As media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
This is that could happen here. We're talking about the God you Are presidential debate starring Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which was by far the worst presidential debate I've ever seen in my entire life.
There's no competition. There's no competition like I remember the days when we laughed at George W. Bush fucking up ed a debate. Would he would clean up with either of these guys, he would be sashing across the floor.
You could drop Sarah Palin in here, Yeah, own them.
Sarah Palin comes out of this looking like Bob fucking Hope.
So I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Robert Evans and James Stout. Let's uh, let's get into it. I guess who do you think quote unquote won the debate.
I can tell you who fucking lost, Garrison, that's fucking all of us.
I mean, I will, I'll get into this later. I'm not sure it matters. But if the debate matters, Trump won totally. If the debate matters, Trump one.
You know, that was my same thought as well. He definitely was a much better debater and had much better like political rhetoric. He he could form complete sentences, which is something you couldnot say of Joe Biden. And that's not that's not hyperbole.
I actually argue with the first two thirds of your analysis there, because I don't think in argument terms, if we're looking at this as a debate, Trump repeated, like if I were scoring this the way you would competition. Trump repeatedly followed Biden on these like Biden would goad him with shit like what he said, what Trump said after Charlott's Vieler all like Trump's height and him lying about it,
fucking golf scores, and Trump always took the bait. Why I think Trump won is that this is not going to get consumed as a debate. People aren't going to look at this and like, look at the whole sweep of how they both sure, which Biden would still very likely lose, but it's less clear. This is going to get cut up a million ways on TikTok, and Trump's just got a lot more AMMO out of this fucker. Yeah.
The very first thing I noticed is that both of them looked barely awake as soon as he went on screen. And so I did get a debate, Bengo, I almost got two. I almost got three. I was very proud of that. I guess I don't know, we can we can go over some of some of what some of what they talked about, because yeah, why.
Not do you want to hate do you want to hate Jill Biden's review? Just just get that out of the way real quick.
Yeah, did he get Jill? Give it Jill or judge Jill?
Don't Jill Biden? Such a great job. You answered every question fantastic, that's amazing stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did answered him coherently. Not so much.
We had We had an inject bleach reference from Biden very early on.
And that was that was one of his better ploys. Unfortunately, he followed it up by mumbling incoherently for like forty seconds. Yeah, yes, but I was glad to hear it dropped. Yeah, he was well prepd.
He just did not he executed Peok here's what I'll say.
I've said this about Joe for a while. If you were looking at this man, not as the president, but as like a relative, you would say, well, he's doing you know, uncle Joe's doing okay for eighty two. You know, like he's so most he's eighty six if he'll be eighty six if he does a second term at the end of it. But like if he were a regular person, you would say, uncle Joe's doing okay for eighty two.
Maybe we should take the keys, you know, maybe doesn't he that he doesn't need to be in a home, you know, that would not be the right call at this moment, But maybe he shouldn't have He shouldn't be driving, you know.
Yeah.
So one of the smart things I think Trump did very early on is that he attacked the vaccine mandate but not the vaccine. Yeah, that was that was one of the more subtle moves that he did that I think he pulled off very well.
Yeah, Joe just gave it up.
Yeah, one of the one of the record trends with Trump is that he really loved to call the United States a third world nation and say we are now an uncivilized nation. That was That was like one of the many things Trump kept going back to because he Trump really did just have like five things he just kept talking about over and over and over again. He
mostly ignored the actual questions from moderators. The moderators themselves did a really bad job both all the questions they had and also like actually controlling controlling the candidates and keep and keeping them on topic. But in general, I think the questions that they did were just kind of bizarre. Thirdal nation was a very common refrain from Trump.
And one thing that like Trump, Trump did badly more than Biden or like you can see how Biden's team prepped him on it and then he screwed the pooch on it. But like Biden would say these things that he knew would trigger Trump, like his weight and his height. Right. Yeah, the very good people on both sides and Trump completely felt for that hootline thing.
You can tell Trump has been obsessing over the little things that people say about like how he treated handled stuff like the alt right and whatnot, like he's very angry about some of that, which is interesting to me because it wasn't the smart move. The smart move was like, as Gary noted, Trump very I think intelligently pivoted on the on the vaccine issue to like still being able to take credit for it with some audiences, while also
making it clear that his issue was the mandates. Whenever Trump was on the economy, I think, even though I don't agree that he was the better president for the economy, I think that he performed strongly on stage. He spent a lot of time in the weeds. If we're gonna use golf metaphors, he kept like bocking shit into the sand dunes and having to like.
Thank you for raising golf from it, it's you're.
Welcome, You're welcome. Because this had the longest golf digression of any presidential event of everything, he.
Had like a two minute argument over whether they could play golf against each other and who would.
Win and whose handicap was what in the eighties.
What I saw in this is you've got two men who are not at are past their prime. And the thing the reason why this in large part went Trump's way, is that Biden has never been a good public speaker. It has never been his strength. He has a speech impediment, right that he worked and got over much of his career. But when you are older, you have less control over everything, and we can see it coming back. Right. There's no there ought not be any shame in that. But also
it does affect the way people think. This is a horrible country full of terrible people. People do not forgive a speech impediment. Right. But more to the point, the thing that Biden is showing his age in most all, as we all do. It's the shit that we're bad at. We get a lot worse at, right, And you can kind of hide how much you've aged when you're doing
something that is clearly your talent. You know, my grandpa near the you know, late, fairly late in his Parkinson's journey, could still like gut and clean and catch a fish really well. It wasn't until pretty advanced that he lost that ability. And it was almost like you could see some of that skill return to him. And like Trump is a talker, Trump is a charismatic guy. He is good at working a crowd. You can tell he is falling off in his inability to the fact that he
keeps falling for all of these very obvious traps. Joe Bile and he spent a lot of time in the weeds, but he still sounds a lot stronger. And this is entirely a contest of who can look best on camera, right, and yeah, it's of course Trump's going to win.
I think the first really big topic that they started to argue back and forth on was abortion. It started by Trump saying that he is pro the abortion pill, and he's pro the Supreme Court's recent rule leg which he kind of mischaracter but that's still he did anything coming from Trump saying that he's he's okay with the with the abortion pill.
He even brought up being okay with a nine month abortion if it's for the life of the mother, which was interesting to me.
But then they spent a long time arguing over whether Roe v. Wade means that you can kill babies after.
Exactly yes, right birth, And that was that was a that was an interesting I don't think that that interaction. I don't know how much it's gonna matter, but it didn't come off well for Trump because.
He he didn't come off well for Trump. That was I think this is one of the few things he did not do well in of course, you know, Biden has done very little to secure reproductive rights as as the current president. We all we all know this, but this did not come off well for Trump. They were basically just arguing back and forth over whether Biden wants to kill baby's post birth, which is just a ridiculous thing to to argue.
It was a shameful chain of arguments.
Right.
George Bush would have insinuated the same thing but done it in a way, but that left everyone feeling less gross and that's why he did so many terrible things. It's just interesting that we've stripped so much of the shellac off of it and now they are just because in George W. Bush's day, we were still the Republicans were still calling Democrats baby killers. There was just it's
interesting how much of the sheen is gone. Maybe a little more class, Yeah, yeah, maybe it's not all bad that we're not pretending anymore, right Like, there's no pretending on this stage. Both men are clearly not doing well.
The system itself is not pretending, right Like, we just got a couple of fucking egyots and what we do and' stile one of them like something I.
Will never pretend to do is dislike our products and services that support this podcast. I love them. I would never pretend otherwise. So go listen to these ads.
Okay we are back, Yeah, yeah, still here we are.
I don't know. I feel good. I feel good about America today. You think so, you think you know. It's not that we're heading in the right direction. We've never been heading in a very good direction. The driver has always been drunk right. And finally, forty five minutes into the drive, he just was like, look, man, I'm not doing great right now, and I'm not going to get this car back home unless you bust open the center
console where I keep a handle of bourbon. And you're scared of the driver because he has a gun and you don't know what he'll do with it. You're not even sure if he can really see you in anyway. That's how it feels to watch the selection.
Let's talk about immigration, one of the other main main topics in this debate.
And that went bad for Biden.
Trump had a fantastic line saying border patrol endorsed me for president, but I won't say that, which.
Is amazing stuff. They both claimed Border Patrol endorsed them too.
Yeah, the body Patrol itself doesn't make endorsements, right, but the Bond and Patrol Union, which is worth the worst accounts on Twitter, did clarify that they endorsed Trump.
So there was a lot of bad stuff with abortion. I mean, James, did you do any thoughts overall and the abortion discourse.
The debate, the immigration discourse. Yes, wow, there was a real Biden moment for you. Garrett Garrison, Yeah, Garrison Davis elderly members of podcast.
Somebody get Garrison as pet pills?
Oh god, I wish.
Yeah, they're they're fog in the air and Atlanta tonight.
All right, the discourse over abord Jesus Christ.
They're bringing abortions with him, Garrison, there's okay, there's a.
Pretty great onion headline report. Oh they're about to talk about black people.
Oh god, yeah, yeah. Another fine moment of this debate, the fucking black job sing yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, immigration and talking immigration shit right, just real quick, Donald Trump kept throwing out this eighteen million number. Fuck knows where that comes from. Yeah, that was just all the numbers, like fully, from the rectum to the debate stage. But look by a patrol of reported nine point six encounters, I've beaten this horse to death. But encounter does not
represent a unique individual. Right, people go and come back when they get deported back, very common, both of them, like like, the way I actually want to focus on is the way that Jake Tappa framed that question, because it was fucking atrocious, right, like it. He didn't frame it in a way in which either of them, if they had wanted to, could offer a reasonable compassionate stance and immigration. Right, it was positive as a terrible thing.
And yeah, you're foxy in it. And next time you come dming me asking me.
The scummy scummy shit, Yeah, it was for the For the record, Jake Tapper should be hit in the head with a with a I don't know truck or something.
But podcaster Robert Evans threatens violence against see it at anchor Jake Tire.
In a way he supported violence against me, So I think I have that right with Jade.
That is true.
He's he's a dog shit journalist. And this was the worst moderated debate because Trump is just lying. Everything he says is absolutely full of shit. And half of the shit that Biden says it's hard to tell what he was even trying to say, and there was no attempt to make it they they treated this like Werner Herzog would have filmed it, right, But they're too Herzog would have done this way because like, my job is not to interfere here. My job is to let this unfold, right,
I don't need now. Herzog would interfere if that would have made it a better story, but he loves collapse artists.
These people are journalists.
Yeah, these people are journalists. And your job was to attempt to both hold them accountable to some standard of reality and also to attempt to present this in a way that's intelligible, right, and you failed on both accounts. You did bad jobs as journalists.
I think for me, the the best and worst line of the debate in terms of like, oh wow, we're really in it is is Trump saying that migrants are taking black jobs, which is one of the most loaded statements I've ever heard, because, for one, you know, it's weird on like the migrant thing like that, that's really your main compact jobs.
What is a black job?
What do you think he's applying there?
I think we know what he's there.
He's implying farm work. He's talking about like working in the fields.
