yeah, we're going to be getting more into every other country that's also.

46:13 Going on right now because it's, you know, it's like.

46:16 It's like India and Spain and Chile.

46:18 We've seen a whole bunch of other countries in the past.

46:21 Yes, we have.

46:22 Six months go up. But I guess I want to start with going a bit in to sort of the background of this and going into what, what the political situation has been in France that's sort of been leading up to this and what kinds of conditions have been sort of producing this?

46:42 Well, have you heard of neoliberalism? No, like seriously, like that.

46:49 Yeah.

46:50 I mean, well, we've had Macron, which is our very dear president. No, I'm kidding. We fucking hate the guy. The guy is rotten to his very core. So, yeah, he's been president for almost 10 years now.

47:05 Jesus Christ.

47:07 Yeah.

47:09 Yeah.

47:10 And the utter and complete destruction of anything public, like public education, public health and everything, didn't start with him. But let's just say that he put the final nail on the proverbial coffin. And he's been like dismantling public education ever since he arrived in And took his job as president. And if you want an analogy or something in comparison with what's happening in the U.S. with respect to your public education. Well, when I saw, like, 10 years ago, Betsy DeVos arrived as the Secretary of Education. Yeah. Well, you remember her? She basically destroyed anything public education-wise. Like she wanted to funnel all the money to private schools and charter schools. And that's basically what has been happening

48:09 in France too, like in these past 10 years. All the money has been funneled in public. More or less legal ways to private schools. Yes, I see more or less legal ways because there are a lot of loopholes. And Macron and his government are experts at using those loopholes. Basically, they can look at you in the eye and tell you that what they're doing is legal, technically.

48:40 Yeah.

48:42 You know what I mean. And they will say that to your face while... destroying everything you hold near and dear at the same time. So these past 10 years, the money allocated to education has decreased. The number of teachers has tremendously decreased, like dramatically decreased.

49:07 Jesus.

49:08 The number of students by class has increased. The way this project started is, well, A school year in France started in September. It's basically from September to June, July. And, well, in the poorest areas of France, high schoolers arrived in their high schools and found basically not enough desks, not enough chairs, no teachers, holes everywhere. In the roof, water leaking in the classrooms.

49:44 Yeah.

49:45 No AC, like that goes without saying, like we don't have AC, like this is not the standard thing in France. So you could have like a hundred degrees Fahrenheit in, you know, and with no AC, like people, like high schoolers were cooking in their schools during the winter.

50:03 Yeah.

50:06 Some of these schools, the poorest schools, also don't have heat.

50:10 Oh, Jesus. Yeah.

50:12 So it's freezing.

50:14 Oh, exactly.

50:14 I'll let you imagine how you can, how can you... learn anything in school while freezing by, I don't know, 50 degrees in your school.

50:23 Yeah. Like, you know, like, I remember thinking back to my high school, and it's like, well, like, we occasionally had drowned rafts falling out of the ceiling, but, like, at least we had heat in the winter. Like, we would have all died.

50:36 Even if the heat is out of the window, like, there's nothing left in some high schools. Like, really nothing. And The egregious thing is that you can have a very poor area with the poorest high schoolers, with the most destroyed high school you can see. And in the town nearby, you will find the best high schools with the richest population, like, For instance, in Paris, like you have Paris, the capital, and you have Parisian suburbs. Some are extremely rich and some are basically the poorest ones in the whole country. So what has happened is that we don't have states. We basically have regions and departments and stuff like that, like the way France is cut.

51:30 The map is cut like that. And so the president of, it's called the Île-de-France. Basically, Paris is part of a region. The president of this region is a right-winger, pretty much far right, but officially she's only right-winger. And her specialty is to funnel money, public money, to private schools, private Catholic schools.

51:55 Jesus Christ.

51:56 Of course.

51:58 Many, many such cases.

51:59 I know, right? Amazing. You see the similarities with Betsy DeVos?

52:05 Yeah, yeah.

52:06 Yeah, that's basically, those two women are the same picture. Let's just say it like that. So that president has been putting a lot of public money in private schools in Paris and in the Paris suburb. Rich ones. But where is she taking that money?

52:22 Yeah.

52:23 Yeah.

52:24 Well, instead of distributing this money equally across the whole territory that she's leading, she's only distributing that money to private schools, Catholic schools, and schools that are in the richest suburbs and in the richest area.

52:41 That makes sense.

52:42 So that's how you find yourself when you're poor, when you're a poor kid. growing up in a poor suburb that's how you find yourself going in a high school that has holes basically everywhere that doesn't have enough teachers that doesn't have enough desks enough chairs that is lacking basically everything that has rats running in in the hallways and yeah yeah so came last september like a month ago high schoolers went back to they found their school being just as bad as it was just before when they went for the summer holidays and stuff like that.

53:23 And so they came back and they found no teacher. They found no desk, no chair, no nothing. And yeah, they were mad and they were right. And so they started to protest to ask for teachers, money for... desks for chairs I mean it's the most basic things like they're not asking for they're not asking for the the latest uh I don't know iPhone or iPad or whatever you know whatever the fuck no no they're asking for like the most basic necessities.

54:02 Yeah like we're asking for to be a school like exactly desk plus teacher is like the most basic school like what what are we doing.

54:12 Here And they're asking for a chance at life.

54:16 Yeah.

54:17 You know what I mean? Like, we have a system. It's a system that has been in place since 2018. It started, so, under Macron, again. And it's a very, very opaque system. It's a system that is designed... It's an algorithm, basically, that is designed to... Think for you what you're going to do next. Basically, when you're in 10th grade, so I was telling you that before we started taping, but high school in France only has three years in it, like 10th to 12th grade. So when you get in 10th grade, you have to choose in 10th grade what you're going to do in college or university.

54:59 Which is ridiculous.

55:01 It is utterly ridiculous.

55:02 Like, granted.

55:03 Awful.

55:03 Why? You're... You're 15. You're 15. And people are asking 15 years old to pick with high accuracy what they're going to do as adults for the rest of their lives. That is stressful. The level of stress these kids are facing is humongous. Ridiculous. Yeah.

55:25 It is ridiculous.

55:26 And the level of attempted suicide among high schoolers. has increased in a way that you cannot comprehend. Like, the numbers are terrifying. Also, that algorithm is a very racist one. It's a very classist one.

55:47 Yeah. Yeah.

55:47 It basically is a black box. Like people, we, the public, we don't know what's in the algorithm. Like we do not have access to it. The only thing that we know is the result. And the result is poor kids coming from poor areas have basically zero chance at getting access to a proper university or a university at all.

56:13 Yeah.

56:14 Like you could end in a queue, but like the 5,000 kids in a queue to access a public university. I'm not talking about private schools. I'm talking about public schools.

56:29 Yeah.

56:30 It's something that is deeply unfair. It's a system of, that when I was in high school didn't exist. When I was in high school, like it was 20, 25 years ago, I'm old. But yeah, when I was in high school, basically the only thing you had to do, you had an exam at the end of high school. And if you pass that exam, you could go to university.

56:54 And that was it. And then the only thing that matters is was your grades in university. That's it.

57:00 Which is also still like a stressful system, but it's like, we've made it worse.

57:06 Exactly. It was a stressful system, but it made some sense.

57:13 Yeah, yeah.

57:14 There's a one-to-one correlation.

57:16 Exactly. There was some logic behind it. The logic now is cruelty. It is violence. It is class violence. It is race violence. It is ableism, obviously, also. And kids, well, they arrive in high school and they already know that their life is screwed. That's what's happening. And the government, the state, doesn't give a fuck. Which is basically why you're seeing the footage you've been seeing for the last weeks.

57:50 This is why the cops have been beating the shit out of high schoolers. because they don't give a fuck yeah and also they know that they don't have a choice what they're going to.

58:01 Do yeah it reminds me so much of the protest in india where it's like yeah you're facing the same thing of like this i guess is one of the one of the things of neoliberalism was like on the one hand education was supposed to be like your ticket out right it was supposed to be like if you you know, like meritocratic, if you were like good enough, you could get into a like elite university and that was your like ticket out of poverty. And then simultaneously, we're going to make that impossible. And yeah, I mean, just like thinking about like, yeah, like this, the stories of these kids were forced into this like unbelievably intense, like competitive pressure and are just getting screwed out of

58:41 the ability to fight their way out of the poverty that they've been born into and just.

58:46 Being like, fuck this. If they're going to rig the system, we're like, the only thing we can go do is fight them.

58:52 Exactly. And, you know, you were talking about like meritocracy, like I'm putting it in between quotes for people who can see me.

58:59 Yeah. Well, I mean, it was, that, that term was originally a joke. It was originally a joke. It was invented as a joke.

59:08 Like, and it's, it's the same thing with like the like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps the whole point of that is that you can't it was a joke but no we've like we decided this is a thing that exists in the world even though it doesn't god uh makes me insane all the time you can not.

59:25 Create a parody out of this reality. Like the, it's the level of like a comedy of dramedy is, is got here.

59:34 Yeah.

59:36 I mean, talking about that, like a few days ago, um, we on my stream were watching a clip from the news. I don't remember which news outlet it was, but they were basically talking about a high school, a very famous one, uh, which is called Henri Quatre, Henry the fourth. And this high school is inside of Paris and it is well known for being like a very bourgeois high school. Like this is like basically as bourgeois as you can do, as you can get. Yeah, it's a rich kid one.

1:00:11 The anchor, the news anchor, introduced this high school by telling that it was basically poster child for meritocracy. And I choked. I choked on my saliva. I was like, no, no, you mean it's bourgeoisie. You used a word instead of another word. That's not meritocracy. That's bourgeoisie. But basically, that's the same thing. And thank you for saying it out loud.

1:00:36 I was like, thank you.

1:00:38 Yeah.

1:00:38 And it's so funny because it's like it is in the original sense, which is that it was a joke about how it was just rich kids who got into college. But like it's not in the sense you're trying to use it.

1:00:49 Like, come on.

1:00:50 Yeah, neoliberalism saw the joke and was like, yeah, you know what I can do about it? I can rip the joke out of it. And I can just keep the word and make it something real. How about it?

1:01:01 Yeah.

1:01:01 It's like, what if all of the metaphors became literal now? And that's like the world that we live in.

1:01:07 Exactly.

1:01:07 That's the fucking world we live in. Absolutely. The kids have no prospects. I mean, they don't have any in the US. Like Gen Z won't be able to buy a house. That's the same thing in France. Like that's the same thing in Spain. That's the same thing in Chile. That's the same thing in every country. capitalist capitalistic based society basically so yeah what we're seeing worldwide what we were seeing in france right now is the product of what you're seeing in the u.s it's product of what you're seeing in spain it's yeah the neoliberal order it's white supremacy and of course i mean to be honest it's the least surprising thing ever like It's basically one plus one equals two. That's what we're seeing. It's a

1:01:58 logical product of our society. So yeah, the kids are mad. They have the right to be, and I'm fully supportive.

1:02:05 Like, really.

1:02:07 Yeah.

1:02:08 So we're going to take an ad break because, yeah, we too are subject to the horrifying violence and whimsy of neoliberal capitalism.

1:02:18 I hear you.