Low skilled jobs is what he is talking about. Yes, that's how he sees this. But what I where I think that came from. My suspicion is that because the Trump campaign is still consistently extremely weak with black voters, right, they've actually made a lot of inroads with Hispanic voters. Trump in this debate, Yeah, they are still based on all of the polling I've seen, they're about as bad
with black voters as they weren't twenty twenty. That really has not moved what you have seen on that is not really based in much of the way of evidence, at least in terms of what polling can show us. They know this is a weakness, and it's one that
they see as a significant strategic weakness. So at some point Trump had a meeting with his campaign prep staff and one of the things they wrote on a billboard is they were spitballing ideas to get black voters was migrants taking black jobs question mark, And that stayed in Trump's head totally. They had a million better ways to phrase it, but when the moment came up, That's how he fucking ran.
That is no guarantee you exactly what happened. It just yes, totally. It also displays a somehow extremely anti immigrant and extremely racist at all the same time coming remarkable directions. It's quite something. One another great line was human trafficking in women. Another wonderus human trafficking in women.
I'm glad. I'm glad that women do make the human life though, Like that feels like progress, Garrison, we did it, Joe.
Anything else on the immigration front, I mean, it was as bad as we would expect. Honestly, I thought that bad would try to go further on the right on immigration than what he ended up doing. Not saying he did well on immigration, but I expected I expected Biden to kind of to kind of push a little a little bit more.
He's not comfortable with it, clearly because he made He got so much of his win on highlighting the obvious inhumanity of Trump's border policy, and he obviously has adopted a policy that's very similar.
Yeah, I mean he tried to hit him on the separation of families. Families are still fucking separated, Like I've literally seen that this week.
Well, I just don't think he's I don't think he's comfortable fighting Trump on this because I don't really think he has a great feeling about their where they're separate on the matter, right, So he's not comfortable with that line of argument the way he is. Like Biden's best moment was attacking him for like being shitty to dead soldiers, and I was shocked that Trump followed him on that. Fucking They talked about that so long. It was a huge. It was as big as the economy.
They talked about like veterans for so long, and just like weird circles that that was an interesting one. A few other just fun lines that were thrown in, uh Biden calling them the Paris piece accords, very cool, funny stuff. Biden's saying that Trump has the mortals of an alley cat. That's a great line.
That was a good line.
That's great.
That was That was again he this was number one. He didn't slur any of us where I'm not saying that to be shitty, but it affects his performance. He was very clear in the lean up of like these are the he's a bad person, which he is. That's a strong thing to hit him on. And I hope again, we'll talk more about like will this matter? But I hope strategically what the DIMS realizes that like that is a to keep hitting him on because it actually matters in terms of like how voters think of the guys.
It's it's a way to actually hurt Trump because he is a really obviously shitty person.
One other thing Trump did in terms of you know, this whole black jobs thing, is Trump did hammer Biden on super predators.
Yeah, that was interesting to say.
I feel like Trump actually did a did an okay job there. And it's not me endorsing Trump's behavior, but this is this is he like that was that was a good move for him?
No, an interesting one too. I was kind of surprised that he he went for it because that's like, yeah, that was surprising.
Do you know what isn't surprising, Robert.
How much we love the sponsors of this podcast? Who are you know? I often think of the president as like a father, you know, or like my father during different times. Right, Trump is like my father that time he brought a home the movie Event Horizon, thinking it would be like a fun little science fiction rop and Biden is like my dad when he's snuck in the South Park movie, but he had not gotten the right language version, so we couldn't actually watch it.
Right.
They're all they're different eras of everyone's dad. I don't know these sponsors are our father. Anyway, We're back.
So one thing that I'm looking forward to is that if Trump does get elected, he will settle the Ukraine War as president elect. So that's great news for all of us. I'm excited before he's even inaugurated.
Ukraine down that was really the Yeah, it's interesting to see him kind of adopt the whole Ukraine has cooked. They've lost all of their young men line. That's not a great thing to hear in terms of like it's exactly what Putin wants is eactly what Russia wants. It's not accurate to like what we've actually seen on the ground, which is another Russian defensive completely stall out because despite what was supposed to be like an overwhelming advantage in
theater and artillery. But I don't think it matters. I don't think that shit's gonna move the election. At the end of the day. I could bitch about like US policy in Eastern Europe, but nobody votes based on that. I do, but nobody else does, right, like, and I barely do. Like it's it's just not It's not a needle mover in the same way that fucking inflation or the economy or crime or the border is.
I mean, Trump was harping on it because he's just trying to blame all of these new conflicts on Biden, being like, all these things happened since Biden was president and I was president. This wouldn't have happened, you know, magically, right, And that's that's a very easy move for Trump, is to bring up all of the bad things that have happened since Biden's took office and say this is Biden's fault. We have that with Ukraine, they talked they talked about Ukraine for like a really it was.
A shocking amount of the debate.
A decent a decent amount of the time, like way way longer than they talked about Israel and Palestine, which is kind of surprising to me.
Now.
I can understand how both them would want to just avoid talking about that, but I'm surprised, like the moderators like let that happen.
I guess I don't think, I mean, the moderators let everything happen. I think I put who I am surprised about was Trump because he kept going back to Ukraine, which is not a strong issue for him. Now Israel Palestine really isn't either. Most Americans don't like what Israel is doing. There's even a lot of like question about
that on the Republican side. So his choices are either be all fucking genocide about it and alienate a lot of moderates, or kind of hedge it and just try to attack Biden for his performance, which is what he did, which.
Is which is which is what he did.
Yeah, he didn't do much of it compared to getting drawn again and again into arguments over NATO. I was really surprised that he kept following Joe back to fucking NATO. It was really weird.
Yeah, there was a bizarre choice for him, like when he had a million other places. His Trump's response on Palestine I want to talk about.
Oh, that was bleak. Absolutely, that was one of the worst moments in this country's entire history.
Yeah, that already said a new love for me.
And we've got like what eight seven to eight genocide, So you know, pretty bad moment.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's a country built on genocide. That that one, That one was pretty pretty bad.
Yeah.
So basically Trump was harping on Biden for not being pro genocide enough and said something that I really never I did not see coming. He said that that Biden has become like a Palestinian, A bad Palestinian.
Yeah, a bad Palestinian because he doesn't do bad enough things. What was that? What was the exact line that followed that?
So Trump says, quote, he's become like a Palestinian, but a bad Palestinian because they don't like him very much.
There you go, thank you. We needed the whole thought.
He's a weak one.
Yeah, the Palestinians don't like him, and I hate the Palestinians, but you should be liked by your own pe. I'm trying to put together the logic here.
It was.
It was really bad.
But like basically using Palestinian as an insult to Biden, you know that's not great. Trump also had a lie how quote the Palestinians and everyone are rioting right now. Yeah, I assume who was I think he's referring to the campus protests, just calling everyone at those protests Palestinians, which is a really interesting like political move.
Actually, yeah, and a dangerous one potentially.
Absolutely.
Yeah, we knock on wood whenever we may have wood.
That's a good Trump line. That's a good Trump line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And James, James was giving him ship for that earlier. But this is the this is you and your Ivory tower. A lot of people don't have wood. You know, Ben Shapiro could only afford one board.
That's true, Yeah, ben cheron wood once. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, small amount of wood at that he was lucky enough to find it.
We can't all.
He put his wood in a little bag.
So this was a this was a bit on healthcare, right or.
Garrison. It did well.
He was yeah, he was talking about being healthy and he was like, yeah, I'm still healthy. You know, knock on wood. We all knock on wood where we find wood or something like that. But he was being we have wood. He was kind of trying to Actually this may be a little bit of like a fuck up by him because he was hitting Biden pretty successfully in Biden's age, but then he dropped a line so baffling that it was like it focused where I was like, what do you mean by this?
They were talking about. Yeah, they're talking about being in good health. And that's and that's where they got into the little golf argument and wait, who would who would? Who would play golf better? And yeah, if if Trump could carry his own golf clubs. A really good line was we bought a certain dog.
Yeah, yeah, that was we bought a certain dog. You wouldn't believe it, a.
Dog that can sniff. And then he just kept talking about machines that can sniff.
Thin Why it's talking about these these machines that they have to suppose to detect fens on the border, which they've spent millions of dollars on. But they've been doing this since a Trump administration, Like this is not a new thing. It was in his border bill. But there's nothing compared to we we bought a certain dog.
Oh god, have you guys seen the dark Brandon secret sauce?
No Robert share this immediately?
Yeah, yeah, I've just shed he's lost Jeff tedrig which.
Is there's a there's a post that Joe made right before the debate would have started that I'm just gonna send it to the chat while I describe it to the listener. It's Joe with like a can in his hand and it's a cantlash home God damage. I'm on the Joe Biden water. No, so he's got He's got a can of this. It's like a water in a beer can, and it's called zero Malarkey Biden, and it's got a dark branded image with a laser eyes. Get real, Jack,
it's just water. And then Biden's actual tak says, I don't know what they have got these performance and answers, but I'm feeling pretty jacked up. Trying for yourself, folks. And for four dollars and sixty cents you can get a looks like one can of Biden water. The se I'm on the website now the secret to a good debate performance staying hydrated. The same performance and answers Joe Biden took before going on stage.
We need to get just get a company cost on this, guys.
I'm gonna get wrecked because he looked fucked up.
I've got some experience with performance, you know, hunting to device drug users in my career.
This is if any I miss having a good GHB hookup, you know, this would be that I feel like that would get me on Joe's level, right.
I think only a brain injury could get you on Joe's level right now.
That's why I brought up GHB.
The last topic I want to discuss in terms of what was talked about at the debate is January sixth, and Trump kind of tried to avoid the question over whether he would concede the election, saying that he would only if it was a fair election.
Only if it was a fair election.
But Trump's line on January sixth, let me tell you about January sixth. We had great borders on January.
Sixth, oh, that whole speed.
We had a great economy on January sixth.
It is very funny. I should post some pictures I took. I took them just after January sixth. I took in the week of Biden's election of the border, well, just stopping in random places, like where they got to a certain level of construction and just stopped.
Like.
We found Trump's direction here kind of interesting. He tried to kind of really avoid talking about his own opinions on the actual Capital insurrection. His very first reaction was to say, no, well, the rest of the country was doing so much better because I was the president. The moderators kind of forced him to talk a little bit about it, but he really avoided it as much as he could, which is, you know, he doesn't want to
alienate his base. He also doesn't want to like, uh, you know, be too pro J six and scare away like independence, so he was really skirting that line. It's just weird because moderators were so much stronger on this question during the debate primaries for the GOP, Yeah, which which Trump wasn't even present for. They really harped on this here and on this they did not care at all. They really they really did not push pushed Trump on on J six whatsoever. And it was it was kind of pathetic.
Yep, yeah, no, no, it was.
It was.
It was terrible, Like the moderators could well, they didn't moderate at all. They just asked some questions and then let it fucking rip.
I think let's just move on to finally talking like the debate in general. I think the GOP will probably be pretty happy with Trump's performance here.
Yeah, he did what he needed to.
They're gonna call us a dub. I think the Democrats are probably kind of scrambling right now trying to figure out what the next move is.
I hope it's possible for someone to be like we got time. Throw Pritzkern, throw fucking wit Marin. You know either of them, right I honestly you know you know Robert.
This is this is how Birdie can still win.