1:02:19 I hear you.

1:02:30 And we are back. So let's talk about what the students have been up to.

1:02:37 You mean on the streets or do you mean on social media?

1:02:42 Yeah, let's get into, I guess, the streets first. What have the students been doing? What kinds of tactics have they been using?

1:02:49 So they've been using blockades, a lot of them. Which is basically a French tradition. We're very good at that. Like whenever there's a protest, especially high school protests and student protests, we build blockades. So we go for a disruption. So the purpose is to disrupt high schools, is to disrupt universities, and to push the adults, basically. to listen to the kids and what they want. So that's what has been happening, except that our dear government basically says, fuck, we don't care, and sent the fuzz. So the cops have been answering to the protest by mutilating kids.

1:03:40 Yeah.

1:03:41 And mutilating adults, basically. That's been this government's response to any protest since 2017, since Macron arrived in the Élysée, which is our White House, basically. So this time around, even news anchors have been taken aback by the violence coming from the cops.

1:04:04 Yeah, because it's like actual children. It is.

1:04:10 It's children... But on the other side, you have an authoritarian regime. Yeah. And what is evidently behaving as a police state. I mean, come on.

1:04:24 Yeah, like you're blowing kids' hands off.

1:04:28 You know who they've been getting their inspiration from?

1:04:32 The US?

1:04:34 ICE.

1:04:35 Yeah.

1:04:36 Yeah.

1:04:37 Yeah.

1:04:38 Our government, when they saw ICE, when they saw... how, quote unquote, effective ICE is at handling the public and handling protests.

1:04:50 Yeah.

1:04:51 They didn't even hide that it was their wood dreams. What we're seeing is the logical evolution of policing in a neoliberal society.

1:05:01 Yeah.

1:05:02 Like the kids are asking for the most basic stuff and the most basic stuff could lead to a semblance of equality. And they cannot have that. So let's just send the cops. Let's just bit the shit out of the kids and terrorize the fuck out of adults. And let's teach everybody, the whole population, what protest looks like.

1:05:28 It looks like blood. It looks like amputation. It looks like losing an eye. The purpose is very clear. It's to put the fear of God in the population. Once the population is scared shitless, the said population will stop protesting and start complaining. Yeah.

1:05:47 Which, I will say, the kind of upside of drawing from the American ICE anti-protest model is that that didn't work. Doing that stuff in the US just pissed everyone off, and it was only when they stopped doing that kind of confrontation and, like, move to this like quiet ethnic cleansing model i guess where they didn't do comfort mass confrontation that like everything kind of i don't know that they were like really effectively able to carry out the ethnic cleansing which is bleak in its own right but like it did it did backfire on them like sort of spectacularly yeah.

1:06:22 But it was a polite ethnic cleansing like What is scaring me, and it's not surprising, but it's still scary as fuck, is that you can do the most violent things with a polite tone and people just.

1:06:36 Yeah, yeah.

1:06:38 Stop look at it and just keep living their lives as long as it's polite as long as it doesn't make a lot of noise as long as it's not disruptive yeah and our government really understands that but yours also.

1:06:50 Does sort of i feel like they're they're kind of like like our government's like because our entire government is like designed to produce content it took them a while to figure out that this is the way that you should actually do it because their initial instinct was just to like do these giant confrontations to produce content out of, and then eventually they realize, like, if you just do it quietly, then you can actually do the thing.

1:07:15 But.

1:07:16 Yeah, because if you do it quietly, then you get the liberals behind you. Because liberals, at the end of the day... They're not disruptive. Like, they want to keep on living their lives.

1:07:27 Yeah.

1:07:28 They want to keep on, like, being able to consume. They want to be able to go to the movies and go on vacation. And, like, they need that kind of scope. They need that sense of normalcy to keep on going and protest, like, disrupt that sense of normalcy.

1:07:48 Yeah.

1:07:48 So once you get back to a semblance of normalcy, you... Get liberals on your side, basically. Or at least you stop having liberals against you. Yeah. And yeah, that's what has been happening in the US. That's how our government has been rolling for the past almost 10 years now. What has been happening, though, with this protest is that liberals have been watching their own kids being beaten up.

1:08:16 Yeah.

1:08:17 They've been watching their own kids losing eyes, like being arrested.

1:08:22 Yeah.

1:08:23 Put up in jail and stuff like that. And that is way too disruptive. This doesn't fly. So they're going to find another way to do things. I mean, I know how they're going to do stuff. They're just going to point their fingers at black and brown folks and say that these kids are the bad ones. And they deserve everything that's happening to them and that they are like manipulating the good white kids and stuff like that, like through social media, through So what our government also has been doing these past almost 10 years is vilifying anything remotely left-wing. Like, I don't know if you know Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

1:09:07 Yeah, he's the kind of... The media used to describe him as like Francis Birdie, but he's like, Actually.

1:09:18 That's not so far-fetched. I would say that he's not as left-leaning as Bernie.

1:09:24 Yeah.

1:09:25 It's very funny because, like, when you read about him in the press, he gets described as, like, the hard left guy.

1:09:31 And he's like, no, he's not. This guy's, like, to the right of, like, the PCF, who were, like.

1:09:35 Oh, no, no. His political party, France Unabashed, La France Insoumise, has been categorized as far-left. It's social democracy.

1:09:47 Social democracy, yeah. It's like, what are we doing here? They're not revolutionary at all.

1:09:53 They're not anti-capitalist.

1:09:54 They're trying to save capitalism from you. And you're like, no, you're communist. It's like, no.

1:10:00 No, they're not even socialist. They're not a less harmful capitalism. It's really social democracy. It's Bernie core democracy. basically. But they might be a little bit more radical than Bernie here and there. Bernie can be more radical in some stances, but you know, none of them, neither Bernie nor Mélenchon are far, far left. Like they're not, they're just not.

1:10:27 But when you have such reactionary politics in power, anything remotely left-leaning seems far left. So This is how they've been presenting our opposition. And so coming back to what I was telling you, they are linking the protest to the France Unabashed Party, saying that it was created.

1:10:49 Yeah.

1:10:50 It originated from France Unabashed and that this political party is instrumentalizing the protest and is basically, it's a big puppeteer.

1:11:02 The youth yeah this is like exactly the same shit they did in india except for india there was like i guess well actually i i don't know if if the french government has pulled the islamist card yet but like that was the other one oh it already has yeah yeah they're all the same like.

1:11:18 Scott islamophobia transphobia those two things are at the very core of our reactionary figures political figures and as they are as yours and and my like this is white supremacy basically like they're defending what they see as whiteness and white femininity and islam to them is a danger to white women and so is the existence of trans folks so yeah yeah they're coming they're trying left-leaning to trans folks islam uh hamas obviously of course and yeah the muslim brotherhood jesus.

1:12:09 Christ at least well okay i'm not gonna say at least but like that that was the the one thing in the u.s to be at least kind of moved past was like we at least kind of stopped accusing everything of being the Muslim Brotherhood because a bunch of people started taking money from the UAE.

1:12:27 And then it was like, okay, we're going to quiet it down a little bit.

1:12:30 It's the same thing in France. The UAE have a lot of financial interest in France. But they're the good ones.

1:12:38 But they still do the loss of brotherhood.

1:12:39 Yeah, but they're the good Muslims because, you know, they invest a lot of money. Yeah, yeah. So that's okay. We can do business with them. So if we want to do business with them, we have to be able to say that they're the good ones. So the good ones.

1:12:55 Yeah.

1:12:56 Algeria.

1:12:57 Yeah.

1:12:57 Palestine and other Muslim countries. Not so much. Not so much.

1:13:02 I feel like we kind of moved from like, it used to be everything was the Muslim Brotherhood and then that changed into everything is Hamas. But it's like, at least we moved from one to the other. But it's like, no, no, we're still doing the Muslim Brotherhood thing. God damn it.

1:13:18 Islamophobia is so... Raw.

1:13:22 Like, so raw.

1:13:24 They don't even think about, like, are they Shiite? Are they Sunni? Are they, like... No.

1:13:29 No.

1:13:30 Not at all. No, that's like.

1:13:31 They're just Muslim.

1:13:34 The problem is Islam. The problem is brown and black people. Yeah. And the problem is the left... which is defending Hamas, which is defending the Muslim Brotherhood, which is defending trans folks. When you look at the arguments, that's basically what they're saying. And I'm not even exaggerating. I wish I were, but I'm not. And it's like, they're not even trying. It's so obvious. But it's the same argument that has been fed to the population through our media platforms. for years now.

1:14:10 So yeah, people like just eat it up.

1:14:14 Yeah.

1:14:15 And I guess that leads into this question of like, how has the rest of French society been reacting to this? Have other sort of like movements been mobilizing?

1:14:25 Yeah.

1:14:27 Well, I was going to say apathy, which is kind of true. If you look at people on the center and on the right, it's apathy. It is, They just want to be able to wear their heads in the sand and keep on going, just like doing business as usual. Left-leaning people, some of them are scared. Some of them are in disbelief. Like they want to believe that if things were as bad as Gen Z is saying it is, they would have somehow managed to see it.

1:15:03 Yeah.

1:15:06 The majority of people still believe that the media are a honest actor, which they are not. They haven't been for years. And as long as, basically, as long as people keep believing what the media, like mainstream media, traditional media feeds them, then they're not going to be able to see the problem.

1:15:29 Yeah.

1:15:30 And it's the same thing in the US. I mean, if people keep watching CNN and MSNBC and stuff like that, how can they possibly know how bad things are on the ground? They cannot. They cannot. So that's where we are. And it's scary, but it's the truth.

1:15:53 There's this quote from the sociologist Raul Zebechi about how Basically, one of the things that social movements do is like in these moments of rupture, they act like bolts of lightning across the sky, like illuminating the darkness. And that's what social movements do to the actual fundamental nature of reality.

1:16:11 They reveal the structures of like power and domination in the world that are otherwise hidden by the sort of darkness. And that's what you're trying. But part of what you're trying to do with these protests is to like make the actual function of society visible. clear for a moment where i don't know if there is a more clear expression of what neoliberalism is than we took all the money from the schools and gave it to the cops.

1:16:37 Yeah yeah a lot of signs during the protest like down the streets explicitly say that yeah like the kids know where the money is yeah it is funneled to the very rich through state subsidies and stuff like that and it is funneled to the cops and to the military complex, defense complex, and contractors and stuff like that.

1:17:01 They know where it's going. So they know there is money. Even when our presidents say that there is no money left for anything. Like, no, there's always money for the rich, somehow.

1:17:12 Go figure.

1:17:13 Yeah, yeah.

1:17:13 There's always money for the police, too.

1:17:16 Exactly, there's always more money for the police, there's always more budget for the military, there's always more budget for the cops, there's always less budget for hospitals, there's always less budget for teachers and schools and stuff like that. So, people are not stupid. So they kind of, like, can put two and two together. But, People knowing what's happening and people acting on what they know, that's two entirely different things.

1:17:44 Yeah.

1:17:44 And that's where the issue is, is what people know, people feel the problem like every end of the month when they realize that they don't have any money left in the bank for food and for anything. Yeah. But they don't act on it. Like, it feels impossible to get out of this way of life for the majority of people.