I know he's too fucking old. I don't. I will say I think he probably based on the last time I saw him speak, I think he probably would have done better than Joe did in this. But not if he had a cold, right, Like, that's the thing. I believe Joe has a cold and that that's why he sounded like shit. But you know what, A strong young person with a cold could pull it together for an hour he write down. That's he could lock down. This is we shouldn't have to plane like it's not. I
don't give a shit. Old people shouldn't be the fucking president. They shouldn't old people should not be the fucking president. Past the past the point at which I feel like if somebody, like if I was if we were helping you move and I was like carrying something heavy and I turned around, I slapped you in the face with like a board or something or a piece of furniture. If I have to be worried that your skull is
gonna crack, you shouldn't be the fucking president. You should be able to Like I should feel confident that you can jumpstart a car without blowing up my battery, you know, Like I don't feel that for either of these men. They both look unwell.
Yeah, if you let these people go into supermarket, they would be lost.
Yeah, it's it's not good. It's so.
I know a lot of people make jokes about this, right, people love joking about how old they are and go here.
I was shocked.
I was shocked at how bad Biden did this debate.
He looked so bad. He looked so bad.
It was one of his worst public speaking outings. Horrible, like in a long time.
Look like I yeah, I am not competent to diagnose shit, but I lived with my grandfather for the last ten years as he died of Parkinson's, and it's there's a shuffle you get to recognize, right, Like, I don't know if it's Parkinson's, but he's not a well old man. He's a sick old man, and he shouldn't be president.
There is there is a reason I put candidate collapses on stage on my Bingo card, which we did not get, but we sure got close.
Were got close, very close.
I filled out almost all my Bingo card, it was and I did not pick easy ones too. You can you can check me on this. You can check you can check the card on Twitter. And I yeah, I was, I was h just I just felt really bad.
I feel terrible. I wanted to ask half that debate, Gear, how do you feel about getting your citizenship? You jazzed, Well, this is a great this is a great, proud time, proud time to become an American.
It is better than it's better than it's better than only having a green card.
Yeah.
True, I can tell you it's just someone who recently upgraded to American status. It is at least it's a little bit less concerning with a shit that Trump is saying. Yeah, and oh Biden.
Well, any any final thoughts.
I hope Gavin Newsom doesn't pull out a way to become the president. I don't want him to be the president.
He is going to be the My prediction is he will be the twenty twenty eight nominee.
He's a very good chance. Really hard, it's between the smart option based on where we stand now. For now war for twenty twenty eight is Pritzker. I think Whitmer would also be a great pick. Pritzker is really good with conservatives, and he's really good with conservatives without like folding completely on shit, whereas Whittmer has some weakness just because of how much time has been directed in attacking
her over like the COVID twenty twenty shit. But either of them I think are strong candidates who are a lot better than Gavin Newsom. But you are right, he's going to be a strong candidate in twenty twenty eight.
Well, I think that does it for me, at least here on it could happen here.
Well, let's talk real briefly. Do we think that debate matters? Do Do we think that this is a thing that is going to turn an election? I think it can.
Yes, I think it actually does. I think I think this could actually hurt some voter enthusiasm. I think people who are maybe looking at Biden and being like, yeah, probably if he keeps performing like this, people might just not vote for him. Not they probably maybe some of them might move over to Trump if they're like weird, like independence, Many of them just might not vote at all.
Like I think if if Biden shows that he is just kind of a bumbling, in like incompetent old man, that's not gonna help an already kind of die your situation in terms of voter enthusiasm and possible voter turnout. So yeah, I think this actually does have a decent chance to hurt Biden. I don't think the debates will necessarily hurt Trump.
I don't.
I don't think on thiscessarily help Trump, like majorly, but I think they can subtract support away from Biden.
See that's where and I don't I don't have a strong feeling on which way this is going to land either, you know, in either case. But some of the data we're seeing, particularly how well Trump performs relative to Biden on voters who are like not sure they're going to vote, right, I think this might be the first election where a higher turnout would be bad for Biden. But I also don't know. I think if any if this depresses I think you are right that if this depresses turnout, it's
going to be worse. It's going to be Biden turnout, right, Although I mean, yeah, I just don't know, I feel like I don't want to do the easy thing would be to just like pick a lane and stay in it. And but I if it comes to my honest opinion, I still have no fucking clue how this is going to go. Because at no point has this been election been about do you think Joe Biden will be a good president? It's been about are you scared of Donald Trump?
Right?
I don't know that you're less scared. I think the worry for Biden is that people are now more scared that he is going to sleepwalk his way through a nuclear war as opposed to Trump at least being lucid for it. But I just don't know how that's going to actually shake out in the long run.
God bless the USA.
We're doing great.
The conventions are going to be great.
Yeah, stay tuned. He could be dead in a week.
That really is like the wild car that.
He could be dead tonight.
Sur on the back of my brain all the time is like either one of these guys, especially Biden, could just like not exist tomorrow, Like he could he could just he could have He could get a little too stressed out and just kind of fall over.
I mean, they could meaningfully make the argument tomorrow that like, that's been a significant decline in his health and he is not physically capable of being president because that's what we saw, Like, yeah, he doesn't.
He if he was, I don't think they will.
If the things, whatever things you consider worst, And for me with Biden, it's it's the border in Palestine. But if whatever things you consider worst about Biden weren't a thing, I would purely be like for this man's health and safety, get him out of this job, get him somewhere comfortable, let him enjoy his final years, don't make him do this. Yeah, anyway, it's good, It's not right.
Fuck, part of me wants to read this Jeff ted Rich tweet to finish at a certain point.
We're all complicit in elder abuse. But I guess they but we are for both of them. Yeah, like in some ways, in some ways, the American system is pushing these two sick old men towards a disastrous.
That's also why I can't trust anything they see on social Security because they clearly have a vested interest.
Uh, I can't see. I will say, we saw the president of Bolivia face down a coup yesterday. I think that that would not be possible for either of these men in.
God.
All right, I want to go cry and go to sleep.
Oh yeah, it's good. That's good.
Make some friends, guys. I'm gonna keep drinking. Yeah, good, little mutual aid.
Yeah yeah, I'm gonna buy some of the Biden water with company money.
Hello, Welcome to Eat Could Happen Here? We're doing it again. Several months back, I did an episode about corn, which I personally think was a huge hit. And I did that episode with the intention of making this food series Eat Could Happen Here into an actual series about food
and not just a silly one off pun. In all honesty, though, I wrote and recorded that corn episode before October seventh, even though we ended up releasing it afterwards around Thanksgiving, because since October seventh there have been much more pressing things I need people to know about and learn about and keep talking about, namely the genocide happening in Palestine. And I will keep talking about it because we all
have to keep talking about it. But I'm learning that in between my episodes where I talk about the most horrific things I've ever seen or read about or heard about, my brain needs to go into silly mode or else I will simply eject myself into outer space. And one of those silly things I've decided will be the how
did we get here? Of food, which I personally find very fascinating, as is the history of all things is very fascinating, namely the history of how Palestine has been illegally occupied by a settler colony ethno state for nearly a century of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and how no one had any right to claim land as their own that was already inhabited by indigenous people. But I digress. We have other episodes about that, and we will continue
to have episodes about it. But today we're going to be talking about something which, in comparison, is objectively kind of stupid. We're gonna be talking about sea Yur trends.
I want to blame and or give credit to James Stout for suggesting this topic very enthusiastically when I mentioned wanting to do an episode about food, and because I personally don't believe I've ever had sea urchin, or maybe my brain has deleted that memory to make room for the worst things I've ever seen, I've brought James here today to walk along or dare I say, swim along with us on this Sea Urchin journey and to impart
on us his never ending knowledge on basically everything. So welcome, James, Thank you Sheen.
That's very nice and true.
It's the truth. You suggested this very very enthusiastically.
I did diggest enthusiastic. I was just throwing to the never ending knowledge on it, the everything part.
Well, I genuinely anything I bring up. You have a story about which I find very impressive. So it's just the truth. You know a lot of things in that brain versus me, I delete things pretty.
Fam I've deleted some shit. I don't suggest braging your brain into your skull if you want to retain information. That's something I've done a little bit too much in my life.
Oh yeah, I think that's wise. But anyway, the Sea Urchin, maybe y'all know it as UNI, but actually the sea urchin and Uni are not synonymous words, and they do not mean the same thing. UNI is actually only a small part of the sea urchin, the edible part, and we will get into exactly what it is later on, but its flavor seems to be quite distinct. In twenty sixteen, Nesley described UNI as one of the top ten food trends due to its unique flavor. Some people describe the
taste as rich and complex. Others describe it as having a rich, buttery flavor that is often compared to that of fois gras.
But right, magic, Yeah, thank you for taking my French lessons.
Thank you.
It has a slightly sweet and briny taste that is unique to sea urchin. James, how would you describe it someone who has had the urchin?
Yeah, it's like ocean butter. I think like it's kind of buttery nurse, but like also like a briny kind of essence of the sea. Noess, Everything tastes good when you're like like sitting on the rocks eating it, you know, like, yeah, this is the thing.
I like to do, refreshing or something.
Yeah, And like it's nice to get your own food, isn't it. Like it's nice to it's nice to go to the bottom of the ocean and grab a sea urchin and then bring him back up and eat him. And you know, know that you're also helping to preserve the kelp, so like you have a little aura around it, which we're going to talk about I'm sure. Yeah, I think I think ocean butter. I've never really been one to like bring it home. I know people do pasta
sauces with it. Yeah, I'm not a big pasta sauce maker, so I'll just normally crack them open, or you know, get some friends around, open them up, and then you get one. You get a nice shell. You kind of you keep that one nice and you do like a little little kind of salca or something in there with the uni, or you just put the oonie in there and people dip into it. Wow, it's a nice little presentation.
A whole new world. I had no idea.
Yeah, so you have to come down and dreamed. And now we'll do a live podcast everyone from me.
No, I don't know. I don't after learning about them. They might be too cute for me to eat, but I guess we'll just keep talking.
That's going to make me sad if that's the case.
There's just one that I keep thinking about called the sea potato, which we'll get into later. But it's so cute. I can't stop thinking about the sea potato. But anyway, we'll get into that in a second. According to Food in Life, magazine Oonie is complicated. They say, if you know unie, there's a chance you love it. There's also a chance you took one look at this creamy yellow
seafood and decided it would never enter your mouth. In the same article I found, they say that some people say it's sweet and buttery, with icy, cold raw unie and sushi as their preferred method to enjoy it. And apparently it also tastes delicious when it's lightly cooked or steamed. And some say, as you just said, kind of that the flavor evokes a dip in salt water. So yeah, very very poetic there. But again, maybe the most popular way y'all have seen sea urchin is being served as
sushi ni uni. Sushi is a delicacy that has gained popularity around the world, and the dish consists of the sea urchin being raw and with rice sushi.
Wow.
A cute little bite. But the history of our little sea urchin is a humble one and its journey to become a global delicacy has been slow and steady. We're going to take a look at the history of the sea urchin as a food source and its cultural significance. So are you ready, buckle.
Up, there we go okay unbuckled.
The sea urchin has its roots in Japan, where it has been enjoyed for centuries. The first known mention of sea urchin as a food source dates back to the Edo period, spanning between sixteen oh three and eighteen sixty eight. During this period, the sea urchin was consumed by the samurai class. The sea urchin has other cultural significances in Japan. The sea urchin is associated with the ocean and is
considered a symbol of good luck and prosperity. It's also believed to have a number of health benefits, including improved skin health and increased fertility. However, it wasn't until the twentieth century that the sea urchin became popular as a sushi ingredient. Sea urchin was used and is still used today in Japanese cuisine. More broadly, it's used in soups and rice bowls, and it's often served in traditional kaiseki meals.
A kaiseki meal is basically a traditional multi course Japanese dinner. This term fun fact also refers to the collection of skills and techniques that allow the preparation of such meals. In addition to the sea urchin being an ingredient in Japanese cuisine, the harvesting and processing of sea urchin is an important industry in many coastal regions of Japan. So even though it's served raw, usually as sushi, as James said, it's used in a variety of ways, like in sauces, pastas,
and on bread for centuries. Modern day chefs are even transforming it now into foam and moose.
Moose.
Yeah, I ain't got time for that shit. I hate. I'm sure it looks pretty well. It looks rat it's very orange. If you've not seen it, I mean, you get on Google and that's you're driving and look for a picture of it. Maybe I'll maybe I'll post one. People use it as a thumbnail for this episode.
I mean, I did watch the harvesting. I had never seen it being harvested before, so I saw that. But the color is like crazy from the jump, Like as soon as you crack it open, it's just like this crazy bright color.
I never Yeah, I mean they're purple, the ones that the ones you're getting in California are purple. There are red some purples, but you want to be hitting the purples. Yeah, if you're diving in California, so will your foot. Your foot will be purple. If you stand on one. It is a bad day if you've you stand on the sea urchin, so it'll spine can go in and break. I've done that a couple Uh. Yeah, yeah, don't be doing that and getting affections learned from my mistakes.
Yeah, please do. But when it does come to sushi, the sea urchin was considered a cheap and plentiful ingredient for a long time, and it was often used in sushi rolls alongside other more expensive ingredient just fill out the role. However, as the taste for sea urchin grew, sushi chefs began to showcase it as a standalone ingredient. Hard launched as an ingredient everyone liked. Today, it's enjoyed around the world, as I said, and considered a delicacy.
It's often served in high end restaurants, and it can get to be quite expensive because of its rarity and the difficulty of sourcing high quality sea urchin. Because, as with many things, sea urchin is safe to eat as long as it is prepared properly, it's important to ensure the urchin is fresh and has been handled and stored correctly. Let's get a little bit more scientific. I'm gonna mispronounce
a bunch of stuff coming up, so oops. Sea urchins are globe shaped little creatures that live on the ocean floor. Sea urchins belong to a group of marine invertebrates called a kinoderms, which means spiky skinned. Animals in this group also include sea cucumbers, sea lillies, brittle stars, and starfish aka sea stars.
This is some of my favorite little under underwater creatures.
What a cute little group.
I love it. Yeah, I love to see a se by discuking alone a starfish, you know, like I love. Who doesn't love to see a starfish?
Yeah?
Leave them alone. Don't touch the starfish.
Yeah, please just leave them be. They didn't do anything to you. They just want to live and.
They sing down.
There're the biggest chillers, you know.
Yeah, they did nothing wrong. I will stab you if you mess with the starfish.
I respect that. The spherical shells of sea urchins are called tests, and they're made up of plates and movable spines that protect them from predators. Sea urchins can be found in all of the Earth's oceans, and they first appeared as a species around four hundred and fifty million years ago. One of the groups present in our oceans today a word I will mispronounced right now, but it was the first to evolve. It was the sadairo dia.
Let's go with that. Start to the sea. You can look it up if you want, but it appeared about two hundred and sixty eight million years ago. These primitive sea urchins, they often have stubby, rounded off spines. A second group of sea urchins are called a kinodea, and they evolved a little later, and they include the spiky creatures you probably are more familiar with. This subclass is
known as the quote modern sea urchin. The most recognizable sea urchins are round, often brightly colored, and covered in these sharp looking spines. In fact, urchin comes from an old word for hedgehog, and because they look like hedgehogs with their little spiky armors.
Fun it didn't edit, Yeah, I love a hedgehog. Hedgehog is one of those.
They're the urchins of the land.
They look they're not because they're not like they're not proud relaying the ecosystem that.
I didn't mean it completely. Literally, they look like little orchins, but they're all rounded.
Oh yeah, they kind of do. There's one that visits my dad, oh pretty often. It lives by his house and he sends me videos of it.
That's cute.
Yeah, I think he gives it like a dog food. We used to give them milk when I was.
Another example of me saying literally anything and James, sorry, don't apologize. It's great.
I want people to know that you shouldn't give them bread and milk, that you should and said give them wet dog food.
Okay, good to know. Did not know that.
Yeah, if you come across one, they're legal in California. Though, fucking I'm doing it again. Sorry, you're doing it again.
I learned so much whatever conversation I have. But back to the species of sea urchins. There are over one thousand species of sea urchins, and they have varying characteristics. They inhabit a wide range of depth zones and all climates across the world's oceans, and only eighteen of them are actually edible.
It's interesting.
Most modern sea urchins are round, as I said, but about a quarter of them have modified that body plan massively. For example, there are sea urchins who evolved into a flotter shape and have smaller spines that adapted to life burrowing in the sand. You can get really weird shapes of these deep sea urchins with strange bodies that don't
look at anything else. We don't know much about these deep sea urchins yet because they're very hard to reach and they're very fragile, and this makes it very difficult for people to study them on the surface.
I think this is a great If you are a billionaire and you are listening to this podcast, you could have a sea urchin species named after you. All you need to do is create a submarine, fill it with other wealthy people, and then take it to the bottom of the ocean to study sea urchins.
You know what else should go into the bottom of the ocean.
It's in the products and services to support the Yes, how kind of you. It's not hedgehogs. They don't belong there, none them matter this. Hopefully it's a hedgehog advert Fuck the police, get a hedgehog in California, acab.
And we're back. I had just talked about some irregular shaped sea urchins before the break, and an example of this kind of sea urchin is actually the sand dollar. Sand dollars are much flatter than other urchins, and this is an adaptation that just better suited their environment. Like most ecnoderms, sea urchins have an internal skeleton called a test.
A sea urchins test is made up of a type of calcium carbonate called sterium, which is a porous structure that holds the urchin together like jigsaw pieces cemented in place. Sea urchin tests have five symmetrical parts arranged around a central point, like segments of an orange, and this shape isn't always obvious from the living creature, but it can be seen on their skeleton when it's dried. Yeah, I found this next bit kind of cute and funny and
the little sad. But sea urchins can't swim. They live and move along the seafloor, favoring hard surfaces like coral and rocks. They have appendages called tube feet, and they often have suckers at the tips of these feet. The sea urchin uses the hydraulic pressure of water moving in and out of their little tube feet to move about slowly. They can also propel themselves with their spines. That's pretty impressive because they don't have brains, and that's another fun fact that was kind of sad.
They're still cute though.
Some sea urchins also have these pincer like organs that look like little jaws, called pedicalaria. These are mostly used for self defense or to remove debris from the animal and some of the penicolaria. And sea urchins are venomous. Urchins primarily feed on algae and kelp, but they are also omnivorous scavengers that will feed on animal matter. Their main diet then is algae, but they can also eat animals too, like sea cucumbers their own kind, as well
as muscles and sponges. So as sea urchins move about on their tube feet, they scrape algae into their mouth. Their unique chewing organ, or the mouth part of the sea urchin, is called Aristotle's lantern. It includes complex jaws as well as five self sharpening teeth. If something nutritious lands on a sea urchin's body out of reach of their Aristotle's lantern, they'll use their tube feet to pass
the food into the mouth. A sea urchin's mouth is actually on the underside of its body, whereas its anus is on the top, and so they scrape of food from the ocean floor, and it makes sense that the mouth is on the underside, and then when they poop, they excrete waste from the top of their body. Thought, that's a funny, little little creature.
So we are everything living. It turns out the longer, like all living things are just tubes, right, Yeah, like for food goes in one end and the rest waste comes out of the other. That is very true, Legs. Yeah, it's my philosophical insight.
And the video I did see of the harvesting, actually you cut it from the mouth.
The underside going in the basa into the Aristotle's lanting, which I know is cool.
Isn't that interesting?
I think it's fascinating.
Yeah, Aristotle's lantern.
Yeah, why, that's a good Scarristotlegs.
But maybe you're asking yourself. Maybe not, but I'm going to tell you anyway, how do these sea urchins reproduce? Most sea urchins reproduced by females releasing eggs directly into the water, and then these are fertilized by sperm. Some species females hold eggs in their spines to better protect them. Most sea urchins will release millions of eggs at one time and live in huge colonies to increase the chances
of reproductive success. There are also more solitary species. However, as I mentioned earlier, there are some species that are in fact poisonous. A lot of them are tropical. They have venom in their spines, and if you're unlucky enough to step on a venomous urchin, the toxins can enter
the body through the puncture wound. Some sea urchin's venoms can cause really grows symptoms like nausea and vomiting, breathing difficulties, but even the most venomous sea urchin has only been linked to one reported human death, so you'll most likely be fine.
It's kinda suck, I have no doubt. It's probably one of those things. I guarantee. This is one of the things that people will tell you you need all your friends to piss on you, like teems with no just like if that's your thing, get after it.
Like why do people say that.
I don't know, I don't know it just maybe it like maybe someone said it. No one, no one has like felt the need to contradict it, because obviously, like there are very few medical treatments should involve pissing. No I think so, oh what I mean.
Trend Some guy just like was trolling someone and then it became.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like jellyfish stings right, people do like, yeah, someone h it was at the beach here that day, and someone got whacked by a sting ray.
Yeah, and someone was like, piss on. It knows to do that or are things to do that? It's like a thing.
It doesn't. It's a good way to get banns from the beach for life. Their children, there are children there. Put it in hot water. It's sisting racing.
That's really funny.
Have a few beers and go to sleep.
Good to know, Good to know. The most venomous, most toxic sea urchin is actually called the flower urchin. It's scientific name, which I was gonna say, but I'm not, but it basically translates into poison breath. So, as I mentioned in my opinion, the cutest sea urchin is called the seat potato. The sea potato is covered in short, beige little spines that give it a furry appearance, and
it's quite distinct from its other sharper spined cousins. These sea urchins burrow into the seafloor, and their fuzzy spines trap air, preventing the urchin from suffocating under the sand. Sea potatoes are also known as heart urchins due to the shape of their test. You can find them apparently in waters around the UK.
James, Okay, I get like a sea potato right now, you have every Oh yeah, these little chaps.
Yeah, it's a little little fluffer.
Yeah, it's a little fluke. Yeah, and you can find it when they're dried out too. They kind of look I guess, I guess to the you know, they look a bit like a sand dollar, right, that's sort of a thicker sand dollar. They've got some pike to them.
Yeah, they're more round versus flat.
Yeah.
Down in cornwall. Yeah, they get they can get washed up on the beach. Sometimes not entirely potato looking, if we're honest. Yeah, there I can see. Yeah, they were passing similarity to potato, I suppose.
Yeah.
I think they're cute. Yeah they do.