1:18:12 Yeah.

1:18:14 Call that the liberal mindset also? Like, do you know Thought Slime? Like, do you know the YouTuber Thought Slime?

1:18:20 Vaguely familiar.

1:18:23 They made a wonderful video about the way liberals think inside of a box and how even the most revolutionary thoughts are still imprisoned within that scope of thought for liberals. Like that scope of thought basically is what makes Bernie or Mélenchon far left to them.

1:18:46 Yeah.

1:18:47 Because it is so out of their deep possibilities to them that it feels revolutionary, even though it is absolutely not revolutionary.

1:18:57 Yeah.

1:18:58 And that's why people stay in that apathetic state. Like, it feels impossible to them to ask for the most basic stuff. And that's what keeps... people in that loop of work, waking up, going to work, going back home, wondering how you're going to pay the bills, going to sleep and going back to work the next morning. So I don't think that people don't know what the issue is.

1:19:27 But I think the issue is that people feel like they have no leverage on their own lives and on their own governments. And if we stay in a liberal mindset, I think they're right. Which is why we have to get out of that liberal mindset. Which is how we have to throw away the liberal playbook. Because if we keep on playing by those rules, we're fucked.

1:19:53 Yeah, you either get more Macron or you get the inheritors. You either get the indirect inheritors of the SS or you get the direct inheritors of the SS.

1:20:06 Exactly, exactly. And they're all defending the same thing. They're defending capitalism. Yeah. They're defending the very rich. And we already know who the very rich are. We saw that about 100 years ago. So we know who they're rolling for. They're rolling for fascism.

1:20:23 Yeah.

1:20:26 That's all there is. So as long as we keep trying to adapt and keep on trying to save liberalism, We're not going to save us, ourselves. Like, we're not going to save the population. We're just going to save capitalism. It drives me crazy.

1:20:55 Speaking of doing things, of, like, finding alternatives to saving liberalism, like, this is all happening... At the same time as the giant sort of mass movement in Spain has kicked off.

1:21:09 Yes.

1:21:10 Which is about, for people unfamiliar, I guess the short and incredibly bleak version is that basically Spanish authorities evicted a.

1:21:19 I think it was like an 80, 90-year-old woman.

1:21:22 She was 87, I think. Yeah.

1:21:24 Yeah, 87.

1:21:25 And she fucking died because of it. And this has set off a massive, massive, series of protests I think they put like a couple days ago so we're recording this on like Friday October 9th I think like I think on like the 8th they put a hundred thousand people like in the streets of Barcelona over this there's been a you know they've been reoccupying some of like the core sort of places where Like the year the 2011 protests were born and like that sort of the thing, the thing that became Occupy, like the movement of the squares.

1:21:56 There still is a massive protest in Madrid. And yeah, it is.

1:21:59 Yeah.

1:22:00 It is beautiful to see the solidarity around that woman and around her situation, how she's been evicted from the place she was living for over seven decades.

1:22:14 Yeah.

1:22:15 It resonated with so many people.

1:22:20 I mean, it's social murder, but it's like normally social murder happens at like one more degree of remove than that. And this is like, no, actually, yeah, she was just murdered by the state and the landlords.

1:22:31 Exactly. Exactly.

1:22:33 So directly. And yeah.

1:22:34 And for everybody to see.

1:22:36 Yeah.

1:22:37 And so I guess I guess my question is like, how are you and how are also like people in the streets kind of like are people looking at this in the context of like the other movements that are happening at the same time? Or are we kind of still in that? what I would call the 2018-2019 mode of isolation, where it's hard for people to see themselves as part of a broader thing?

1:22:57 That's a very good question, and I think it's the latter. I think that people are so depoliticized that it is hard for them to link the most obvious linkable stuff together.

1:23:10 Yeah, or it's like you and the kids in India.

1:23:14 Exactly.

1:23:16 I believe in us.

1:23:17 That's manufactured. The depoliticization of your population, mine, it's not random. To be able to keep us doing the 9 to 5 and complying and everything, they need a depoliticized population to keep on going forward. So I think that social media managed to get through Gen Z. So they managed to see that what's happening, what has been happening in France has also been happening in other countries. And they managed to put two and two together. And they managed to see that, yeah, the issue is capitalism. The issue is white supremacy. The issue is patriarchy and imperialism. But when you start looking at millennials, Gen Xers....

1:24:07 That's... Which is also like, hey, if you're a millennial, we've literally, you've done this twice already.

1:24:13 I know!

1:24:15 We did 2011, we did 2020. I believe in us. I believe we can figure this out.

1:24:21 I know we can do this.

1:24:22 There's a part of me that believes in us, but there's also a part of me that knows how effective the capitalistic propaganda is. So the moment you start owning stuff... like a house, you know, an apartment and stuff like that, you start wanting to keep that stuff for yourself. Like, you deserve it. Like, suddenly, meritocracy seems real. And that's where the danger's at.

1:24:48 Yeah.

1:24:49 And that's where the danger's at. So, I mean, I see people living their lives and having zero realization.

1:24:56 Yeah.

1:24:57 Like, with respect to what's happening in the streets. Like, it doesn't hit them at all. Like, they keep on going... doing their stuff, and they just don't see how it affects them. Or worse than that, they see how it affects them, but they seem to have accepted, like.

1:25:16 Yeah, nothing can be done about it.

1:25:18 Yeah, it's like, I've suffered, you're going to suffer.

1:25:22 Yeah.

1:25:23 That's how shit works. And to me, this is the scariest thing. This is the scariest thing. I don't have an answer to how I have to deal with that. I just know that, again, liberal mindset, and we have to get rid of that. I don't think that we're going to be able to convince the majority of people that what we are doing is the right thing. But then again, a hundred years ago, when we were fighting against fascism and Nazism, the majority of people So we don't need a majority of people.

1:26:01 Yeah, this is the actual lesson of the storming of the Winter Palace. The actual lesson of the October Revolution is that You don't need everyone on your side. You just need your enemies to stay home.

1:26:14 Exactly.

1:26:14 Then you can knock off Kerensky.

1:26:18 All you need is for them to stay home. Your enemies to stay home and enough of your allies to come out.

1:26:25 And you can do this.

1:26:27 You can see this liberal mindset is so hell-bent on trying to convince the majority of people. Like, No, we're not going to make it. It's not going to happen. This is why the very rich are owning all the media.

1:26:40 Yeah.

1:26:41 Because they know. They know what you want to do. And they see what you want to do. And they have already put their chess pieces in place to disrupt that. So you have to do stuff differently. We have to organize differently.

1:27:00 Yeah.

1:27:01 Speaking of doing something differently, I want to close on... So, okay, I think people in France kind of understand logistically what it means when you're doing a blockade of a school. But for people, for example, in the US, we're like, I guess I have seen schools... I have seen colleges blockaded, but I've never been involved in a high school blockade.

1:27:24 What does that actually just look like on a practical level?

1:27:27 Is it like.

1:27:29 We're, like, blockading the street leading up to the school? Is it like we're barring the entrance? What does that actually, like, physically look like?

1:27:37 Well, basically, physically, you are barring the entrance... Borrowing the street is complicated because for a lot of legal reasons and logistical reasons, it can be really difficult to block a whole street.

1:27:51 Yeah.

1:27:51 But yeah, you can block the entry of the school. You can put in front of the school whatever you want, like trash bins, barriers. Whatever. You can take desks from the inside, put them outside, pile them up. Yeah. Like anything.

1:28:12 Classic French revolutionary tradition. Stack all the desks.

1:28:16 You know, it surprised me when you asked me that because I was like, what? People don't know that? You take shit and you put that in front of the door and that's it.

1:28:25 Yeah. We have less of a tradition of that.

1:28:29 Exactly. Just like burning trash cans and stuff like that. It's a tradition. We do that all the time. That's protest shit. Like, of course, we're going to burn the trash.

1:28:43 Like, it's normal.

1:28:45 It's normal. But yeah, it's really, it's that simple. The purpose is to disrupt. So you do everything in your power to stop people from getting in the school.

1:28:56 Yeah.

1:28:57 Because you don't want them to be able to get into school because you want them to ask for the same thing as you do so that they can go back to school.

1:29:07 Yeah.

1:29:07 So yeah, you forbid them from getting into school and you push them to support you. That's the whole blockade mindset.

1:29:15 Makes sense.

1:29:16 That's how strikes work, basically, also.

1:29:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:29:20 Which I guess is the other angle of like... Something I've been thinking about a lot, talking to you, because one of the things that struck me about these protests is the extent to which when you like read over the student grievances, it's like, oh, this is like exactly the same grievances you would have for a teacher strike.

1:29:34 Yeah.

1:29:35 Like it's the same things. It's like, oh, wow, class size too big. Don't have teachers.

1:29:39 That's very good that you talk about that because our teachers are not really supportive.

1:29:43 Of Yeah, which is like, what is wrong with you? Like, you gotta go now.

1:29:48 Like, if you want your conditions to suck less, you need to move right now.

1:29:52 Like, this is the best you're gonna get.

1:29:54 Well, in France, like, a few decades ago, teachers used to be seen as left-leaning, left-wing. They're no longer left-wing. I'm sure they're really, like, right-wingers. Like, they want to be paid more, which they deserve to be paid more. Like, really, they're not paid enough.

1:30:11 But.

1:30:12 they're not asking for it like in a disruptive manner and basically they're not getting paid more. Oh, shocking. I know. But so yeah, the, the teachers are not really supportive of the, their students, which shows you everything you need to know about the state of affairs basically. Yeah.

1:30:32 Which like that has been like one of the things that's been heartening in the U S is seeing a lot of kind of like, like students coming out to support teacher strikes and like, things like that, where, like, teachers are sometimes, like, are supporting, like, student walkouts and stuff.

1:30:45 And that's really sad.

1:30:47 Because, like, I don't know, like, if you were a teacher, like, the thing that you have the responsibility to do is to care for your students. And if you're not doing that, then, like, yeah, I mean, I guess you are just the kind of, like, you're doing education in the Napoleonic sense, if, like, yeah, we're cranking you out so you can, like, be cannon fodder for, like, the French Imperial Army.

1:31:06 Like.

1:31:07 Exactly. No, that's what's happening.

1:31:09 Like.

1:31:10 Again, neoliberalism is a deeply individualistic way of life. And you can see that in the way teachers are not supporting their students who are asking for stuff that teachers are also asking for. So logically, you should see teachers support students. But when you look at reality, they are not. They're not. So, yeah, because they only think about what's in it for me. And we've been molded into only thinking about what's good for me, what's in it for me.

1:31:45 And we've stopped thinking us as a society, but just as a set of individuals. And that's one of the biggest issues we're facing, politically speaking.

1:31:54 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, do you have anything else that you want to make sure people know before we wrap things up?

1:32:03 Yeah, I really want to stress the fact that what's happening in France and the problem is at its root. It's the same problem that is happening in the US. It's the same one that is happening in Spain, in the UK, in Germany, and basically the whole West and even more like in Japan, in South Korea.

1:32:25 Yeah.

1:32:26 In India, just like what we're talking about, that is neoliberalism, that is capitalism, that is imperialism, that is white supremacy, that is patriarchy. And we need to come together. I don't think that fighting within our borders is going to lead to anything, but we cannot change stuff by just fighting for our countries individually.