Look when you see them, when they look really fluffy, Yeah, it does look like a like a beaver or something.
Wait, how how big have you seen them? Can you show me with your hand?
Yeah, like a like a hand size, you know, like a like a like a sort of yeah.
Both hands to make a circle.
Yeah, like if you were like if you were doing that hand hot, very millennial of you. Yeah, yeah, excites.
Yeah, I do have a heart test.
Yeah, if you're a millennial, you could go up to them and do that, I bet, and put it on your Instagram in a millennial way.
And yeah, and only James will know what you're talking about.
Yeah, well there's thousands of people. All your friends will think you're cool. Tell him, I told you got it.
You heard it here first, sea Urchin's cool. The physiology of a sea urchin is actually pretty significant. As I mentioned earlier, there's only one part that is edible, which is the unie. When it comes to consumption, they're harvested for their gonads, and the go net is essentially a sex gland or reproductive organ that produces the sex hormones of an organism. So the go nets are reproductive organs are the edible part of the sea urchin, and that is known as unie rather than the sea urchin as
a whole. Sometimes uni is mistakenly built as row which are fish eggs, but it's not that it's the reproductive organ and each sea urchin usually produces five gonads or uni quote unquote tongues that slip out with a spoon. And these gonads are sometimes bright yellow to orange lobes, and they're apparently stock piles of sugars, amino acids, and salts, a trifecta of sweet, salty, and umami. And that's why I guess it's been dubbed as the butter of the
sea or something like that. And they are also similar to oysters in the fact that they can vary from flavor depending on the species and the diet of the organism. Urchin lovers, for example, prize Hokkaido Uni because of its umami intensive flavor, which is developed because of the urchin's diet of the Hokkaido macro algae combu aka the kelp. The green, red, and purple species have the highest demand globally because their lobes tend to be larger and more
visually appetizing. Ninety nine percent of sea urchins are wild and harvested either by diving or drags.
You if you are buying giosi e. Gens, I don't know why you would buy them. Even but you want to get the dived ones, don't. I'm not sure if you could get dragneted stuff in the US, but it's very damaging to the ocean floor. Any any of this stuff, right, scollops, et cetera. You want it can dived better. Yet, just go and get it yourself if you, if you're able to, if you you close by the ocean. But yeah, don't, don't be buying dragneted stuff.
There are several species of note, and I mentioned some of them earlier, but others include the murasaki aka purple unie, and that uni fetches the highest price because of its large tongues and sweet flavor. Another species worth mentioning is the smaller buffun ouoni b a f u n ba fun but its name literally translates to horseshit because of the way that these round, brownish little creatures cluster on
the ocean floor. A little note here that I didn't know about until reading about this, and maybe someone else out there didn't know this either. Again, I learned English as the second language. Maybe it's obvious, but this word sea or chin is similar to the word fish in that sea urchin can be both singular and plural. I didn't know that, so if you hear me using both interchangeably, that's why cute little word. I mentioned this earlier. But
freshness is the key to good uni. It should be firm and bright colored, without any signs of seepage, and ideally still tiled or crisscrossed in its original packaging. Once it's harvested, it begins to melt, and its flavor can turn unforgettably bitter and off. In the best of worlds, uni is cleaned, iced and shipped before it can spoil, but it can also be treated with additives, including alum, to keep it firm. These chemicals may contribute to an
off flavor if the UNI gets old. Some sushi chefs prefer in soy uni, which is shipped in a brine that mimics the salinity of seawater. The global and domestic market for sea urchin and uni is extensive. The greatest consumption of sea urchin occurs in Japan, France, and Korea. Japanese consumption, however, wins by a landslide. The country consumes about eighty to ninety percent of the current global supply.
Sea urchin is a traditional staple in Japanese cuisine. Japan was the largest global harvester of sea urchins until the nineteen eighties, but high demand and a decrease of domestic supply forced Japan to look abroad. From the nineteen eighties to nineteen ninety four, the US, particularly Maine, was the largest exporter of green sea urchin. Today it's Chile, which exports Chilean red urchin and accounts for fifty percent of
global landings. Overall, global supply has decreased over the last twenty years because of storms, decreasing chalp beds, invasive species, and overfishing. In nineteen ninety five, for example, the global landings total to one hundred and twenty thousand tons. In twenty seventeen, it had decreased to seventy five thousand. America has two major uni fisheries on the West coast. Santa Barbara UNI comes from the giant red sea urchin, and it's noted for its large size, coarse texture, and brightly
sweet flavor. Back East Maine UNI comes from the longer spiked green sea urchin in North America. In general, the main sources of sea urchin come from the Canadian maritime Maine and the Pacific coast from British Columbia to California, so green sea urchins are harvested from the Atlantic, while the red and purple urchins are harvested from the Pacific. These days, domestic supply stays domestic to meet the growing
demand and ethnic markets. Domestic supplies also supplemented by imported product, mostly from Chile during the summer months. On fact in New Zealand, Quina, urchins have long been part of the traditional Maori diet, so sea urchins have long been fished and harvested everywhere where there's basically a coast, from Peru
to Italy and Korea. Reading about Korea and sea urchin harvesting is what led me to learn about the high who are female divers in the South Korean province of Jaiju, where for centuries, these specially trained female divers have collected sea urchins for generations, and traditionally girls start as young as eleven to train to die for urchins. Their livelihood consists of harvesting a variety of moluks, seaweed, and other
sea life from the ocean. The Hainu are also known for their independent spirit and determination, and they are representative of the semi matriarchal family structure of the province of Jaiju. Another fun fact. I love a fun fact. You know what else loves the fun fact.
Is it? Is it the sea potato.
It's the ads, It's the sweep. Oh, the sea potato. Every time I think of a seat potato. Feel nice.
Let me get you like a pleasure.
Okay, here are some maths and we're back. So we're wrapping up this odyssey of going into sea urchins and this swimming journey we've had with James. It's not just humans who have found a way to get past the sea urchins spiky exterior and eat its sex organs. Their predators include a wide variety of fish, starfish, crabs, and sea otters. Sea otters lie on their backs with sea urchins on their chest and they whack them with a rock to eat what's inside.
Yeah, it's a cute thing to see.
I love sea otters. They are so cute.
They very adorable.
Lying on their backs, It's like little guys go to position.
They keep a little stone with them.
Yeah, cute, so cute. But sea urchins are actually not just used by people solely in cuisine, perhaps because of their mysterious shapes. Fossils of sea urchin tests have also been historically used as protective amulets to ward off evil Apparently in southern England, James, some sea urchin fossils were traditionally thought to be thunderbolts frozen in rock, and these thunderstones were thought to protect a house from being struck by lightning. Interesting, I'm teaching you about your culture.
Yes, that's it.
And as James mentioned at the top, climate change is of course affecting sea urchins, and climate change is affecting everything. Sea urchins are sensitive to changes in their environment. They can act as an early warning system for potential problems in their ecosystem, as well as rising temperatures. Ocean acidification and rising temperatures are probably the biggest long term threat
to see urchins as a whole. Increasing ocean acidification increases the rate at which calcium carbonate dissolves, so as things get more acidic, it will likely become harder and harder for sea urchins to accumulate enough calcium carbonate to make a solid test, and their tests will then get thinner and weaker. Experiments in labs have shown that this can
happen even with very minor increases in a certification. Sea urchins in this way can help illustrate why it's so important to protect the balance of nature in our already threatened ocean ecosystems. So that's the sea urchin.
Yeah, if you live in like northern or central California, as the water gets hotter, the kelp begins to die and the dead little pieces of kelp are fed upon by the sea urchins, and so the sea urchin population has like ballooned and they're taking over the kelp. You get what it called like barrens urchin barrens where it used to be like a kelp forest. You're amazing. If you've never dived in a help forest, you should dive in a help forest. I mean, don't fucking just do it.
If you don't know what you're doing, you'll die. But you know, provided you're capable of free diving or scuba diving. But now they're gone, right, and it's just beds of urchins, which is really sad because the colp obviously is a sustaining part of that holy ecosystem. So yeah, be nice to the oceans.
Please be nice.
You can gather them without even diving. You can gather them on the in the intertidal there they'll be going. There'll be like getting cliffed out. Right, don't go to a place where there is no beach at high tide and then hang around there until the tide gets high, because I'm going to have to swim then. So don't don't be doing that. Be sensible, respect the ocean. Yeah, I love a sea urchin. Well, I'll put a picture of one I love to I love to show them.
This is my This is my weird like toxic trait. Yeah, yeah, my doxic trait. Yeah. My toxic trait is showing children sea urchin like potato. Yeah. Well I I'm in California. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not just walking up to kids and you're whacking out my iPhone, Cherie, I'm not weird.
No.
If I'm gathering sea urchins on a free dive, then I'll come back into the beach.
Right.
I have a little body board and I have a bag on it, but the urchin's in there. I'm sure kids love that.
I mean, I remember like going to those like aquariums where you stick your hand in the water as a child, you don't know any better, and like the little starfish and everything. That was the most interesting part. So I'm sure the kids love that shit.
Kids love a creature.
Yeah, you learn anything about sea urchins.
I learned a lot.
Yeah, I don't awful lot about it, Like I didn't know anything about these these excited about these Korean ladies. Pretty going to google that later.
Yeah, I feel like they des are more of a deep dive. I'm intended magic incredible.
Maybe there'll be my next podcast series. I'll there. I've contrived ways to free dive on when I went free diving a lot in the Marshall Islands at six. I'm stoked for iHeartRadio to pay for me to go free diving somewhere else.
Advocate for that petition, write a lot union involved anyway. That's this episode of it could happen here and until next time. Important pickup alert, We're back. James alerted me to a fact that was too important to not include in this episode. James, what did I miss?
What you're missuring was the eighth wonder of the world, which is sea urchins wearing little hats.
That's right, folks, see urchins wearing little hats.
Yeah, this is where we fact check all our reporting exactly to bring you the cutting edge shear professional journalism.
So what are we talking about? We talked about tube feet, right. Urchins move using their little tube feet, and they contract small muscles that force water into the tube foot to take each step, and the end of each tube foot is very, very sticky. They used to be described as suction cups, but now researchers are thinking of them more as like a bioadhesive rather than a suction that sticks
to things, including the floor. And they use the stick he tube feet to pick up and hold on to raw shells, golf balls, and other little treasures, treasures including tiny hats. Behaviorally, collogists call urchin hats quote unquote covering behavior. They don't call the hats that, but they call the
act of them covering themselves covering behavior. That name is related to the first and most prevalent hypothesis about this phenomena, that the urchins are covering themselves to provide shelter from light predators or maybe even both. There are experiments which confirm the light hypothesis. Researchers in Ireland found that when the urchins were exposed to the full spectrum of UV light, they would pick up their little hats and or move to a shady corner of their tanks in order to
avoid harmful UV radiation. Around the same time of these findings, another scientist in California was studying the covering behavior of Pacific rose flower urchins. The rose urchin study wasn't conducted in a lab. Instead, the urchin behavior was observed in their natural habitat, and what they found was that the sample site with the greatest wave energy had the most covering behavior among the urchins. So what is it sun safety or is it like a protective gear like seat
belts or kneepads. Are they protecting themselves from currents and wave damage instead of floating away? Or are they afraid of the sun? Researchers have tested several factors simultaneously to trace the covering behavior to its source. In the lab, green urchins were exposed to common predators, wave surges and algae blades, as well as sunlight, and as it turns out,
predators were a bust. Their presence had no significant impact on the rate of covering behavior, so it's not necessarily camouflaged for all urchins, and similarly to how sea stars can regenerate lost arms, urchins are also constantly regenerating loss and broken spines. But this regeneration takes energy, and so for some urchins it might be a safer bet, particularly for a small urchin who is vulnerable to dislodgment and damage, to pick up some extra weight and put on a
little sun protection at the same time. And of course, because humans are humans. Once three D printing came along, people started making sea urchins tiny little urchin hats, which is why I keep calling them hats, because now they are hats and people have them in aquariums or in their personal urchin tank, because sure enough, these urchins will skitter along and pick these hats up and put them on their head, which we now know is actually their butt,
but they put them on the top of themselves. Not all urchins, right, little ass hat.