1:32:51 Yeah.

1:32:52 Like we have to fight together because, well, capital doesn't know borders. Yeah. We share the same enemy. We share the same enemy and we have to coalesce and organize worldwide in order to fight back and have a chance of fighting back properly.

1:33:10 Yeah.

1:33:12 So yeah, organize internationally. Talk to your French folks, to your British folks, Spanish.

1:33:18 Folks, etc.

1:33:19 And yeah, teach what you know and learn from them. And I think that's the only way out of that shit hole.

1:33:28 Hell yeah.

1:33:29 Faiza, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find your work?

1:33:34 Thank you for having me, Mia. People can find me on Twitch. at a phaser so f-a-y-z-a underscore underscore and also on instagram and blue sky and sometimes on tiktok.

1:33:51 Cool yeah we will have links to that in the show notes yeah thank you so much for coming on and i don't know i hope i hope y'all fucking win.

1:33:59 Thank you i also hope that much thank you thank you thank you and thank you again for having me Yeah, it's been great.

1:34:21 Hi, everyone.

1:34:22 You're listening to It Could Happen Here. My name is Carlos Berrios Polanco. And today I'm going to be talking about breadfruit, the climate change resistant crop that also works as a tool for emergency preparedness. But before I get into that, let me tell you why I started thinking about breadfruit in the first place. If you're anything like me, the effects of human-caused climate change on the food that we eat and grow have been on your mind lately.

1:34:51 Maybe you've been thinking about it because you saw a scary-looking graph that shows the global temperature shooting up over the last few years and only increasing over the next couple of decades. When this type of graph comes up in an article about food, It's usually accompanied by a rice or cornfield so dry that the ground is cracked to show how bad it's gotten and how much worse it can get. Or maybe you're thinking about it because the price of foods that have become staples in your diet, like rice, chicken, and coffee, have gone up significantly year over year because of a mixture of different climate-related causes has caused crop losses all over the world, and for the very process of planting and harvesting to become more expensive,

1:35:38 a process known as quote-unquote climateflation. And in the case of more specialty foods, like Florida oranges, for example, maybe they're not even available at the grocery store anymore because of how hard crops have been hit by extreme weather events and illness. To be clear, climate change isn't the only reason that food prices have gone up lately. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz because of the U.S.

1:36:01 's war on Iran has also certainly led to prices going up for everything across the board. But climate change is the main thing that has been and will continue to affect the way that we consume food into the future, especially as resources become scarcer and we as a planet start realizing that what once worked to feed us isn't going to be viable forever. A study by the Climate Impact Lab found that every additional degree Celsius of global warming will lead to global production of six stable crops, corn, soybean, rice, wheat, cassava, and sorghum, to decrease by 4.4%, which is roughly equivalent to a loss of 120 calories per person per day.

1:36:47 As Solomon Sheehan, one of the senior authors of this study and a professor of environmental sciences at Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, told the UK Telegraph, quote, if climate warms by three degrees, that's basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast, end quote. This is pretty bad already, but it's going to affect the people already suffering from food insecurity the worst. And that's not to say that we're not growing enough food, just that it's not being distributed to the people who need it most. Three degrees of warming would also cause cataclysmic ecological effects for millions of people around the world, to include cities submerged by rising sea levels, months-long deadly heat waves, and turn people

1:37:36 into refugees by the millions. The regions most affected by climate change right now, like Africa, Southern Asia, and the Caribbean are would be the most affected by this. So I've really been thinking a lot about that lately, and I did what I always do whenever I start to think about collapse and cataclysm like that. I look for the ways that people around me are trying to deal with the effects of climate change in the best way that they can.

1:38:03 That's why.

1:38:04 On a recent Friday morning, I found myself about an hour away from my hometown of Caguas in a tiny little neighborhood called Mariana that's nestled into the mountains of the municipal borderline between Yabucoa and Umacao. As I made my way through the labyrinth-like roads up to the mountain that definitely were not made to fit two cars side by side, I knew that I was getting close because I started seeing nearly 100-foot-tall breadfruit trees reach towards the heavens.

1:38:31 I was there in late September right at the tail end of the breadfruit's harvest season. So the bright yellow-green football-sized fruits weren't as plentiful as they would be if I had come earlier in the month. If you've never seen a breadfruit or never tasted one, you should probably fix that as soon as you can.

1:38:48 It's delicious.

1:38:49 Breadfruit trees can grow up to 100 feet tall and are covered in large green leaves. The fruit itself can grow to be almost 15 pounds, but usually tops out at about 6 to 10 pounds. Per the Breadfruit Institute in Hawaii, it's an energy-rich food and a good source of complex carbs, fiber, and minerals like potassium and calcium as well as vitamin.

1:39:11 B and others.

1:39:12 Although some varieties grow with seeds, in my experience, the majority don't. Therefore, about 90% of the time, you're more likely to see breadfruit propagated through root cuttings or tissue cultures or something like that, rather than from seed. Breadfruit trees grow extremely quickly, like up to four feet per year, and will begin producing fruit in about three years. And it produces a lot of fruit, like between 100 or 200 individual fruits per tree, although some trees could blow past that. Harvest season depends on where these trees are grown, but it's generally late summer to fall, usually. The tree itself doesn't need too much care or perfect growing conditions.

1:39:55 Far from it, actually. As long as you can provide it with medium amounts of water and deep, fertile, and well-draining soils, it'll grow for you. And even then, some varieties grow in atolls that are shallow and sandy, according to the Breadfruit Institute. And it'll also grow on hillsides. That's why it's often touted as a quote-unquote climate-resilient tree, because it'll grow in a bunch of different conditions. It's really the goat of trees. As to what the fruit tastes like, well, it's in the name. When cooked, it tastes like bread, although I've read some people can describe it as kind of like a starchy and nutty potato.

1:40:33 It can be used in a million different recipes and used in all states of ripeness, from completely raw to overripe. Personally, my favorite way to eat it is cooked into tostones, which are these kind of twice-fried flattened fritters that are usually made from plantain, but I prefer when they're made out of breadfruit. I've been to Mariana before, about three years ago, to work on a story about how communities affected by the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022 were designing their just recovery through bottom-up methods, like a community aqueduct to help ail the neighborhood's decades-long water issues, as well as a community census to know who is the most vulnerable in case

1:41:14 of an emergency and make sure they got help first. And in a sense, I was back there to cover essentially the same thing, except that this time it was community preparedness through a breadfruit farm that they've planted at La Loma de la Niña Mariana, a kind of community park slash rec space. It's a really serene space. especially when it's empty. It's surrounded by breadfruit and other trees, so there's a lot of green, and the breeze is a welcoming reprieve from the near triple-digit temperatures we've been having lately. Mariana is the neighborhood that grows the most breadfruit in Humacao, Rosalina Abreu tells me. She's a community leader who's part of the neighborhood's non-profit organization, Arecma, which

1:41:57 is in charge of community participation and development. As a quick note, I interviewed Rosalina in our native Spanish, but Mia from the Cool Zone team was gracious enough to read a translation of that interview here and in following sections.

1:42:14 It's a tree with a strong root. It's resistant to hurricanes and any environmental changes. And a mature tree can yield a harvest of between 100 and 300 to 400 breadfruits.

1:42:25 Therefore....

1:42:29 The harvest is fruitful and abundant.

1:42:33 Breadfruit has a long history here. Rosalina tells me that her family has always had a breadfruit tree or a couple growing near them going back generations because of how much food it produces and because when you preserve it, it can last months with proper refrigeration. In Puerto Rico, it was originally used as sustenance for pigs and other livestock, but little by little, people started paying attention to how good the fruit was, how many nutrients it provided, and people started using it for everything. Mariana has been hosting a breadfruit festival between the end of August and the start of September amid the peak breadfruit harvest for 38 years.

1:43:13 The community has also created a breadfruit recipe book that I'm flipping through as I read this script, and it has dozens and dozens of different things you make with it from fritters to flan and even juice. When Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 hurricane, tore through Puerto Rico in 2017, leaving thousands of people dead and causing more than $ 91 billion in damages, Mariana was left more or less incommunicated from the rest of the world. Rosalina told me years ago that it was like a bomb had been dropped in their neighborhood. But knowing that the government wasn't coming to help their small rural community, they knew that the only people they could count on or themselves. So they got to work and opened a food distribution center at

1:44:00 La Loma where they were feeding members of the community with whatever food they had on hand and whatever food they could gather from the hundreds of breadfruit trees and others in the neighborhood.

1:44:16 We've seen that when the need arises, people come here to look for breadfruit. And not only that, But the environment is full of trees that keep us cool, that provide a natural space for growth. And eventually we know that we are going to be one of the neighborhoods best prepared for any situation that involves a food shortage.

1:44:36 We're going to have breadfruit to share and to use. In fact, we have a kitchen here, a semi-industrial kitchen that opens to feed the neighborhood. During the time of Maria, we served 400 people daily that came looking for food here. We already have the kitchen, we have the trees planted. So we're already a step ahead for the survival of our people if an event occurs.

1:45:03 Neighbors in Mariana have planted about 80 breadfruit trees throughout La Loma as a kind of disaster insurance policy. There is probably not a fruit tree that can really withstand a hurricane or severe flooding or something like that. But if a breadfruit tree goes down, it'll likely start to spring back up from the roots. Of the four people that I interviewed for this episode, all of them told me something similar. And if a breadfruit tree gets stripped of its leaves and its fruits by a storm, it'll probably start sprouting leaves a few weeks after and will probably produce breadfruit next harvest season. Something similar, although to a lower degree, happened when Hurricane Fiona hit in 2022.

1:45:45 Rosalina explained to me that in the 1920s and.

1:45:49 1930s, the U.S.

1:45:50 Government tried to take down breadfruit trees to grow potatoes, but they didn't take away the roots, so it just sprang back up again. She also says that Puerto Rico's farmers took the tree up into the mountains. It usually grows closer to the beach and other places where it has thrived ever since.

1:46:11 It looks like a Christmas tree with its bulbs because each branch has two or three bread fruits. And when they're ripe, when it's harvest time, you look at it, and it's really miraculous. Plus, it provides food, provides shade, it's resistant to the soil, meaning you can plant it in areas prone to landslides, and it will preserve the terrain so there's no collapses or landslides. So, for many.

1:46:38 Reasons, it's a tree we could consider miraculous.

1:46:46 Breadfruit is one of the first crops to grow back in Puerto Rico after an extreme weather event. It also grows pretty much everywhere throughout the archipelago. And this is super important because Puerto Rico is one of the countries most affected by climate change, ranking sixth on German Watch's Climate Risk Index. which looks at how countries are affected by extreme weather events and how they cause loss of life and how it impacts their GDP. Puerto Rico has experienced several disasters caused by extreme weather over the years, the biggest of which were Hurricanes Irma and Maria and Fiona.

1:47:20 Maria caused a loss of around 80% of the archipelago's crops, or about $ 800 million worth of food, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, Fiona caused about $ 159 million in losses for the agricultural industry per the AP.

1:47:37 Breadfruit has proven to be drought resistant. It's wind resistant. After Hurricane Maria, we were eating breadfruit first than we were eating local bananas and local plantains. Because they were highly affected by the winds, but they would come back. So it's very interesting how... Even if the fruits are smaller, it will bear fruit, especially in a drought season.

1:48:03 That's Marisol Villalobos, a co-founder of Amazar, a company that sells breadfruit flour that's shelf-stable and can last years with no problems. Their farm's in Hayuya, and in 2017, her and her husband, who's also a co-founder, had planted about two acres of their farm worldwide. breadfruit, but the saplings were little tiny sticks when Maria hid, and only one survived.

1:48:25 Marisol now calls it the quote-unquote matriarch tree. Nearly 10 years after that, their farm now has 500 breadfruit trees that are producing hundreds and hundreds of pounds of breadfruit that they turn into flour every year. They're one of the first farms in Puerto Rico to grow breadfruit and cocoa at the same time. The breadfruit trees provide the necessary shade for cocoa to grow. They've also planted several other native trees throughout their farms. If you wanted to produce breadfruit at an industrial scale, this probably isn't the best way to go. Most industrial agriculture has one singular crop planted over large swaths of land to maximize production, ease of gathering, and resources. This is called monoculture. However,

1:49:11 there's serious downsides to it, like needing to pump tons of fertilizer and compost into the soil to keep it growing the same thing over and over again, as well as increasing the risk that a pest or illness will wreak havoc throughout the crop. The way Marisol grows breadfruit isn't ideal if they wanted to maximize production, but Marisol isn't really bothered by it. Instead, she thinks it's better that way because of its positive effects on the soil and on the plants.

1:49:41 Some people say, no, it might not be the best synergy. I see it in a way, you know, I'm enriching my model of agroforestry. And what we produce is what we produce. But if I have a more secure crop in terms of resilience and protection from sicknesses, illnesses in place, I'm very happy with that.

1:50:03 Puerto Rico grows very little of its own food, about 10-15% depending on the source that you look at. While breadfruit has been part of Puerto Ricans' diets for centuries, production of it has been going down over the last few years as Puerto Rico becomes even more reliant on imports. Per data from the Archipelago's Department of Agriculture, production of breadfruit has gone down from 1991 to 2019, the last year for which public data is available, by about 771,000 pounds.

1:50:34 Only about 650,000 pounds of breadfruit were produced in Puerto Rico in 2019, according to the data. Meanwhile, imports have risen rapidly from 2015 to 2019, reaching about 830,000 pounds of breadfruit imported in 2019. So people are still eating breadfruit. They're eating more of it, but we just can't grow it fast enough.

1:51:03 So we definitely have a great opportunity in Puerto Rico to increase local production and local consumption with a crop like breadfruit and especially incorporating other crops with it. Beans, vegetables, a lot of farinacios, taro.

1:51:18 Plantains, all that. Yeah.

1:51:19 And even animals, you know, nice farms that have both things, silver pasture with trees and with the animals. And then we have a little bit more protein there too.

1:51:30 So yeah.

1:51:31 When we get back from the ad break, we're going to be talking about the history of breadfruit's voyage from the Pacific to the Caribbean and the rest of the world and how breadfruit is being distributed to help combat hunger crises everywhere. And we're back. You're listening to It Could Happen Here. I'm Carlos, your host for today's episode.

1:52:01 And while breadfruit has become a staple in the Caribbean because of how easily it grows and its ability to be turned into a gazillion different things, it's not native here. Instead, it's originally from the western Pacific, specifically from New Guinea and the Indo-Malay region. Thousands of years ago, it was spread by the indigenous Polynesians who were the literal first people to travel across the region. They would travel on double-hulled canoes that are nothing like what we know of as canoes today. Instead, each hull could reach up to 100 feet in length, they had a sail, and they could fit entire families as well as the food and resources they needed to settle on the islands they were traveling to. And one of the things they carried were

1:52:44 breadfruit saplings because of how much fruit it would produce when planted.

1:52:49 In the case of breadfruit, it was usually the little saplings that shoot up from the roots. They would cut them and pack them in a ball of earth and leaves and keep them moist so that they could plant them on the new island and have the same familiar foods that they were used to wherever they were coming from.

1:53:05 That's Russell Fielding, an associate professor at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina who researches geography and environmental justice and who wrote the book Red Fruit, Free Global Journeys of a Bountiful Tree. He explained, that one of the Pacific people's earliest uses for breadfruit was roasting it in an earth oven, which is when you create a pit, put burning coals in there, then the fruit, then more coals on top, and then you cover it all with stones and soil. This type of cooking is common to a bunch of indigenous cultures across the world, and it produces delicious food. Another way that the people of the Pacific used breadfruit that Russell's never seen outside of the region

1:53:46 is putting it into a dark pit, making sure there's no airflow, and then letting it ferment. This turns it into a sort of paste that can be stored for a long time. It tastes kind of tart, almost like citrus, Russell told me. Its name depends on which Pacific island you're on, but the people of the Marquesas call it ma.

1:54:06 And so this fermented breadfruit was used as kind of an insurance against times of scarcity, where, you know, if you get a big crop of breadfruit, like you said, A single tree in a single season produces lots of fruit. So if it's more than you need for the time being, you can ferment some of it to store it away for later. And then maybe there's a drought or a famine at some point and you have to dip into your reserves.

1:54:31 This shows that the history of breadfruit as an emergency preparedness tool goes back millennia. People and the breadfruit they carried continued spreading across the Pacific. When the Europeans colonized the region, they essentially forced the people to switch from breadfruit to imports from the globalized market. Crops like coffee, pineapples, and sugar overtook the breadfruit groves in taro patches, while rice became a staple of the Pacific diet, according to Russell's book. It's a story anyone familiar with colonization or who's been a victim of it knows all too well. However, breadfruit has seen a resurgence in recent times. In Hawaii, According to an article in Civil Beat, breadfruit production is booming,

1:55:16 but similar to Puerto Rico, farmers can't keep up with demand. We'll get back to the modern-day breadfruit situation in a second. But before that, let's talk about how breadfruit made its way all the way from the Pacific to the Caribbean.

1:55:30 It wasn't until the very end of the 18th century that breadfruit made its jump to the Caribbean. And this was intentional. This was directed by the European colonialists. It was the British that eventually succeeded first, but they weren't the only ones trying. The French had also made efforts to bring breadfruit to the Caribbean. And there's some hypothesis that the Spanish were also moving breadfruit around the same time.

1:55:56 But the British did it first.

1:55:58 You might have heard this story before. The story of the mutiny on the bounty. Every time I mentioned to someone that I was working on this breadfruit project, They would mention the original 1945 movie, The Muni on the Bounty, or the 1962 remake with Marlon Brando to me. And I would be like, yeah, for sure. But let me be honest with you, dear listener. I did not know that these movies existed up until a couple of weeks before recording this episode.

1:56:25 And to be honest, they're pretty good.

1:56:28 3.5 stars on Letterboxd. Anyway, as European colonization wrecked terror and death throughout the Caribbean... The British came up with a plan to transport breadfruit from their Pacific colonies to their Caribbean colonies, all of which had more or less the same climate, to feed the enslaved people that they had kidnapped from Africa and forced to work on sugar plantations. So, the British assigned William Bly to the HMS Bounty, and they traveled to Tahiti to load upon breadfruit. Bly, as authoritarians commonly do, was quick to anger and routinely verbally berated and physically assaulted his crew, who eventually mutinied and sent Bly in his loyalist packing. However, Bly eventually made his way back to England, where he would once again

1:57:15 make his way back to Tahiti and eventually reach his original goal of bringing breadfruit to the Caribbean. He first stopped in St. Vincent in 1793, then Jamaica shortly after. Then breadfruit was all over the Caribbean in a few short years, even reaching the state of Florida a few decades later, where it's still really the only place in the continental U.S. where it can grow outside without too much trouble. Although it really only mostly grows in the Keys and the warmest parts of South Florida because it's super susceptible to a cold snap.

1:57:51 It was specifically intended to feed people that were enslaved on sugar plantations and or otherwise impoverished. I know that not every island was practicing slavery at the time that breadfruit was imported to that island, but breadfruit was never really intended as a food for everyone. It was for the poor and the enslaved. And unfortunately, that gave breadfruit something of a stigma or a negative reputation in a lot of places throughout the Caribbean. And you can even still find traces of that today, where it's referred to as you know, poor man's food or comida y barro, where it's still got that association today with poverty.

1:58:32 Russell explained that while slavery was still going on, people that were able to eat something else absolutely refused to eat breadfruit. That's how hated it was, and who could really blame them? This reputation as a food for enslaved people or something that only people in poverty ate stuck around for decades, and one could make the argument that some of that sentiment still lingers today. Even if breadfruit's reputation has started to turn around, so much of that evil history of colonialism and slavery is inescapable. Even now, as I read this script, I think about how the communities where this fruit grows the most are some of the ones most affected by human-caused climate change, which they

1:59:15 contribute the least to. The Caribbean historically accounts for less than 1% of the world's global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. Theoretically, there could come a day when breadfruit is not as bountiful as it once was because of the heat or even refuse to grow altogether. Even though breadfruit is certainly climate resilient and it can take a lot, it can't survive without soil and water. both of which are becoming harder and harder to come by day by day. The global south, a lot of which relies on breadfruit as part of their diet, will no longer be able to grow this bountiful tree if we reach certain levels of warming. As the hottest year on record morphs into the hottest year

2:00:03 so far, the global north will likely get to experience breadfruit for the first time as areas that were once hostile to breadfruit become its new home. This seems to already be happening in the Marshall Islands, another place that is very, very, very affected by climate change, as in they're literally disappearing before our eyes. Their breadfruit, which they call ulu, similar to other places in the Pacific, has seen better days. They're growing smaller and less bountiful, according to one farmer the Civil Beat interviewed. He thinks it's salt getting into the soil or the aquifer. While breadfruit can resist some salt, the constant presence is killer. Per a study published in PLOS Climate about how breadfruit can

2:00:51 contribute to climate-resilient food systems in areas near the equator, the area suitable for breadfruit cultivation in the tropics and subtropics is projected to decrease by 4.4% in a scenario where we stabilize emissions. aka where emission levels go down but do not reach net zero by the year 2100, and they'll decrease by about 4.5% in a high-emission scenario, which essentially means if we burn even more fossil fuels by 2100. In these scenarios, the areas most affected will be Latin America and the Caribbean. where a suitable range for breadfruit growth will decrease by 10.1% if we stabilize emissions and 11.5% in a high-emission scenario. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, yield quality and consistency show minimal

2:01:45 decreases under a high-emission scenario, while the land where you can plant breadfruit will likely go up. In all regions, a high-emission scenario will lead to reduced consistency and quality of breadfruit harvests. The narrative of the study ends by saying that breadfruit may play a role in alleviating current and future food insecurity, particularly in equatorial Africa. When instituted with an agroforestry model, as Marisol is doing, it could be a potent climate adaptation strategy. This study also mentions that its role can be expanded in countries that already produce it to become even more of a staple and help address growing climate-related issues there.