That's funny, urchin ass hat. What a great band it could be.
That's a great band name.
Yeah yeah, if you are listening and in need of a sort of like a you're welcome, yeah, like Blink one eight two, that kind of music. I think that's what I associate with urchin asshole.
I agree urchin asset. Not all urchins wear hats and a Canadian state he found that smaller urchins are the ones that are more likely to cover up, and the logic behind their covering behavior it seems to depend, as I said, on the species of urchin and the environment day in habit So out in more tropical regions, the collector urchin as it's called it may be protecting itself from the sun and these urchins can be found in shallow waters off of Hawaii, the Indo Pacific in the Bahamas,
and this is where they're exposed to a lot of sunlight. Meanwhile, researchers think that the green sea urchin uses its adornments to weigh itself down, and this species tends to live in the shallow waters of the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans where it gets constantly battered by waves. Wherever there is a lot of wave activity, the urchin heavily covers up the top and the sides of its body with whatever it can find, which helps make it heavy enough
to avoid getting swept away. And then further south, Antarctic urchins have been found to cover themselves as a w to avoid predators. Their main predators are king crabs and c aneemies, and researchers found that they were more likely
to put on coverings when predators were around. In a lab experiment, another species of urchin was more likely to survive being exposed to a predator if it was given shells to cover itself, So these decorations may be type of camouflaged to keep some urchins from being found and eaten, not necessarily all urchins. And then there's the Kina, a large urchin found in New Zealand. This urchin seems to use the item that it collected as a food source.
Researchers found that this species was covering itself even in the dark, which suggested that it wasn't trying to protect itself from sunlight, and its predators don't rely on site to find their prey, so camouflaging itself would be pointless.
In a field study, they found that these urchins were carrying algae aka a source of their little urchin food and basically carrying around like a snack bag or a fridge for themselves, which can be helpful because these urchins might not always have a lot of algae around for grazing. So now you know about little hats and the little things that urchins do to cover themselves and collect things.
I didn't realize that it was more than just covering their little ass hats or ass heads rather, but yeah, I thought it was really interesting and good good on James to remind us to talk about urchan hats.
Yeah, great, many things that I've learned recently. Got a TikTok account, so I'm learning a lot. Whoa yeah, And it's not like I'm not I'm not tiktoking, and I just want to be extremely clear about this. I got it because lots of the folks in me and I used TikTok to you. Oh nice tip to communicate with the world. So I've been tiktoking and I've learned a lot, learning a lot about Taylor Swift and Olivia and chids that's not necessary.
Thank you James for joining me on this swimming journey of urchin facts and things. I when you suggested talking about the urchins, I did not expect them to be so cute and so interesting, So thank you for that. And if you have an urchin around, go get a little hat, be its little buddy.
Get on Etsy, I've just been looking. Oh no, go on, Etsy, gonta have Viking. I think that was one's the.
Most that's funny anyway. Okay, that's now the end of this episode, so you're welcome for this update and uh bye.
Welcome zikaap Here, a podcast that is droning under the oppression of whoever keeps changing the stupid zoom interface. It's different every time. It always gets worse. It never gets better. Please stop.
We had trads for zoom zoom layout.
Just get it, get it one time, put the recording thing on the stupid panel on the bottom, and then never change it.
It simply never gets better.
H Yeah, this is be a who's extremely annoyed at zoom with me is javes.
Yep, also extremely annoyed at zoom high just in solidarity with Mia fucking yeah, and also also extremely annoyed.
Right now is the man stages the world's worst coup ask to report to prison.
I don't think we can call it the world's worst coupa. That's a bold claim. You're forgetting Silver Corp.
No, So, okay, here's the thing about Silver Corp. Right, the guys who defeated Silver Corp. Had guns, Yeah, but Silver Corp didn't. They had BB guns.
Yeah.
But here's the thing, right they they those guys again, those guys did not have real guns. Defeated by guys with guns. These guys had guns. They had a lot of guns. They were defeated by people with flags.
Yeah. Yeah, and a guy standing in a doorway being like, no, you can't come in, go home? You know, so we we we are.
I genuinely believe this is the worst cup I've ever seen in my entire life. And you know, we've lived through Venezuela one I I I distinctly remember stepping out of a post office and checking my phone and getting eighteen messages from my friends that said, do you do you?
What do you know about the coup and Turkey? That was a terrible coup.
Was they they could have they could have just saved us all this trouble of shot aired when Douf a jet fighter, But they didn't, you know, And there's there's been plenty of bad ones. There was that that coup recently in the Democratic public at the congo To fiasco. Yeah, hilariously, this coup and Bolivia recovering today happened exactly one year and three days after the March of the Wagner Core.
Oh yeah, I've got to forgot about that one?
What if?
Wow?
Yeah, Well we wanted to try it.
Guys, if you believe you can achieve give it a go to a coup if you want to, why not gonna trump pee try one?
Did what?
Very well? Yeah?
Yeah, I mean we really, I mean I also, I mean, we can't forget January ninth, even the the well, I don't, I don't because January sixth was already farce, but like we forgot the farcest, farst version of it in Brazil.
Yeah, yea, even there. Yeah yeah, they owed a building coupe.
Yeah, lots of lots of very stupid cues, but this this is probably the worst one. And so we're going to be explaining sort of what happened. But the thing about this coupe is that in order to understand what's happening with this coup, we have to get through I think a part of oblivion history that has not been really well understood or talk on the left, which is effectively what happened in Bolivia.
After the coup in twenty nineteen.
I think I think people sort of know that there was a coup and that it got overturned, but coma that was sort of the point at which which the sort of Anglo media and like the sort of press that hits the left here kind of just took off. So you have your sort of twenty nineteen coup. The place where sort of everything getting lost kind of starts is that.
So there's this coup.
The left sort of response to the coup is not very strong because the sort of social movements have been hallowed out by their sort of incorporation into the Bolivian state, so they don't they sort of just don't have the juice to really kind of you know, roll this coup back. This is this is makes basically this is the twenty
nineteen coup, not the twenty twenty four coup. Yeah, and you know the thing about the twenty nineteen coup that makes it very different from this one is that that one was you know, there was a broad base of support for this right in this sort of in this sort of like far right out of Santa Cruz and also out of sort of like like more moderate center right factions. So you know, there are sort of large street with favor of this. This is not true if mose recent.
One, yeah, absolutely not.
Yeah, but you know, by by by twenty twenty, as twenty twenty is sort of progressing. A Anya's coup government is a fiasco. Their management of COVID is just terrible, enormous numbers of deaths. I mean actually I mean not by American standards, I guess, but you know, really really mismanaged.
I mean my I have friends there who were talking about how if you were going to the hospital and you needed to use like a piece of medical equipment, you had to buy the medical equipment or a part to fix the machine and then show up to the hospital with the part because they couldn't order it.
Yeah. I've yeah, I've seen that in a few places in the world. It's never never a good time.
Yeah, it's it's not good. It was a real shit show. And by By sort of I think about September, early September twenty ninth of twenty twenty, there are the left has sort of gotten it shipped together and there are these this massive set of roadblocks. Bolivian Blivion social politics tends to sort of be about roadblocks because you know, country a lot of mountains, a lot of roads you can very easily block off and then prevent anything from you know, for example, entering a city.
Yep, good idea.
So they're they're able to just basically shut down the Blivion economy. The government is once again on the Vergia collapse and once again and we'll get to the first time this happened, but even Morallies once again sort of pulls the supporters off of the barricade so he can go win an election rather than you know, attempt to just bring down the sort of coup government.
So you know that eventually happens.
The government is forced to hold elections because you know, they've they've lost control of the country, and the MS takes you know, wins this election by overwhelming margins. The MAS is even Morales' party, it's the sort of like party of.
The oblivion Left. But yeah, the guy comes to the power. As Lewis R.
Say, he's an interesting figure because he is kind of what we're going to get more into sort.
Of what the MAS is in a bit. But he is from a kind of right wing of the party that's not talked about very much. Yeah, he he is.
A you know he's not a guy who comes from the social movements and in the way that sort of Morales did like he was even Moreles was a guy from the co He was like the president of the coca growers Union. Arsay is a banker. He's an an economist and a banker. He comes out of the Central Bank of Bolivia and.
He he has had.
Been kind of the guy running Bolivian economic policy. But but he is from the developmentalist wing of the party, which means he is effectively from the wing of the party that are the kind of like center left capitalists that the social moments kind of allied themselves to under Moralees in order to do this sort of national economic development policy. So these are a lot of these are a lot of mining sector guys. These are a very specific sort of cadra of these central bank guys, you know.
And I think this is the part.
The thing about the MS that's kind of relevant here is that it usually also has a base support among people you wouldn't expect. I mean, there's a lot of small business owners who support them, because you know, the maas really did for most of the time they've been in power preside over sort of astonishing economic growth. They sort of did this by marrying these social movements to this kind of national bourgeoisie developmentalis faction.
Yeah.
And the other thing that that the MAAS sort of does in the period between when they come back to power in late twenty twenty twenty twenty one and now is they do they actually go after the people who did the coup, right, and yes, he was the previous president is just in prison for helping you do the coup. The other big person who's been arrested is Luis Fernando Camacho, who is a man who, in one hundred percent complete
seriousness calls himself Basho Camacho. So that's that's a sign, Yeah, that that that's an odication of who this guy is, which is he is a really fanatical, really fanatical Christian nationalist.
He's playing a very similar.
Role to I mean, actually, I think even even in a lot of ways sort of more radical role to what Bolsonaro played in Brazil, where Camasho in Bolivia is this kind of he he's the guy who's rallied both sort of Evangelicalism and Catholicism, of those rallied both of them into this sort of virulent and and and specifically in Bolivia, anti indigenous sort of political force. The the twenty nineteen coup is seen in very very explicitly is
seen in religious terms. Both Idias and Cabacho talk about how like the word of God is back at the capitol and the but like all of the sort of indigenous various indigenous stuff is just never going to come back.
So Kamacho gets arrested in twenty twenty two for you know, doing this coup, and this sets off so he, by the way, like is the governor of the state of Santa Cruz, and this sets off a bunch of like a right wing general strike, a bunch of riots, like hundreds of people are injured in street fighting between his sort of fanatics and everyone else in the country. It
does an enormous amount of economic damage. It sets off sort of roadblocks the government, I mean Kamacho I think also is still in prison, but it kind of, you know, the government's kind of forced to make concessions to these people. So you know, the whole the whole sort of ur say, government is kind of on shaky footing from the beginning. And all of this is before the Bolivian economy really hits the ship. But before before we get to the Bolivian economy, do you know what else hits the ship?
Oh uh?
Is it the meal kit preparation delivery service that we are not allowed to mention for leader reasons. It is, yes, yeah, yes, yeah, you'll be pooping your brains out. Don't do it.
We are back, so let's talk about the other thing that's happening in Bolivia.
Well, okay, see other.
Thing, the one of the four other things that's reppening in Bolivia, and that is the real.
Sort of collapse of the Bolivian economy.
So the Bolivian economy Blivia has been kind of different from the rest of the sort of kind of left wing, pink tied governments that were elected in the in the in the sort of two thousands era sort of anti globalization politics. Most of those countries' economies employed did a long time ago, like Venezuela is sort of obviously the most famous case, but all of these economies fell apart because these were all economies based on the commodity boom.
We've talked about this in some of.
Our Brazil episodes, but the very short version is that a lot of a lot of countries that produce sort of primary commodities, so like you know, your copper, your sort of your natural gas, you know, I mean things like soybeans to kind of fall in this category. You know, so you're you're you're sort of minding stuff, or you're
some some of you some of your farming stuff. All of these sort of industrial input primary commodity stuff all got you know, massive price spikes in early two thousands because the Chinese economy had integrated into into the rest of the world economy fully by you know, joining the joining the World Trade Organization, and this set off this massive industrialization boom in.
China, and you know, the Chinese.
The the levels of sort of demand that this induces is unbelievable because Chinese economic growth in that period is unreal, and it's it's economic growth that is unreal in a
country with a billion people in it. So this produced a kind of shock of demand for all of these sort of mineral resources that was not entirely unprecedented, but enormously large, and also allowed all of these sort of social democratic economies to you know, kind of paper over the inherent contradictions of their base being both capitalists and also a bunch of like unions by there just sort of being enough state revenue from all of these all of these exports to just kind of buy everyone off.
Of paper everything clantalism.
Yeah, yeah, and that stops working when the economy goes under. But Bolivia's economy does a lot better than the rest of the economies in the region.
There are there are a lot of reasons for this.
Part of it is that you know, are say, who is running the economy of Bolivia in the sort of the period, like post two thousand and eight period, when everyone else economies are collapsing. He is genuinely doing some pretty interesting macroeconomic stuff. Also, the other thing that's going on is that Bolivia main expert and people. Okay, so people in the US tend to think of Bolivia as a country that produces lithium. That's not true. That might be true maybe thirty years in the future that will
be Bolivia's primary export. But Bolivia's primary export for the last two decades has been natural gas, and natural gas prices didn't quite do the same thing that sort of oil prices did that kind of imploded the Venezuelan economy. Yeah, and so through sort of like economic management and these sort of political alliances, and you know, the high price in natural gas, the Bolivian economy has sort of been fine. Unfortunately, what's happening right now is that Bolivia is running out
of natural gas. And because it's running out of natural gas, and also because their economy is an export based economy based on natural gas.
Not so good, nusuge good vibes. Yeah, it's very bad.
The entire economy is full, all your part because you know this this is a very very classic kind of economic crisis. You know, the econdoic crisis are having is I'm not saying it described as a balance of payments crisis, but that's what it is, which is that the Oblivion
economy works on buying things with American dollars. So you know, like a lot of the businesses in the country involved are sort of import businesses, right, you know, I mean I know people who run businesses like this in Bolivia where you know, you're inputting shoes or like motors, yeah, stuff like that, and you buy them with American dollars
and you sell them in Bolivia. But the thing is this requires a constant supply of American dollars to go buy good manufacture goods from other places, because Bolivia's manufacturing economy is effectively is a joke. And this is something that was true of all of these economies. I mean, Bolivia never they kind of tried to industrialize in the seventies, but they never got as far along with it as a country like Brazil or country like Venezuela did in
the seventies. And the other thing about these all these sort of pink Tai governments is they all took power in economies that have been completely deindustrialized man liberalism, right.
We talked about this with Brazil.
Brazil went from a country that was a kind of like effectively a first not quite a first, right, but maybe a second tier a large, a powerful second tier industrial power to a country whose economy is almost entirely based on sort of primary commodity production and farming bullshit. So they've they've moved down that they've moved down the value chain. They'vey're manufacturing less stuff, they're producing shit that's on the bottom. They're getting less value from the value
added bullshit moving up the chain. And this is this is also the problem with the beliving economy, and because the natural gases is drying up, they don't have enough dollars coming into the economy for people to use to buy things. And the Bolivian currency is also pegged to the dollar, right, so there's supposed to be an official exchange rate at which you know, X amount of money is worth x amount of dollars, and that's all falling apart.
People are sort of running around in the streets trying to find people who will exchange like their currency for dollars.
This is this is you know. So so this is a classic short of balance of payments.
Yeah, well it's kind of because it's kind of kind of a balancing, but they're having a giant dollar shortage. This is really really messing up. No, I mean not just the economy, but the entire political system is really kind of coming apart under this. Now, okay, I I talked about things kind of coming apart there. There there is another thing that is coming apart in Bolivia, which is the m AS is shattering. Yes, the shattering, it's it's it's splintering in two. So what is the m
A S So the m AS is this part? Oh okay, so it has a slightly weirder history, which is that so the m a S was a completely random actually kind of kind of right wing political party, but importantly it hads electoral status, so it was it was it's a party that was taken over by the social movements at the end of the sort of stuff stuff we're going to get to in order to be able to run like you need in order to be able to run candidates for office.
But this means that because again because it was literally it was an existing.
Legal, registered party that was taken over from the outside, and because of how it emerged, it's always been seen as sort of a movement party, right It's supposed to be like the assembly of Oblivia sort of left.
Wing social movements. And these left wing social.
Movements are the movements that i emerge in quite the right word, but are the movements that solidified it began to sort of exert their power from two thousand and two thousand and six in this enormous sequence of social uprising against sort of Bolivia neoliberalism.
The most famous of these are the.
Water and gas wars, which are these fights against water privatization and the sort of gas line and this alliance of peasant unions, the traditional sort of urban urban sort of proletariat like traditional sort of like urban left.
These these new.
Street movements, coca growers unions, miners unions, and a whole array of indigenous groups that we frankly do you don't have time to get into here because the politics are extremely the philosophy is extremely complicate. I don't know if I've talked about this on the show before, but one of the I mean, we're talking about like like they have like philosophical constructs that I don't understand. It's this philosophical construct that's like a dialectic, but there's three parts
of it, and they don't it doesn't resolve. They just all kind of grind intension with each other. Right, So like, Okay, we're not really going to get into that. It's outside the scope of the show of If you're more interested in this, read Rhythms of the PATCHACOUTI or get a doctorate.
I guess, yeah, yeah, we returned to grad school. Your options are limited.
But you know, there's this coalition of of all of the kinds of unions, these rural unions or urban unions, urban street movements, real street movements, gather together, gather their strength, set up a million roadblocks, and just smash the neoliberal right.
They are. The oblivious right is basically completely destroyed from the period of two thousand and six until twenty nineteen. That was the first time they ever took power. They did it in a coup and they held power for about one year before they were kicked out of power again. So they basically completely reshaped all of politics in Bolivia. Those the second round of roadblocks very nearly destroyed the Bolivian state until as I sort of allatedd to earlier.
Even More, Alles pulled his supporters out the barricade in order to get an election in two thousand and six, and this is the election of the MS one.
And to understand the kind of seismic change of this right, the MAAS is the first party in the history of Bolivia to win a majority of the season the parliament by itself first party ever. It completely destroyed the existing sort of political system. And again this was supposed to be a sort of a sort of new kind of party right. The theory of the MAS is the organization
of the social movements. Former vice president and sometimes Marxist Garcia Leneria described it as quote, there's a dialectical relationship between the social movements and the party. Now this is a lie. Or more precisely, if this is a dialectic, it is not a Hegelian or Marxist dialectic, where the sublation of two parts creates a concrete totality or a whole that is neither of the things that all is
for it. This is a Maoist dialectic where two sides face off each other with each other, and one of them hits the other side of the help with a hammer until it dies.
It's just a conflict. It's just there are two three people and they both want to control the thing.
Yeah, so.
That's what ends up happening. Right.
So, the social movements and the indigenous movements in particular have been fracturing for a decade. You know, there are a whole series of large fights, even even in sort of like the early twenty tens over sort of of the NIS doing these infrastructure things that everyone else in the country was like, why are you building a road to indigenous land.
There's huge fights, many such cases.
Yeah, so you know, this is the kind of hollowing out in the kind of conflict that had led to the social movements being completely unable to overturn the coup in twenty nineteen, and it taking them until the end of twenty twenty to really pull their shit together.
And you know, overturn the.
Coup and you know, you know what else overturns coups.
That's a that's a f promits is it arming the working class?
It is the working class we are sponsored by yeah, or in the entire working class.
We're back. So okay, So now we get to the present spling the social movements.
What has happened now is that you know, are say and and even Morale had always kind of gotten along usually, but once you know, our say took power, he instead of he didn't want to sort of just be a proxy for even Morales. He had his own sort of actually like not great agenda either, a sort of more technocratic agenda. Although you know, you have to sort of ask Evil, like you're the one who brought these people into the party, Like, I don't know what you were expecting.
You brought these people in that they weren't going to governed as a sort of center left technocratic capitalist government. You know, you could have seen this coming, but they they have been increasingly fighting, and the two sides are now implacably hostile. They are saying evil, fucking hate each other.
And this, this divide has split every single social movement in Bolivia, from the Landless Workers' Movement to the cocoa growers, to the indigenous federations, to the fucking urban trade unions to the miners unions. Every one of these organizations either has officially split into two factions as one's in Evil faction and ones in our save faction, or they are in the middle of the fight where you know, they're they're they're both sides are still fighting for control over
over you know, their union federation. And this is not a clean left right split, which is this is actually I mean, that was kind of what I was expecting ish when this fight started, that I was sort of expecting that this was going to end up as a fight between sort of you know, the left of social movements and the sort of center right base. But that's not really what happens. It is kind of a left right split, but you know, it's also a split over
the person of Evo himself. And because it partially a split over Evo himself. There's a lot of like sort of more left wing groups that are kind of are kind of backing our say, because they don't want even morallies to come back into power and re solidify his control over all of these all the social movements, and they're you know, angry at him for a whole series
of attempts to sort of co opt their movements. It's also, you know, it's also it's also a split about sort of how autonomous the social movement should be, should be able to be from government policy. It's it's a it's
you know, it's kind of external to this. But one of the other thing that's going on is that Evo has been really unpopular with a lot of feminist groups in Bolivia for a very long time for a lot of reasons, including I mean, you know, one of the big ones is Bolivia's horrific femicide crisis, which the MAAS has been in power for almost twenty years and has done jack shit to actually like deal with, right, you know, So there's there are all of these sort of fractures
breaking out. Partially also it's a war between for control of the MAAS, between the Coca goers unions and the miners unions. So this is a shit show. It is
a complete fiasca. And then you know the thing that makes it more with fiasco is, you know, we talked about this sort of with uh we We did an episode about kind of what's been happening with with the sort of pink tied governments a while back, and you know, one of the things you talked about in that episode was Ecuador, where Ecuador has this left wing base that should win every single election until the end of time,
and they don't because they're constantly fighting each other. And this is effectively the beginning of hopefully it doesn't turn into that. But I mean the m a s if it is, if it is even sort of united, is in unprecedented Bolivian political juggernaut. It should win every election, like I mean, not till the end of time. They probably probably should only win I don't know that they have had demographic issues right now.