2:02:28 Ironically, tropical regions are where you do find some of the world's underserved people, people with hunger and malnutrition as part of their risks of daily living. So the kinds of tree that we plant and the need are very well matched.

2:02:47 That was Mike McLaughlin, co-founder and secretary of the Trees That Feed Foundation. a Chicago-based nonprofit whose mission is to feed people, create jobs, and benefit the environment. Mike and his wife, Mary, who's president of Trees That Feed, grew up in Jamaica, where breadfruit is incredibly common. However, they didn't think of planting it until years later when they realized how badly climate change was affecting the environment as well as the problems it was causing around the world.

2:03:19 And then they started thinking about what they could do about it.

2:03:23 And the reason we wanted to plant fruit trees, it was kind of an easier sell. There were, and there still are, climate change skeptics, people that don't think anything is happening. They're not worried about super El Nino. They're not doing anything to reduce our fossil fuel use, our carbon footprint. And so because of the skeptics, we said if we lead our effort with with climate change and solving that problem, we kind of have to do more explaining.

2:03:58 We're going to be more skeptics. But if we say we're planting trees to feed people, everybody understands that.

2:04:04 They know that.

2:04:06 Trees that feed gives breadfruit and other trees to farmers in more than 20 countries, then teaches them how to take care of them, harvest the breadfruit and process it so that it can be sold and used to feed their families. Part of the reason they have this emphasis with farmers is that it reduces reliance on imported food, which means that more money circulates in the local economy instead of going elsewhere. The organization also buys breadfruit flour and other breadfruit-based products from processors and bakeries, then donates them to schools as part of their school feeding programs.

2:04:45 which serves more than 20 schools and orphanages in Haiti, which is the second country that they started working with, Mike explained. 5.8 million Haitians, a little more than half of the country's total population, face crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.

2:05:05 More than 250,000 children aged 6 to 59 months are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition between June 2026 and May 2027, per a UN analysis. Some people in Haiti are forced to eat mud cookies, which are exactly what they sound like, a little bit of earth, salt, and oil that's meant to curb hunger pangs. It's the saddest thing Mike's ever heard of, he told me. Trees that feed Foundation have tried to substitute that where they can, with con pared, a type of bread that's dense like cake or a breadfruit porridge. These recipes were co-produced with bakers in Haiti and North America, according to the organization's website.

2:05:47 Part of the trouble of growing so much breadfruit is that it ripens really quickly, like within a couple of days, it might start rotting if you don't refrigerate it. So to combat that, Mike helped create a solar dehydrator that can dehydrate breadfruit so that it can be stored without refrigeration without affecting the nutritional benefits of the food. This means that it can be stored for up to several years and still maintain the same nutritional value. What Trees That Feed is doing, using breadfruit as a tool for sustainable development, is part of its history all along, Russell, who's also a board member of the organization, told me during our interview. When indigenous communities were carrying it across

2:06:30 the Pacific, they were hoping to feed themselves wherever they settled. Although it was a weapon in service of the evils of slavery, the British brought breadfruit to the Caribbean to provide food when it became scarce, in large part because of their own actions planting monoculture sugar plantations everywhere, to be clear. Meanwhile, in modern times, it continues spreading across the world as an attempt to feed people suffering through hunger because of climate change and other crises. It's time to throw the ads, but when we come back, We'll wrap this episode up by talking about how the real power of breadfruit might have been the friends that we made along the way. You're listening to It Could Happen Here.

2:07:22 I'm your host for today, Carlos. And one thing I haven't mentioned yet is about what we call breadfruit in Spanish. It has a bunch of names depending on where you are. Panapeng, frutipang, masapang, buempang.

2:07:34 You get the idea.

2:07:35 They're all bread related.

2:07:37 However, what I and millions of other Puerto Ricans call it is pana, which is exactly the same way that we refer to a close friend. A direct translation would be something like buddy or homie. So every breadfruit is a friend. This fruit that grows quickly and produces hundreds of pounds of food from a single tree that has accompanied people into the unknown and been turned from a weapon that sustained humanity's greatest evil into a food that now helps sustain millions and millions of people every day that has started sprouting weeks after disaster raised every other crop, that will grow tall and wild without much help, and almost always has something to give, is literally named Friend.

2:08:29 That's the kind of beautiful and surreal that only real life could ever be? Marisol from Amazar has a theory about why it's called Pana that I think is worth sharing.

2:08:40 We in Amazar have a theory that it has to do that. We have a very strong relationship in Puerto Rico with our godfathers. And comadre and compadre is that relationship of the parents of the godchild with the godfather and godmother of that child. So if I were to visit in the 1800s, and we were very, very, very poor, extremely poor, and a lot of malnutrition, if I were to visit a friend, I would bring a pana. with me and here's your pana, here's your pana, a pana.

2:09:15 So it was kind of like that connotation of I'm giving you something to help nurture your family. So that's something very special. So if you're really my pana, you're dear to me, I will protect you. I will take care of you and I will, I will have your back.

2:09:29 I want to end this episode by returning back to La Loma de la Niña Mariana. After my interview with Rosalina, when I was on my way out, I stopped to take a photo of a mosaic made with hundreds of little pieces of colorful tiles. It depicts about a dozen hands together in a circle, like they're about to go three, two, one, go team.

2:09:50 There's a breadfruit at.

2:09:51 The center of the circle, almost as if it's the thing they've put their whole faith in. But the inscription under the mosaic, glory to the hands that work, makes it clear that even though breadfruit might be at the center of this art and one of the most important things in this community, The real greatest thing that this neighborhood has are its people, the ones that are putting in the work when it's needed, the ones that are making sure to help their neighbors when they need help, the ones that are using all this breadfruit and have used it to cook for years and years whenever there's a crisis. It can't happen without them. Breadfruit might grow super quickly. It might be incredibly abundant as a source

2:10:31 of food, but it can't be used to feed people without the community putting in the work to gather it, cook it, store it, and then bring it back out when it's needed.

2:10:44 Because to us, if we've done anything, it's that we've seeded solidarity. I mean, whenever a situation happens here, people show up and immediately ask, how can I help? What can I do? Where can I pitch in? People get here hauling water with whatever they have at home. Cans of beans, rice. Look, I have this, you can start cooking.

2:11:08 People say, I can get to such and such place because I have the right equipment. What can I do? We have that in abundance. This community's greatest resource is its people. We've always said so. We might not have the vast financial resources, but we do have the people.

2:11:24 And that is.

2:11:25 The primary resource we work with, and the people to whom we owe everything we have here.

2:11:34 I've been thinking about that mosaic pretty much every day since I was at La Loma. While breadfruit is at the center, it's the people that are putting in the work who are actually able to help one another by using breadfruit. It's a powerful reminder that the only way out of a crisis is through, that the only way through is together. Thanks for listening.

2:12:09 Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Robert Evans. We all know what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Those events were so consequential and infamous that I fear people have forgotten how they felt about the possibility of an attack on the Capitol by a mob of citizens on January 5th. That's not something I can forget. as I spent my first days of January that year digging through thousands of comments on social media and MAGA-focused message boards.

2:12:39 I came away from my research convinced an attack on the Capitol was possible, and I tried to warn people. I was not the only researcher who wrote about the possibility of an attack on the Capitol before January 6th. None of our warnings were heeded, in part because the authorities, like most people, considered the odds of a mob successfully occupying the Capitol to be right around 0%. The United States is the most powerful nation in history, the argument went, and the Capitol building and nearby government facilities are some of the most hardened targets on Earth. There's no way a mob of mostly unarmed protesters could just storm them like the Winter Palace and put lawmakers' lives at risk.

2:13:17 Your fears are a fantasy.

2:13:18 You're just trying to scare people.

2:13:20 Shut up.

2:13:21 Well, we were correct about January 6th, and over the last few years, I've begun to worry about something new. The name I've given this fear is Nuclear January 6th. Now, I'm not talking about an all-out nuclear war here, and I'm certainly not talking about a nuclear strike on the U.S. Capitol, although that's one possible way this could occur. You're all readily familiar with the possibility and consequences of Atomic Holocaust, and I'm not using that term for the possibility of a terrorist organization or their non-state actor acquiring a nuke or dirty bomb, which remains possible, but let's say unlikely.

2:13:56 A nuclear January 6th would be a lot like its namesake, a catastrophic event that would have seemed impossible, even laughably so, before it occurred and involves the use of a nuclear weapon. A nuclear January 6th, then, would be a fuck-up, either a disastrous nuclear error caused by incompetence or a limited nuclear deployment inspired by incompetence. Either way, the scenario I'm envisioning doesn't mean the end of the world, It means one or at most a small number of warheads are detonated for a very stupid reason, and we're all left to move forward in a world that is now permanently less safe. In 1989, American political scientist Robert Jervis published a book titled The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, Statecraft

2:14:41 and the Prospect of Armageddon. Looking out at the international situation at the tail end of the Cold War, Jervis argued that war between nuclear powers was now unthinkable. Within the context of that conflict, he was correct.

2:14:54 Both the U.S.

2:14:55 And the USSR, despite their separate battalions of war hawks and substantial doses of paranoia, avoided stepping over the nuclear brink. The men who ran both nations clearly considered nuclear war unthinkable. In the decades since the Cold War's end, the nations of the world have continued to avoid nuking us all into Cormac McCarthy's The Road. But there is an unfortunate amount of evidence that some of the people in charge of the great powers of our time no longer find deploying a nuke to be unthinkable, even against other nuclear powers.

2:15:26 The clearest example of this comes from the Russian Federation and its activities in Ukraine. Back in January, The Bell, an independent Russian news site, reported on building support in the Kremlin for the battlefield use of a tactical nuclear weapon. This was thought to most likely occur over Crimea.

2:15:43 A 2022 U.S.

2:15:44 Intel assessment independently estimated 50% odds that Putin would order a nuclear strike if the defenses around Crimea began to fail. Russian nuclear doctrine today supports the use of atomic weapons against an existential threat. And as Kieran Monks writes in a piece for iNews, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov said this morning this meant encroachments on Russia or its territorial integrity by aggressors, including those who may possess such weapons, could prompt us to use these weapons in the worst-case scenario.

2:16:14 The loss of Crimea, which Putin calls an inseparable part of Russia, could technically reach that threshold, said Dr. Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher and specialist on Russia's nuclear forces at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. Now, my understanding of the situation in Ukraine is that Crimea is not under imminent danger of being retaken by Ukrainian forces, somewhat unfortunately. However, the vagueness of Russia's nuclear line being an existential threat means that they might well decide one day that diesel refining facilities count, given the centrality of oil exports to their economy. Sergei Karaganov, head of a defense industry think tank in Moscow and former advisor to Putin, is among

2:16:54 Russia's largest nuclear hawks. He has recently argued for limited nuclear strikes on Ukraine's European allies. I bring this up not because that's a scenario I'm discussing today. If Russia nuked a NATO country, that would be a de facto strike on a nuclear power and would likely end up being much worse than my nuclear January 6th theory. I bring this up because comments like this from Russia have contributed to an unfortunate trend in U.S.

2:17:17 Defense circles.