Yeah, but you know they should.
Still be winning effectively every every election and they're not. And the reason that they're not is because of this ship or a lousion. They might not is because of because of all of these all all of these splits and these are very these this isn't a These are very very serious political splits. I mean, uh, one of the miners workers meetings, very famously, the two sides broke into into fist fights. I think one hundred and forty people were injured. So you know, this is this is
these are these are very serious fights. There's also a whole disaster right now over who actually is the candidate of the m a s Because Evo held this Congress of the m as it was his supporters that Arse was not at and they said that because he didn't, because r didn't show up, he was kicked out of the party.
Classic, So this is this whole thing. So few typically been expelled.
But like the courts got the electoral courts are now involved because the electoral courts have to decide what like, you know that they have to figure out what candidate their party's running. So it's this, it's it's a complete catastrophe. And in the midst of this complete catastrophe there is the worst coup of the twenty first century. So let a lot of let's get into finally this coup. So this coup is run by a guy named Juan Jose Zunjega is the He's the commander of the Bolivian Army.
He is hand picked by Arsay to run the army, to be the guy who yes is yeah, and this is you know this this this has sort of shades of the fact that Pinochet was sort of elevated by by Allende and the Social Democrats, but reminds me of Franco as well, like getting prom about this, Yeah, this was this, those were tragedy.
This is farce.
So what happens is that on Tuesday of last week, Niega goes on TV and says, I am going to like Louis evil morallies cannot be allowed to take power again. I will stop him from taking power.
And our say is like, dude, what the fuck?
Just immediately fires him, because you know you can't do that.
Yes, Like almost every every country with a codified constitution has prohibitions on its military intervening and its politics, right, like yeah, the basics of democracy.
Bolivia has had a series of military governments and military cups across this twentieth century, including the the god the fucking Cocaine coup that I've talked about at length in our world of the Communist League episod that ends with like Klaus Barbie fucking running around, right, So I mean, you know, like this is a country that has had military q is quite literally staffed by actual Nazis, right, so you know, this is this is a place that take that takes the threat of a military queue very
very seriously. There hasn't been one, blessedly in a long time, but there's a lot of people who are fucking alive for the last one. And you know, and so this this is you know, people are extremely unhappy, even people who I think in theory would be okay with, you know, the government being deposed, like absolutely, under no circumstances want the fucking military running in the country because again, everyone fucking remembers how bad that shit was.
But what appears duff.
Happened is that Zaninka realizes that so he's just been fired, right, which means that he has a very short time window in which he could try to pull some shit, Which means that whatever whenever he may have been planning, I don't know what his actual plans were. He may have been actually planning a coup, he may not have been until here was just immediately like, well, I guess we have to do it now.
If it was planning, it wasn't planning very well, because yeah, yeah, what results from this for this very I think results on this very short timetable is the worst cup I've ever seen.
So what appears to have happened is that on Wednesday he gathers the troops that he's able to gather, which is not that I mean we're talking like a hundred guys.
Maybe it was.
Not a you know, they they had a decent number of armored vehicles, but it was not like a lot of troops.
It does not appay that he even had the support of a lot of troops, right.
Like, yeah, a lot of the army seitster have kind of been sitting there going what the fuck is going on? But it was you know, I mean I was watching the videos who were like the livestreams from journalism on the ground of these troops and they're just they're just worth it, many of them.
No, they really were, Like it was the whole thing was just really fucking shocking, like chockingly bad. They didn't even surround the building, they just went up to one door.
Yeah, so it's so what happens is they use in our vehicle to ram the door of the presidential palace, and they try to take control of it. But the thing is right are saying, is it in the presidential palace? He and his cabinet are in the next building over.
So they taken the wrong building, going great, and again this this is not a sort of you know, this is not a coup.
That follows the standard coup repertoire of I seize the president, sees the radio station, sees the airport, sees the trains, right, yeah, and have been tray control over the military barrackses, which is your short this is your sort of basic five step plan to how to do a coup.
They will be doing that episode soon by the way. Yeah, yeah, given today's to find we're in the we're in the clear plan to do a coup.
But you know, so they don't they don't even see a part one, so they're they're kind of just kind of milling around the front of the Presidential Palace and try to get into the next building where the president actually is. So it's also the demands are also very weird. So Nika claims that he's not overthrowing the governments. He claims that he's still loyal to our say, but he's going to form a new cabinet.
Oh yeah, he's useful. Yeah, that's how you normally do that. Yeah.
So he's like yelling about the economic crisis, says he's going to quote restored democracy and quote release political prisoners.
Which I kind of get.
Okay, So the political prisoner's thing, I think is about the people who've been arrested for doing the twenty nineteen coup.
I have no idea what restored democracy means. I don't know if he had any idea what he meant by restored democracy. Something was happening.
But the thing is the other thing about this coup is that he has no backing at all. I mean, he doesn't even have back in the army, but he has no he doesn't even have backing among the right. Both Macho Camacho and Jeanina one Aye are people who did like the last one. Both condemned the coup. So people he is trying to break out of prison it condemned the coup. Right, This is going nowhere.
Worst coup I've ever seen.
So meanwhile, or say it is cabinet are in the next building over appointing a new commander of the army, so that the new commander of the army can go outside and order them order the troops to go back to their barracks.
This is kind of what's happening.
But also meanwhile outside so that these troops have like taken over the square in front of the presidential Palace, and that they have sort of successfully managed to take over the square with a bunch of sort of military police.
And riot gear.
But there's this sort of crowd who's come to yell at the army, right, and it's just very weird spectacle because it's there's all these soldiers to all have long guns, right, being protected by a light of cops with riot shields. Yeah.
Yeah, like if you open up on the crowd, like have enough numbers to get every every single one of you is going to be individually executed. Yeah, So they're all people don't have guns and.
Unless that you know, and when I say execute, I mean like they're they're gonna get executed by the goverment. That that's assuming they live long enough and are not just beaten to death by the crowd, which is also a real possibility. But you know, so this crowd is sort of approaching a lot of riot police. You're getting
tear gas a bit. But this is and I kind of emphasize this enough, this is not a kind of normal like highly organized Bolivian mass protest where you know, all of the union, the Union's college general.
Strike in the middle of this.
Yeah, but again, this this whole thing lasts maybe two and a half hours, so there's not time to do the actual kind of sort of roadblocks and stuff like that. There's not time to actually do the organization that you would need to do.
Overturn this coup.
This coup falls apart so fast that people don't have time to make protest signs only have our flags. They do not have time to write signs out. That is that they don't have time to cope with chance. I was watching the funniest part about this whole thing, So I was watching a live stream of the pro testers, and the protesters had gotten this kind of I guess you call it sort of this kind of metal gate.
I guess it was this big sort of it almost looked like you know how there's you get this those white shelves that have like metal bars, and it was kind of like that like cross hashed.
It was you know, it was pretty big.
I was like bigger than a person, and like three people are like carrying in front of them, like going to the police lane, presumably to use it as a battering ram. But the troops run away so fast that these guys couldn't get their gate up to the police line fast enough to use it.
That's how you know it's going. Well, it was staggering. It was amazing.
So, you know, the entire coup calls apart. Zuniga gets arrested on Life TV. It's like giving a press conference and they just like arrest them.
Amazing.
But at the end of this, as it's falling apart, the one genuinely masterful stroke that Zunjinga pulls in this entire I mean it missed a just a cavalcade of failure. One actual genius line that he does is as as he started being arrested, he says it's in prison too.
Uh.
He claims that he's been ordered by Arsay to do this in order to bolst ar Say's poll numbers, which are dog shit.
It's fake.
Yeah yeah, now, okay, this this whole scheme begs the question, what was Arsay supposed to get out of this, sorry not again, Why what what what is? What does he get out of it? Right?
Because she's just going to prison.
It's like, why would he do it if it was just under orders from the president because this is a lose lose for him, so none of it makes any sense.
But comma, this is.
Immediately picked up by morele I supporters. You fucking hate r say, and they all immediately begin sort of repeating us. And now this has become sort of the official line. I mean, even Morales. He's been on TV and on social media just saying, yeah, this was this was a fake coup. This was a coup that Arsey did against himself to help his poll numbers, and this is you know, this is a This has turned into a real thing.
And there's a lot of people who are sort of like, I don't know, the whole coup was really weird, right, And there's a lot of people who believe this because they're you know, I mean, either because they want to believe it, or because you know, I mean it does look weird, or because they fucking just hate our say from the beginning, right, this is all you know, as funny as it's sort of is this has had a sort of catastrophic effect on sort of just like regular
oblivion people, because people are fucking terrified. You know, they're terrified that this is the beginning of the army coming back into politics. They're terrified that someone else is going to do a coup. I mean even more. Elis has been saying for a very long time. Actually both of them have been trading accusations that the other one is going to do a cup against them.
Yeah, they've been banging the coup drum for a little while.
Yeah, everyone, everyone has sort of been claiming that there's going to be cups happening. And all of this is creating this sort of cauldron of things that are extremely bad for the Bolivian left. The economic boom that wildered their coalition together is over. It's not clear anyone can bring it back, because again, this is a this is
a natural gas based thing, right. And the other problem that they have is, you know, the problem that all social democracies have, which is that they've created a middle class base of small business owners and people with middle
class salaries and professional jobs. And we talked about this in the Brazilian context, and this is something that Garcia le Nara has talked about too, which is that, well, he doesn't say it in these words because he's a coward and a capitalist, but social democracy produces its own grave diggers by creating a middle class that despises them and then eventually destroys everything the social Democrats thought to create.
And that this is very possible that what we are in right now is the opening stages of this entire political project coming apart. Yeah, I fucking hope it doesn't, and I hope that you know, but again, like, the only, the only actual way to resolve the inherent sort of political and social contradictions of attempting to have a sort of left wing socialist political base and a capitalist government
is to eliminate the capitalist state. Yeah, So either either you do that or you get another one of these shitty fucking cues.
Yeah, you're just constantly vulnerable to this ship, right, like at any point, Yeah, yeah, you're creating the conditions which a.
Wealthy and I mean, and we've we've we've already seen the coup that's capable of knocking them out of power, right it's the cup that actually has sort of a mass, like a mass backing from the right.
And this was not that cue. This was this was this was the comedian's coup. This was the joker coup, This was the this is the worst coup. Yeah, but you know, the next one, the next one might not be yes, and that's quite serious.
Yeah.
So until then, hopefully, hopefully we don't reach there. But until this has been naked happened here. Yeah, you two can overturn a coup by yelling, not even particularly menacing, at a bunch your troops.
Yeah, practice practice at home in case you ever need to do it.
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