2:17:18 Serious discussion about the need for expanded low-yield tactical nuclear options. And folks, remember, when we're saying low-yield nuclear weapons, we're still often talking about stuff at least on par with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, if not still considerably more powerful. Those count as low-yield weapons today. For most of our lifetimes, The U.S. has focused its nuclear research and buildup on what we might call big civilization-ending doomsday nukes. I'm using a little hyperbole there, but not much. Most of our standing nuclear weapons are strategic.

2:17:50 In nature.

2:17:51 That means they're very big, and they're meant to deter an enemy from launching a full-scale nuclear attack on us. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimates that about 94% of all actively deployed U.S. warheads are long-range strategic weapons. As Gabriel Honrada noted in an article for Asia Times, this makes tactical nukes a, quote, small, specialized component of overall U.S.

2:18:12 Nuclear posture.

2:18:14 You and I might consider that a good thing because any nuke small enough to use safely is likelier to get used. However, when defense planners hear the U.S. has very few tactical nukes alongside news articles about Russia threatening to use small tactical nukes, a funny thing happens. They begin to worry about a gap between our capability and that of an adversary. Fears of that gap have been further exacerbated by recent significant modernization of China's nuclear arsenal.

2:18:41 In the last few years, the Chinese military has massively increased the quality of their nuclear weapons and the related equipment, the delivery devices and such. I'm not going to go into a nerdy, fear-mongery deep dive about the exact capabilities of these new tools. That doesn't really matter today. What does matter is that in August of 2026, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby initiated a policy review of the nation's nuclear posture. The stated goal of this review is, per coverage by Breaking Defense, quote, focused on providing more options for the White House. Undersecretary Colby expressed the need for what he called rational nuclear options to deal with the changing threats from China and Russia. And,

2:19:22 as Honrada wrote in his article, The policy review comes amid longstanding U.S. DOD concerns over foreign deployments in low-yield warheads, which risk leaving the U.S. without proportional non-strategic responses. An expansion in the number of, and potentially the in-theater deployment of, low-yield nuclear weapons does not guarantee their use. Low-yield nukes have been deployed to hot zones or potential hot zones before, albeit decades ago during the height of the Cold War.

2:19:49 But I have trouble looking at this current administration in the U.S. and so much of the bombastic, kill-obsessed rhetoric that comes out of the Department of War these days and believing that the terms low-yield and tactical won't be interpreted as safe to use. In fact, there's a real chance that just by accepting the need for more of these weapons and deploying some near-conflict regions, we'll start a countdown whereby some of our current defense thinkers convince themselves there's a ticking clock. and they need to find a target for a low-yield nuclear strike to prove we've got the guts to use this thing. If that sounds far-fetched, I want you to think back to April of 2017, when the U.S. conducted an airstrike in Afghanistan using the

2:20:29 largest non-nuclear weapon we've got, the MOAB. There were some logical reasons for such a strike. ISIS fighters were using a tunnel network, and the MOAB is meant to penetrate and take out such underground targets. That said, there's no evidence this facility or the 36-ish ISIS fighters killed in the blasts represented a threat to U.S. interests in the region, necessitating such a dramatic response. Many pundits suspected the real reason we dropped this big bomb had more to do with Trump's campaign promise to bomb the shit out of ISIS.

2:20:58 Faisal Pervez, an analyst for the military intelligence forum Stratfor, told Vice his suspicions. We drop a bomb that weighs 21,000 pounds.

2:21:07 That's so big.

2:21:08 I think a part of it, or some part of it, is the messaging and the symbolic significance that the U.S. is sending out to countries such as Russia. that we are the premier military in the world. We are the biggest power. We have the tools and weapons to show you that this is the case. Well, the same man who dropped that bomb is back in power now. We are fighting a losing war with Iran that has endangered his power. Back in April of 2026, President Trump threatened Iran by saying, a whole civilization will die tonight if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened. More recently, he's mused that Iran might take out Los Angeles or San Diego with a nuclear weapon someday. which he viewed as a small price to pay for the permission that would

2:21:46 give the U.S. to annihilate Iran in return. We'll keep talking about this, but first, here's some ads.

2:22:04 We're back.

2:22:06 If more low-yield nuclear weapons are built and deployed, they will become in startlingly short time just another option on the menu for military planners. We might expect decade-standing traditions against using such weapons to count for something, but as you're aware, Pete Hegseth has purged a huge number of veteran leaders from the Department of Defense. Similar brain drains have occurred across all of our primary national security institutions.

2:22:31 There are fewer cooler heads to prevail.

2:22:33 Hegseth has also made lethality and kill count into our military's primary measure of operational success. More to my point, today, the entire Trump administration runs on social media. Truth social, Twitter, and TikTok aren't just organs the regime uses to disseminate propaganda. They are where Donald Trump and his advisors go for information and to take the pulse of the nation. Let's consider one possible chain of events. Some months from now, Trump orders a tactical nuke deployed with our forces attacking Iran.

2:23:02 The plan isn't to use it, but to threaten the enemy and generate a groundswell of rage among Trump's domestic enemies, which is always something he thinks about. Soon after the weapon arrives, Iranian forces score a major hit. Maybe one of their ballistic missile strikes and damages a naval vessel killing soldiers. Maybe they hit a base and cause an unprecedented loss of lives and materiel. Such a strike is not impossible. It could happen tomorrow, and it would not need to debilitate or cripple our military forces long term to provoke Donald Trump into a nuclear response. All it would need to do is embarrass him. At his footage spreads of fire raging atop an aircraft carrier or a burning frigate listing at sea or wounded and dying U.S.

2:23:42 soldiers near a base, Trump's followers begin howling for blood on social media. One cry sounds out louder than all the others.

2:23:51 Nuke the bastards. Trump might.

2:23:54 Such a strike would be unlikely to cause an immediate apocalyptic cascade into nuclear war. There would be international outrage, but not outright retaliation. Even so, in a stroke, Trump would have dissolved any remaining stigma against the use of nuclear weapons in war. This would make Russia much likelier to use a tactical nuke in Ukraine. It might change Chinese calculations, RE Taiwan, but what it would inarguably do is make nuclear weapons a normal, conceivable, usable tool of conventional war. I don't know how long it would take the breaking of that taboo to generate a larger nuclear war, But I believe after this point, such a future would become almost inevitable. It is still quite possible, even likelier,

2:24:38 that Russia would be the first nation-state to break the taboo and use a tactical nuke for the reasons I've just outlined. This might lead to a similar outcome worldwide, although I'm less certain of that. Russia is considered an international pariah to many in ways that the United States still isn't quite. That said, I have no doubt that the ultimate chain of events leading to such a deployment would be just as stupid as they would be in the United States. China feels less likely to be the direct cause of such a deployment. Their nuclear policy originated from Mao Zedong. He did not love nuclear weapons, calling them a paper tiger and talking shit on the US and the USSR for building so many of the damn things.

2:25:16 When China became a nuclear state in 1964, Mao stated the only use for this thing, his term for the bomb, was to deter other nuclear-armed countries. As a result, China has always had an official no-first-use policy with their nuclear arsenal. This differs from the U.S. and Russia, who operate by launch on warn. In other words, if we think you're going to nuke us, we will nuke you. China's official policy is minimum deterrence. That's generally translated to mean we keep our arsenal at the minimum level necessary to deter our adversaries. However, in an article on the evolution of China's nuclear posture, the website DEFCON Warning System notes, This declaratory posture also embodies China's strategic ambiguity. For one, minimum

2:26:00 deterrence remains undefined. Chinese officials have never quantified what a minimum nuclear capability means in practice. Is it a few dozen warheads able to strike back?

2:26:09 A few hundred?

2:26:10 As China's arsenal grows, the goalposts appear to shift. Similarly, what constitutes an arms race is left vague. Beijing's current buildup, by far its largest and fastest ever, ostensibly does not violate its pledge to avoid arms racing, at least in its own view. Crucially, China's nuclear doctrine has begun to stress achieving strategic counterbalance with other powers. Though not officially defined, this phrase suggests Beijing sees its nuclear forces as vital to shaping the global power equilibrium. It implies a more assertive role for nukes, not merely to deter an attack on China, but to offset the overall military might of rivals, particularly the United States. This nuanced shift in language contributes

2:26:48 to uncertainty. Does counterbalance mean China seeks nuclear parity with the U.S. or simply a survivable second strike? The lack of clarity keeps observers guessing. Now, I don't bring any of this up with the interest of fear-mongering over China, but because the questions and ambiguities outlined in that segment are a real cause for concern to the defense analysts who study China, not just for the U.S.

2:27:10 Government, but over in New Delhi.

2:27:12 The Indian state is locked in a continuous low-level border conflict with China, alongside their border conflict with Pakistan, also a nuclear-armed state. Both China and India have been extremely careful to avoid bringing nuclear threats to the table. But that only underlines how much leaders in both nations fear the possibility. And over on their border with Pakistan, nuclear threats have come up recently. 2025 saw a large skirmish between India and Pakistan that included crossfire.

2:27:40 Aerial raids.

2:27:41 After several days of this, Pakistan's foreign secretary issued a statement on May 28th. We will not hesitate to use any weapon in our arsenal to defend our territorial integrity. This was interpreted as a nuclear threat and caused a massive international ruckus. which prompted a spokesman for Pakistan's government to clarify that that was not the intent. We all lucked out that the May 2025 conflict did not occur at the same time as another uptick in hostility between Beijing and New Delhi, but it's easy to imagine something like that might occur. In the event of such a conflict, Pakistan would rely heavily on their naval forces, armed with nuclear weapons, to complete the third leg of their nuclear triad.

2:28:21 Having a nuclear triad, which means having separate land, sea, and air-based weapon systems that can deploy nuclear weapons, is considered the gold standard for nuclear deterrence. Most nations that have one fulfill the third leg of the triad with nuclear-armed attack submarines. The most advanced of these are, inarguably, the deadliest weapon systems ever devised by man. Pakistan is generally considered to be the nuclear power with the least reliable protections for their arsenal. These have long inspired fear that Pakistan might lose control of a weapon or that rogue elements of their security services might give one to a terrorist group. That's not my concern here. One of my sources for these episodes was an article in the

2:29:01 Defense and Security Analysis Journal. Its authors point out that in recent years, Pakistan has done a decent job of sealing some of the former security holes in their nuclear weapons systems. However, as one researcher noted in 2014, Parts of Pakistan's nuclear management system, like its command element, have been reasonably transparent. Other parts, like the physical security and surety human reliability elements, have been at best translucent.

2:29:24 In many areas, there are only.

2:29:25 Bald assertions that programs and methods have been put into place with very few details provided. One of the parts of their management system we know least about is the rules under which shipboard nuclear weapons operate. In theory, any nuclear weapons used by Pakistani forces would have to be authorized by a special 10-man committee. It's believed, but not known, that some systems require both a civilian and military key to be provided in order for the weapons to become operable.

2:29:54 This is because Pakistan's military has a long history of outright running the shop. Today, civilian leadership is meant to have much more oversight. One example of this is the fact that all air and land-based nuclear weapons in Pakistan are stored separate from their delivery systems. This makes them harder to steal and makes it more complex for, say, rogue military leaders to get a hold of a piece of the arsenal. But we already know that Pakistan's naval nukes do not work exactly the same way. Per that journal article, quote, Little information is available for the naval leg of Pakistan's deterrent, currently based on the Babur III submarine-launched cruise missile. First test-fired in 2017 and described by

2:30:32 Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations as a second-strike capability because of its naval requirements, the Babur III is assumed to be pre-mated and contained within a vertical launch system or similar canisterized device. Procedures meant to inhibit the use of nuclear weapons outside authorized uses are called negative controls. We do not know what negative controls Pakistan has for their naval weapons.

2:30:55 it is entirely possible the military remains in total control here and justifies that as necessary for guaranteeing their ability to launch retaliatory strikes against India. I want you to think right now about a fun new development in technology that we've all witnessed, the growth of generative AI tools that can convincingly mimic both human posters on social media and create believable fake videos, including fake news videos. These and similar tools make it possible to flood any region with targeted disinformation and make it seem legitimate, at least for a short span of time. Earlier this year, in March of 2026, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a theoretical article by Herbert Lin. He's a Stanford fellow

2:31:38 and expert on cyber warfare operations who in 2016 worked for the Obama administration. Back in the 1980s, he was a staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee, so he's a guy with some knowledge of this area. The article he put together envisions several scenarios in which AI tools might help cause or exacerbate a nuclear conflict. None of his scenarios involved anything like Skynet. The dangers he foresees from AI come not from its intelligence so much as its ability to automate the production of targeted bullshit and influence the decisions of political leaders. And speaking of targeted bullshit, here's some ads.

2:32:24 We're back.

2:32:25 And I was talking about an article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists written by Herbert Lin. One of his scenarios envisioned a blockade of Taiwan in which the Chinese military deployed an army of AI chatbots to lie about military maneuvers in order to create the impression of high military readiness to deter U.S. intervention. I don't consider this specific scenario very likely, but I do think he's on to something with passages like this. The accounts adopt personas of professionals or students isolated by the crisis and connect with foreigners through the full suite of channels described above.

2:32:57 These spaces attract not only their regular users, but also journalists, analysts, and even mid-level Pentagon staffers looking for unfiltered intelligence. In one instance, a bot mimicking a 28-year-old engineer named Li Wei claims, I saw convoys with TELs heading east. DF-26 is probably, referring to mobile transporter erector launches used to launch ballistic missiles and land-based dual-capable DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

2:33:21 Before adding, sirens everywhere, evacuation starting. Then screenshots start flooding the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, amplified by coordinated sock puppets. The bots adapt seamlessly to queries, cross-referencing real-time U.S. open-source chatter for added plausibility. A user of Tinder, a dating app in Washington, D.C., matched with Wang Mei, a fabricated nurse in Ximen, who relays her alleged eyewitness panic about explosions near the port and prepping of hypersonic weapons, which aligns with the partial satellite imagery glitches caused by Chinese jamming and begins to see doubt in U.S. intelligence assessments. State media subtly echoes these stories, framing them as grassroots outrage at U.S.

2:34:00 Provocation.

2:34:01 In the United States, some of this material migrates into expert discourse. Open-source intelligence analysts, journalists, and think tank experts incorporate screenshots and chat logs into maps, timelines, and situation reports, and present them on cable news and in policy briefs as independent confirmations of missile movements. Congressional staffers and allied governments cite these products in their own assessments, generating a feedback loop in which fabricated chats appear as triangulated, multi-source evidence.

2:34:27 I think the only weakness of Lin's article is his focus on scenarios that lead to mass nuclear exchange and in his insistence on considering nation states as the only relevant actors in most of these escalation cycles. But the basic process he outlined there, a bad actor flooding regional social media with disinformation designed to look like OSINT that suggests an imminent attack, that's entirely possible and you wouldn't need a nation state level actor to pull it off.

2:34:54 Let's say you have a well-funded non-state group of ideological hardliners. Let's imagine them as partisans of India or Pakistan, right? You could also imagine they're just trolls, eager to add confusion for the lulz. Or more insidiously, you could imagine them as motivated to pull off a massive score gambling on world events by betting on a limited nuclear attack and then making one happen. Returning to our hypothetical border conflict between India and Pakistan, let's imagine another outbreak of actual shooting like May of 2025. Imagine whichever of those hypothetical non-state groups you like to pick floods the region with reports of Indian nuclear forces mobilizing or even weapons inbound.

2:35:36 This would occur alongside the already nightmarish disruption of communication and command and control that will occur during such times of conflict. Is it so crazy to imagine that one of those Pakistani ships chooses to fire its payload? There's a very good reason why most nuclear-armed nations do not give military leaders direct control over how and when to fire these weapons. We don't know how Pakistan governs the use of their naval nukes, not really, and that means we cannot discount such a possibility. The kind of decisions made in nuclear war planning tend to come with a timer of less than a half hour. New weapon systems like hypersonic missiles have shortened that even further. This means

2:36:14 any decision about when to deploy nuclear weapons is likely going to be made on a very short time frame by frightened people. Another equally terrifying vision of that scenario could lead China, Pakistan, and India to each conclude, based on a mix of real movements by neighboring forces and a flood of AI disinformation, to activate and position their nuclear arsenals just in case. Once you have nuclear weapons assembled, deployed, and aimed properly, the odds rise exponentially that something might go wrong, even if no one chooses to fire them.

2:36:46 And the same sort of concerted digital disinformation attack, executed by a state or non-state actor, could happen today, during literally any tense international situation with a potential for nuclear escalation. As I said, my interest here is not in an apocalypse narrative, but in the possibility of a limited nuclear fuck-up.

2:37:06 Let me propose another that might occur in this situation. In the U.S., all nuclear weapons are built to be what's called one-point safe. This means the weapon has a probability of less than one in a million of causing a nuclear detonation if the weapon explodes unintentionally. We have had nuclear weapons destroyed in plane crashes, and so far they have never detonated in a proper nuclear explosion on accident.

2:37:30 Because they're one point safe Other nations do not necessarily abide by the same safety rules in their nuclear weapons And we simply do not know if Pakistan's nukes are safe in the same way Imagine then, as the border conflict heats up Pakistan's military assembles their arsenal and begins flying it in theater A plane crashes or gets shot down, and the weapon inside detonates in a proper nuclear fireball.

2:37:57 Every one of my nuclear fuck-up scenarios relies on terrible decision-making. Clear-thinking civilian and military leaders do not take the kind of risks that would lead to a nuclear January 6th. Alas, clear-thinking civilian and military leaders are thin on the ground these days, especially where I live. As I noted earlier, the decision makers in any of these situations, regardless of national identity, might have only minutes to make their decisions.

2:38:21 They'll be frightened and probably sleep-deprived. And what do frightened, sleep-deprived people turn to these days when they need to get work done?

2:38:28 That's right, AI.

2:38:31 In a CNN article from earlier this year, Katie Lillis and Zachary Cohen write, Across the US military and the intelligence community, officials are pushing to weave AI into nearly every facet of their work, from analyzing the huge volumes of raw intelligence the US collects and selecting targets for strikes, to more mundane applications like managing budgeting, logistics, and supply chains.

2:38:50 Just a few months ago, back in the spring of 2026, one member of the intel community, an analyst, asked one of these chatbots to analyze intelligence around a Chinese vessel sailing to the Middle East. The bot was likely an internal tool, but as one senior U.S. official told CNN, the internal tools are mostly just copies of the commercial stuff wearing lipstick. Said bot did what bots do best.

2:39:12 It mixed a bunch of different sources together to create a product for its user. This analysis, based on a mix of OSINT and secret intel, concluded that the Chinese ship was carrying components used in the production of nuclear weaponry. The analyst asked his AI tool to take its finding and produce an intelligence report, which was sent up the chain of command. Since the vessel was headed in the general direction of Iran, and since China does sell conventional weapons to Iran, this sparked a panic. Heard that CNN article?

2:39:39 The U.S.

2:39:40 Military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar.

2:39:44 With the episode.

2:39:45 According to two of the sources, armed members of the U.S. military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of these sources and another source familiar with the incident said. There was only one issue. The AI chatbot that Analyst used had hallucinated. Every piece of that report was wrong. China was not sending nuclear weapons equipment to Iran or anywhere else because of fucking course they weren't. But we came calamitously close to attacking a Chinese ship with military force due to that hallucination.

2:40:14 In January, Pete Hegseth gave a speech outlining our Department of Defense's new AI strategy. He insisted, we will unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, focus our investments, and demonstrate the execution approach needed to ensure we lead in military AI. All that says to me is that these tools will only become more critical to the production of intelligence products than ever before, and we know they'll continue to hallucinate too.

2:40:38 This change isn't just happening in the United States. It's occurring in governments and militaries all across the world, and it's happening at the same time as some nuclear-armed nations seek to expand their low-yield stockpiles. Simultaneously, the U.S. war against Iran and the ongoing war in Ukraine have made it clear to every nation-state actor that the only real guarantee of national sovereignty is a nuclear arsenal. More nations will work to acquire nukes in the near future. This means more nuclear weapons and more conflicts where they might get used, alongside an even wider proliferation of tools like the ones I just described.

2:41:10 I'm not trying to be.

2:41:11 Apocalyptic here, because again, that's.

2:41:13 Not really the immediate worry.

2:41:15 The worry is that a mix of increasing acceptance that it's okay to use small nukes, and increasing reliance on these AI tools, alongside the conflicts that we have always had between nations, will lead to a situation in which a very limited nuclear fuck-up not only is disastrous to people on the ground or wherever it occurs, but changes the very nature and all of the decision-making calculus in the world that we live in. I hope it doesn't happen, but that's what I'm thinking about these days.

2:41:43 That's everything for today. We'll be back tomorrow. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, Robert Evans, and Sophie Lichterman. Not allegedly. Yeah, no, that's definitely Sophie, but you can't prove it's me. I can prove it's you.

2:42:18 Sophie, you have no idea where I am, Sophie, or what I'm doing.

2:42:24 I know exactly where you are, and I know exactly.

2:42:27 What you're doing. This is the first episode where we're testing AI Robert.

2:42:31 Oh, no.

2:42:32 We're not testing, there's no AI Robert. Don't yell at me, I'm Blue Sky.

2:42:38 It'd be shit. You'll know there's no AI Robert because they would have trained an AI Robert on like the subreddit and all of the different jokes that I can no longer do because people have taken it too seriously. Like if I start talking about a child hunting island, like you'll know it's the AI me.

2:42:56 It'll pull like a bagel throwing reference from like nine years ago.

2:42:59 Yeah, all of a sudden you start talking about Doritos like you did 10 years ago.

2:43:05 Yeah, talking about Doritos like 10 years ago or talking about the Jamie Loftus murder thing, which I don't do anymore because now there's a real serial killer in the area that people were making comments about.

2:43:15 And being like, what is it, Jamie? I'm like, guys, there's really people dead. We don't keep the bit up at this point. All right.

2:43:21 Here.

2:43:22 This episode, we're covering the week of October 7th to October 14th. And we're actually going to jump straight to our first main story. Last Thursday afternoon, October 8th, ICE shot a 28-year-old man named Oscar Belgal in the New York City neighborhood of Marble Hill, which is physically located in the Bronx, but technically in the borough of Manhattan.